Stillness In Motion

After the unrelenting heat of the past couple of months, I woke up today to the soothing sound of rain drops. Not actual rain drops, but the drops that lingered on the roof tops and leaves the night before and were slowly descending to the earth. It had rained the night before and the dull light from the frosted window showed a promise of more to come.

There were tasks lined up for the day and appointments to keep which seemed tiring till yesterday, but now they seem less tiring in this new setting. After some minor chores, I'm quick to get ready and leave for work. The streets seem deserted for a Monday morning. I feel like turning off the aircon and winding down the window but resist the urge, for the fear of water splashing inside. A few kilometres out and I'm on the road that joins the highway at the end. I can see the highway in the distance and clearly make out that it is raining a few hundred meters in front of me. I cannot tell if I'm moving towards the rain or the rain is moving towards me. It starts with small splashes here and there on the window, and soon the whole car, as if being devoured by the rain. Millions of droplets falling on every surface, some to rest, some to bounce off and some to replace the ones already there.

I turn on the indicator and the wiper as i enter the highway. I pick up speed through the less than usual traffic. I have to take the exit which is only a few kilometres away. As I stare ahead at the cars in front, spraying water behind them as they tread through the wet roads, heading towards a far away destination, I think of her. I wish the day was different. I wish i had woken up with her by my side and looked at the frosted glass together. I wish I was on this highway with her on my side, but not about to take the next exit.

I wish we had broken away from our routine, just brushed our teeth and left home, or even skip the brushing part. We enter the coastal highway and drive on along the sea. Windows lowered a bit, music in my ears, wind in my hair, her hand in mine, as we cruise through the different intensities of rain. We go farther away from where we are supposed to be, doing nothing that we are supposed to do. When we feel far enough, we stop for a sip of coffee from a road side shop, sitting on unbalanced chairs and looking at speeding cars through the steam coming from the cup. And then head further down, to find a deserted beach, where we lay on the sand and let our eyes drink from the ocean. The calm and at the same time restless surface, reflecting the dark clouds above, with no sign of the sun or the blue sky.We talk a lot but communicate a lot more. We lay there careless, not worrying about the sand in her hair, the time of the day, mistakes of the past or decisions of the future.

Maybe some other time, maybe after she comes back in town, maybe when there is less work, maybe if it rains on a sunday, but i want that day to come. Happy or sad or routine, everyday ends for a new one to begin, but I don't want that day to end, or i don't know how to end it. For now, I don't have to worry about it, because here comes my exit on the highway, my exit towards where i'm supposed to be. Or is it.....

The Invisible Glasses

My exceptionally tall friend was on the phone, giggling in embarrassment, "Dude, Modi just killed it man." He hated Narendra Modi, who was winning the elections with the greatest majority in the history of India that day.

"The thing on everyone's agenda today at office is to pass some sarcastic comments at me or within hearing distance from me. I didn't know so many people work here man." He was open and loud about his hatred for Modi and his preference for AAP. Although he expected Modi to win, the margin was just too much for him to bear.

The Godhra riots of 2002 is synonymous with Modi. Its the first thing that comes to mind when you hear his name, all around the world. My friend's hatred for Modi originates from this. Some time after the riots, one of his friend's father who was in the Gujarat police force at the time, had told him something to hint that Mr. Modi was indeed at fault. These words had formed such a strong picture of Modi for him that even though the person had not given any proof for his accusation, in my friend's mind that became the truth.

Casually browsing youtube, i chanced to come across this video of a TV interview of Narendra Modi just before the election. I was impressed by the way he spoke and presented himself. Although I'm aware of the riots, I haven't gone into the details and have not heard many people's opinion on the matter. So for me, it is just something I'm not sure about. Soon after the video was over, I glanced at the side pane and found some suggested videos and checked them too. A few videos in, I noticed that all the videos suggested to me were against the other parties contesting the elections and a few of them praising the BJP. I became a Modi supporter. A few hours of such browsing can completely change your opinion and preference on a subject, and this preference is not formed based on facts but on the representation of facts.

My friend does not know the real facts about the riot, the other person had merely presented some facts in such a way to impose his opinion on my friend. This happens all the time. To a point where, people get away with mixing a bit of lies in the presentation. For instance, in an election rally or an interview like the one I watched, politicians constantly give out some figures and infer that they are better than the opposition. But at the end of the interview does anyone go back and check if the figures are right? Or if the figures actually represent what the person inferred? The facts do not remain in your mind. What remains is an impression.

And it is rightly said that the first impression is the best impression. Because once you form a good impression about a party, you believe everything they say and claim that the opposition is lying. Once you form an opinion that a person is stupid or dumb, everything he says or does seems to resonate with your opinion, when in reality you do pretty much the same stuff yourself. The best part is that we never realise that our thoughts and opinions are being controlled. Makes me wonder if i really did chance upon that interview or was led there without my knowledge.

All these election campaigns, product advertisements, gossips, movies etc, influence our minds to such a great extent. We make so many decisions in our life not based on the truth but based on what we are told is true. You will always think your detergent brand is the best even though you haven't tried them all. Why should you test your theory, when actors in lab coats constantly come on television and tell you that they have done that? The other day, I saw this surf excel ad telling me that it has vibrating molecules which remove dirt. And initially the ad for Tang said that it has real fruit, and now it says it has the taste of real fruit. Don't get me started on the names they give to things they put in fairness creams.

So next time you feel hatred or love or any strong feeling towards a person, try to stop yourself and force your mind to feel the opposite. Give the bad guy the benefit of doubt. Assume that he may indeed be good and you're just not able to see it.

I have tried it and failed.

The Illusion

She side-steps some dog poop as she begins her early morning jog of three laps around her home measuring a kilometre each. She would like to listen to some songs but because of the inconvenience of the wires and risk of accidents, she opts to sing them instead in her head. Its the peak of summer and she starts to sweat by the first turn. As she cuts left at the corner with the temple, she hears some strange animal cries similar to that of a crow. But as she approaches the overflowing garbage bin she spots the source which is a tiny little kitten in the middle of the road.

Her heart goes out to the poor thing, so small and fragile, probably shouting out to it's mother. The way it just about manages to keep one feet in front of the other and move in one particular direction, indicating that its just born.

She keeps running, hoping it's mother comes to her soon. Between the vehicles passing by and the crows flying above, such a small kitten in the middle of the road, shouting out like that, has no chance of survival. For a brief moment she considers taking it home if it survives till she completes her first lap, but then decides against it considering the number of stray cats already loitering around her house, specially the kitchen. As she turns around the temple with the dual coloured walls again, she finds the kitten at the same place, still shouting. She keeps running.

A couple of turns and a few hundred meters after the garbage bin, she begins to hear similar cries. This time from behind her and gaining on her. As if the kitten is chasing her. Before she could look back, the cries go past her, originating from a bike driven by a middle aged man and his daughter seated at the back. They are taking the kitten home. The kitten's fate had turned, just like that. From an almost zero chance of survival to a comfortable nine lives.

On her third round, she finds the place around the garbage bin empty and silent. Her mind lingers on the events that took place. Realising that the kitten would never know that its caretakers had saved it from inevitable death.

Again, a couple of turns and a few hundred meters ahead, at almost the same spot that the bike had overtaken her, she again hears some cries. This time its dogs, two of them following a third and dangling from the mouth of this dog was the kitten that had just been rescued. The kitten hung lifeless, held by its head. The dogs ran past her. She kept running.

She feels sad for the cat. The fact that the cat was almost rescued makes her feel worse. She had expected the kitten to die when it was crying near the rubbish bin, but not now. It was supposed to live. More than what happened, it is what she expected to happen that troubles her. Something good should always be followed by something better. Everything we get is forgotten or taken for granted. Not only do we expect to get something better, we are not prepared to lose something that we got before.

The kitten had never realised that it was in fatal danger in the first place and that it had been saved by that girl on the bike, who convinced her father to take it home. It had neither memory of the past nor expectations from the future. Everything in its life, including life itself, was temporary.

Business Idea #2 - Clean, Green Earning Machine

Idea number 1 and 3 were deleted because someone not as lazy as myself worked on their idea and brought it to the market before i could bring my lazy a#@ to the computer and type a few paragraphs about it.

Recently, my Mom was saying that dumping waste on the road was now punishable under law in Tamil Nadu with a fine or even imprisonment. Like always, i was quick to say that it will never be effective and the government will forget it even before the news spreads to all the citizens in the city. But then, measures such as these are designed to fail.

We do not live in a homogenous world. People in the same house are not alike and do not always concur on thoughts or actions. I would like to be in a clean environment and i'm prepared to spend x amount of time and money to make my environment clean. That does not mean that everyone in my house or my street or locality has the same thought process. But we all concur on one thought, "Let someone else start it"

We are so good at following. Half full garbage bins with more garbage strewn all around the bin are a common sight in this city. I wish there were cameras installed there, so that we could clean the place just once and wait and watch. The first person that dumps garbage outside the bin should receive a royal a#@ kicking because i feel it sets off a chain reaction. All of a sudden, it is now ok to dump garbage outside the bin because there is garbage already there.

When the process of making a place dirty is a chain reaction, so should be the process of cleaning. Instead of having a state wide law, we should start at a small place in slow pace.

Thats where this idea comes from. Take a locality in the city, lets say Nungambakkam. More specifically Loyola college. This is where it will start. We start by cleaning the campus and putting measures in place to keep it clean. Simple announcements by the dean and frequent bulletins will help immensely in this environment of almost like minded people. We learn from our mistakes and make constant improvements and establish a system that can be horizontally deployed. Next, we do not move to other colleges but jus outside the campus.

We tie up with the local businesses and schools and churches and expand the system to the streets and roads near the college. Place dust bins, employ cleaning staff, supply cleaning equipment and fix time tables. We should spread information and knowledge through these institutions to the people living and working the area on how the cleaning system works and what small things they can do to keep it working. Distribute leaflets to all houses in local languages and pictographic representations. Have a helpline number that would respond to any call in case there is a lapse in the system. Gather some media attention so that people even crossing the area become aware of the speciality and maintain the cleanliness.

Get in advertisers for the dust bins of cleaning staff uniform and expand slowly, street by street. Students of the college can form a special team that continuously studies the progress and also alerts of any lapses. At each step, it is important to check on the areas covered. It may take years to cover the city and perhaps decades for the state, but then, better late than never.

News This week

OUTCOME OF 2014 GENERAL ELECTIONS COULD SHAPE INDIA: GOLDMAN SACHS
Saturday, 30th November, 2013 (Actual headline on front page of economic times)

In the most shocking of revelations, Goldman Sachs has said that the upcoming parliamentary elections could play an important part in shaping the future of the country. The government and the citizens of the country are equally in shock after this statement. The leading investment advisory firm based in the US have gone on to say that India needs to focus on reforms.

Finance Minister P Chidambaram said, "We did not see this coming. But then, these are investment advisory firms and their reports are based on a number of criteria assigned different weight ages. It is not necessary that they have to be true. We would like to assure the public that we are doing everything in our power to change the opinion of Goldman Sachs"

The report says that greater stress on reforms and the removal of infrastructure bottle necks may spur India's economic growth. "Firms like Goldman Sachs are such a boon to the world", Rajan said. "If it weren't for this report, we would never have known the secret to economic growth. I would like to emphasis that we are in a very safe position and are on track towards a zero inflation future." Sensex rose by 11 basis points after Mr. Rajan's statement.

We could only get a quick response from Rahul Gandhi, "What elections?"

NaMo responded to us through whatsapp, "I'm very good at shaping the future. Shaping is actually a passion that i have held close to my heart since my childhood. I have even managed to shape an image of myself as a secular and religiously unbiased lauda"

"typo *leader"

Our special correspondent whom we had sent to the Goldman Sachs office in the US was not available for comments since he had apparently missed his connecting flight from Hawaii.

As the nation is gripped by this report, it prepares itself for the high octane mega budget drama that is the general elections 2014.

Irritant

When I was employed with a commercial Vehicle manufacturer in the past, we studied the various things that can go wrong in a vehicle. These faults / complaints were grouped under different categories and each one was given a rating of sorts depending on the severity and dis comfort to the customer. There was one category called "Irritant". That was sub divided into two, Major and Minor irritants. These were small complaints that would not lead to any monetary loss but still concerned the customers, like a rattling door or squeaky passenger seat or stuff like that. But one should not under estimate the power of minor irritants.

When i can sit and learn and lecture on what irritates others, why not have my own list? So here it is,

1. My latest irritation (and what prompted me on this topic) is the new BB pin thingy. Seriously what the hell? As if the unwanted number of messenger services and their lousy ads on TV were not enough. Now terrorists don't have to go to the extent of encoding or decoding their messages, they can transmit messages through one of the messengers and the government would take forever to find the right one. Our generation, sorry, great generation, has the power of communicating infinite number of non sense messages, moral lectures, photographs that are a waste of disk space and 3g data to infinite number of people through infinite mediums.

2. Filthy advertisements. Not the ones that you don't want young kids to see, but the ones that the advertisers themselves don't want you to see or notice. I have done some little study and come to understand that some people have the power to switch off their minds during advertisements. They are clearly watching the ad, but if you ask them something about it, they say they didn't listen. Sadly, I do not have this super power. That is why i get irritated when every week, some cosmetic or soap company comes up with a new chemical element that can make your skin look better. I think all the research they do is finding words that are not in any dictionary. Only if they were sure that the listeners aren't really listening, they can come up with soaps that are made of fruit milk shakes, face wash with magnet action and deodorants that smell like chocolate. I think within the advertising circle, the power of your beauty cream is determined by how ugly you make your model look before they use the cream. Something that put me off recently is the Tang ad. Initially, the mother says that the new Tang has fruit inside. But recent ads have changed the wordings. Now the mother says that the new tang has the taste of fruit. Same ad but changed voiceover. I don't know why, there is no logical explanation, but this highly irritates me.

3. Real Estate. An ad not so far in the future. "Are you looking for a home in Chennai? Look no further. ABC builders (my intention is to quote a random name but i'm pretty sure there is some builder by that name already) is here to solve your problem. Just a 2 hours flight journey from Chennai airport is our lush villa style houses ready for occupancy". Advertisements are everywhere. It is impossible to escape them. There are already premium TV channels that do not have ads. Slowly there will be premium radio and premium internet browsers that will block all ads. Then there will be a time when customers will be paid to watch/read/listen to ads.

4. High beam head lamps. This is the most irritating experience of driving in India. At least 50% of the drivers always have their head lights on high beam. Most of them are bikers. I fail to understand how they cannot notice that they are flashing their lights on faces and not the road. This, and a lot of other things root from our deeply engraved misunderstanding of FREEDOM.

Our freedom is more important than the freedom of others around us. People are entitled to make their own choice, so they go around choosing. Choosing to cross when the signal is red, choosing what their children would graduate in, choosing where their wives should work, choosing when their sons should marry and choosing whom their daughters should marry. We believe we are right, we are more experienced and we know what is best for everyone. Do we?

Assume we have a choice. The most important choices will never have a sure, definite, time bound, quantifiable result. Like buying a home, choosing your spouse, etc. And if a choice has a sure, definite, time bound, quantifiable result, then they are most likely insignificant decisions. Like ordering your food, selecting clothes, etc. Coming to the significant decisions, there is really no way of telling for sure that your decision was wrong. One cannot say that it would have been better if one had selected option B instead of option A because of the simple reason that one did not select option B. The comparison becomes between something real and existent with something that does not, cannot and will not exist. We exercise great strengths of imagination to create this parallel universe where we have made all the right decisions in life, just to gain a feeling of regret or hatred towards life as it is.

Some may lecture on the concept of probability. The probability of success in class B is higher than the probability of success in class A. Try that lecture on someone who has survived a plane crash or  a family who lost a loved one in a lightening strike. The number loses all its charm once you become part of the statistics.

You had a choice to read this article or skip it. I have consumed 3 minutes of your life and given you nothing in return. But don't regret it, because you would have to spend another minute doing that.

On a roll

I am sitting in my office going through my blog after a long time, almost a year, determined to add something today. There are a few ideas i had drafted in the past year but none of them seem interesting once they are typed out in black and white. I guess things are a lot colourful when they are inside your head. I start to dwell on a new topic, try to build on it, check a few things online and finally give up when i reach an article on brain death. I cross my hands on the desk and rest my forehead on them and close my eyes for a bit. Getting the idea out of my head, thinking of removing the blog's bookmark from my browser. Thinking... thinking...

Suddenly the office door is kicked open from the outside and three men enter. One leading and two following, dressed in shabby clothes and looking like none of them has seen water for a week except for when they mix it with their drinks, which i'm guessing took place just before they came over. Having spotted me, they come straight towards me making loud noises with their mouths and also by moving objects in their path. Startled as they come closer, i begin to ask them who they are and what they want but before i can complete the first word, the leader pulls out a gun from inside and places it on my forehead and asks, "Are you Midhun?"

Should i say "Yes"? Do they want me alive and don't mind killing the people who aren't me?

Now I should be saying "No". They are obviously looking to for me and in all probability they want to kill me. They don't look like they care of the consequences and they definitely don't look like the practical joking types.

"Are you Midhun?" He shouts again, this time the other two get excited and kick at the table and chair.
"Yes", i stammer. Honesty is the best policy?

He pulls the trigger. BANG!! 

I get up. What if something like that really happened? What would happen to me after a death like that. Would there be a me? Would i be in heaven or hell? When would that be decided? Is it already decided? Because the gruesome death that i just went through should be accounted while judging my life. That and all the years that i could not live must have nullified all the wrong that i have done. And some more. I imagine i must be in some place in between where the decision is taken. Standing in front of the judging entity or in a line to meet the judging entity. That person standing in line, does he look like me? would i be carrying my body or would it be just my thoughts or conscience looking like a cloud? Wait a minute....

What if there is no heaven or hell the way we think? What if i don't leave my body? My mind just goes into infinite sleep. I can only dream. I can dream everything, sweet ones and nightmares. Maybe, if i have lived good enough, i get to see only good dreams and if i have done wrong, there would be nightmares playing in endless loops. That looks pretty much like heaven and hell. but wait a minute....

What would happen to my body? That body lying lifeless on that office chair with blood dripping through the leather, to the floor. It would be a mess indeed, taking hours to clear the body, days to clean the place and weeks to get rid of the furniture and still people would hesitate to enter the office for a few months to come. It would take a year for the body tissues to decompose depending on the depth of burial and the waterlogged in the soil and many decades for the bones to become brittle enough to.... Wait a minute....

The guy pulls the trigger, igniting the gun powder in the bullet to set it in motion. The bullet leaves the barrel and enters my head, the time reduced considerably because of the nil distance between the two. It penetrates the skin without any fall in speed. I guess i'm still alive at this point. The sensation of pain racing against the bullet to reach my brain first. The bullet boring through the skull taking it some effort before entering the brain. The soft brain tissues easily burning away to give way to the hot piece of metal that comes out through the back and then through the black chair before finally coming to rest on the wall behind me.

Boy...... If i could write at the speed of my thoughts........