Category: General
22 Mar 2005
Posted by Oblivion in
General
| 9:53pm
I held her hand firm as we approached the school gate
She is precious to me, but I had to let her go
As she hastened her tread, she turned to bid adieu
My hand still lay open as we looked at each other
Tender tears no more flowed on her baby cheeks
Instead, a cherubic smile adorned her innocent face
With a glimmer of delight she waved me goodbye
Joy of heaven was mine as I looked at my precious one
But, alas! I let her go alone into the ruthless world
And that was why mine were also the pangs of pain
World mocked at me and reminded she is no more a baby
Frozen memories of fourteen years melted by recollection
Grown-up is she for the world, but little she still is for me
Little was she when I held her with care in my arms
When she ran in the sand with abandon, she was little
She was little too when fairy tales were the world to her
Little also was she when cute plaits danced on her shoulders
When she learnt her first rhyme and shared her delight
When, after the day's play, she slept to my lullabies
Little she was when, in pain, she looked at me for a hug
My precious one was little when she believed all my stories
Little was she when her world crumbled on the first day at school
Little is she now as she walks away from me for school
And little shall she be to me however many years may pass
Yes, my little sister shall always be the precious little one to me
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15 Mar 2005
Posted by Oblivion in
General
| 9:00pm
Meaninglessness cannot be ascribed to life, for the concept of meaning and the process of inference belongs to the realm of mind, but life does not.
As it might appear, then, sanity is, on the contrary, not in admitting failure and living in disillusionment reminding oneself, "after all, there is no meaning in anything anyways", but in transcending the realm of mind and embracing life with passion.
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11 Mar 2005
Posted by Oblivion in
General
| 8:49pm
On our journey to nowhere, my feet ached
My feet ached, and I saw the swift flight of a feeling
A feeling of numbness crept in, and I paused
I paused on our journey to nowhere, and looked back
I looked back into His eyes yet again
Yet again I met with that indifferent stare
Indifferent stare but compassionate eyes His were
His were the eyes with no trace of weariness
Weariness and boredom were my constant companions
Companions in my joy, in my strife, and solitude
Solitude encompassed me as He smiled and beckoned
Beckoned me to walk ahead, and I stood askance
Askance I stood and wondered what lied ahead
Ahead have we been walking for years but reached nowhere
Nowhere have we reached, and futile the walk has proved
The walk has proved futile, or so I thought
I thought and I stood shattered. "Where to?" I asked
I asked and He just smiled. "To nowhere", He said
He said thus and noticed the tear in my eye
My eye, and the eyes, went blurred as I turned
I turned as I mused what I did all along the walk
Along the walk, all along, I wanted to be ahead of Him
Ahead of Him I wanted to be, in speed and in sight
In sight of mine, blinded by ambition, was always the destination
The destination that I now, alas, realise is not there at all
"Not there at all!" tears rushed in a cascade
Cascade of memories, joyful and painful, fleeted past
Past was all life that I lost waiting for a tomorrow
A tomorrow when I believed eternal happiness will be mine
Mine, I believed, will be that happiness for eternity
"Eternity, my son, is always in THIS moment", He said
He said, He also said, "don't run. Just walk. Beside me"
Beside me, He walked now, as I slowed down
Slowed down on my tread, I looked around for the first time
For the first time the million doors of delight opened
Opened were also the crooked, closed windows of mind
Mind rested and flew with the clouds as we walked ahead thus
Thus walked, now as friends, ahead on our journey to nowhere
To nowhere walked ahead both of us - Time and me
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6 Mar 2005
Posted by Oblivion in
General
| 11:19am
How many people are gorging on sumptuous food?
How many gadget-freaks are typing SMSs?
How many children are blissfully asleep?
How many poor, old women are hungry and praying for crumps of meal?
How many kids are playing in sand?
How many poets are walking on a beach?
How many cancer patients are battling for life?
How many orphans are thinking of their mothers?
How many men on the battlefield are feeling home-sick?
How many tourists are watching at Eiffel Tower?
How many idlers are watching the strangers on the street?
How many citizens are bribing the bureaucrats?
How many lonely hearts are pining for their lovers/beloveds?
How many lovers are holding hands and walking at Bandra?
How many jobless youth are worried about uncertainty?
How many adolescents are running into the chance meeting with their first crushes?
How many beaten and cheated souls are contemplating suicide?
How many frustrated children are deciding to leave their homes?
How many couples are making love?
How many thinkers are trying yet again to make sense of life?
How many scientists are hoping to discover another solar system?
How many composers are going mad to get that final note correct?
How many sons are holding hands of their mothers just about to die?
How many prostitutes are pleasing the men and cursing their helplessness?
How many school-kids are dreaming of becoming an actor?
How many innocent people are being tortured in prisons?
How many politicians are troubled by feelings of guilt?
How many guys are waiting for the moment to sleep with their girlfriends?
How many women are anticipating labour pains?
How many drunkards are on the verge of being inebriated?
How many insomniacs are wondering why there is night?
How many bosses are screwing-up careers of their subordinates?
How many journalists are making up stories to meet deadlines?
How many judges are passing capital punishments?
How many young boys are being initiated into terrorist groups?
How many Priests and Nuns are regretting their decisions?
How many murderers are standing inside confession boxes?
How many frightened kids are lying to their fathers about marksheets?
How many insane men are hacking the heads of helpless hostages?
How many innocent kids are walking to school to return and find their families killed?
How many passengers are traveling in the flight about to crash?
How many brothers are writing letters to their little sisters?
How many readers are disappointed with the latest work of their favorite writers?
How many bored chaps are surfing porn sites?
How many copywriters are preparing copy for Women's Day ads?
How many godmen are foisting another belief on the blind followers?
How many anxious girls are deciding on the reply to the guy-next-door's proposal?
How many compassionate people are shedding tears for the sorrow and injustice in the world?
How many romantic chaps are listening to Moonlight Sonata?
How many mavericks are giving up on everything and just walking away to nowhere?
How many schizophrenics are returning to normal?
How many atheists on the death-bed are praying for the impossible?
How many agnostics on the death-bed are braving the inevitable?
How many young AIDS patients on the death-bed are hankering to live?
How many intelligent girls are uncomfortable with the misconception of women empowerment?
How many businessmen in their Mercedes-Benzs are waiting for that tomorrow when they will be happy?
How many unhappy onlookers are envying those businessmen in their Mercedes-Benzs?
How many happy people are admiring the speeding Mercedes-Benzs without a trace of envy?
How many lazy guys like me are writing junk in their blogs?
Strange world; interesting life!
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5 Mar 2005
Posted by Oblivion in
General
| 12:22pm
A: Slanging is sinning.
B: Slanging is slanging. Sinning is sinning. No connecting.
A: I saying slanging is sinning. I insisting. You better listening.
B: ...but slanging is slanging, sinning is sinning. Why you connecting?
A: You acting smarting? If you not listening, I fucking you.
B: Good referencing. You saying fucking - that is slanging. If you forcing fucking, that is sinning.
B: Slanging is simpling. Sinning is complicating. Connecting slanging and sinning is even more complicating.
A: You daring speaking more!? I slitting your throat and killing.
B: But, killing is the biggest sinning.
A: No giving a damning. I eldering, you youngering. You not listening to me is mistaking. And I punishing.
B: You go aheading with beheading. But I believing in no connecting slanging and sinning.
A: You fucking culpriting. No respecting? You deserving punishing. I killing you.
B: Amening!
Life is full of obscenity and vulgarity. By taking so many things for granted, and with heads full of convoluted and illogical belief systems, we commit sins enough to warrant ten sentences in hell and yet are completely blind to this fact.
Sin is deeper than the knife can go into the other person's flesh, and slang is often packaged in the nicest words possible that kicks, imperceptibly at that, deep into the other person's ass and makes him feel guilty! We fuck one another with words and gestures, and yet attach virtue to it.
We make it easy for ourselves to do anything and justify the same, by classifying some definite actions as sins and some definite words as slang. And any action that doesn't belong to that set is not a sin, and any word that is not a part of that word set is not slang.
Brilliant, but blatantly shit logic! Man excels at this.
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28 Feb 2005
Posted by Oblivion in
General
| 10:02pm
What if all this world is just an experiment? An experiment designed to fool one person, say Mr Z? What if the world maps, history, biographies, evolution theories, etc are all fiction, just to ensure that Z isn't troubled by the faintest signs of doubt? What if everything is created on the fly, just as the landscape is created in a virtual racing game as the car moves ahead? What if everything is meant to vanish the very next moment after the death of Z? What if all of Z's friends, relations, acquaintances, colleagues, strangers, and everyone else are merely actors who are told what to say and do? What if everybody and everything that Z has seen or known or imagined knows that their only function is to keep him in delusion? What if Bertrand Russell, Plato, JK, etc were never born and that their books, biographies and photographs are just manufactured to keep Z busy thinking and wondering? What if there was no such place as NY, and that WTC attack, Bin Laden, Bush, UN, Kofi Annan, War on Iraq, etc were just gimmicks of someone's imagination - again, to remind Z that there certainly is something out there? What if his friends never go abroad but just go to a retreat at some secret place, and make him believe that they are indeed in US/UK/Australia/etc? And, if Z likes to visit a place, what if it is created right at that very moment to make the impression of reality ever so stronger?
Yes, what if everything is just an experiment?
A fitting case for paranoia extremis, but a fantastic experiment to test the strength of delusions.
Freaky as it sounds, that it is not absolutely impossible makes the question 'What if?' linger...
(It reminds me of Russell's idea that the assumption of the world having been created just five minutes ago and the memory having been so programmed that it takes 'past' as a reality cannot be logically proved wrong, although it does not sound very convincing for logical consideration)
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23 Feb 2005
Posted by Oblivion in
General
| 5:37am
"Every piece of shit that every man eats on every day of his life is personal. They call it business. OK. But it is personal as hell."
- Mario Puzo, written for Michael Corleone
Some writers appear to me to be more intelligent than most philosophers. I have read as many naked facts, with profound insights, in the works of fiction as I did in many volumes of philosophy.
Some works of fiction I rate among the best:
Disgrace by Coetzee
The Stranger by Albert Camus
Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre
These writers' brains, to my mind, have the optimum combination of the intellects of Freud and Russell.
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19 Feb 2005
Posted by Oblivion in
General
| 3:24am
Omerta, the law of silence. [Ref: The Godfather, Mario Puzo]
Maybe the world would be a better place if this law were made an indispensable part of education. Or maybe it would not. Even then, it cannot be worse than the way it is now. So, either ways it is good. It would make people at least more patient, if not anything else.
Kudos to Puzo, no tough guy was ever more impressive than the old guy Corleone.
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15 Feb 2005
Posted by Oblivion in
General
| 7:57am
While necessities are enough for survival and a healthy life, we, it appears to me, spend most part of our wakeful state occupying ourselves with redundancies. However, dividing redundancies as regards how beneficial or harmful they are, we have necessary redundancies - those that are more beneficial than harmful - and absolute redundancies - those that can be wholly dispensed with without affecting the
status quo of the happiness in the world.
Absolute redundancies:
Fashion
Hope
Beliefs
Ideals
Religion
Nationality
Morality
'Self-help' section in bookstores
Politicians
Defence
Marriage
...more to be added.
Necessary redundancies:
Talking
Entertainment
Sports
Interior design
MBA
Law
Police
Mercedes
Psychoanalysis
...more to be added.
Feb 14th - Valentine's Day! All hype and fuss around. Seriously, what are we doing with ourselves? Where exactly have things gone wrong for
Homo Sapiens?
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5 Feb 2005
Posted by Oblivion in
General
| 2:06am
What is the one event that, if ever happens, will disillusion me and shatter my faith in humanity, or love, or whatever I have been holding with significance?
Why does one believe that everything and everyone out there exist to fulfill his expectations? Everything and everyone have their own ways. Why cannot one settle with this absolute fact? Why does one carry such excess, redundant, and useless mental baggage? Why is one apprehensive of just walking on the road of life without knowing what lies ahead?
Contrary to what people believe, taking life as it comes, with no care for security, is not same as being insensitive. Licentiousness is not same as freedom. To be open to the fact that anything can happen is not same as giving up on life and conclude anything is right. Sensitivity hasn't got anything to do with a wholesome display of emotions. To be sensitive is to be completely aware of life, every moment. When one is so aware, one doesn't become arrogant so to attempt putting life in a straightjacket. To expect life to follow one's logic belies all understanding of life.
This, however, does not imply that one takes the gravity and gore of even war with an air of easiness or dismissiveness. It just means one is open to the uncertainty of life, that one follows every note of life as it is plays, and moves along with no conclusions or expectations.
Disillusionment is just a reaction; realization and insight are wholly different.
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25 Jan 2005
Posted by Oblivion in
General
| 5:50am
"...people's approaches to co-operation with their fellows are, indeed, evolutionarily stable. Of course, it is a long stretch from showing equal success in a laboratory game to showing it in the mating game that determines evolutionary outcomes. But it is good to know that in this context at least, nice guys do not come last. They do just as well as the nasty guys and, indeed, as the wary majority."
Nice guys refers to those who choose to co-operate, nasty guys, to those who choose not to. There is a third group - free-riders. They decide to co-operate or not to, depending on the situation on hand. In case of an intensely competitive situation, where the two subjects involved have equally powerful strategies, I doubt if categorising them as nice and nasty depending solely on the tendency of implementing the strategy and ignoring the consequences is sensible.
Game theory strongly relies on assumptions. It applies perfectly to situations where the subjects involved are equally clever or dumb, for, the evaluation of how competitive and unbeatable a strategy is depends on the acknowledgment of the strategy by the opponents. When an opponent repudiates, the strategy seems out of place and the significance dissolves. Which is why, one cannot approach kids or sane individuals with a strategy. They do not have a stand; all strategy fails against them. And because they do not acknowledge the strategy in the first place, the result would be of no bearing - no matter what the result.
For everything else, of course, there is game theory! And it works absolutely fine.
As long as man is against man
And as long as minds can plan
So long shall people play games
Futile duels for fame and names
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16 Jan 2005
Posted by Oblivion in
General
| 12:16am
It's easy to leave behind knowledge for the future generations, but it's not easy to leave behind mystery. In fact, it is possible for every person to pass on his insights, experiences and there are always takers for that in this world. Every one wants to embrace an ism, to hold on to that one big idea, to adopt one school of thought or another, so all knowledge has chance for survival for at least some generations, if not for eternity. But, to create something that will trouble the most intellectual brains for generations hence demands a great amount of genius. And to do that deliberately needs a genius who can grace the planet only once in a millennium.
That da Vinci is a genius is as much a fact as that Googling is a synonym for searching. Although no conclusive evidence exists as yet, da Vinci is believed to be the man behind the mystery of the shroud. That it has been so intimately associated with religious sentiment hampered any meticulous research. Nonetheless, the analysis, however little of that was possible, thus far suggests no other man could have done it except him. Only a person with in-depth knowledge of human anatomy, crucifiction process, unmatched perfection in painting and good contacts with the church and the affluent could have 'created' the shroud with such impeccable foresight! It's akin to planning a perfect murder leaving absolutely no clues behind.
I'd certainly be delighted to know if he really is the man behind the shroud. And it'd be a matter of curiosity to know if he indeed knew that his work of art would become a symbol of faith for millions and perplex religious sceptics and scientific people alike, for centuries thence. Surely, if he was aware of this, it would merit becoming the subject for a mindblowing thriller. Even otherwise, if the mystery were just an accidental consequence, it would still remain among the greatest works of art, and possibly the only one with an element of mystery that would not likely be solved. Ever.
If today I am given a chance to envision any such thing that would leave mankind in mystery for centuries together, what will I choose? .....
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7 Jan 2005
Posted by Oblivion in
General
| 4:49am
Do we know what reality is? Or, do we merely live in a world of relative realities? Of course, everything is not dependent on our perception - everything, in fact, exists regardless of whether we perceive or not. So, logically, there is indeed reality - the world/universe just as is. But, are our minds capable enough to perceive reality? If we observe even casually, everyone believes he is perceiving reality. He believes the world is exactly as the way he is comprehending. Being a fundamentalist or a philosopher is simply a matter of perspective, and perspective is dependent on a lot of factors. Ergo, neither's judgment can be considered infallible. Given this situation, is it possible for one to perceive reality at all?
I suppose it is. It is possible to perceive reality when the perceiver disappears - not out of effort, but out of volition. A simple realisation that any effort on the part of the perceiver/observer subjects the reality to distortion effects the dissolving of the perceiver. In such a state, there is only perception; the duality of perceiver and the perceived is no more. The individual just becomes a channel through which reality lives and flows. He becomes the reality itself.
Unless one comes upon such a state, it appears to me that we merely live in a world of relative realities, no matter how objective our thinking is.
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6 Jan 2005
Posted by Oblivion in
General
| 4:55am
How would life have been if our memory were not photographic? Human memory, for the most part, relies on stored 'images'. The encoding process is strongly linked with the 'association' corresponding to a particular image. There's almost no storing of sense-data. So, when someone 'remembers' an experience, he is simply fetching the appropriate imagery and, more importantly, the 'associations' for the same. While the imagery helps one 'see' the experience, the associations decide the corresponding emotion generated as a result.
However, not all memory is photographic (it appears to me); nonetheless, the memory that we frequently use is. The entire repository of emotion depends, for its effective fucntioning, on only photographic memory. For example, our recollection of basic historical data or theorems in mathematics hardly engenders any recognisable emotion. On the other hand, one can say with a fair amount of confidence that envy cannot be triggered if the mind does not 'recall or construct images' relating to an issue. Same applies to other emotions as well. One feels hatred not directly for the person or an issue, but for the 'mental construction' of the subject in question. Emotion depends not on the subject directly, but on the 'association'.
Looking at it, the edifice of emotion would completely crumble if human memory were not photographic. That also implies the transfer of knowledge from one generation to the next would have been impossible, or at most, absolutely difficult.
Hypothetical but interesting!
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4 Jan 2005
Posted by Oblivion in
General
| 9:03pm
Life is a random event with an uncertain result.
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