Zilch in the marrow

Life...Tadaaaa! Surpriiiize :)

2007-04-17T06:45:00.000-07:00

Its Sukoon-07. The cultural fest of the University of Hyderabad.

Shrikant and I rush into the Ambedkar auditorium in the university at 11 'o clock- just in time for the solo singing competition. I'm listening for the last time to the song i've decided to sing and Shrikant screams in his characteristic style after reading an inconspicuous notice somewhere....the competition is at 11:30 in the main auditorium.
Shreiks me: "WHAT?????? I"LL HAVE TO SING IN THAT MONSTROUSLY HUGE PLACE?
Thats so mean of them.
I'm shit nervous....my hands are shivering...eeks guess I should back out!"
Shrikant's busy looking around and trying to figure out something while I'm all nervous. He shouts again into my ears, all excited, he tells me there's a poetry competition going on here. His shouting is doing no good to my nervousness and I'm only feeling like throwing him to Mars right now. I scream back:" Abbe bewakoof.....poetry competition? so what? lets go to the main audi and rehearse'' and he screams back even louder: "Mujhe koi rehearse vihearse nahin karni, mujhe poetry likhni hai....tujhe likhni hai to tu bhi likh warna chal phut yahaan se"
'I'm not writing any bullshit poetry! I'm nervous and I want to remain nervous.' thought I.

@#%O&*(@$#^(*& goes on in my head

Well.....I was inside the hall....I was given a sheet of paper to write the poem. The rather rude woman who gave me the sheet told me that the theme of the competition was 'Life'
I wrote:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Life

I woke up
To a bizarre existence;
It all seems
Beyond comprehension.
I'm on a journey
I didn't decide to make.
The reins are mine,
But where am I headed?
I see dreams,
But fail to distinguish
Dreams from reality.
I look within myself.
I see a void.
I make no sense.
I hold your hand,
It seems real,
But what is 'real'?
Its ephemeral-
Everything
I scream in confusion,
At the distant suns,
My voice echoes,
In far off planets
It resounds,
From galaxies and quasars,
It reaches the very ends
Of the Universe.
My confusion reverberates
What is life?
But why must I bother
If I can just live it?

-Deepthi K
06HPMA03
II Semester M.A
Department of Philosophy
School of Humanities

2 days later, I'm in the main auditorium at the prize distribution function to collect the first prize we won for Antakshari and my roomie screams my name from somewhere behind me. I hear my name being called out of the mike too "Deepthi K from Philosophy, II place in poetry competition" !!
Wow! I'd participated in some such competition too???? It almost slipped out of my head!
Cool!
I won no prize in the solo singing competition, by the way !!

Boredom

2007-03-21T06:35:00.000-07:00

18. 03. 07

A scorching summer afternoon. A lazy beginning to a lazy day. All activities seem mundane. All thoughts seem like i have them too often. All things seem to have been needing a face lift for centuries.There's no power, no water, no internet connetivity. I stare at the phone, hoping it will ring. It doesn't. The books piled in my shelf are not looking encouraging today.I have things to do but it conveniently slips out of my head. The window doesn't beckon, neither does the door to outside the room. I seem to be waiting, but I have no clue for what. The phone must have slipped out of my mind by now...I'm not waiting for it anymore. Am I waiting for a knock at the door? No, that's the last thing I want now. Nothing should happen to the door, nothing should be done with it. In fact nothing should happen to anything. A certain alaap that i stopped listening to the moment it started still plays...i just realised that that should've drained the computer's batteries by now! Its shut out and at a distance i hear music, very faintly, but it sounds interesting. Now the window beckons. But its still so faint. I think i'm hallucinating. There's not a soul outside, just the summer heat, just the scorching heat. And I'm still hallucinating...the tune still plays. It assumes more and more definedness as my mind goes more and more astray. But the moment i realise this its all gone and its stopped.
Its been an hour since I slipped into this mode of thought (thoughtlessness?).
I've had enough! I've enjoyed it to the maximum and any more of the pleasant boredom will make it boring.
Shilpa knocks the door and asks boredly:"Chai?" I scream as if she was a godsent..."Yessssssss!!Certainly". She gives me a qeer look. I dash off on my cycle with super fast violin playing in my ears (suddenly it occurs that violin and speed are made for each other). We slide down the road to the chai shop effortlessly ...superfast.
' Sweet smell of mirchi bajjis
Risin' up through the air!'.
"Hot chai and hot mirchi bajjis on such a hot day? People are so weird!", I told myself as I sipped the chai and bit into my bajji.
I then dash off at high speed to the library and the rest of the day is all high speed stupidity. I come back late and hit the sack and you wont believe it....dreams are all high speed!
Suggestion to the reader :1) if you're bored, enjoy it but not for too long.
2) Listen to the 'Flight of the humble bee'. Especially once u're done enjoying ur boredom.

Gulp...22?

2006-12-15T08:37:00.000-08:00

I woke up in the morning...there were some messages and calls...friends wishing me a happy birthday...so there I was,half awake to the first day of my 23rd year here...thinking, where have I come, where am I going?
Invariably, birthdays are times for a reality check....what the heck did i do in 22 years?
Gawddd! I've been on the face of this planet for over 2 decades now!
Suddenly, 22 seems like a huge number...I've left teenage 3 years behind!
I can go on about how I freaked out at that thought,but the bottomline remains that its not a very nice realisation...that I'm growing older! [Now one may console me by saying that its not like my hair will turn grey in a few months...but yet!]
'Acceptance, Deepthi, acceptance is the first step' ...I tell myself...'Grow up!'
So, where do I see myself in 10 years?...oops too far...how about 5 years?...yikes, still too far...how about 2 years?...OMG! THIS IS SCARY!!!
What have I done so long? ...(shrieks really loud and pulls her hair apart, gets distracted for a minute thinking of whether she needs a haircut, but very soon gets back to pulling hair apart)
I really like philosophising (Ya...I admit,shucks, I do like that darn activity!...boring,as it may seem to the reader...but i really seem to be liking this thing!).....so?
Where do I take life from here? (Prof. Basu's sarcastic comments about my diligence with studies reverberate in my ears and I am also reminded of the shameful fact that I'm supposed to have read 3 books for my project by now...but I seem to have read only their prefaces!)
All this aside...am I exaggerating things? I probably am...atleast a bit!
Well...ya, I dont know where life will take me...but I atleast know where I want to take it! So, all I have to do is TAKE IT THERE!
All I need to do is stop shrieking and pulling my hair apart (she notices a split end and shrieks even louder...if not anything, atleast one thing is clear about life...she WILL get a haircut tomorrow!)

Blissful addictions

2006-12-08T23:00:00.000-08:00

Posting after 5 months...blame it on the 'state of the art' Computer Center at the University of Hyderabad combined with the lazy eventlessness of my own life. But now that I'm back in Bangalore,I've things to say and all the time in the world :) (or so I continue to believe!!)
So I'm back to doing the most useless thing in the world....sitting before my computer!
I might grow horns, ants might get all busy and build anthills over me...my hair might just grow by a meter and get all knotted...and I wouldnt know! (wait a min...has that already happened?....Aw heck, this cant be true!)
Chatting with my next door neighbour...what can get worse!! Can my computer just crash so I might get back to the dozens of books I am supposed to read?

In memory of your greatness...I bow to thee Prof.C.G!

2006-12-08T08:09:00.000-08:00

Among all teachers I have learnt from, he has been the most memorable. It is said that Socrates was sentenced to die by drinking hemlock for the heresies he committed, one of them being 'corrupting the youth'...but what bliss it must have been to be corrupted by him. I had the brief opportunity too...to be corrupted by one such saint.
Technically, he's never taught me. I've never had the previlege of doing any course under Prof. Chinmoy Goswami. But it was during those intellectually stimulating discourses and thought provoking discussions in the chai shop over the past 4 months that I have learnt real philosophy. To us students, who do like engaging in philosophy but are part of this frustrating education system, wherein even streams of knowledge as beautiful as philosophy are taught in such dry and unexciting ways, CG seemed like a liberation. We'd sit with him and listen to him intently...atleast I always had a 'hangover' after he spoke. He'd buy us cups after cups of chai and I'd forget the maddening crowd around as he spoke of Wittgenstein or Kant. We students of Philosophy(not just in the University of Hyderabad but almost anywhere else in the world), are too few in number....but frankly, how many of our Professors really even know we exist? Would they know our names, let alone our academic interests or inclinations. CG was such a contrast....why would he be sitting till late in the evening despite poor health explaining Advaita or Set Theory to students who aren't part of any course he teaches, and that too spending from his own pocket for our chai and samosas?...simply because he was born to teach, to philosophize.
I only wish he smoked lesser. Pale in his hospital ward he said 'I'm alive...trapped in this ward' when I asked him how he was. He wouldn't miss the cricket matches even in the hospital. His predicament immediately took me back to the talk we had had on 'Metamorphosis' by Franz Kafka.
It must have been more than coincidence that my own father had said the same words in a ward similar to CG's.
With tears in eyes and an empty feeling, I gazed at the benches of the chai shop...where ar't thou, Socrates?

Your Children

2006-07-01T04:50:00.000-07:00

Here is a line from a poem by Kahlil Gibran that a friend sent while I cribbed to her about feeling 'pinned down' by parents:
'Your children are not your children
They are the sons and daughters of life's longing for itself'
Why cant all parents realise this? Why cant they understand that their children are not 'wrong' when they refuse to walk on paths parents choose for them?
Indeed they are not wrong...they are just different.
Why not accept that they are different than spend a lifetime complaining about the children gone 'astray'?
Parents are people and have their own prejudices. They hold onto ideas strongly and impose them on others. That's how people are! They constantly want to make others like themselves...and their own children are not spared. They want to see others more like themselves. Some are left with frustrations and unfulfilled dreams of their own life and want their children to inherit the responsibilty of attaining those unattained goals. Is this fair? May be its not a problem if children dont resist it. But what about those children who want to have their very own goals?
So what should ideal parents be like? Not teach anything with the fear of transmitting their own prejudices? No that's not what I am suggesting. All I am saying is that parents should bring their children up in a detached sort of a way...they should not decide before the seedling grows if it is going to bear apples or oranges.
Maybe a balance is needed. A balance that cannot come without children and parents laying down their egos. Why should there be a generation gap (or any gap for that matter) if people can clearly communicate their minds and are, at the same time open to understanding another's predicament?

The Plague: On doing nothing

2006-06-28T03:06:00.000-07:00

'Query : How contrive not to waste one's time?
Answer : By being fully aware of it all the while
Ways in which this can be done : By spending one's days on an uneasy chair in a dentist's waiting-room; by listening to lectures in a language one doesn't know; by remaining on one's balcony all of a Sunday afternoon; by travelling by the longest and least convenient train routes and of course, standing all the way ; by lining up at the box-office of theaters and then not buying a seat; and so forth '

From The Plague, Albert Camus

As long as I am alive, I must do something, I must engage myself in some activity, even if it happens to be supremely useless. Some innovative ways to achieve this state of 'busy-ness' were as mentioned in the excerpt from the book, others include blogging :)

The Plague: Feeling of exile

2006-06-28T02:58:00.000-07:00

When Plague had struck Oran, the town was closed. People who went out remained out and those that had come in remained in. Their predicament :

'It was undoubtedly the feeling of exile-that sensation of a void within never left us, that irrational longing to hark back to the past or else to speed up the march of time, and those deep shafts of memory that stang like fire'

From The Plague, Albert Camus

Down memory lane : Gifts and Photographs

2006-06-27T08:09:00.000-07:00

I have had this carton for years(an old Bata shoe box...as sturdy as the pair of shoes that didn't ever wear off despite the years...I threw them because I was bored of them). And today, after a long time, I felt an overwhelming urge to have a look at its contents.
Sigh! It brings back such nice memories. I found my own little blue bangle( one and a half inch in diameter) which used to be one of my favorites. I used to wear it all the time and when I lost one of the pair in a wedding, I was hearbroken...I must have been 5 or 6. Its just a small thing, but it brings such vivid memories. I remember a little friend, Vimal, telling me that it didn't go with the red frock...but who cares! I liked them. It brought memories of the place in Mysore from where Ajji had bought them for me. It brought memories of Ajji herself and Vimal. Both Ajji and Vimal are now no more, but somehow, this bangle brought them closer. It brought memories of those narrow streets in Mysore where I played as a child. I spent my summer holidays there. I would invariably fracture a hand or a leg and land up in Mysore and there I was, getting the attention and care of everyone in the family...three uncles an aunt, a grandmother. What more could a child want?
Little things meant so much then. Now I'm hardly connected with that younger self. Yes, I seem to have changed. But nothing can change me so much that I'd look at this carton and feel nothing.
The warmth of photographs in sepia, the nostalgia...aah!. Why does it seem like each of these people was better then? May be its just this reassuarance that there was indeed a time when things were much better than they are now. And that reassuarance brings a longing for the past.
People grow older and often more insensitive to their pasts. Thats the way it is. But I hope(rather irrationally) that I dont ever let go of these little memories. They seem to form me ... they shape my identity.
But soon, the mind wanders off, extrapolating into the future. Wonder how these people will be in future...and that brings hope. Maybe, there will come times when photographs from forthcoming events will be added to these albums, and on a day like this some years ahead, I will be looking at them with the same longing as I do now.
So here I am flipping these pages over and over again as each of these articles/photographs/gifts re-establish lost neural connections and let me relive the past.
Each one tells a story. Each one brings some longing.

Down memory lane: It is fixed

2006-06-23T05:53:00.000-07:00

I was about to go out and play. Amma reminded me again that I must come back when called for. I agreed carelessly, not giving much thought to it. I was a kid who barely knew the values of a promise given. I was preoccupied and she called, several times. I heard but couldn't respond. She decided to lock me out. I decided I must stop playing. I stood there waiting for her to open the door. But she wouldn't. And I wouldn't go and play, now that she was angry. I stood there and waited. I wouldn't go and play. I couldn't get in. I stood there and waited.

The Plague

2006-06-20T11:31:00.000-07:00

"Stupidity has a knack of getting its way, which we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves"
From The Plague, Albert Camus

More to come on the brilliance of this book. Lemme first recover from the experience...sigh!

Fathers' Day

2006-06-18T05:14:00.000-07:00

Strange that we need a special day to formally wish fathers while we should be doing that a lot more often than once a year! But if we are a part of this ridiculous culture anyway (however hesitantly) , why not wish all the fathers of the world a happy fathers' day? And beg for forgiveness for things said and unsaid...more so for the latter.
Fathers are strange people sometimes. They might love their children dearly and show no signs of it. Love isn't always what's expressed. Sometimes love that remains in the heart and remains there forever attains a permanence that nothing else can.