Thursday, April 20, 2006
SQoSSD #5
There are only two kinds of people in this world: Those who are already dead and those who will be soon.
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
The Human Tragedy
The human tragedy isn’t much of a tragedy in itself.
Actually speaking, it’s a comedy; dark, black, bitingly sarcastic, slapstick, humane, feel-good or just plain funny. In fact, it’s more comedic than any other single genre of comedy.
As one often realizes, when absolutely delighted and excited after accidentally bumping onto a really good movie, or when immersed in total bliss listening to superb stuff, unconditionally embracing his triviality. Even, when one is excited just after deciding to have a “Rude” under the “Martini Madness” menu in a cool pub, or when pleased at the hot rasam served in a nearby restaurant. Worse even, when one gets ridiculously happy that somebody nodded in agreement on an obscure point that he made.
And so does one, how much ever he tries to dismiss it as a “mere event, part of the great web, that has befallen him,” when clearly stumped by a really cool salary hike after an average [1] appraisal.
Life is delightful. More so, if your EQ ranges from 5.7 to 5.9.
[1] - I am really not sure if it was bad or average.
Last modified on Apr 20, 2006 at 1:11 p.m. to infuse some clarity in the post.
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
Jokes and Beliefs
A joke. That’s what it is. That’s exactly what it is.
My life is a big joke and probably a good one. I often wonder if it was one single joke or an array of jokes.
May be, it is a single joke and the audience (“God” and I, that is) is laughing waveringly at the hilarity of that single joke. At times, laughing hard rolling on the floor, at times slowly recovering from fits of laughter and clutching the handles of the chair to sit back on it, at times smiling gently and reclining comfortably into the chair, and at times bored of the joke and repeatedly repositioning oneself in the chair; all these fleeting moments constituting the fine units of the overall timeline of the joke, that is being cracked.
Or may be, it is indeed an array of jokes and the audience laughs hard or less, smiles, smirks or jeers at one joke at a time.
I believe in jokes. I mean, I actually *believe* in jokes; “believe”, as in my set of belief(s). In fact, that’s the only thing I believe in. May be, this realisation had not dawned upon me, a couple of years ago. But now, it definitely has.
Coffee. Strong caffeine. Now, that’s another thing that I have started to staunchly believe in, of late.
My life is a big joke and probably a good one. I often wonder if it was one single joke or an array of jokes.
May be, it is a single joke and the audience (“God” and I, that is) is laughing waveringly at the hilarity of that single joke. At times, laughing hard rolling on the floor, at times slowly recovering from fits of laughter and clutching the handles of the chair to sit back on it, at times smiling gently and reclining comfortably into the chair, and at times bored of the joke and repeatedly repositioning oneself in the chair; all these fleeting moments constituting the fine units of the overall timeline of the joke, that is being cracked.
Or may be, it is indeed an array of jokes and the audience laughs hard or less, smiles, smirks or jeers at one joke at a time.
I believe in jokes. I mean, I actually *believe* in jokes; “believe”, as in my set of belief(s). In fact, that’s the only thing I believe in. May be, this realisation had not dawned upon me, a couple of years ago. But now, it definitely has.
Coffee. Strong caffeine. Now, that’s another thing that I have started to staunchly believe in, of late.
Monday, April 10, 2006
Of or related to problems and solutions
I am trying to get rid off some drafts that I had saved in the past and push them as posts, on general principle. This was drafted originally on 13th February, 2006 at around 6:48 p.m, and modified now to look palatable.
Further update: Contents last modified on 11th April at around 1:25 p.m. to suit the author's mood and taste.
Feb 13th, 2006
Problems, in general, can’t have solutions. If there was one, there wouldn’t have been a problem at first place. {So, problems are nothing but facts; facts that are a little annoying, but facts nevertheless.}
Somebody might come up with examples to refute this claim, like this:
Q: how much is 17 times 18?
A: Hmmm, the conventional wisdom has it as 306.
Well, this kind of example is a special case and rejected outright because of the sheer number of living beings that know the answer.
I know there is an alternate version which goes like this:
Problems are meant to have solutions. If there weren’t any, nobody would have tried to pose it as a problem. {So, problems generally have solutions, and they would have been accepted as facts, otherwise.}
Again, some frustrated reader, might come up with examples to refute this claim, like this:
Q: how do I get a girlfriend?
A:Now, I can’t have an answer for this, when you yourself don’t. Can I?
Well, may be, this is a special case as well and need not be considered in this discussion. {So, we will assume that there is an impending solution in this case, much to the reader’s delight; and that, it will take some finite time to find the solution .}
Now, I pose a problem - to find out which of the above theories are right.
The discerning reader would have realised that theory #1 is deftly done and hardly makes any claim about problems having solutions. Where as, according to theory #2, there will always have to be a solution, now that I have specified a problem.
My dear reader, here the supporters of theory #2 are caught off guard unless they offer a convincing solution to this problem. Else, the winners by default, the supporters of theory #1, will go on to make more claims.
1. Contradiction is the only tautology.
2. Incompleteness is the most complete.
3. Cynicism is beautiful.
indecidability, on whether there is a solution or not, for a problem, is just a “constraint ”. And, the solution, or the lack of it, is just an “implementation detail”.
Final note:
There are no problems. There are only facts. On second thoughts, there are no facts either.
Further update: Contents last modified on 11th April at around 1:25 p.m. to suit the author's mood and taste.
Feb 13th, 2006
Problems, in general, can’t have solutions. If there was one, there wouldn’t have been a problem at first place. {So, problems are nothing but facts; facts that are a little annoying, but facts nevertheless.}
Somebody might come up with examples to refute this claim, like this:
Q: how much is 17 times 18?
A: Hmmm, the conventional wisdom has it as 306.
Well, this kind of example is a special case and rejected outright because of the sheer number of living beings that know the answer.
I know there is an alternate version which goes like this:
Problems are meant to have solutions. If there weren’t any, nobody would have tried to pose it as a problem. {So, problems generally have solutions, and they would have been accepted as facts, otherwise.}
Again, some frustrated reader, might come up with examples to refute this claim, like this:
Q: how do I get a girlfriend?
A:
Well, may be, this is a special case as well and need not be considered in this discussion. {So, we will assume
Now, I pose a problem - to find out which of the above theories are right.
The discerning reader would have realised that theory #1 is deftly done and hardly makes any claim about problems having solutions. Where as, according to theory #2, there will always have to be a solution, now that I have specified a problem.
My dear reader, here the supporters of theory #2 are caught off guard unless they offer a convincing solution to this problem. Else, the winners by default,
1. Contradiction is the only tautology.
2. Incompleteness is the most complete.
3. Cynicism is beautiful.
Final note:
There are no problems. There are only facts. On second thoughts, there are no facts either.
A token visit to the local temple (a.k.a.) The silly joys of irreverence
These are some notes that I had written originally on February 27th of this year, after a pleasant visit to my hometown, and intended to publish it. Not very unreasonably, I never finished it. Now, I am publishing it here, after some bare editing to make it palatable to the reader, in lieu of the general principle that this blog should be the only place where all my written pieces of you-know-what should remain.
Feb 27th, 2006
I went home this weekend that just went past over us. Among the eventful things that happened were the meetings I had with lot of long-lost reduced-to-hi friends. The one who studied till 5th standard with me and then diverged his path from the rut and went on to do more manly things, one who quit the school past his 10th standard and joined a polytechnic course, and so on. It was nostalgic, to say the least.
Not visiting the temple in the past dozen visits back home meant one thing; that I’d have to visit it this time. Also, it happened to be Sivarathiri. Exhibiting absolute pretence, my amma asked me to come to the temple because it was Sivarathiri. The actual reason wasn’t that. It was that my last visit to the temple is already past the expiry date and will no more be valid; even if not with God Himself, at least with amma. So, we walked over to the Ayyappan temple (the Ayyappan temple had a Shiva deity as well) nearby the sea shore.
I, sometimes [1], wonder how irreverence comes to me very naturally. For e.g., the first thing that struck my mind when I heard that my Computer Networks professor was *actually* a professor (with a Ph. D and all) is that how dumb the one who gave it to him should have been. The possibility that the dear pitch bald (this is expressed with utmost empathy as there are flourishing signs of the same showing up with yours truly as well) professor was capable of doing something that is confounding to the rest of us never struck me. As a matter of fact, during my final year project work, I myself have confounded him with such unpalatable balderdash (conceptualized during an ‘insightful’ grape juice session) passing it off as new ideas (since he really insisted upon new ideas and publishing them on journals and such stuff) and made him listen to it for some good amount of time.
This time around in the temple Lord Shiva was having his day; or night as a matter of fact. There were a host of aunties and housewives each of them equipped with an unbound book white-covered thin book full of slokas in Tamil/Sanskrit, most of them written in Tamil though. My appa was on the mike reciting Rudhram and Chamakam, the couplet in the Vedas/Upanishads on Lord Shiva. There was one more person, much younger, accompanying my father who just couldn’t recite it as loud as my father did. (Angry with himself and this world, he came out and repeatedly checked if the mike was working right and tried really hard to bring its volume down so that his voice could also be heard.)
Greeting everybody you know on your way with a token “Hi! How are you doing?” is perhaps the most difficult task in this world. Worse it is, when you are from a nutshell of a place where everybody knows everybody else. So, as you smile and try evading one aunty, you would have already missed another one. That’s good, you may think. But, as you round about the temple [2], she will catch you again and you’ll have to explain the possibility of you actually missing such a huge figure. And you rue to yourself, what Subhash Nagare says in Sarkar, “Kitni baar samjhaya hai tumhe Zero! paas ke phaide dekhne se pehle, door ke nuksaan ke baar mein sochna chahiye.”
So, it’s better to catch as many of them while they were reciting the slokas so that they pardon you with a portending smile and miss those slokas (which somehow gives you a great pleasure). My sister who was pretending as though she was really interested in the proceedings was only managing to doze away. I had already started thinking about the post that I am making right now and more specifically this line that I am typing now.
[1] - which means that, I really don’t wonder, but claim that I do, so that I could pass something off as a new post.
[2] - this, perhaps, could be the reason why this tradition of going around the deities must have originated; so that one can meet people and talk to each other on the way and spend some quality time.
Feb 27th, 2006
I went home this weekend that just went past over us. Among the eventful things that happened were the meetings I had with lot of long-lost reduced-to-hi friends. The one who studied till 5th standard with me and then diverged his path from the rut and went on to do more manly things, one who quit the school past his 10th standard and joined a polytechnic course, and so on. It was nostalgic, to say the least.
Not visiting the temple in the past dozen visits back home meant one thing; that I’d have to visit it this time. Also, it happened to be Sivarathiri. Exhibiting absolute pretence, my amma asked me to come to the temple because it was Sivarathiri. The actual reason wasn’t that. It was that my last visit to the temple is already past the expiry date and will no more be valid; even if not with God Himself, at least with amma. So, we walked over to the Ayyappan temple (the Ayyappan temple had a Shiva deity as well) nearby the sea shore.
I, sometimes [1], wonder how irreverence comes to me very naturally. For e.g., the first thing that struck my mind when I heard that my Computer Networks professor was *actually* a professor (with a Ph. D and all) is that how dumb the one who gave it to him should have been. The possibility that the dear pitch bald (this is expressed with utmost empathy as there are flourishing signs of the same showing up with yours truly as well) professor was capable of doing something that is confounding to the rest of us never struck me. As a matter of fact, during my final year project work, I myself have confounded him with such unpalatable balderdash (conceptualized during an ‘insightful’ grape juice session) passing it off as new ideas (since he really insisted upon new ideas and publishing them on journals and such stuff) and made him listen to it for some good amount of time.
This time around in the temple Lord Shiva was having his day; or night as a matter of fact. There were a host of aunties and housewives each of them equipped with an unbound book white-covered thin book full of slokas in Tamil/Sanskrit, most of them written in Tamil though. My appa was on the mike reciting Rudhram and Chamakam, the couplet in the Vedas/Upanishads on Lord Shiva. There was one more person, much younger, accompanying my father who just couldn’t recite it as loud as my father did. (Angry with himself and this world, he came out and repeatedly checked if the mike was working right and tried really hard to bring its volume down so that his voice could also be heard.)
Greeting everybody you know on your way with a token “Hi! How are you doing?” is perhaps the most difficult task in this world. Worse it is, when you are from a nutshell of a place where everybody knows everybody else. So, as you smile and try evading one aunty, you would have already missed another one. That’s good, you may think. But, as you round about the temple [2], she will catch you again and you’ll have to explain the possibility of you actually missing such a huge figure. And you rue to yourself, what Subhash Nagare says in Sarkar, “Kitni baar samjhaya hai tumhe Zero! paas ke phaide dekhne se pehle, door ke nuksaan ke baar mein sochna chahiye.”
So, it’s better to catch as many of them while they were reciting the slokas so that they pardon you with a portending smile and miss those slokas (which somehow gives you a great pleasure). My sister who was pretending as though she was really interested in the proceedings was only managing to doze away. I had already started thinking about the post that I am making right now and more specifically this line that I am typing now.
[1] - which means that, I really don’t wonder, but claim that I do, so that I could pass something off as a new post.
[2] - this, perhaps, could be the reason why this tradition of going around the deities must have originated; so that one can meet people and talk to each other on the way and spend some quality time.
Friday, April 07, 2006
A Rude Shock
Yesterday, I was in for a rude shock, when I realised that, in one’s mind, melancholy could creep in like that. Just like that, in a moment.
Now, this came in as a rude shock because, after all these years of propounding theories, one after another, I was somehow of the idea that I had learned to perfectly dodge melancholy.
I have had learned to laugh at myself. There was this moment of clarity somewhere in these 20-odd years which made me think so. May be, it was not a single moment, but a vast passage of time that metamorphosed me. (As I have already confessed somewhere in this blog, I feel I have already lived for a very long time; so long that it’s virtually impossible to categorize myself as a young man, though “saner” minds would do so.) So, often I laugh at myself when I spout theories about life; when I fret over a taxing day at the office; when a the CD/DVD cover a favourite movie cracks a bit; when I wonder if I had a disturbed childhood, on an idle day; when I live my life. Thus, the idea that maintaining absolute frivolousness could evade melancholy.
The day in itself (yesterday), if it’s not obvious, was as bland as it could get. I was quite tired of loitering here and there on the web and finally decided to go home. But, I had to book my tickets for the next weekend (which I didn’t get eventually) and have dinner in between. After failing to get the tickets, I hopped over to the legendary Sri Krishna Café for my dinner and met an ex-roommate of mine.
Now this friend of mine often sports a sorry face and gets pissed off with life on a daily basis. But that has never been a matter of concern for others (yours truly included) and only makes him the butt of our jokes often. Yesterday, he had a certain unexplainable pensiveness in his face, or so I felt. That got me thinking. Now, something that makes one think is potentially dangerous; unconditionally so, when you actually connect to somebody like that friend of mine.
All things, that are fodder enough for bringing in a contemplative mood, came into one’s mind in a flash – 5.7 to 5.9 EQ, “After all, one does need to do Something in life”, oblivion, senility, “The universe is expanding” - stuff which my dear friend himself, wouldn’t have thought (as only he can, should, must and need to) of.
I sent out an incomprehensible message (as often I do) to confound some friends, who challenge themselves on not getting confounded on the sort of messages that I send, and reply challenging me back with their musings, wisecracks and self-proclaimed brainchildren. And thus, it was already a joke.
Needless to say, I was amused!
Now, this came in as a rude shock because, after all these years of propounding theories, one after another, I was somehow of the idea that I had learned to perfectly dodge melancholy.
I have had learned to laugh at myself. There was this moment of clarity somewhere in these 20-odd years which made me think so. May be, it was not a single moment, but a vast passage of time that metamorphosed me. (As I have already confessed somewhere in this blog, I feel I have already lived for a very long time; so long that it’s virtually impossible to categorize myself as a young man, though “saner” minds would do so.) So, often I laugh at myself when I spout theories about life; when I fret over a taxing day at the office; when a the CD/DVD cover a favourite movie cracks a bit; when I wonder if I had a disturbed childhood, on an idle day; when I live my life. Thus, the idea that maintaining absolute frivolousness could evade melancholy.
The day in itself (yesterday), if it’s not obvious, was as bland as it could get. I was quite tired of loitering here and there on the web and finally decided to go home. But, I had to book my tickets for the next weekend (which I didn’t get eventually) and have dinner in between. After failing to get the tickets, I hopped over to the legendary Sri Krishna Café for my dinner and met an ex-roommate of mine.
Now this friend of mine often sports a sorry face and gets pissed off with life on a daily basis. But that has never been a matter of concern for others (yours truly included) and only makes him the butt of our jokes often. Yesterday, he had a certain unexplainable pensiveness in his face, or so I felt. That got me thinking. Now, something that makes one think is potentially dangerous; unconditionally so, when you actually connect to somebody like that friend of mine.
All things, that are fodder enough for bringing in a contemplative mood, came into one’s mind in a flash – 5.7 to 5.9 EQ, “After all, one does need to do Something in life”, oblivion, senility, “The universe is expanding” - stuff which my dear friend himself, wouldn’t have thought (as only he can, should, must and need to) of.
I sent out an incomprehensible message (as often I do) to confound some friends, who challenge themselves on not getting confounded on the sort of messages that I send, and reply challenging me back with their musings, wisecracks and self-proclaimed brainchildren. And thus, it was already a joke.
Needless to say, I was amused!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)