Life

Life...

A gift, a puzzle eternal

To the common man, but to

The kittens that are our philosophers

A monumental ball of yarn to play with,

While faking, for others, knowledgeable airs

And employing pompous syntax to theorise

Some ridiculous theories again and again

With long winded statements; paragons

Of the syntactically, grammatically

Complex; veiling simple, even

Absurd ideas. All in all:

A farce.

Life, is but a wonder, a gift.

    A gift much too beautiful,                      much too simple, and yet complex

To be tarnished by the farce is the ‘intellectual’ drivel

 Hiding behind the mask of sophistication

That reduces everything to instances of

   Perception and perceptions of perceptions

   In an endless word-game that starts nowhere

     Leads to nothingness and has no purpose and aim.

Another piece revolving around philosophy and stuff... but then again, that, among many other things, IS what this blog is about.  :D   <-That's a grin, in case you're wondering.

A Disclaimer :D (Warning: NOT humorous...)

Very often I seem to end up posting stuff that seems to have some deeper meaning and some resonance with some of the slightly better known threads of thought (the proper term would be schools of thought) which may give you, my faithful, (hopefully) mildly gullible, yet intelligent readers the illusion that I actually have a highly developed intellect and that I have some deeper philosopher within me who assesses everything and after long periods of deep, ponderous thought comes up with those ‘truths’ that I very often tend to post hither and tither. Well, rest assured that nothing could be further from the truth. I am but a pseudo-intellectual young man playing at philosopher while he procrastinates and leafs through some random book ranging from the witty Wodehouse, to heavy stuff (like Freud to name a not-so-recent one) while doing justice to the wide smattering of fiction that comes in between ranging from space operas (read epic sci-fi) to thrillers and courtroom dramas, and yes even though  it stings my ‘manliness’ to admit this, the occasional romantic piece of nonsense a la Sparks, and Cecelia Ahern two*, as long as the story doesn’t have nauseous amounts of purple prose and flowery dialogues, THAT I just cannot stand.

So that’s all I am truly, a guy who reads a lot and ends up thinking a lot with his thoughts often being influenced by recent experiences and books, if not an outright muddle of thoughts projected into my puny skull by means of text or that combination of the audio-visual sensory inputs as is so common these days (and is responsible for the zombification of a majority of the world’s population).

However this does not mean that everything I come up with is a result of paraphrasing other people’s thoughts. I agree that many times my thoughts and ideas may match a lot with someone else’s but many times that just means that I have arrived at a similar conclusion after my own deliberations, however meagre they may be. And I do have the grace to Google any quotations I may come up with, or come across in the vast messy jungle that is my head, so that I can give the proper author credit and I don’t let the possibility of it being my own creation ripen in my mind until and unless even Google can’t trace the quote, which means that either it is from an extremely obscure text/author or that it is indeed an indigenous product of my own thought processes.

Oh, and one more thing. I sometimes end pieces abruptly, like this.

P.S. I love adding foot notes and even postscripts. :P

P.P.S. Another, shorter, disclaimer: my vocabulary isn't as awesome as it seems. I use Google and thesauruses at times.

P.P.P.S. Grin-emoticons in the title never come out the way you think they will (yes, it's supposed to be a grin up there).

 *Intentional pun seeing that I've read exactly two books of each author.

'Shady' Characters - A Little Ranting, Theorising and Conjecture

We all have come across them sometime or the other, some of us may have joined their 'shady' ranks for a bit in between, some people you know are perhaps part of this 'elite' gang yet none of this makes them as less of a mystery to us good old regular kids. Who am I talking about? Well, none other than the 'coolest' crowd ever: Those who wear shades... indoors!

This elite crowd is one that I have never fully understood, but recently, armed with my half-baked knowledge of psychology and philosophy, thanks to the half-read books on Freud and Kant and excerpts from other thinker's texts, and my own personal knowledge and ideas about some of these wonderful people whom I have the (mis)fortune of counting in my group of friends/people-I-know and fueled by the questions of the masses, I decided to take the plunge and try to figure out what makes these people tick, what is it that makes them who they are... and what is the reasoning or tradition that lies behind this occult cult.

First off I decided to go and question a person I knew about this strange act of wearing these shades indoors, during the twilight hours and even at night and the answer I got was staggering in its revelatory powers. This person (anonymous by choice) said, "Dude. It looks kewl". Yes, you read that right. It looks KEWL, that one thing everyone one of us aims (not) to be, that tag we all (don't) aspire to, the one that (thankfully) seems out of our reach... and it is so easy to attain. After all, who wants (not) to be just plain old cool, humorous and well-versed in English. Those days are gone, so yesterday as some might say (or is it ystrdy now?). Anyhow, that was but the first in a series of revelations.

However, not all the people seem to fall into the category of these kewl people. Some of them actually turned our to be part of the (in)famous Dude gang who wear this not only to look like the wannabe-cool-movie/sports-star imbeciles (if you're a Dude reading this, that is another term of affection) but also to go 'sight-seeing', or 'bird-watching', as some of them call it, without getting noticed or caught. But these dudes are another species altogether, hence I shall leave them alone for now. They deserve more than a mere mention in this piece (they deserve a thorough beating).

Coming back to the topic, I shall now proceed with a little theorising about these 'shady' people using my own personal knowledge of those few I know and the many that I have observed.

The first theory, of course, is none other than the theory of 'kewlness' and picking up girls. I believe that most people you see probably are acting as per this very (il)logical and (un)sound theory. It goes somewhat like this: if you wear cool looking shades inside a mall or some other fashionable place (or anywhere else for that matter) you look more 'fashionable' and hence have a higher chance of picking up 'fashionable' gals or guys, whichever your gender/preference dictates.

This narrows down the playing field for them a bit as this 'elite' crowd, as the word 'elite' suggests, is not a very common or easy to mingle with crowd, but then again it is worth it, right? After all, who wants to hang* with people who are so outdated and foolish as to consider the act of wearing shades dumb. I mean, they're meant to be worn. Sun or no sun, indoors or outdoors, nightclub or mall, they just have to be worn, right? Sun-shades/ sunglasses? Aw, c'mon, that's just a name, a silly, old tag from the stone ages and as The Bard once wrote, 'What's in a name?'.

The above paragraph of digression apart, this theory works the other way round as well. In this second (and perhaps unintentionally successful) case it works as per the wounded bird principle which applies to some girls. Looking at these poor chaps shambling about a mall or a busy street with their hopeless attempts at looking 'kewl' some of these girls (or guys), at times, take pity on the idiocy of these deluded souls and decided to take them under their wing and nurse them back to a delusion-free, sane world.

The second theory is that of unbearable brilliance. Some poor souls probably find these fancy modern places too much for themselves to handle and hence where these shades to protect their eyes from the brilliance of all the modernity, however, these few star-struck souls are but a minority if the attitude is anything to go by and most of those who don't subscribe to the 'kewlness' theory only wear shades for the common good, i.e. they help people identify realise that they are in the presence of sheer awesomeness

How? Well, they say that the eyes are the gateway to a person's soul (or his optic nerves at any rate), and the brilliance of these few souls is such that it shines through their eyes so blindingly bright that they need to wear shades to make sure they don't damage the eyesight of  the crowd around them. Thus the shades mark them and set them apart from other mere mortals, kind of like Cyclops from X-Men.

Of course, all these long-winded theories are but the result of mere speculation, and the end result may be much simpler: Low self-esteem, which can only be healed by looking 'cool' all the time, or Narcissism and low IQ that demands they wear this eye-wear everywhere and instantly assume they look awesome for doing so.

UPDATE:
Another theory I've just come across, suggested to me by the insightful externalexpressions^ (http://eternalexpressions.wordpress.com/), is that these supreme "kewl-propagandists" are simply functioning at a higher plane of thought and communication, aided by the "kewl"-est of accessories - Shades. This mysterious plane could perhaps be one of those extra dimensions that all those propagators of the string theory talk about. Or something else all together. Who knows? We mere mortals can but watch on in awe and keep conjecturing while these 'supreme'-beings stride into realms unfathomable to the uninitiated, shade-less masses. 

_____________________________________________________________________

*hang with- ... : A rather silly phrase I feel. Every time someone says that, I picture them hanging side by side from the gallows, or trussed up by some cannibals; who aren't planning to eat them, as they may get indigestion due to the sheer weight of  'kewlness' in them, but will sacrifice them instead to some mystic god or another (who will naturally have a better, stronger, digestive system).

^and this mysterious eternalexpressions, as it turns out, is none other than the inimitable Amrith Nayak, champion of expressions and witty word play.

Empty

Friend in need

To those who trust,

A thought suddenly strikes me:

Am I what I am,

So eager to help,

Out of sheer necessity?

Is it but because

On the inside I feel,

At times,

So strangely,

Frighteningly,

Empty?

Part or Shield

Weirdness

Funniness

The side many see

A mere shield

Or part

Of my personality?

Random stuff, yet again :P

In case you're wondering, I think it is both, a part, and a more prominent part in front of some as it is also a shield.

P.S. I can't help but feel I misused a comma, or maybe missed one, up there. :/

Of Hostels and Garbage

"Buildings may come up, be demolished and go

And streets may be renamed to something clever.

And Potholes may come and potholes may go,

But garbage shall stay here forever."

Ah, Garbage! What would our world be without you? It is you who fills up those empty spaces left so detestably clean by people, who adds 'colour' to the surroundings and who adds that much needed fragrance to counter the effects of the noxious fresh air that some weirdos seem to like. What would Indian towns be without you? Nothing, I say. Without you, dear Garbage, these cities and towns would not be Indian cities and towns but simple towns and cities like anywhere else in the world; and there's no fun in that.

We are a nation of diversity which retains its culture and traditions while also mingling and fusing with the west and nothing gives as bold an affirmation if this fact as you do. For when one sees ladoo boxes lying amidst packets of western chips, fancy Reebok or Adidas sneakers all torn up and discarded alongside a pile of worn out chapals or a Subway wrapper floating down the drains on a rainy day, right beside a kathi roll wrap, one cannot help but acknowledge this coexistence of two separate worlds, in a manner of speaking, in one nation.

As for your value as a beautifier of a locale, I bear witness to it everyday. Be it the staircase in the hostel, the fire hydrant box, an empty shaft that's under construction or even the hotel elevators some part of you is present at one of these places at the very least, adding variety and helping break the monotony of a clean environment. Yes, despite the existence of those nefarious creations of man called dustbins or wastepaper baskets, as some call them, well within walking distance of these places I mentioned your presence has not been wiped out, not yet. After all, such is your magnificence, so marvelous is your presence that despite the best efforts of those heathens (of whose ranks I, sadly, am a part) who aim to eradicate your presence from all public spaces, who wish to see our locales, our towns and cities reduced to the bland cleanliness of some western nations your followers have held their ground. And while the rest of the world slowly gives in to the horde of dustbin-fanatics, VIT-C's Boys Hostel shall always remain a safe haven, an island of reason in the ocean of madness.

EDIT: Added an impromptu poem included in the Campus Diaries version of this post (linked here).