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).

Critique

Critique

So important

Yet unwanted by many

For self-delusions of grandeur

It can shatter

Forever.

Truth and Beauty

The purest Truth and Beauty

Reside not in long winded statements

Or displays of complexity

Of technique and skills

But in the lost art of simplicity.

I don’t think this piece needs any elaboration. Yet still I’ll add my two bits for a (most probably) unnecessary explanation, or elaboration, if you may, of the idea in the verse above.

Most people these days try to make things looks really, really complex. If they have something to say, they dress it up in long winded statements that can drag on for paragraphs which in turn can crawl on for pages and pages filled with utter nonsense and drivel, all to say just one little thing which could have better been said in a line or two. Many artists make their works look dauntingly complex all in the attempt to show off their highly developed skills and that in itself makes them loose favour in my eyes.

Not to say that those pieces aren’t beautiful too, they are, but they pale in comparison to any piece that on first glance conveys to the viewer a sense of simple beauty no matter how complex the technique and arduous the task of producing it may have been. What I particularly enjoy are those pieces that have an almost organic fluidity to them, those where the eye flows over the image or the sculpture or canvas rather that jump, those that convey their meaning in one go, drawing one in to then notice the subtleties that are testament to the artist’s genius. Those pieces are my favourites.

The same is in the matter of truth, the more long-winded your statement, the lesser the hopes of the essence of it being conveyed faithfully.

After all, a long essay of a joke is infinitely less impactful than a witty two-liner that gets the essence of the situation.

Of Cynics

Those cynical

Due to past experience

Perhaps should be indulged,

Yet those cynical for no reason

To them I say:

What the hell?

I guess that should explain the reason for the conflict in my mind to some extent. On one hand I'm a bit of a cynic due to my own few personal experiences and other exposure to the outside world via news, books and the second best teacher ever: other’s experience; while on the other I'm one who reproaches those cynics at my age who think they know a lot (hence I reproach myself).

Strange thing is, I feel justified in both: being a cynic and reproaching myself for being one. So I guess I have a diluted version of a split personality. :P

Oh, and one more thing:

Poems, people often feel,

Ought to rhyme

And many poems do.

But this little poem

And the one before it

Don’t.

Oh, and I have also posted this on my Deviantart  profile. You can check this, and other writings by me on that site right here: http://akash21593.deviantart.com/gallery/27712143

Timely Thoughts

Sitting in the dhaba outside the campus I can’t help but feel a bit restless and irritated as time ticks by while I wait for my order to arrive. It’s become a new affliction of sorts that I seem to suffer from. Some days I can sleep all day, doing nothing, almost as though I’m in a state of hibernation without a worry. But some days I can’t sit still and tend to get terribly annoyed and frustrated if I can’t find something to do. Compounding this problem is the wide area of interest that I’ve cultivated over time and the unruly chaotic mass of the variety of ideas and techniques I’ve been planning to implement in each of my varied interests. Add to this the varied deterring circumstances, back-to-back classes and that nefarious, unwelcome guest called the ‘writer’s block’ and you have a recipe for a nuclear meltdown of me wee little head.

So I twitch and shift continuously in my seat thinking about why I’m afflicted by this strange new ailment and I suddenly realise, maybe it’s because all those quotes, articles and books have finally penetrated the dense, thick fog of silliness and general idiocy that surround my brain like a protective blanket, preserving the innermost cogs that drive my craziness from corruption and corrosion from any external agents and have begun their sinister work.

Perhaps for the first time I truly appreciate the quote that my English language professor, Dr. L Kavitha Nair has displayed on the walls of her cabin. It goes somewhat like this “To put days into life is ageing but to put life into days in living.” And perhaps I now appreciate why Richard Dawkins stresses the fact that contrary to what people say to discredit atheistic people, that their lack of belief in divinity is but an excuse to shirk the responsibility of living a good life, the fact that you don’t believe in an afterlife, in some continuation of existence or in rebirth means you have this one chance, just one go at doing what you want to do and doing it right, this one chance to play whatever role you choose and actually making a positive impact, for there is no other life for you to repent for your sins and balance the scales of misdeeds of one life in another life or realm. Talking in terms of biology, he explains how that one sperm in a million that got through and made us may just as easily have been another out of those same millions, and thus being the lucky one out of those million possible people to actually exist, we have a greater responsibility to live up to our true potential.

I prefer putting it in slightly easier to understand terms. The responsibility that he says we are supposed to live up to gets multi-plied manifold when you consider the millions of people out there in the world who don’t have the same chances and choices as you do, to live their lives to their fullest potential. Forget freedom, many of these unfortunate souls don’t even get a chance to live due to diseases, wars and numerous other causes that run them into the ground. Very few amongst them find a chance to be truly happy, even for a brief moment in time.

In light of all this, I feel that moping and wasting one’s life away is not just an act of wanton self-destruction, it is gross negligence bordering on the criminal and an insult to the freedoms that are you possess. Freedoms that millions, nay, billions can only dream of. Not that I’m expecting every one of you to become the next Mother Teresa or Van Gogh or Mozart. No, expecting that from everyone, or from anyone for that matter, would be just plain idiocy. Instead what I request is that we make our lives better, that we actually utilise what little freedoms we have instead of leaving them on a shelf as a display piece to show off to those who don’t possess them. Live your life to the fullest, become a musician, become an artist, a doctor, a lawyer, just another worker in some big company or be whatever else you may wish to be. Do whatever you wish to do, be it ordinary, mundane tasks or something different and exciting. Whatever you become, whatever you do, utilising your freedoms and your skills is up to you. The only thing I’d ask is at the end of your life you shouldn’t have reason look back and think with regret those thoughts starting with “If only…”. For even the simple act of actually living as opposed to ageing will be a sort of a tribute to those who don’t have a chance.

Perhaps it is these thoughts spinning through my head that now war with my off and on, depressed lethargy, that get me so keyed up and bouncy all day. Perhaps one day I’ll learn to control these thoughts and channel all this jittery, frustrated eagerness and annoyance into something constructive, use this as a fuel to drive me on further down the paths I choose to take.

"I think therefore I am" ... or am I?

“I think therefore I am” quipped Descartes all those hundreds of years ago, and is now condemned to being quoted (and misquoted) again and again in arguments/debates/theses pertaining to the question of existence and reality and many other similar fancy hoity-toity topics where one of the conceited philosopher wannabes finds an opening, especially when someone wants to sound enigmatic and knowledgeable.

But paradoxically the more I think, the less I am, or rather, the less I seem to be. I know, it seems really confusing and contradictory, especially when one refers to the opening quote, but think about it, I mean really think.

The more one thinks about one’s existence, the origin of the universe and other such nonsensical stuff about which our knowledge is little enough for us to feel confident enough in our ignorance so as to engage others in debate; even if the other is just a contrary splinter-self, separated from the main self like in those multiple/split personality disorder cases, who likes to contradict everything the other self, or selves if the subject is a far-gone case, say or believe just for the heck of it, or because they conflict with its own set of beliefs; the more the number of possible reasons and explanations one can offer for the existence of the universe, ranging from the tired old argument of a supreme being who in his complete belief in our capability to survive our own destructive nature created an entire universe for us to occupy steadily over a span of time and is always watching over us (and its more moderate versions) and the deistic version where some chappie created this little universe (but not especially for us only) and now is snoozing away (or observing from a distance) to equally crazy beliefs like our universe being but a simulation program or even a sim-game being run by some higher dimensional beings on their super-duper-computers, like the popular game SimCity only this’ll be more like Sim-Universe and will involve more awesome hardware and possibly higher dimensions, or that we’re all just figments of imagination in the dreams of some higher dimensional being and so on and so forth. Do note that each reason raises a yet more important question: “What caused/led-to/created the random event/being/super-duper computer which created this universe/simulation of a universe which we reside in?" 

So, ranging from the ‘we-are-real-beings-in-every-sense-and-in-every-dimension’ to the ‘we’re-just-figments-of-something’s-imagination’ or the even more unthinkable ‘we’re-just-virtual-characters’, albeit virtual characters with higher thinking capabilities (which one could blame on more advanced coding and algorithms), each explanation is just passing the buck as we still don't know the universe started, sure it was created lets say, but who created the creators or if it was just the result of a random event, what triggered it?And so the questions go on and on. Still, assume that one of these explanations has the potential to solve this cosmic riddle, now what proof do we have that our point of view is correct? Each explanation has an almost equal amount of concrete evidence in favour as well as against it: none...  make that almost none, for the sake of accuracy.

So depending on which view seems more convincing to you, you could be more or less real than you were at the beginning of the long-winded-fatuous thought processes that brought you to this point. Or if you found multiple arguments equally convincing you could very possibly existing in multiple levels of realism at the same time, a thought which, if pursued further, could very well shred to pieces what little sanity you lay claim to faster than food disappears down the gullet of dear little Daisy, my dog; though bitch is the grammatically correct term yet cannot be used due to social taboos and stuff, an issue I may write on at length later.

Digressions apart, another thought that one must consider is the fact that most terms we use are but relative. Time is relative to whatever reference a person/specie is using for their convenience, the ease of climbing up a staircase is relative not just to age but fitness as well (a fact proven by a few septuagenarians I know whose ability to climb multiple flights of stairs would put most of my college mates to shame), the obviousness of the fatuous nature of most debates, particularly philosophical ones, is relative, the relativity of an object/occurrence is relative and thus even reality is but relative. Compared to a comic book character or a simulated character in a game we’re probably pretty real, compared to some higher dimensional being with a different sense of perspective we may be nothing more than stick figures.

Thus in the end the only conclusion one can safely draw is that reality just is. The entire idea of debating the concept of reality and seeing how real we are and if we truly exist and other such high-fi philosophical topics is truly fatuous, conceited even if one pretends that one has the one true answer to these conundrums.

So after all this heavy thinking the one modification I’d make to Descartes famous quote is “I think therefore I realise that I may be or may not be real and that it all comes down to a question of which theory of the universe’s existence, and hence my own existence, is true and that the lack of proof in favour of any particular theory can but lead one to the conclusion that this entire question is but an futile exercise in philosophical thought and that I just am”, or in short, “ I think, therefore I am”, or rather, “I just am”.

Now if you've reached this far in the article you've probably realised what a farce this is, albeit a rather high level and thought provoking and a bit moderately well thought-through farce. But then again most meta-physical philosophical thoughts and theses are but farces to some extent (note: I’m only referring to meta-physics) Anyway, for being such faithful readers and for suffering through this pseudo-intellectual piece of mine you deserve a reward. So go treat yourselves to a toffee or an ice cream if your mind feels really boggled.

The Rat Race

Rats chase rats in an endless loop, and self-righteous posers, hypocrites that they are, discretely stoop to wretched, rotten means to gain advantage all the while preaching their fatuous righteousness from their pedestals standing high above the rest of the crowd upon a pile of their own rubbish and garbage that lays claim to the title of ‘serious thought’ but is nothing more than a haphazard collection of flatulent ideas based on superstitions and prejudices dating back not just to the medieval ages but even further back to the time before the invention of these pretentious modern religions when humans worshipped fire and lightning and believed that the stars were the droplets of spilt milk from a god’s glass and that the sun revolved around the earth, propelled by a heavenly chariot.

What is more surprising is that the more flatulent and stupid the ideas the stronger is the conviction of their truth in the minds of those unfortunate sods who actually believe it, so much so that the most stupidest of ideas have the staunchest of supporters, supporters who won’t be swayed by any argument or proof, scientific or otherwise, even when the contradiction of their beliefs comes up and slaps them in the face. Sad thing is that such people are very often in the majority, or in positions that ensure that even their being a minority will cause them no major inconvenience, in fact, more often than not this causes a major inconvenience to the majority instead.

Almost makes one lose faith in the human faculties of thought, even in human society as such, for clear thinking people are indeed very few. Even I for one may not count in the crowd of those who can see through most mumbo-jumbo and can truly win this rat race by the only means possible, a means that not many people even bother considering: to get out of it.

Hello

Well, thought I'd first pop in and say hello to whoever has enough free time on his/her hands to actually be viewing this blog and also give them fair warning as to the content of this page.

Warning first; the posts you shall see herein will deal with the varied topics and themes ranging from the most abstract and frivolous themes to the heavier and more philosophical-ish stuff but all with a healthy dose of humour or just regular weirdness that should make it more palatable to your fine sensibilities. But if your sensibilities are too fine (say you're touchy on the topics of religion, or some other similar stuff) well, stay well away, or if you can;;t resist, don't curse me excessively (the usual little bit is ok) for you HAVE been warned, and try to respect the views of anyone else who by mistake happens to post a comment voicing their own opinions.

And before I forget altogether, here comes the fulfilment of the primary objective of this post: Hello!