Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Of Dalliances and Dally

H and T walked into the common area wondering why they weren’t being served. It had become a habit to expect a fawning drooling manservant appear at the drop of a hat. Was it just the other day, T thought, that I was thinking about Linda Lee and Cage? Was Cage really in love with her, I wonder. Who would actually know that, eh? Would Cage? Would Wintermute? Why form stars in the shape of a face, if it wasn’t reading the face out of the love that Cage felt? T had a bad habit of thinking of books the whole time. He would also think about thoughts and conjecture about the futility of a thought having a thought.

“X is actually quite fascinating.” T began to tell H, “He was talking to Y the other day and telling him about markets. I almost thought the whole story was coming alive in my head. Imagine a market as a living breathing structure – The market is the heart of the land, the road is its body, and the people are its blood. Markets grow and expand. Markets die and are buried. Sometimes, people dig them up and look at their bare bones and try to recreate the animal that once existed there. This isn’t what he told me or Y, by the way. This all something I dreamed up from his conversation as he stood there talking about markets.”

Ever the dreamer and great problem solver, H said “Shut up.” Oblivious to the pain that was supposed to be inflicted on him, T continued, “It reminds me of this story I once read…” and paused while the others entered the room. They were a motley bunch of people, dressed all in penguin attire while their minds were as different from each other as snowflakes in springtime (this would seem to indicate that snowflakes in winter are very similar to each other; however, that’s not the point the author wishes to make, which is to bring to the fertile mind of the reader a picture of snow melting in springtime, signaling not just the birth of a new season but the death of the old).

The conversation turned to the mundane – rooted in the world of brick and mortar, of which winners have actually quit and quitters who’ve seemingly won, of power politics and the correct time to launch a counter offensive in a game of tower desktop defense. Before long, T had sniffed a few glasses of an intoxicating red and began to think of his world of books again after the fumes had entered his nose. “I’ve often wondered whether we choose the books we read or whether the book chooses us. It is often said that the author had exactly you or me in mind when he/she wrote the book. Let me take this a step further, eh? What if he actually had you or me in mind at this particular point in time, endowing his book with power to reach out to you with ectoplasmic fingers to make you bury your head in its pages?”

H interrupted, “T, that’s why you’re s_____.”

This is that point in every H & T post, (do look back at the previous ones, I’m sure you’ve missed them all), when the blessed author forgets why in God’s name he was writing the post in the first place. (It’s true, in my case, that H has a whip by his side which he uses to, primarily, ensure that I blog on time and, secondarily, for his own pleasures (or is it the other way around?)) () (Those brackets were put in there to show you that I can) () ((((and will))))

To cut a long story short, Delhi, or Dally, as you will, is a wonderful place. Great place to meet people, the mojo is always rising and all that. Love’s labour no lost in the concrete jungles erected by DLF – no pun intended. More on books and the inherent wealth in them and why there is a book meant for you, later. The only point I would like you to ruminate on is how books might have shaped your life, owing to which, even the most mundane book, at the right time, seems the most “beautiful”. “Words fail me in expressing why I like this book and its not owing to my vocabulary,” you’ve probably said, a number of times. It’s because you needed the book. Just like people enter your lives just when you need them. There’s apparently a quote in the Bhagvad Gita, or some such, which talks about a guru entering people’s lives when they are ready. Believe me, sir/ma’am , it happens all the time. The world is conspiring to make your life more meaningful/ adventurous/ lazy/ happy or whatever it is you wish it to be. Zip-a-dee-doo-daa and all that.

“She said yada, yada, yada. He said blah-blah-blah.”
-HOMM III

Story of my life, I would hope. H, that’s why I’m not.

Toodle-doo,
T

Sunday, August 26, 2007

Enough is enough is not enough

My dear procrastinating friend T,

You have brought numerous counts of shame and disrespect upon this beautiful blog by not blogging for as many days as you have thought fit. In spite of many a request from the so-called taskmaster mouthpiece of yours truly. May you find comfortable requests in diurnal work and other irksome obligations. May you be happy and prosperous. May your conscience be clear. Dio volontà.

I don't want y'all to go away thinking this is a post of infightin', for I believe in the true making of Tagore's perfect world - "Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls". So let us add some educated content to these embittered words.

Lately I have been reading a lot of books which on retrospect fall under the general realm of philosophy. Good philosophy. Milan Kundera, Herman Hesse, Mitch Album. Reminded of the profound animes like Ghost in the Shell and Arjuna.

So just to fill up some empty space, here goes some of the better quotes -

Each of us suffers (more or less) from the baseness of his too commonplace life and yearns to escape it and rise to a higher level.
All of us have known the illusion (more or less strong) that we are worthy of that higher level, that we are predestined and chosen for it.
- Milan Kundera, Unbearable lightness of being

For love is by definition an unmerited gift; being loved without meriting it is the very proof of real love.
If a woman tells you: I love you because you’re intelligent, because you’re decent, because you buy me gifts, because you don’t chase women, because you do the dishes, then you should be disappionted;
such love seems a rather self-interested business.
How much finer it is to hear: I’m crazy about you even though you’re neither intelligent nor decent, even though you’re a liar, an egotist, a bastard.
- Milan Kundera, Slowness

Detachment doesn’t mean you don’t let the experience *penetrate* you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate you *fully*. That’s how you are able to leave it.
- Mitch Album, Tuesdays with Morrie

When someone is seeking...it happens quite easily that he only sees the thing that he is seeking; that he is unable to find anything, unable to absorb anything...because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal.
- Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish. …Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.
- Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

If our gods and our hopes are nothing but scientific phenomena, then it must be said that our love is scientific as well
- Auguste Villiers de L’Isle-Adam, Innocence (Ghost in the Shell 2)


Most of my better friends have heard these quotes from me some time or the other. But that's fine. Hear it again. You never get enough.

The Enlightened One and the Punctual One,

H