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

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

Just don't do it, just feel it

T, C and I are having tea at the local tea shop. It's one of those bustling places were strangers stand side-by-side at the cold metal counters and indulge in snacks and tea. And some of the lesser enlightened ones have coffee. (One of Buddha's quotes, though not that well know, is aham only satyam vadami, only ahimsa karami and only tea drinkami) So we're standing there, drinking our small quantities when T suddenly starts reminiscing about his first study and how he changed because of that. Though not as expressive in his first few minutes, he turns raconteur, gesticulating wildly as he describes how the 'funness' was sapped out of him. One of the scenes he mono-acted involved him standing over himself, arms akimbo, and then whipping his victim for having too much fun left over. C and I watched amused, silently laughing, but trying simultaneously to sympathize with our emotionally scarred friend. T ends his story with the line, 'I am a penguin'.

Happiness and purpose are the only two reasons one can lead his life. For some time I was of the opinion that the two are mutually exclusive. But now I have reason to believe that two of my assumptions were wrong. One connected to our current conversation and another, not quite. One, Happiness is a flexible and redefinable rabbit. On the other hand, Purpose, to a large extent, is not such an adjusting pet. So though your initial expectations of purpose and happiness are often contradictory, you have to rationalize the two in order to retain your sanity, and Happiness often ends up being the peace-maker. Two, human beings waste too much time thinking. About anything and everything. About life. About death. About lunch and dinner. About friends and family. About cars and cell phones. About what the spectacled middle-aged woman in the yellow saree is thinking about me sitting here with her in this cinema theatre. About whether that man in black shades, who looks so much like my paternal uncle, has seen me driving around Chennai with all my friends at this time in the night. About abouts. So remember, when all Hope is lost and you sit down to think about life, ask not whether you're happy, ask not whether you have purpose, but ask yourself what's on TV?

So the three of us were walking back to the office. T was still mumbling something about how cold penguins feel during summer, C was trying to perfect his left-arm bowling action with live commentary and I was musing aloud about a good common friend who is to move to our city soon. As we reached the doors of the office, still in the babel of our mutually disinterested ramblings, T stepped back and said, "After you" to C. C replies, dead-pan-faced, "After me what?". T is a good sport, forever the butt of our jokes. In an instant, he turns from chivalrous to irked to serene. I smiled and complete his nascent word, "Siddhartha". He nods with closed eyes and goes into a penance.

Readers, if you've noticed, and I'm sure you have because if you have enough time on your hands to be reading this bullfunky, then you have enough time to have noticed, this blog has some new sections. One, and this one is to attract the (really cool) star wars geeks, is the jedi or sith that T and I resemble the most. And two, this is also for T (*winks*), is a section on chat conversations we have because often the funniest things in life are best rehearsed. Or is that unrehearsed. One of the two.

And, if you've noticed another thing, and I'm sure you must have by the same logic as the last time I was sure, I am trying hard to be unstructured. Because I think there exists some correlation between structure and seriousness and we all know which side of the cuckoo's nest this blog is. Thus this is yet another milestone post in my quest to become completely unstructured. It's hard for chaos to reign in the world of order, but as Nike doesn't say and the Star Wars geeks do - 'Just don't do it, just feel it'.

Like a farmer in a 'feel'd,
H

The River flows

There are times in life when the world seems to stop and hold its breath, the time when you are the centre of a typhoon, the time when you looked out of your window in Kansas, like Dorothy, hearing your radio crooning Someone told me long ago, there's a calm before the storm. These are times when you look up at the sky and see the sun hidden behind a small cloud, with golden beams of light poking out from behind the fluffy pillow reminding you of old, decrepit houses and motes of dust exhibiting brownian motion; these are times, when you halt in your tracks and tell yourself you will remember it as one of those moments in your life that have contributed to the warp and woof of the pattern you were trying to weave out of your existence.

H and I were talking about these moments, once. He said that he had had only three of them in his life, I don't remember which though; I, on the other hand, have had many, times I've looked back upon like wayside inns are looked upon by a traveller on a lonely road. I've just remembered an old poem on the same topic, but I forget the name; a poem from another time, a time of the definition of man and the birth of duty, rebellion and all the many ideas that lie dormant in man's brain to be woken up like a ritual spell, man (or woman's) schooling, the time of second birth.

It is during times like this when one learns what life is for, if ever it was meant for anything. Not to get caught up in our mundane lives to the extent that we, to use an old lovely cliché, miss the woods for the trees (the cliché itself evokes lovely images of a country side awakening from a cold winter or drinking a huge draught of rain water in the Monsoons) but to realise that life is a river flowing with the beginning, current time (a great pun, if I do say so myself) and the end, etc etc existing together. You get the drift (another brilliant use of the English language, or is that usage?). For more details refer Siddhartha by Herman hesse.

In other news, our blog has been criticised for not being silly enough. It would appear that from being a stream of consciousness blog, though we would have preferred unconscious, we've tried to become gyaan gurus. This is, apparently not a good thing. One doesn't go to the circus to see the Harlequin quote Shakespeare. Though there would be nothing wrong with the Whiteface doing a nice Puck, if you ask me. On the one side, we've got this bunch of rowdy readers giving me grief and on the other we've got this quantity focussed taskmaster, H, who believes that we must be putting out the latest and best, hour on hour not realising the temendous pressure it is putting on his best writer. Anyway, such is life. So, yes, we'll go back to being silly for a time and forget all the order we've been trying to bring to the place.

"And the earth parted and the flames of hell surrounded him;
And the clouds wept and the fires of heaven rained down upon him;
And T screamed, I don't have a quote!"

T