Someone died today... someone I don't know a great deal... a fellow scientist, a fellow string theorist, a person who was a student of my supervisor... a person who was less than ten years older than me...
the solar eclipse was meant to be doomsday according to some astrologers... the world is safe for most of us... some though are not so lucky.
as an atheist, I do not believe in souls and afterlives.. but if I am wrong, ..... may your soul rest in peace.

All that you touch
All that you see
All that you taste
All you feel.
All that you love
All that you hate
All you distrust
All you save.
All that you give
All that you deal
All that you buy,
Beg, borrow or steal.
All you create
All you destroy
All that you do
All that you say.
All that you eat
And everyone you meet
All that you slight
And everyone you fight.
All that is now
All that is gone
All thats to come
And everything under the sun is in tune
But the sun is eclipsed by the moon.

So, I told you I was near Berlin. I am actually in a place called Golm, near the town Potsdam which is about 40 minutes by train from Berlin. I am at the Albert Einstein Institute which is inside the Max Plank Institute at Golm. Thoroughly confused? So be it!
This place reminds me of HRI. Except for the fact that there is no mess open on weekends and for dinner on weekdays. It sits in the middle of nowhere. Not that Potsdam is as bad as Allahabad. But you get the picture. And as you expect with Germany, it is a pretty fancy place. There are keys which smile and frown, doors which open with buttons, lights which are automatic and all that jazz. I have spend more than a week here. My host has been unbelievably nice.
Just as I write, there is a sudden urge to go out... get to Berlin and see it closely once again... so fare you well.

I am in Berlin. Well, not quite in Berlin, but near Berlin. It has been quite a while away from home. Almost a month now. I have been traveling around Europe and talking about my work. And it is not as wonderful as it sounds. Its like doomsday every time I need to move from one place to another. Catch a bus, go to place X .. from there take a train, go to place Y... if you are lucky, from there take a flight to place Z. Once you are in place Z, the fun starts all over again. Doing all this alone is such a pain. Part of why I am blogging now is to record my feelings and remember how I felt if I get bored of staying at HRI!

Bridge over Troubled Waters

As I am on a writing spree now, the weak-hearted take cover!
It was day before yesterday... (or was it yesterday? Alzheimer's catching up.. help!)
I was in the middle of a game of badminton, when someone called. A friend.. looking for my camera tripod. Well, you would say, pretty ordinary start to this post. But hold your horses.
As it happened, he and another friend of mine were taking a couple of Italian visitors to our Institute (if you don't know about my institute,- go hang yourself while there is still time) to the Magh mela. This religious fiasco, which takes place every damn year, has a pretty torrid relation with the grad students in our institute. For the uninitiated, Magh mela is a religious gathering that takes place every year on the Ganges around this time (yes, on.. the river is as dry as a bone at this time) and every sixth year turns into a monster called the Kumbh Mela (here is a Wiki link!).

Yeah, so I lost it... the thread. But let me rant a bit more about the hate-and-hate relation with the mela. The "religious" people who come down to the mela dont come alone. They bring their microphones along. And they blare them for all they are worth. The icing on the cake is that this starts everyday around 4 a.m. when most of us poor souls are heading bedwards. Just the other day, I was telling someone how the sound levels had gone down this year. As if just to prove that I was the greatest fool that ever walked the earth, the next couple of mornings, the noise was taken to another level.


Okay... now back to what I was planning to narrate. A couple of my friends and a couple of Italian women. On the spur of the moment, I joined them and off we went. The road outside our institute takes you down to the banks of the Ganges. We decided to take that road and then walk on the banks for about 3-4 kms to reach the mela. If you have not been to HRI, you would not know that they burn corpses by the side of the Ganges here. They do. And we chanced upon witnessing the last stages of a burning. Of the two Italian ladies, one was a bit older and a bit more prone to the "omg-this-is-india-i-might-die" syndrome. The walk at night, in the moonlight through the deserted banks of the river amidst the burning corpses, as you can understand, did not do a world of good to her morale.

As luck would have it, after a while, we came to a place where you had to cross a creek. For the mela, people had put sand bags in the water. So one could, in principle, cross. But the sandbags had got a bit submerged. So, when you did cross, you would wet your feet/footwear. This lady, understandably, did not want a holy dip in a dirty creek and we went on the search of a different route. The other option, we discovered, was jumping over a smaller region. We saw a local do that. The poor lady was in no mood for gymnastics and we decided to go back and give the creek another try. I crossed first. Man, it was dirty! And did it smell!! Girish (the initial caller) and I then took turns to guide the two Italians across. The older woman was so convinced that she would drown in that waist deep water that she shook my confidence,- proverbially! She did not fall, however. We got across. All of us. The Italians used up about a couple of packets of tissue-paper trying to cleanse themselves. But I think the deed in itself was very brave. Imagine trying to cross a water-stretch somewhere deep in Africa with local natives with you in the middle of the night. We thought it was something equivalent for them.

We walked a lot more that night. But most of it was uneventfully boring. We got back to HRI. The Italians seem to have survived without getting sick. I think they might still be showering during their leisure time :D. This was an absolute certified Indian experience. Incredible India!!

Happy New Year!

I agree that it is a bit late for season greetings. But since you have no choice, you might as well accept the pleasantries while they last :)
This post is initiated by a song ... here it is


Let us all thank my sister-in-law for this. :)

Christopher Nolan!

As I sit here and write this post, he is looking over my shoulder.. asking me to get on with it and get to doing what I should do... watch "Following". You should be looking at me with disapproving eyes and saying "tut tut .. get to work!" But even the meanest and most cold-hearted person would not grudge me a Sunday 10 o'clock movie at the end of a hard week. I listened to 7 seminars this week. Yes, SEVEN! and most of our string seminars are never-ending. There is a particular guy who loves to talk so much that none of his talks last less than a heart wrenching, soul tearing three solid hours. You would be asking yourself all sorts of questions about existence and existentialism during his talks... but let us not digress.

The bottom-line of this post is that I like Chris Nolan. For me, a guy who can turn Batman into something eminently watchable, is a guy with loads of genius. I chanced upon this film by the guy called "Memento" which I am sure most of you know. For the poor sods who don't, it is a masterful suspense thriller, short partly backwards in time. This non-linear narrative I found later, was a signature of this guy's direction.

When "The Dark Knight" was just about making its waves around the world, I forced myself to watch "Batman Begins". I had never been impressed with people running around in bat-suits. But to my surprise, I liked the movie, even though it had the predictable last part. With my homework firmly in place, I launched into a "Dark Knight" overdrive when I was home for just a couple of days. I went and saw the film in a theater hall. It was really worth the money and effort. If you have not seen it, even if you dont like men jumping about in stupid clothes, you should go ... this is a good film, period.

I have since watched "The Prestige" which again was quite a directorial success, according to the great Bagchi.

Now, I would sit on judgment on Nolan's debut film, "Following". Wish him luck :P
:D

"... been a long time, been a long time, been a lonely lonely lonely long time.."

Well, if you read this blog, the chances are that you know me and know the story about the fast and unsteady as well. Carrying on in the same vein, here I am again!
I have got myself a nice office room at my institute all to myself. It is heaven, as long as it lasts!

I am going to write about random things today. Maybe about the snake which crossed the road in front of me the other day, maybe about the bookshelf in my new room which I can't open, maybe about the guy who is supposed to come looking for me with stuff... but who never ever manages to turn up... maybe about the bottle of water without water which I would dearly like you to fill up for me.... and then again, maybe not!

Did you know that I love writing on a chalk board? I am sure you did not. But what the hell!

Did you know that the last book I read was John Steinbeck's East of Eden? Now you think I am showing off... well.... maybe I am. so?

There is a nice breeze blowing outside today. The sort that makes you want to walk. And chances are that if you knew me, you would know I like to take walks. Even if you did not, I told you....

At any rate, walking is better than talking to you now!

Pomodoro

bolo pomodoro r joye
bolo emon jinish kon deshe hoye.

koto deshe deshe ghure seshe
mon bole italy te eshe
bole emon sobji kono deshe nai..

to be expanded later :D

A train station... a tiny little old train station.
Five of us.... on foot. Up the stairs and into the platform....
Why are we here? Who brought us here? Was it the ghost god himself? :)
It is a beautiful station.... and it is day before yesterday!
We walk around.... go down the steps and under the tunnel and over again.
Now on the otherside.... a light suddenly out of nowhere... and a dog..
perhaps loose... they didnot stop to find out. Cowards!
A lone venture with a lurking hound (of the bagchis!!) was not very enticing prospect. So even the unwilling me followed..

Miramare .. fare you well!

Imagine

imagine a dark blue sea...
imagine a rocky shore...
imagine some dark mountains beside it...
you are on the rocks...
nothing between you and the ocean...

someone nearby is playing a guitar, softly... gently...
the sun has gone down quite a long time back
but the sky still remembers her like a lover lost...
there is a trace of light where there should have been none...
darkness, like harsh reality, is moving in to erase the last traces....

the colours of the evening turning into night .....
wish i could stay there!

I am in Trieste, Italy. Just back from the shores of the Adriatic. I am sitting on the desk of this room that I have been allotted. Strangely, even now, as I look out into the dark sea, there is music playing. Not the soft guitar, but some drums and a voice.. not bad :)
I have been here for a while. Had been to London before that. I had been thinking of my blog for a while. But as always is the case, did not get time to put pen to paper, or should we say put hands to keyboard.

A few more posts might be on their way... maybe tonight!