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!

Sympathy for the Devil

Entertaining disenchantments...
Gripping sang-froid ...
But never illusions of a disillusionment ...
Wonder how the play would have done in a non-Shakespearian stage.
Wonder how it would have done in another age..

A thousand loves without a care
A thousand lives, not one to spare
Never a moment of doubt
Never a single bout
Of searching the black soul.

But is it really black?
Or just shades of gray...
Driven into godforsaken desperation
Where sanity begins to stray.

Could it be white?
It should not, but then it might.....
Maybe its too pure
Too pure to endure
The dirty touches, the forced crutches..

(Statutory Warning:
A word at the end
To you my friend...
"Sympathetic is Simply Pathetic!!")

I am going home... it is Asthami! There is a beautiful dawn breaking.... home is where the heart is.. heart is where home is :)

I am sitting in my room... it is bitterly cold. A gloomy evening is giving way to a gloomier night.. HRI is where work is.... work is where HRI is!

You would be amazed to know that I take refuge to pathetically silly Hindi songs to get rid of the gloom at times. Sometimes good music can make you think. Here you would not want to think, especially if you are not in the best of moods. Here you also would not want to write.... but I am making a sort of trade off... bad music and self indulgent writing...! A4 sheets of paper are looking at me though the curves of my bed partner... a red red quilt!

The train picks up speed... the wind lashes into my face. I have been told that I should not be standing at the doors of trains. But between the love and the concern of words, there is always that call of the wild, the call of the wind.... I love the sound of the train when it runs to Howrah through Bengal.... I love that wild wild embrace of the wind.. cold mornings near home.. near, but not quite there yet. I am recording my conversation with the train.. it is a one-way one though. I am not talking... and the train seems to be saying the same thing to all the rest of the people. But you are not me. You can only hear what the train tells you. And she tells me more... :)

The wind loves playing with my hair...

"They call the wind Maria"

Someone should tell Maria that I have chopped off my hair... and bring back that pearl from her eyes........ would you?

Forgotten Conversations

"When you can fall for chains of silver,
You can fall for chains of gold,
You can fall for pretty strangers,
And the promises they hold."

Sleep... no... walk with me to where the wind never stops.. follow me to those walls where the white does not blend with the red and makes them taste of salt in a bowl of milk. I don't like milk, don't like salt in it even more. So, lead me to the streets where the world descends in the day.... before the break of day. Look at me... look and look away. Tell me about that lonely moment on that hot day. And forget about the time of the day that I don't like. Because it might be that time of the day.... and like the grains of sand you hold in your palm... it might also be slowly slipping away.. don't talk unless you have to... don't walk unless you want to.

An Incomplete Murder!

I am a serial killer.... and at the moment I am thinking of killing the person in charge of our computer system. You would ask how can a person possibly take up the job of managing the computer system of a bunch of serial killers and in answering that the whole blog is going to go downhill. This was supposed to be a brilliant metaphor and an excellent post but our pathetic Internet speed has screwed up my mood!

So,.... I was supposed to tell you about the contract killer that I am. I was going to tell you that there was this particular thing that I was assigned to kill and how it kept evading me for months. The moment I thought that I had the bastard nailed, there was some divine (?!) intervention and the chap would escape. I even had the gun ready for a while. Now I guess the bullet is finally through the brain. But as they say,- it ain't over till the fat lady sings. Where I live, there sure is a dearth of women. But, I dare say, I have a feeling I would find what I am looking for.

This is a scattered post.. I am hoping to put the final nails into the bugger's coffin on Monday. Once that is done, I can come back and give you a bit more of the gory details of the murder.

Wake me up when September ends!



I am awake. September has ended. Jim Morrison has already screamed
"Wake up!
Shake dreams from your hair
My pretty child, my young one.."
(although I am pretty sure the last line was not for me!)

It has been an eventful month, this last one. First, I was down in the dumps of what they call graduate pit holes. Managed to drag meself out and managed to get myself to Cambridge. It was a pretty place. And it was a useful time there academically too.
But the days passed in a blur, as they often do. Cambridge, influential classes, inspirational research topics, good coffee, bad food, strolls in the history-laden streets, sometimes alone and sometimes with a friend from the long gone college days, with and without my camera, High Wycombe, London, unending undergrounds, then again back to classes... conference ended soon. and I got myself to Oxford to a friend's place for a day and a half. The half was nice,- but the day was totally ruined by wonderful English weather.
Soon i was on my flight back. the first flight got delayed, and i had to run for the connecting one. From cold, cold England to warm Turkey, back to hot India. Then from Delhi, back to dear old godforsaken Allahabad.

I hear Pink Floyd playing somewhere... only its to my modified lyrics:
"the month is gone, the blog is over... thought i'd something more to say."

Goodbye and thanks for all the ......... fish?

Last night in Cambridge. Will leave tomorrow for Oxford to drop by at a friend's place and see the place.. you don't need the details, but you have them already!

In case you have not been to UK, and in case you have not heard of the wonderful English weather, (first is likely, second is, to put it mildly, unheard of) it is a disaster that happens practically everyday. And on the days the sun actually comes out, so do the people. The clothes stay mostly indoors though! I am what a physicist or a mathematician would say analytically continuing to times when its warm. Coming back to more practical terms, it is bloody cold for September here! I can hear the wind roar outside my window. The bed seems a rather inviting option right now. The day has been wet and windy and there have been brief patches of sunshine. I even saw a rainbow!

b.t.w. have i told you that the English are horrid cooks? guess if you happen not to be a stranger, you have borne the brunt of my complaining self!! I shed tears for chicken curry, cried buckets for mutton curry... i choked..yes literally choked, on a beef steak. And with it, my wonderful relation with all cows in the world hit an all-time low. The Hindu somewhere deep down in me revolted and presented me a moment, albeit brief, of being pious and thinking of cows differently. That leaves ham and fish.. so, one can give it to Douglas Adams, as I have done above....

Its cloudy! And i want the sun... But it is England. I am stuck in my room... Metallica blasts into the ears. Thoughts are disoriented, quite like the picture and this post. A bit by the music, a bit by the weather, a bit by about seventeen thoughts which decide to hit my head all of a sudden all at once.
"Nothing else matters" ! Why the else? What does?
I am sitting and waiting for a knock on my door.. hate doing this. Waiting..
Am too bloody impatient. Next time you see me, tell me that. I need to know. Say I wrote that in my own blog and it is for my own good. I probably won't even hear you, but you remain clear in your own conscience... you warned me.
What makes this particular waiting worse is the fact that anyone going out of the door beside my room seems to be knocking the door. So i need to pause James Hetfield midway and listen.
"No there's no sun shining true!.... Are you unforgiven, too?"
How bloody appropriate!
The song ends.. and so does this post.

As time goes by...




I am lying on my bed, a pretty white thing, with a laptop in front, typing into it and all this in Cambridge! How times have changed again :)
I have written a lot on my blog lately. If you are wondering why you don't see any new posts, it is just because I have been writing it for the blog, but doing so on paper... strange times, these.. I warned you. You could find me next on the moon, blogging on a supercomputer, for all you know. I have a fascinating room here.. it is long, it has a wonderful window which overlooks a green field and, to top it all, it has a wash-basin which looks so much like a cupboard, that it took me a day to figure that out. You must be thinking I am a moron... well can't blame you for that. It's the English weather you see. And all that walking on the roads of Cambridge. It's got to my head. After a couple of joyous days of being a free man in an exciting foreign land, I am back to being bound by strings. I would need to deliver a talk with a wine glass in hand for five minutes on the work i have been doing for more than five months.. you would think that is cakewalk. But actually, when the audience includes huge shots and a Nobel Laureate the cake can get a bit messy. But that should be interesting..
You might see a lot of posts here in a few days time,- then again you may see none atall.. :)

The reasons for blogging... and a metaphor

The last time I blogged, the act had been inspired by an acquaintance who had put up her blogger name as her status message on Gtalk. How times have changed.. how the mighty have fallen! This time it is a rather subdued and desolate graduate student on the keyboard. Gone is the usual guy,- I am looking for him around. Seems to have given me the slip! For those starry-eyed people who think research is a bed of roses, this is a reminder.. research, like most of life, screws you bad a good deal of the time,- and royally a few times. I have a voice singing somewhere in my head:
"I beg your pardon
I never promised you a rose garden
Along with the sunshine
There's gonna be a little rain sometime."
This is supposed to be a love song. And appropriate it is too... for my relation with research is and has been a sort of passionate love affair which inevitably has moments of bloodshed. And as I bleed here today, I look around for that little band aid which would start the process of healing. What could it be? Where could it be? May be right here!

Now you are looking for the metaphor.. well.. you don't get one!! :D
Well begun is half done, they say.. so forgive the ending and the missing metaphor! :D

Goodbye to Garcia


Decided to do a little editing to the name of my blog.. guess my frequent visitors have noticed. In case you fall under the un(?)fortunate class of people who do not read my blog regularly,- you have not missed the missing "foretold". Yeah, I have come down from that high Marquezical platform and realized that I am starving now.. it is a hard reality,- this. The last month the food in the mess (that's where i eat) was a proverbial mess. Something to write home about every day. There was arhar dal, and arhar dal and arhar dal. And for variations, you had arhar dal,- with tomatoes... now you can't beat that can you?

T.S. Eliot once wrote...
"There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create"

For the sake of the mess managers, who incidentally happen to be my friends, I hope Eliot is wrong,- about the murder bit at least. Can't hang people for their sense of food, can you? Well I know people have burnt for a lot less.. but i am no Hitler. So my form of expression to oppression is silently removing a word from my Blog name. You could argue that I could be a bit more silent with it. But, hell,- what else is a blog for?

Surviving Summers!!

It has been ages since my last blog. The string theorist was indeed starving! The oppressive heat has brought out the blogger in me again. :)
Shobha De at some point of time wrote a particularly stupid book called "Surviving Men". I am looking to build on that stupidity and write "Surviving Summers". That brings us to what I could write in the book.. and to a Sardar joke. (I hope I am offending no one. I am sure Shobha De would not be reading my blog and Sardars are the most sporting of people.) Once upon a time a Sardar wrote a very big and fat book and took it to a publisher. The publisher was amazed at the volume and asked the Sardar what in the world he had written. Sardar replied, "Aare, there was this handsome prince who wanted to cross a jungle and go to another kingdom. So he jumped up on his lovely horse." The publisher was still all wonder struck,"Then, then...??" Sardar:"Then? Clip-clop clip-clop clip-clop...... " , "Then??", "Clip-clop clip-clop", "Then???" "Clip-clop", "And?", "What else? Then he gets down from the horse after crossing the jungle."

So, let us not digress. "Surviving Summers" would be only about drinking gallons of lassi and nimbu pani and staying inside. Most of my friends know that my relationship with the sun is not great. We are both too bright to share the same sky at the same time. :D So I let him have his share during the day and help out in the nights. These days the relation is getting worse. We hardly get to see each other!! So all of you wait with bated breathe for the book to hit the markets. Make me a bestseller, folks! Then I might not have to starve :P !

world is ..... a football!!

It is almost 12-30am. About half an hour to go to the next World Cup match. However hard you try to get work done in these "in-between" times, it almost never gets done. Having yawned through the opening matches today (astoundingly pathetic games between Spain and the Saudis and Ukraine-Tunisia) the prospect of watching the nonstarting and aged French without Zinidine Zidane, does not look too good. But it is the world cup, and a part of national duty is to ensure that we Indians remain the most passionate non-participating country ever.

A word or two about the pros and cons of watching the world's biggest festival on TV in Allahabad. ESPN which is beaming the matches live hardly seems to be on the priority list of the cable distributors here. "Brajil ka hya babu? E to UP hai!!" We in the institute atleast were getting a stolen espn channel (with pictures good enough to earn you glasses if you didnot have them) for the first few days from the local operator. Then a proper ESPN (along with Star Sports) came along and our joy knew no bounds. But wait! I have not told you about the icing on the cake. These channels come along with their own brand of Hindi commentary which runs together with the English one! It is fantastic... If you happen to pass allahabad, drop into our institute. The commentary is worth the visit!!!

(p.s.- The hin-lish now seems to restricted to Starsports only. Strange!!)

At last I am free. I am off to the mountains and then home, sweet home. No Allahabad, no HRI and hence no blogging for the next few days. 'Ca'nt say I am too unhappy though!! :)