Things to do

Things I wish I finally do in 2005. Among others.

1. Take notes in fingerpaint.
2. Spill coffee on a conference table and put a little paper boat in it.
3. Sit in the last row of a class looking at the board with binoculars.
4. Hide in the clothing rack and when somebody comes around, pop up screaming 'Pick me! Pick me!'.
5. Make a paper plane and aim it at my boss' left nostril.
6. Look for nutrition in places other than antacid tablets.
7. Find somebody with tanned palms.
9. Blow a bubble gum bubble.
10. Say no.

Random Physics

I took a physics course that was so hard I couldn't find the classroom.
Steven Wright

... Einstein was doubly wrong when he said, "God does not play dice." Consideration of particle emission from black holes would seem to suggest that God not only plays dice but also sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen.
Stephen Hawking, Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays (1993)

The circle of life

There was once this wooden cirlce. He was pretty content. Just one teeny weeny thing nagging him though. He had a small part of his circle missing, a little sector that was not there.
He would roll around all day, talk to the grass, the warm earth and the little purple flowers in its bosom, the blue skies and the birds from far away. It made him happy, but for that small nag. He would try to complete himself, try and find little pieces that fit his hollowness. They never were right, and he continued his journey. Listening to the moon laugh.
To his luck one afternoon, he found this piece of wood. It looked just right. He tried it on. Voila! It fit perfectly too! He beamed with joy and rolled on the same warm earth so fast, he was finally complete!
He went on, deliriously, amazed at how he thought this piece completed him. Ah, to be free finally.
Oddly, he sometimes still felt heavy. He never listened to the birds anymore. Or a babbling brook. The rustle of orange leaves in autumn. This time however, he knew what to do. He gave the piece up. And he realised he had come a full circle.

Nostalgia

Rummaged through some ancient print outs from a paper bag with silver fish. This particular one from a high school friend made me smile:
Hi Freddie,
Whats your math score?
Watch the Flintstones tommorow 16th june at 2130 hrs on HBO.
Byebye for now
Barney

Fell out of touch with Barney. And I don't remember all the characters from The Flintstones anymore.

Illusions

The simplest questions are the most profound.
Where were you born?

Where is your home?

Where are you going?

What are you doing?

Think about these once in awhile, and watch your answers change.
- from "Illusions, The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

Richard Bach

Prey and predator

3 a.m., a small noise in the backyard. A little baby squirrel or bird's tiny shriek. The jaws of the predator. The
shrieks get closer together and louder. Then a silence.
The unpredictability of life. The certainty of death. Another cold, dark night.

Literary fantasy

Just finished reading some of your works. I cried to the skies asking why I hadn't met you earlier. Your words stir my soul.
C'est magnifique, sans doubt!
Would you perhaps like a stroll with me in a field of rye, on an orange day?
Sincerely,
Thomas Hardy.

So runs one of my personal bookish fantasies.
However, the master of this game is Woody Allen. The spotlight is on a piece of prose called The whore of Mensa.
Run by a madam with a degree in comparitive literature, for a price a girl will come over and discuss any subject- Proust, Yeats, anthropology. Women who cater to your intellectual needs.
Red flocked wallpaper and a victorian decor set the tone. Pale girls with black rimmed glasses and blunt cut hair lolled around on sofas, riffling Penguin classics provocatively. For three bills, you got the works: A thin Jewish brunette would pretend to pick you up at the Museum of modern art, let you read her master's , get you involved in a screaming quarrel at Elaine's over Freud's conception of women, and then fake a suicide of your choosing- the perfect evening, for some guys.
Woody my man, thank you deeply for the thought. Tea today evening, what say?

The pedal

A few months ago, I found myself one late evening having a very strong craving for pastries. My cousin got hung on the idea, and admitted her fancy for a kind with figs.
So we run down three flights of stairs to find that the scooter was away and the car isn't available. The bakery is a couple of kms away, and we were too tired to walk. And the dark, too.
So what do you do when you hear some exotic pastry calling your name?
She had an idea. Brings a bicycle out. Brilliant.
I try my hand at it. Not only could I not cycle too far, but I fell off not being able to reach the pedal.
So she takes over, does a fair job of it as I held on for dear life.
And she pedalled hard, ringing that little metallic bell everytime a car honked behind. And we grinned hideously as they overtook.
Donuts after a bumpy bicycle ride, with a generous sprinkling of
heady, uncontrolled laughter. Happy, happy, happy!!!
Kudos to you, sister!

Voices from another room

Conversation overheard between a father and his little kid bursting into his office.
"Where did you come from?"
"I don't know!!"
Giggles of a child, bursts of laughter.

That warm feeling

Sankara is visiting. He is 5 years old. I gave him four pieces of candy. He eats one. Gives his Dad one. Puts one in his pocket. For tommorow, he adds. You have a plaster on your foot. He puts the last piece on that. So you don't get a shot, he says.
You smile and feel all warm, little angels making you happy!

Keeping the faith

Philosophies, religions, beliefs, sciences all have a theme. Like music. One principle or idea around which it is built. Like how various pieces are put together to a symphony.
It is so that most people live their lives with certain beliefs. What if along the line you realise that the pieces you put together to form the symphony were wrong. That the way every little note is percieved changes so much that your grand symphony is reduced to a cacophony?
There is a certain dialogue that takes place in Maugham's Of human bondage which might illustrate.
The essence of the particular passage is that as time passes, perception and truths change too. For instance, St. Augustine believed that the earth was flat. He believed that with his generation.
We now believe otherwise. Extend that to faith, personal beliefs and religion.
We build all our lives around this, our perception of the right. Or wrong.
How do we know if we have the truth now? How do you believe anything at all?
What does one put her faith in? Does it just boil down to one's highest truth?
Is God playing dice with the universe?

Thought

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day, you fritter and waste the hours in an off hand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town, waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain, you are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then the one day you find ten years have got behind you, no one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking, racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in the relative way but you're older, shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time; plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desparation in the English way - the time is gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say

-Pink Floyd "Time"

Quack quack!

I live in New York, and I was thinking about the lagoon in Central Park, down near Central Park South. I was wondering if it would be frozen over when I got home, and if it was, where did the ducks go? I was wondering where the ducks went when the lagoon got all icy and frozen over. I wondered if some guy came in a truck and took them away to a zoo or something. Or if they just flew away.

Holden Caulfield in J. D. Salinger's The catcher in the rye.

Where do the ducks go?

Where art thou?

Every morning I'd leave home at 5:30 for math lessons and he'd be there. At the gate, looking at me with those eyes screaming "Its so good to see you!" and he'd wag his tail and follow me till the street corner.
I'd give him biscuits as I sipped tea, or the remains form my school "dabba". Those doggy brown eyes always had a sparkle, the tail would wag as much, and that insane doggy smile would be on his face no matter what. Not even the ticks changed that.
A very happy soul, for someone living on the street.
Then one day I decided to walk for 3 k.m. to my aunt's. This guy decided to walk by me, and we happily shooed all the other stray dogs away together. We stopped traffic together, this girl and her (stray?) dog. He was a very good boy when it came to crossing roads.
Once there, I told him to stay till I finished dinner and we'd walk back.
Who knew.
Yup, he was not there when I returned. I searched for a while, and still look from the corner of my eye whenever I go there. No, no Juju yet.
A wise man once said gypsies go away only to come back.
My little fella is smart. Will he be back?
Those brown patches on white doggy fur. All those afternoons of petting your head and rubbing your neck. And the time we palyed in the garden.
I miss you Booboo.

The street

Every Sunday, after a late afternoon "chai" there is a street that slowly comes to life.
Roadside vendors setting shop. Stalls and sheets are spread and the prized goods are on display. Books.
So it is a crimson, chill evening with sparse yellow light, people looking for a their buy. They focus well, and the place is generally quiet. Pensive silences together.
There is also some haggling going on, but all in all a very blissful picture.
The finds here are amazing. From pirated books to yellowed paged publications to illustrated fairy tale books, they have it all.
Numerous vendors, numerous people, happy faces.
Added to this quaint charm is the fact that the books are pretty inexpensive. Deilicious bound copies sometimes cost a two figured number!
The joys of reading are infinite, and of being in a place like this, greater still.

Dawn's peaceful

Dawn's peaceful, luminous blue,
Intensified with the day
As did happiness,
Blue...bluer...bluest,
White puffs of delight,
Joy overflowing.

Until sunset
Wrapped us in tender pink,
And we fused in a
Passionate magenta goodbye,
Earth-soul and Cosmic-soul
Bursting with beauty.

When night came
A baby moon
Laughed sideways in the dark.
I laughed back
And thought:

Partway across the world
Your sky
Is filled with this same
Golden laughter,
And hoped that you,
Twinkling Blue eyes,
Saw and heard,

So that somehow we three
Were joined in our gladness,
Each in our own space,
Together apart,
Distance meaningless.

And I slept
In a world
Full of smiles.

Leslie Parish

( From Richard Bach's The bridge across forever)

Black velvet

Ever tried sticking your nose up the sky? Literally? Till you see the cold azure sky, the sprinkling of stars, some bright. Stared so long that you get a little giddy. That it feels like a game from a childhood memory.
It came to me one such day. This feeling of being one. Of all humanity being one, the common denominator. A gurgling baby, wild laughter or the pain in teary eyes. The common thread running through all of us. Maybe there'd be more peace if everybody just looked at the night sky. And I go to sleep, with clouds between my ears.