An Android Awoke (on Moon!) Chapter Nine

Episode Nine – To Earth

In previous episodes: LEX-42 stows away on Selina’s spaceship. Selina sees him from the spaceport near her home town on the moon and comes to investigate, but cannot find anything. She meets her parents (Maw in real life, Pa virtually) and an old, intelligent acquaintance: Illen.

In this episode: Selina & LEX land on Earth, after spending the week in close proximity. LEX learns vicariously about human intelligence. Neer manages to get a coded message to them, informing them that he is being held in involuntary quarantine by agents of Earth’s space squad.

Takeoff was chill as usual. With well-practiced movements of her head and hands, Selina coordinated with the Moon squad capcom efficiently. Advent engines ran on hydrogen fuel cells, so there was negligible Moon pollution. This was a great move from four centuries ago, when interplanetary travel was on the cusp of becoming the norm. Fossil fuels had been more or less phased out, replaced by renewable and sustainable energy sources. Humanity had evolved.

An eco-consciousness had developed in newborn minds all around the world due to a pandemic that woke people up to the real reality instead of the virtual world in which they had become ensconced. Nature came to the forefront of humankind’s priorities, with greater understanding. The happy result was that Earthers, Mooninites, and Martians regarded Eartoo as a living being.

Care and kindness towards Eartoo had precipitated a great increase in positive climate action, in turn fostering a heal-before-steal attitude towards fast-depleting resources and environments.

This was essential, because the polar ice caps were already melting by the time humanity woke to the fact that the proponents of the industrial revolution had not taken the future into account, mainly because of lack of information regarding their actions. A similar situation occurred with Mr Midgeley from Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, who had no idea the hell he was unleashing upon earth’s environment when he advocated for leaded gasoline and gaseous chlorofluorocarbons.

In retrospect, things seem clear. This is an undoubtable truth, as expressed by Captain Hindsight, a major figure in embracing positive climate action & an example of crude animation.

Crude oil had gone out of favor within 1 century ACE, and was becoming continually defunct as systems were upgraded across all spheres of human existence. With no purpose left in fighting over oil, humankind had focussed its collective efforts on improving life and expanding upwards.

Selina thought of all this while the system check completed its routines. She had run them when she had come out to the launch pad after spotting Lex near her ship, but it was protocol to run them before aligning for rendezvous with her ship’s reusable booster. It had hung in orbit, using zero energy in its dormant state, after her ship had detached to land in Bohr City’s space port.

All checks were run, with all results within threshold parameters. Moon squad uplinked the coordinates of the rendezvous point with the booster and shared some peanuts back on the lunar ground, while Selina ate some peanut butter paste as she ascended towards Moon orbit.

Reaching moon orbit for the booster assisted slingshot towards Earth, she kept a close eye on proceedings as the auto pilot pirouetted her ship towards the booster lying in wait to propel her.

The navi lights of her ship began to reflect from the booster’s shiny panels as they aligned in orbit. Blinking red and green, they gave her a visual confirmation that the space crafts were in tandem. With precise hisses that she could subtly feel, her ship vented directionally until the two crafts docked. The booster had too much mass compared to her quite petite ship, so it took the brunt of the docking vibrations in stride, and Moon squad confirmed smooth capture of the ship.

Powering up the booster took a few minutes, and the rest of the inertly floating ride to the orbit exit point from where the booster would shoot her towards Earth was another half an hour away, so Selina switched off the permarec cameras and made her way to the washroom compartment. There, she took out the device Illen and she had found in Neer’s old bed, and examined it minutely. It was a synthetic device, nearly circular and pretty flat. The only bit of metal she could see was a physical connector, ostensibly to plug it into some sort of port, that extended from one of its sides. This connector was about a fingertip long, and shaped like a cuboid. The open end had a black strip of plastic inside, blocking exactly half of the connector’s opening lengthwise. She recalled seeing something similar in one of the computers in Neer and Hielsa’s bio eco modules in high earth orbit, where they had set up nearly self-sustaining space farms.

She returned the device to her pocket and herself to the control deck to prepare for the boost.

There would be time enough to find that socket when she docked with the bio eco module furthest from Earth (which made it the closest one to Moon) to pick up the latest space greens.

Without Earth’s full gravity weighing them down, orbit-grown plants could breach the limits of volume and flavors that humans knew up to that point in time. Over the past century, bio techies had honed orbital botany so that the effects could be replicated in special greenhouses on Earth and Moon – and as Selina had found out on her latest Mars trip, efforts were on to do the same on the red planet too. The thought that perhaps Neer’s expertise in orbital botany was what had caused him to be sent to Mars crossed her mind as her interlocked booster and ship swung out.

Relaxing into her pressure-absorbent launch seat, she discarded that notion. Neer had long expressed his own desire – very publicly and volubly – to use the thin atmosphere and lower gravity of Mars to further his research on extraterrestrial vegetation. He had wanted to go there.

Her chief’s voice floated into her ears.

“Mind giving us a look at yer mug to see if you’ve started gettin’ scared, li’l ‘un?”

Selina laughed; she had not turned the cameras back on after returning from her loo visit.

“There ya go, oldie, now get me on my way so that I can grab some of that orbital grub!”

In high spirits, they locked in the boost, and Selina tensed up in anticipation of the acceleration.

In cargo, Lex was jolted awake from his soporific state by the near-instant kick of the booster.

In an effort to restore calm to his synthetically circuitous brain from its suddenly overclocked state, its mind began to show more examples of human literature. It was learning how to cope.

Lex’s brain began to slow down as it trawled millions of pages of text from the archives. He decided to focus on extracting as much contextual data as possible about how humans thought, randomly selecting some extracts from the occasional stream-of-consciousness outpurings, raving ramblings, and time-stamped transcripts by some human who had existed circa 10 BCE.

Meandering & Wandering

College started with me getting my first cell phone, as a gift. The cell number associated with this cell phone changed even before I graduated. The reason was something like better calling rates and free local messages, as far as I remember. This reminds me to declare, at the outset of my college life, that I digressed a lot during this time. Digression is, shall I say, something I count as one of my any and many afflictions. Add it to the list.

It was a Sony Ericsson T230. Nice phone. I liked it. It, too, will change a couple of weeks before my number changes. The first time I had to get it fixed was after it got wet in my bag while we were on the college trip, my first. That was in the second semester. We had gone to Manali in the Himalayas, and spent 3 days there, and while coming back some dumb ass’s bag had a water bottle which, in the 16 hours it took us to reach college and open the boot of the bus, had soaked lots of stuff, including my bag, which had my phone. My poor, blameless, color-screen phone. Anyhow, I got the screen fixed, but the incident taught me something – once I’d taken a shine to staying “connected” with people, disconnecting was not an option. I was close to miserable during the 2 days it took the local mobile shop to fix the phone. In my defense, I had made many friends in the half year I’d spent with it. It figures that almost all my closest friends from that initial era of engineering college remain so today, as do a few of my school ones.

College was Pink Floyd. The name Pink Floyd echoes through time. Their music goes very well with many moods; whether you want to have a cigar while you set the controls for the heart of the sun on an interstellar overdrive, or feel comfortably numb while you are waiting for the worms. Their music before and after Syd Barrett’s participation was as different as apples and oranges. Perhaps it was proof that money can cause brain damage. Syd probably felt he was on the run; it seems that in photos of him from that time that he was lost for words, yet his eyes spoke louder than words. Speaking of eyes, since we never see the dark side of the moon, perhaps Pink Floyd were right in saying, ‘let there be more light,’ especially on days obscured by clouds when our fat old sun is not flaming as usual. Hey you, if you’ve never included their music in your all-time favorites playlist, you may want to be careful with that (awesomax-music-excluding) axe, you know what I mean? 

Pink Floyd reminds me of a quote (certain parts of which are used to quite great dramatic effect in their song “Keep Talking”) by none other than the late, great Doctor (in mathematics, astrophysicist extraordinaire, CH CBE FRS FRSA, survivor supreme, papal pontificator – no, seriously!) Stephen Hawking: “For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind’s greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn’t have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.” His brief history on Earth was far too less time, but more than most expected. The human body surprises doctors.

Truer words were rarely spoken. I want to follow something like this approach to explain my alethings. By encouraging discussion about them, I want to build upon these alethings in a constructive way. To raise debates in using alethings effectively for thinking, I want to learn more and try to inform others not just about alethings (which would seem selfish) but about everything (which seems presumptuous, because nobody can ‘know’ everything, but I might try, mayn’t I?).

Alethings can help in dealing with lots of untrue things: fear of missing out (driven by social media’s pervasiveness), inferiority complexes (due to comparisons with others who are more fortunate – wealthy/higher learning ability/better sports capability etc.), peer pressure (alcohol, drugs, sex being regarded as commonplace due to uncensored gratuitous media’s proliferation), unrealistic family expectations (which forces many young students to join in the ‘rat race’), and confusion about vocations (due to so many avenues of earning being shown off by youngsters). 

All of these issues that popped into my mind over a few minutes of deep thought are obviously well documented by specialists elsewhere. Yet, I am kind of proud of my ability to empathize with my (open-minded) peers, having faced a few of such issues in my own formative years. So I will say that if we as a species ‘keep talking’, the end result makes the effort totally worth it, even if it makes the smallest iota of a positive difference in even one person’s life, so that they may think better and act kindly towards others, a trait that’s sorely missing in human ‘kind’ today.

Speaking fluently is a privilege. I have used it myself to “win friends and influence people”, as Mr Carnegie put it so many years ago! I know this to be true because I was lucky enough to be taught in one of India’s premier schools: The Lawrence School, Sanawar. Most (if not all) of my classmates are also quite well-spoken, and hence, faced little difficulty in pursuing their higher education (both abroad and in India) and careers (both family business and corporate). 

I may not be a B.Ed. or a child learning specialist, but I do know that reading aloud helps a lot in instilling confidence in children when it comes to speaking. Learned people to guide them about correct pronunciation and spoken syntax without being judgmental can also be of great help – or so I believe. Each individual develops their own inimitably unique style of learning language(s). 

Speaking styles are so different that even twin siblings have their own ways of expressing themselves. Moreover, in a multilingual society like ours (India), regional intonations and colloquialisms find their way into a person’s thought process (and hence, diction) from quite an early age. This might be one of the “issues” our educators face routinely, in my humble opinion.

Issues like this were exacerbated by COVID – 19. The past year (2020) was unprecedented in living memory, even though ‘unprecedented’ has become a cliche. COVID made life difficult even for those who did not suffer from it. Students also felt the brunt of the cataclysmic effects, as the education system came to a grinding halt. With virtually next to zero infrastructure for online education in place, there arose a dire need for scrambling together what could be foraged, and onboarding teachers & students into the early stages of online (virtual) education. Over the months, however, the system has been improved drastically, mainly due to the ease with which Zoom, Google Meet, and their ilk put online distance learning on the education map.

There are many educators and teachers (the two aren’t interchangeable) more capable and learned than myself who might be better people to ask about the best way to leverage technology for educating students, but my two cents can probably be summed up like this: people need guidance according to ability. Virtual classrooms make it difficult to gauge each student’s innate ability, but it shouldn’t stop us from trying to bring out the best in each person. 

College was also Fight Club; as junior college should be. It is unfortunate that I expected the excellent standards of my school throughout my education. All is well, though. Due credit to 3 Idiots. College was about rebelling; which meant doing what you thought would make others think that you thought that they thought that you thought that still others thought you were ‘cool’. 😀 Microsoft Word doesn’t find anything wrong with that sentence. Neither do I, which is why I wrote it.

I have to hand it to them; the entire Fight Club ensemble. It defined quite some time of my life; starting from the first week of…September? It may have been October, I’ll have to confirm that by referring to my photos library. My vast and comprehensive collection of digital memories. To put it as Frasier might, “this” continued till some way into third year, or sixth semester. Fun times. A time of lots of disjointed writing; something about thoughts being shadows behind a rippling or moving curtain. Or was that Plato’s cave? Thinking about that time brings me as close to regret as anything can. It was a pain in the ass to be treated unfairly for being outspoken, or not conforming to what stickler teachers expected students to be. No Robin Williams-esque Dead Poets in this college, thanks very much, much to my chagrin. Of course I knew that acting like Brad Pitt in Fight Club did not make me like his character, Tyler Durden: “sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken”. My Fight Club lifestyle receded over time, as most fads do, leaving me changed from the ever-refreshed, bright-eyed boy full of potential and the determination to knock the world dead; I devolved into a grouchy, sullen pessimist. Still, time changes everything – everything – and so did I. I don’t know, you know, I just wrote the piece about realizing I was meant to do great things. And yet, writing such highly philosophical-sounding things like “and so did I” about my college life embarrasses me, while I had no compunction about writing such (or deadlier) stuff while at school. I am so proud of my childhood alma mater, nestled in the beautiful foothills of the mighty Himalayas, that I love and adore.

College was about music. Pink Floyd, like I said, and lots of other stuff. It was an influence it was impossible not to get influenced by; the ones who escaped it must’ve been rocket scientists. We, too, were rocket scientists in our own way. We were fighters, challenging the known boundaries and always – always – devising new ways to ensure that every passing moment of our lives was full of fun. Music, to begin with, enabled us to make friends amongst our seniors, amongst our compatriots – but not so much with too many of our juniors, even though there were loads of them (good friends in the junior batches, I mean, not just juniors). Music of different genres became available to us through our extended circles. I sampled everything the best I could and formed my opinions about music. In some cases, I even changed my previously existent or newly-formed opinions to suit others’ expectations, and consequently boost their perceived perception of me. It was like I (and everybody else around me, if they don’t be unreasonably high-nosed and deny it) was trying to achieve compatibility with everyone else and everything else around us, sort of settling down into the flow of things, each choosing his own place. Hence the term ‘cool’, drawing upon entities/molecules/air/hot oil/excited hamsters (or people) that settle down, leading to a temperature drop. Some deep thought it must have taken to formulate, inspect and announce this Law of Thermodynamics. Will its progenitor be counted amongst the luminaries of science?

I love science, especially thermodynamics, and I stand by that statement. It is just one of the drawbacks of typing – I do not, but definitely would like to, know how pervasive it is in us amateur writers’ laments: the original thought gets lost in the passage from neuron to fingertip. Add to that the additional thought process of locating keys on a keyboard, and you got yourself writing sentences like the last one of the preceding paragraph. As if there weren’t enough distractions already. I appreciate how science gets rid of emotion in drawing conclusions. As a matter of fact, I aspired to be a scientist (among other things, like an astronaut, in Rakesh Sharma’s footsteps) while I was studying at the best school of all.

One of my college friends, NG, looks forward to more parts about him in my – for lack of a better word – journal. Due to this, a “Prologue” heading I had written for this section has written itself out of this document. Stubbornly. I can find no place for a prologue in this medley of reminiscences. Thoughts have unforeseen consequences.

Like keystrokes made while hazarding a newbie attempt at typing without looking at the keyboard, our actions commit mistakes. In my current vanity, I pride my MusicBox for playing Comfortably Numb right now. I want to share the words, but the fond hope that the greatest musicians to ever band together will allow it without copyright striking it seems hopeless. Nevertheless I have High Hopes music aficionados will know it well.

Many songs meant a lot to us. Ends of long-drawn nights, like this one, and complex music, the sheer depth of it, and the yearning of things further than a pursuit of materialistic goals. We were about living in the moment, weren’t we? Just the fact that I use that phrase “in the moment” showcases the widespread infiltration of various methods of Killing Time (huge Infected Mushroom / Astrix shout out) rampant in educational institutes. Everyone has stories to tell. We have the best, though. 

Our college days were way better than simply legendary. I throw my hands up in despair at the flood of memories that comes rushing to the fore when I think of college.

Memories are tangibly, albeit digitally, retrievable through photos. I have ‘proper’ photos of my father that I intend to digitize for near-eternal safekeeping. He was KIA in OP Pawan as part of the IPKF, in 1987. Memories that trigger strong emotions are usually connected to people with whom you once lived, or whom you once loved.

Now that we are in the digital age, our progeny will know most of what there is to know about us. Our digital imprints shall persist (if properly preserved) long after we perish. It is a cherish-able thought for a positive future. I want to get a lot of thoughts down before they become irretrievably archived. The entropy of memory can be overcome by journaling digitally. 

I am glad that the spirals of friends who are usually chilling in metropolitan areas intersect once in a while – another undeniably positive effect of technology. Many others’ tangents went far off after brief intersections and momentarily parallel travels through life. Thinking of death while typing this led me to how briefly SSR’s spiral overlapped mine at college, when we competed against one another for being Mr Fresher. I won.

Unfortunate downward spirals cannot be avoided, but we must go with the flow and try to keep our head above the rising maelstrom. Perhaps we will become kings and queens of the world (like DiCaprio’s Jack, very briefly), riding an upward typhoon. It is hope that keeps A Life Afloat. 

Just the fact that my friends continue to support me in the blistering variety of ways they do is proof of our friendship. Truth is best told as directly as possible, and words are but instruments of language. It is a pity that money has come to be the most widespread language, closely followed by natural resources (ravishing the Earth, but more on that somewhere else – specifically on my YouTube, where I am trying to promote zero-impact travel, especially in the Himalayas). I wish we could go back to the jungle days; I’ll make sure I earn enough to have our own place in the mountains to chill and relax – to chillax.

A memory surfaces. It was the day of the ‘counseling’ for choosing the stream of my graduation degree. But I did not go. I left my family friends’ house well in time for it, though. For starters, I felt that my rank in the qualifying exam wouldn’t get me any worthwhile stream of engineering; secondly, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix had been released a few weeks ago, and I was a naive, happy-go-lucky youngster. I skipped the chance to start my graduation a year early, just like that. In my ever-expanding list of regrets, this one consistently takes a podium position. The more I try to leave the past behind as I approach the end of life, the more such memories emerge and drag me back into pondering the past, staring into the hellish mire of a life left unfulfilled, promises unkept, words unsaid.

I recall Upamanyu Chatterjee ‘s English, August being the first book to film adaptation I had encountered. Its brevity and sarcasm resonated with my young, brash mind. The book’s, I mean. The movie was good too, and Rahul Bose’s oeuvre has only expanded splendidly since then. It was a coup de force for me to encounter them both at the inaugural Times Litfest at Delhi’s Taj, and obtain Mr Chatterjee ‘s autograph on my copy of Catch 22. He chuckled when I tentatively proffered it to him; at least I think he did, as he signed it with his fountain pen, a rarity in itself these days. I had Mr Bose sign a Ruskin bond. I also asked Rahul about his brightly coloured Swastik hairdo shaved into the top of his head, temporarily. Just yesterday, seeing that interaction on YouTube brought on a nostalgic smile.  

I met Ruskin Bond and got him to sign my copy of The Salmon of Doubt (by the peerless Douglas Adams) at another Times Litfest at the India Habitat Center. 

Some time later, maybe months or years, I was saddened by Chester Bennington and Chris Cornell bringing their beautifully chorused songs to a screeching halt, permanently. SSR has been added to the list of famous people whose death left me troubled. What were their troubles? Unimaginably hellish due to the fame fetish, I think.

My school, quite oppositely, was heaven. My friend G (suffixed with ‘ji,’ as a sarcastic attempt at a deferential tone – not to be confused at all with differential, a mode of calculus that strangulated my brain often) asked me to relate our college life, as did the rest of the Nallaz, but I feel I owe myself a brief, if patchy (because my interest drops in and out of my own memories, that is) recap of my formative years, in the true sense of the word. Before that, I don’t remember much. I know a lot about what I don’t remember from what my family has told me when I “grew up,” much of which was not good to know. Some coffins are best left undisturbed, or for grave robbers to loot.

Dank poetry about the melancholy of life doesn’t move me too much. Rhymes, clever ones like Roald Dahl’s, I find refreshing. I remember winning a poetry recitation competition in middle school sometime; the “Heady” presented me with the grand prize of two big chocolates. He was one of my idols, a former part of the Army, a writer of stories (and, the Web tells me, of a book on Sikhism as well), not afraid to tell us one of them even though it involved a rape. Such acts helped me define the fine, now rapidly diminishing, line between vulgarities and (because I can’t find the word I want) art. Moreover, we had stories of his to draw on even before interacting with him individually, courtesy Mrs. K, my English teacher at the time.

My first face-to-face with Heady happened sometime soon after joining school. Three friends of mine convinced me, while I was feeling only a little less homesick than them, to join them in running away. We had it all figured out: we would simply walk out of school (it was no Mordor, to be honest, and we were walking out instead of in), down to Dharampur (yeah, that sounds pretty, pretty, pretty easy), where we would hitch a ride with anyone who cared to give us a lift to Chandigarh (umm…okay…), where one of my 3 co-conspirators had genial relatives, who were ready to harbor us till we contacted our parents and explained to them, tearfully, why we couldn’t continue in boarding school and wanted to come home. At the school gate, however, one of them and I turned back, with cold feet, admittedly. We spent an hour or two furtively in our dormitory, until the two of us were summoned by a peon who had been sent explicitly to fetch us.

It turned out that our (overly) ambitious compatriots had been spotted on their way down and promptly escorted back by a teacher, Mr. G, I think, who had a reputation for catching runaways on his trusty scooter. That was my first time inside the Headmaster’s residence, and my first talk with him. So there – I was a 9-year old, guilty of transpiring to break school rules, one of the most sacrosanct ones (breaching school boundaries without permission). Heady was, in one word, cool. We had black soda and potato chips, my friend AV committing the naive faux pas of switching his glass for a more-filled one when the tray was offered to him. Heady shot the breeze with us about putting the aspirations of our parents ahead of us, and then, quickly, went on to put us at ease with banter about how the 4 of us were doing at our studies. I didn’t understand then how that interaction affected my life, or even how Heady molded much of my adolescent psyche; suffice to say that I consider the best years of my life the ones I had the privilege to spend at school.

I hate being ill. Which is ironic in hindsight, thinking about it while writing this right now. At school, I loved getting ill. Except for the few times I really was afflicted with diseases or broken bones, it was fun staying at the hospital and taking a break from the hectic routine we followed. Shamming, we called it – acting ill to get out of activities in which we did not feel particularly inclined to participate.

It was at school that I felt it in my bones that I wanted to do something great. Those frivolous 7 years gave me a lot of experience of coexisting with people of all ages. There would be too many commas in a single sentence if I were to tell all about the extraordinary years at school. Additionally, I wouldn’t be doing justice to the mind-boggling variety of the annual events by rushing through them as phrases between the commas of a long-winding (albeit interesting-sounding) sentence.

But like the Red King said, let us begin at the beginning, and go on till we come to the end, and then stop. On our first day, our parents came to install us at school; the grade is called Form II, the English education system equivalent to grade 4. On my first night at boarding school, I looked out over the railings running the length of the balcony outside our dormitory at the bright pinpoints of the quaint town occupying the top of the hill next to ours, and felt homesick. A kind senior gave me a Tetra Pak of a mango-flavored drink, and I immediately felt better – those were the starting days of my exposure to life, the universe and everything in between. After that first night, I never ever felt homesick again, and even when I came home for holidays, I could only count the days to getting back again to my adopted home. When relatives asked me if I missed home, I would gladly regurgitate stories of me calling my school ”swarg”, which means heaven in Hindi. That analogy still holds true for me; I did not miss a single opportunity to stay at school. Parents were allowed to visit us once every semester for one SOP (Sleeping Out Pass, a provision to spend the weekend with your parents or authorized local guardians from Friday evening to Sunday evening; some children pushed the limit to Monday morning, but later than that meant your parents owed an explanation to your House master – and it better had been a good one!). When I was in Form II; we stayed in a little hotel in the small village in the valley below school. I think that was the first time I took a shine to puppies in particular and dogs in general. I have a few real photos of that SOP, cuddling the local pups in one of them. I also have a faint, fleeting, nearly suppressed recollection in my mind’s eye of a man brandishing a wire clothes hanger to…let’s say, threaten a woman; however, in retrospect, I cannot say I can put the entire blame on him, cowardly act though it was. That woman can get on anyone’s nerves without even trying. Not all people are saints, nor are all evil.

In the second half of 1994 (26 BCE), plague broke out in India, and so the second half of my second semester was declared a long, long holiday, extending till February, or maybe even April the next year – I’ll have to check the official school records for that, because I doubt I can recollect my memories of that time without any anchors. It feels awesomax to know that my school has a rich history, which reminds me of the book about it by Ms. K and Mr. P. I have a copy of it, hardbound and safe from silverfish, and have read most of it multiple times. Further readings and research materials are amply available throughout the world with all the alumni, distinguished or not so much, as well as in our library hall (which has been upgraded into a museum, last time I visited), the chapel archives, and various other sources. Suffice to say, I am very, very proud of being a small part of that saga, and hope to add to the glory by living my life as well as I can. The way we live our life is what forms our legacy.

A few words about my changing perception regarding my school are in order. I left school after the final exams of Form Upper V (definitely more recognizable to readers in India when referred to as ‘Class X Boards’), and have been back to school [ref. Deftones, “Back To School ”] half a dozen times. With every visit, I have become more disillusioned by the progressively deteriorating manners, unkempt attire, and standards of courtesy displayed by the students, especially the younger ones. I hope this is a temporary lull, and the former high standards will be re-attained; that future generations of Sanawarians will be courteous, well-mannered and proud enough of the kit they are wearing to take care of it. What I saw during the last few visits reeked of the fall-out of pervasive technology. Especially during celebratory times like the founder’s week or national holiday weekends, smartphones abound in little childrens’ hands.

Mollycoddling by parents seems to be at the root of this evil. It is important to maintain discipline, methinks. In our time, life was regimented, and the punishments were focused on enforcing discipline. I’ll not paint a rosy picture; a majority of us found our names in the drill and detention lists for various misdemeanors. Nevertheless, it was never personal, and certainly didn’t last beyond school. Of course, as with everything, I can only speak for myself.

Anyway, let me not get too bogged down (and drag your mood down with me) while remembering this very enjoyable part of my life. It is time to relate some stuff about a normal day at school as far as I can recall.

The year (academic; around the third week of February) started with a journey. Parents would receive a letter along with the New Year’s wishes communication: a well-composed, concise letter with details of how, when and where I was expected to be deposited so that the teacher accompanying the official school party could escort us to school. Usually, Patna Party was picked up en route from Patna railway station and got absorbed into Howrah or Guwahati Party, and the corresponding Rajdhanis maintained an admirable adherence to their schedules, contrary to what Indian Railways used to be famous for. The timings were very convenient for us – arrive at New Delhi about 10 AM, be polite while receiving your pocket money (while returning from home, we would all be heavy in the pockets, of course, so the small amount of the school allowance felt like a lot more when we were returning home), roam Connaught Place, Khan Market, Ansal Plaza, the PVRs at Priya and Saket. About two dozen (or maybe more) times I made this stopover at India’s capital, and now that I think about it, I really have always liked this city. Overexposure can make a golden sunny picture blindingly silver, but I don’t think that is the case with me, especially now, with the Metro and NCR-expansion.

Anyhow, leaving this train of thought to catch the one from New Delhi late in the evening, we used to arrive at Kalka, the northern head of Indian Railways, in the dark. Not the crack-of-dawn, swift-sunrise-green-hills style when the hues of blue ascend into the sky. The cold, sometimes wet because of sleet, or fog, or Kalka being in a cloud dark. I’d grab my luggage ASAP and find a good seat in the buses waiting for us. I never saw Kalka much during my school years, only passing through the bustling town.

Chhota Hazari at 6:30 AM. Tea, and a ration of a sweetie, saltie, or sweet bun – which, apparently, were such a valued commodity that our house matron had to distribute them individually on Saturday mornings, or else there was grabbing, stealing, robbing, gambling, and the like, amongst 9, 10, and 11 year olds. I was going to write a bit about our matron in prep school, but I won’t. Instead, I’ll remain with my development through Form II, Lower III and Upper III. Various activities occupied us through the day, making us interact interminably, and gave me a considerable understanding about the human psyche. 

I will not deny, I was always interested in knowing what went on behind the words a person spoke. I am glad of the avalanche of interactions, both short-term and long, that being in one of India’s – nay, the world’s – best residential schools allowed me to experience. I must mention that we are India’s oldest co-educational institution.

PT (short for physical training) was something I did not mind at all, unlike many of my fellow students. I am a firm believer of ‘healthy body, healthy mind.’ Over my life I have discovered being fitter than your competition gives you a significant advantage. So, I was mostly to be found doing the exercises, reveling in keeping time and stomping flat and slapping my hands so as to sound crisp and sharp. Admittedly, there were numerous days that I also succumbed to whatever was inside my head at that time, and therefore, could be found in the hospital or on the special “short back walk” for the ones with pink slips – little memos issued by our Residential Medical Officer that excused us from strenuous activity (like PT).

This (shamming) did not happen very often to me, though, and mostly I did not visit the hospital without reason. It is a different matter altogether that I was in hospital for long stretches quite a few times. Apart from the average number of visits for flu et al, I went for stitches to [1] my lower lip (a stone thrown by an unassuming senior rolled downhill and smacked me in the middle of my face), [2] my right cheek (this one was a visit to one of the bigger hospitals in Shimla; I was wrong-sided and hit during a hockey match against a rival school) and [3] one of my shins (skin peeled off after falling during athletics practice for the relay events, both 4 X 100 and 4 X 400 meters).

I endured numerous sprains and three fractures – right elbow, right wrist, and left the talus of the left ankle. I distinctly remember I had to get my right knee checked for a fracture once, because it meant I had to be taken to Chandigarh for a second opinion from a specialist. That was an unexpected bonus, so I got my eyes tested sometime in Form Lower V so that I could get another Chandigarh trip. On that trip I got myself a pair of silver-rimmed spectacles, with “only a little power in their lenses,” or so I told myself and my friends then. I somehow think I would have had perfect eyesight if I had not followed that path. But then again, unexplored universes that branch out from “ifs” deserve a whole chapter, and perhaps an entire book, to themselves. Also, on this note about “If,” I feel that both, the poem (by Rudyard Kipling, an author who shares a bit of trivia with Eric Blair / George Orwell – they are both India-born) and the song (by Pink Floyd) deserve to be immortalized.

Back to the daily routine. Classes began at 7:30 AM, I am sure, calculating backwards from breakfast at 9:00 AM preceded by 2 45-minute classes in the morning session. A quick grace “Oh Lord, thank you for what we are about to receive. Amen” was sandwiched between two peals of a bell, rung by one or the other “authoritative” students. For meals in which we knew “good” food was on the menu, we jostled to bag our positions to help ourselves from the laden tables. The quest for “good” food, and the formation of the subsequent strategies to obtain a fair share of what was available, certainly drove competitive levels higher amongst us.

Breakfast was awesome for me, as were all the meals served in the central dining hall. I remember being selected to represent the prep (junior most) department at the mess meeting to discuss the serious matter of our nutrition. It was probably my first encounter with committees. The meeting was scheduled in the staff room next to the computer lab. There were house captains, house masters, and house mistresses, along with Mr. N, our industrious mess-in-charge, and me and my lady counterpart representing the girls of the prep department. Democracy, mediation, debate, reasoning, conviction and convincing ability, compromise – my learning curve had just begun to slope upwards. I realized with experience that general knowledge helped to have meaningful conversations, rather than bitching about seniors, homesickness, tuck raids, and confiscated home cash.

We learnt our way through two more classes, and then, we were treated to a milk-break near mid-day. Depending on the season, cool or hot chocolate flavored milk or cocoa or chilled lassi in Tetra Paks were served, one each – lucky you if you could land ‘seconds,’ i.e. extra servings after the initial crowd had depleted. Some pretty devious means were used to achieve this end; I hope they used their Machiavellian traits to good use in the future. 

I really was an arduous learner, involving myself in many activities and dissolving myself into the fabric of our close-knit community. Indeed, I’m proud to say my teachers are still proud of me today. Back in those times, when parents came up for founders’ celebrations and met my teachers, they were all praises for me. I did have my habit of making silly (I believe the word used was “careless”) mistakes that were pointed out to me a few times. Thankfully I have managed to overcome that issue (mostly). I must say that I put in a diligent effort till Form Upper IV, at least. Then I strayed a bit. But that is for later.

Next up were two more classes, then a moderately filling lunch so as not to weigh me down for sports, Socially Useful Productive Work (acronymed ‘soup’), hobbies (in chronological order, I took up carpentry, art, music, music again, and gymnastics for the last 3 years), or just roaming around the hill in our weekly post-lunch free slots. We had four seasons of sport: cricket, football, hockey, and athletics (the last was combined with founders’ celebrations practices).

Team sports are a must for any individual. Furthermore, I think it is never too late. Michael Schumacher played charity football matches after retiring; I’m sure he’ll play again after retiring again. [10th October 2010: See? I (like anyone else) love being right. MS is driving again, though not for Ferrari, sadly.] I’ll miss cheering for him when I’m cheering for the Prancing Horse. I hope he is recovering from his medically induced coma, and that his racing legacy will be celebrated forever.

In the evening was prep (preparation) time – an hour of studying, either in our classrooms (but organized by house and batch, unlike school time) or at our desks in the dorms. In the founders’ term, we used to practice marching for the actual NCC parade, and salute the War Memorials outside the chapel on our way up to the classroom complex. Prep time was pretty eventful, spent mostly on the most common pastime of humans: talking. Our seniors had fun, we had fun (mostly), and we tried to make sure our juniors had “at least as tough a time as us.” I will steer clear of vague memories, consign them to the deaths of my mind’s ocean, and relate my clearest, dearest memory of adventure during evening prep.

During lunch one day, when I was in Form Upper V, my house prefect gave me a few of his books to “carry down”, which meant I was supposed to do him the “favor” of taking his books down to his bunk in the dorms, and carry them up again for evening prep. I went to the computer lab during the afternoon sessions, and forgot those books there. When evening prep started, he wanted his books, so I panicked and lied, saying I had put them on his table. He was livid that someone had stolen his books! Long story short, he threatened dire consequences for the entire dorm if he didn’t get his books by the time he reached his bunk after dinner. I was petrified by my lie, but time was running out, and I had to do something to fix my mistake. Midway through evening prep, with barely an hour left, I asked to be excused. I walked to the washrooms which put me out of sight of everyone. It was dark already, and I was small and quick. I applied my running skills and ran to the computer lab undetected. Lucky stars, the lab was unlocked! Next to it was the staff room where I had discussed our meals with the mess committee so many years ago. It was abuzz with adult voices.

In what felt like an eternity but was probably a minute or so, I slid open the latch, crept in, picked up the pile of books, crept out and shut myself in the small staff bathroom right next door – I was scared, I needed to take a leak. Unfortunately, so did Mr. P. He came, he knocked, he waited. He knocked again, he queried (“Who’s there, y’know?”), and after waiting some more accompanied by some grumbling, he went off to the next ‘pans,’ as we called washrooms. The moment I gauged his footsteps to be at an adequate distance, I was out of the toilet and sprinting away towards our classrooms like lightning. It had taken about twenty-five minutes to do this job, so I paced my arrival with the formation of the lines for marching up to the dining hall for dinner. As we lined up, I returned the books, and apologized to my house prefect, telling him that they had been left by me in the computer lab, and so we were all spared from his wrath. 

I would love to be a field agent for our national security or intelligence agencies. My escapades at school enabled me to infiltrate many college hostels for fun – but that is in the future.

Education systems play an extremely important role in a child’s development; that is pretty easy to understand. Then, also easy to understand should be the relation between the role the environments play. The ecological environment, not just the social. School was beautiful. I am nowhere near poetic enough to wax eloquent to describe it, even though I did contribute a few poems and articles to our monthly news-letter, which was also a foolproof way of ensuring that our parents received some semblance of communication from us. This was not totally out of anxiety for our well-being – they knew we were well-taken care of – it was more to ensure that we followed a routine.

And next on our daily routine was dinner, to which I attach much importance, both for erasing hunger (in which we were abetted by tea at 4:30 PM) and for talking. You should practice what you preach, and if you practice what you preach, you will be very good at what you practice along with being well-versed in what you preach.

I tend to spend more and more free time with old memories; in this moment they bring to mind Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals, which was a fun read, further made more enjoyable by me being asked to read aloud to the class many times.

The fact that my school played a major part in making me the existentialist, six-hourist that I am is not doubtable. My teachers are a wonderful lot, all of them, and I would love to go back and contribute to school, as some of my classmates have done. 

One of the best gifts from my mountainous school is a zeal for health and fitness; irrevocably, this puts into my mind the realization that I am glad Granma got to see my school. I managed to convince her to make the most of my financial stability and flew her over to see our incredible nation’s capital, too. How does the cycle of birth and death go, again? Is it karma, or nirvana, or punya and prayashchit? Why are we born?

Apropos, a little rewinding of time, and life, to the zero point: birth

It was not an agreeable situation. Personally speaking, of course. I didn’t know what to make of it, but there was nothing much I could do about it either, and when I gave in to my natural reaction to the situation, it only became worse. In addition to being cold, wet and very uncomfortable, there was this high-pitched sound that was not doing any good to my general well-being. It would stop when I breathed in, but then carry on again in almost the same cacophonous tone at which it had left off.

There wasn’t much to see, too, and when I tried to open my eyes, the brightness hurt, so I gave up trying. By and by, after quite a bit of knocking about, I found I was dry and still; if I could call the gentle rocking motion I was caught up in ‘still.’ And the wailing noise was gone, too. I was breathing evenly, so I figured things must have improved. I decided to take a look around.

The light did not hurt my eyes anymore. I peeped out a little more and saw that my field of vision was almost equally divided in two. One side seemed plain and blank – white was the name of that color, I learnt later. The other side frightened me so much that I had trouble breathing and that wailing noise coming from somewhere very near my ears started again, though it was a little muted this time. I noticed the wailing came when I did something, although I wasn’t sure what, except it felt that the source was somewhere close to my eyes, too – my ears were finding it difficult to figure out where it was coming from, and why it stopped when I breathed in. Meanwhile, I felt something soft and firm gently patting my chest, where I could feel the vibrations of the noise. The patting felt good, so I started to breathe evenly again and that caterwauling klaxon subsided. I squinted at the frightening roundish shape still filling one half of my vision.

It was very dark at the place where it began and the blank part of my field of vision ended. Then it smoothed out into a lighter expanse, which ended at two dark rows, in the middle of which there was a cone jutting out. On either side of the cone were weird almond-shaped (not that I knew what almonds were – another thing I learnt later) white things, with deep brown circles inside them. The cone that extended beyond these unsettling, moving almonds had two gaping holes in it. Just below the holes was another black hole, and as I focused upon it, it seemed to open and close in arbitrary motions, its edges moving ceaselessly. In an instant they would open up bigger than the quite small holes in the cone above them; and in the next instant the hole would close as the edges pressed together, wrinkling the pinkish boundaries of that black hole. All these openings and closings of the hole were accompanied by sounds that did not seem as troublesome as the yelping I had heard before.

I could see that this thing above me was part of a bigger thing, but just as I was shifting my attention from that fascinating black hole to the alternately dark and blank almonds a little above it, the edges of that fluctuating hole pressed together again and came closer to me. Instinct took over and shut my eyes to stop this horror from approaching me. I stopped seeing the world I had come into, and just as I did, the wailing siren started up again, germinating somewhere inside me and getting expelled through some part of my face. Honestly, I didn’t really like the kiss my mother gave me.

Being born was not pleasant.

Like any normal person, I too have glimpses of growing up. I remember that the colony we lived in had a largish pond in the middle. I watched a few washer men at work, once. I don’t remember the washing of the clothes or anything, but I do remember the arcing streaks of water from the clothes, almost in slow motion. I took bicycle rides through tree-lined kaccha roads and shortcuts through people’s gardens, pushing through seemingly impenetrable bushes to discover free expanses of more lawns beyond, in various stages of upkeep. I also have a hazy recollection of being carried by a pundit on the banks of a river, and being given a flaming torch to hold. Perhaps I only remember it in hindsight from the real memory of seeing a photograph of me as a child in that moment. I can never recall anything further in that sequence, but it’s certainly the memory I have of my father’s funeral. Pity; I would’ve liked to remember more. Painful memories can be a source of inspiration like little else. When things seem to me as if they couldn’t get any worse and that I’ve never faced more depressing times, I almost always recall that torch in my hand and count myself lucky that I didn’t understand what was going on then. That would’ve been worse than anything in the present. At that moment in my life, if I’d realized what events had transpired, helplessness would’ve been absolute. I’m lucky I was unaware. Ignorance is bliss.

Perhaps a transcript of the “our great depression is our lives” speech from Fight Club will give unambitious people some food for thought. As I write this, I am reminded of one of my teachers giving political agenda-type speeches…plus, this guy wasn’t even a good orator, let alone being capable of influencing people to win them over as friends, Carnegie-wise. Not students, at least, not the way he’s going. Yet that is the sad part; such is the impressionability of minds afflicted by uncertainty about the future that every little thing, even one as weak as this guy’s rant, will succeed in ringing in people’s ears.

I think this is an opportune moment to suggest that echoes of such things distort the original memories, even resulting in great contortion of the truth (consequently retarding correct recording and interpreting the original truth – the one the speaker intends to communicate). These distortions magnify inside empty heads, i.e. minds without the necessary filters to process, store and control the sensory information they receive in every moment of Waking Life. As a direct result, what is received by others in a society or group as second-hand information is, quite possibly, far from the truth. Doubting the information dispelled by the provider results in discussion among the recipients involved; this usually deviates from the ideal way the cumulative knowledge of the group could have increased in beneficial ways.

He’s not sure which, if any, original copies of assignments he gave us. I’m sure I was trying to convey to you the damage possible due to gossip, of course. I loathe gossip, and its omnipresence pisses me off. I take a deep breath. I relax. In MBA terminology, “gas” is comparatively better than gossip.

I think my myopia has increased. Without my glasses, I cannot see the white board from the third row, and the class has a total of six rows. I need an eye check-up. I know! I’ll get one the next time I go to college (my engineering college), from that decent doctor whose clinic is at the T-point of the main market road. Cool, that’s sorted and put away for the future.

I should flip a new page. Just half the class is over. It is now 11:31 AM. Dissecting knowledge, even without the analytic knife used for Quality, is thirsty work.

This is a new page. I love (and prefer) writing with pen on paper, like I did in adolescence. The typing I’ve done (so far) is hard work, man. [Update: It still is.]

Just ask MH, my good friend from when I was admitted in hospital for a week or so at the same time as him (and a few others – EB, for a memorable stint involving book cricket as well as card tennis), sometime in Form Lower V, I guess. For those who are curious, book cricket is when you score runs by opening a book (preferably fat and not dog-eared) and noting the number in the unit’s place of the page number. If you open a page number ending in 0, that’s it, YOU’RE OUT! IF it’s an 8, you score a single. For elaborate score-keepers, that also meant a change of batsmen, like in the real world counterpart of the game. I have recorded my thoughts on cricket and football and why I love sports elsewhere in the digital world, which means they are open to people to see.

Card tennis was, as far as I know, EB’s invention. You dealt 3 cards to both players on either side of the net. The winner of the duel got the quarter of an hour points. Tied triplets were deuces. Usual scoring was followed; 15-30-40-game, set, match. I cannot for the life of me remember if there were faults and double faults.

Anyhow, during that stint in hospice, I was working on an idea and had already filled an entire thick hardcover notebook with the first half (approximately, as I saw the plot progression) of an action adventure book, inspired by series like Blade, Phoenix Force, Commando comics et al. My team was called the Omega Titans; it was pretty readable, I think, for light readers who liked the kind of things I liked. I express my written gratitude to AS, he knows who he is, for being excellent company and a treasure trove of nifty information. He was a fellow imaginative academic overachiever.

Which reminds me, I also scored quite a few gold star stickers from our French teacher (she lived in one of the quaint little houses near the basketball court) for my short stories, one of which was an especially good one about how a person walks into a marsh with a flaming torch to investigate eerie phenomena, and realizes he is an intruder in something that has gone on longer than homo sapiens…can’t recall the details. Those notebooks were thin, printed in our very own historical, awesomax printing press. They were treasured possessions for me, especially the fat hardcover one full of half my plot for the Omega Titans’ first stealth assignment.

Those notebooks, thin and thick alike, were all left behind in my trunk, which I stupidly did not take along while leaving Sanawar permanently, so as not to burden my fellow (slightly senior) traveler, who had taken his trunk. I seriously, seriously regret that decision. If only I could retrieve it. I am sure that it is a tumultuous collection of my early short stories, ripe for the taking. 

If only I could just go back in time and/or space and collate all my “if” sentences.

There’s that feeling again; one I have been familiar with since the second year of engineering college: too many thoughts and conversations that are worth being recorded to ponder for posterity go to waste due to lack of easy modes of documentation.

I was thinking about SWOT analysis for an assignment and I found something in my mind that adds to my “strengths”: I conform to my astrological sign in a positive way, and that makes me a natural team player and leader. I had saved this thought as a draft message on my phone: an example of an easy documentation method available to anyone at any point of time. The thought I wrote in the draft says “One of my strengths is that I use my astrological sign’s supposed characteristics to better my character.”

A friend says, “The internet is a wonderful thing.” I must agree. Full power \m/ to the Net. I feel it is now somehow appropriate to use emoticons in prose. Language has evolved, and it was inevitable, the way technology proliferated the world – like a blitzkrieg, but in a good way. On an unrelated note, I liked the movie I Am Legend. I have also decided to stick to my decision of not changing anything written in this document out of fear of retaliation, or of upsetting anyone. People are free to think what they want about what they want. I am also a part of the people, am I not?

In hindsight, every good outcome seems to follow a “good” decision on someone’s part, and a bad outcome, a bad decision. Consequently, sometimes that someone will try to be modest, like that master of politically incorrect outrage, Larry David (actually I am thinking of the wrong person, this quote is from Google’s Larry Page): “You have to be a little silly about the goals you are going to set. There is a phrase I learned in college called, ‘Having a healthy disregard for the impossible’. That is a really good phrase. You should try to do things that most people would not.”

SC says I should sell my words. I agree, indeed I do. It is one of my major strengths, and I rarely ever use it to put people down; rather, I’m always open to motivating them and answering anyone’s queries to the best of my abilities. As for life, I “Grin and Bear It” like Abhi. That book’s author, Ms. Sigrun Srivastava, knows what I’m talking about. Ma’am, if ever these words have the good grace of being read by you, I request an autographed copy of your book, I’d very much appreciate and cherish it. Your Moment of Truth stories and Abhi’s family dramedy got me through many years.

In the intervening years since I read those books, I have learnt to laugh along with the rest of the world at my expense.

Timestamps begin with a trip to Haridwar & Rishikesh, India

21st June, 2010. I returned yesterday from a weekend trip with exactly 13 other people – not including the driver of the Tavera. The other car was a Ritz. We left on Friday morning, 7 o’clock. At around 9:30 AM, the vehicle in front of the Tavera that we (7 plus the driver) were traveling in braked really hard. So did our driver, but the Ritz behind us was caught completely off-guard. This Unfortunate Series of Events resulted in considerable dents on both the vehicles. I like to think that a small mishap at the beginning of a trip tends to have an effect for the better on the overall experience of the rest of the trip. The drivers tend to be more alert.

A couple of hours’ delay later, we resumed our journey and reached the Tata group-owned Ginger hotel at 5 PM, as compared to the 2 – 3 PM we should have. However, as the Red Hot Chili Peppers have sung, “nothing ever goes according to plan.” “Should have” is also a misleading phrase; one that is condescending and carries demeaning undertones towards the unpredictability of the future. No matter who says it – a boss, a co-worker, a friend, a parent, me to myself – it gives innocuous actions and unpremeditated coincidences underlying-motives-driven connotations and generates feelings that they were pre-planned set-pieces in an insane game of galactic chess.

The hotel was good, and followed a ‘no-frills’ model. The outer layer of the large window in our room was spider-webbed with fine cracks, as if the hurler of the projectile that had caused the event had put painstaking effort into getting the physics just right, so as to give it a really professional finish. I’m surprised at myself that I didn’t take a picture [ref. Filter, “Take a Picture”]. We went for a dip in the Holy Ganges that flows down from the heavens (Aakaash Ganga) via Shiva’s tassels. It was a good experience. We had a good time, trusting the absence of visible industrial effluents. 

We repeated the bathing rituals on Sunday afternoon. The main reason for timing the tryst with the Ganges at 7 PM was to catch a glimpse, literally just a glimpse lasting a few seconds, of the daily evening aarti at the temple at the bathing shore we were at – its name is Har ki Pauri. The place is a people magnet; hoards throng the ghaats everyday to wash away their sins and cleanse their souls.

18th July. Waiting is so boring. People are playing cards to pass time. Time, which is treated as such an essential commodity these days by most, is reduced to being an irritant, at best. It is no more a hindrance. However, “reality” soon catches up. Saw Inception. That movie should lead to some interesting conversations.

28th July. My wallet is lost. I am tired.

16th September. If I had only this to write, I would write the hell out of this. Unfortunately, I have to submit many assignments. Maybe I am waiting for my time [ref. The wailing lyrics of System Of A Down’s “Hypnotize”], too.

10th October. My eyes are smarting from the sulfurous vapors of the freshly cut onions, so I shall pause here, for another eternity, seemingly, before I write again. There was something in my mind but that thread, like Pink’s dream, is gone, and I have become Comfortably Numb. Surprisingly, not for as long as I could have remained (Linkin Park’s) Numb.

0134 hours, 25th November. I am at C-69/39. Just for the record. 😛 Quote the RHCP’s Emitremmus: “Nothing ever goes according to plan…” [I just did, above]

1852 hours, 19th December. Stuff like ‘A Call That Changed My Life’ sells like hot cakes. While typing, an explosive epiphany: ‘RDX’ is in a diagonal on the QWERTY keyboard. While listening to Wish You Were Here, a repetitive regret about failing to repeat: I wish I could follow a consistent format rather than the ever-varying format I use for quoting great songs. Trivia: John Cho (of Harold And Kumar Go To White Castle) played a (minor?) character in American Beauty.

The thing I’m really curious about is, where did all matter come from? I am inclined to humor Barry Sonnenfeld’s cinematic interpretation at the end of Men In Black, which shows that the ball contains not just our galaxy, but our entire universe, as large as it may be. Unfortunately, that doesn’t solve my problem, because then there’s that much more matter to account for. Or, I forget whose idea this was, and I must try to find that quote – I have a strong feeling it is Douglas Adams – I wonder if I am a figment of someone’s imagination, and whether they are having a good time.

Time for a timestamp, as I am here again, at C69/39. 2325 hours, 26 February 2011. Passing time in the right way – that is to say, the most “constructive” way, is a pain in the butt. Lennon said something about time enjoyed not being wasted time. So I choose to while away the hours watching the result of other people’s “constructive” use of their time – most notably, Misters Grammar and Lorre. Kudos, gentlemen. At this point, may I raise a glass to Sheldon Cooper (does the actor portraying him drink? Cheers for making us laugh and forget our troubles for a while, mate!). [This is before I knew his name: Jim Parsons]

My eyes trouble me. Light is so important to my perception of this world. Anyhow, I am comforted (as in most medicinal cases) by their being umpteen precedents of myopia throughout human history. From my thoughts over the past 5 minutes, I come to realize that I don’t even have the level of affinity to social networking that I let on. It must be the morbidity of the emails I get – none of them are important at this point in my life. On top of this all, I have to prevent “dry-eye” et cetera. Blink more. I must do something about the screen at work, it is troubling my eyes. How, and when, will I write Something Must Be Done?

0143 hours, 5 March. I have written a couple more pages for the Zeroth chapter. I am confused. Should I attempt to explore the additional character further, or leave that setting behind and move on to greener pastures? Decisions, decisions…

Not very long after, it is today, the 3rd of April. 1804 hours. As coincidences happen, I have just added another line or two to Chapter One. Then I thought of putting in a timestamp, realized it belonged here, and opened up this ongoing project, one of numerous. Let me take another look at the Zeroth chapter…

So here I am, sitting at home, and wondering. Reading the last paragraph makes me want to clarify that I sometimes type on my phone even when I’m ‘sitting at home.’ Right now, however, I am playing a game – an app on Chrome, actually – called Word Squared. So I had L, I, I, T, H, U, N, and I was biding my time by playing small words, anticipating a Y to appear in my tray so that I could capitalize on an AMAZING I had made previously. I decided to use H, U, and N to make HUNG; I was about to click “Add Word” when I pressed “Recall” and placed U, I, L, and T to make GUILT. Then I remembered I was waiting for Y and needed L. Back to HUNG, which is where the entire planet we live on and off of is – hung in space, spiraling around a yellow star.

2259 hours, 13 May. There is so much I want to be, and so little (or too much) time. Now, however, is not the time to procrastinate while reassessing my priorities. “It’s all right, it’s all right, call me now, use the satellite…RHCP, Emitremmus [again]. I keep spiraling into this song often. It is so hard not to get distracted all the time. Raise your hand if you agree with me.

1923 hours, 17 October. A fortuitous moment, and I shall claim it to say, “I don’t need an amanuensis.”, primarily because I just learnt it from Christopher Tolkien’s comments in The History of Middle-Earth Vol. 11, The War of the Jewels. My, oh my. What a long time it has been since I’ve re-read the Lord of the Rings. Writing-wise, not a dry spell of course, since I have had my cellphone as my worthy ally; a digital amanuensis. This reminds me of “all thinking = = writing.”

It is much easier for others to agree with what one says in a conversation rather than try and apply their brains and see what their outlook on life about that topic is. I prefer to stay alone, only to get away from inane chatter that is so inconsequential, it appears too banal for me to participate. I indulge my wife, but even then, sometimes, solitude is essential to get over tiffs that any reasonable humans get into, occasionally.

Almost immediately thereafter, depending on how you define almost and immediately, especially in cahoots with each other. Either way, 6 hours later, I remembered I should write about …something. Absent-mindedness is a leading cause for concern in our times. The times that have been handed down from our forefathers and foremothers, each of us inheriting differently and leaving behind differently. It is food for time, our life. Time is a voracious eater. I wonder if I’ll have to submit to societal rituals when times demand, or when time demands. I will never give in to time. There is no answer to “What time have you got?” other than to continue existing. Expand to outer space, humankind! Move beyond earthly boundaries. Think of Asimov, please, and thank him and Sagan and Adams and everyone later. Later. Does “later” ever arrive? No.

The pale blue dot, as Carl Sagan put it quite admirably, is relatively large: there’s always room to explore more. So near and yet so far – how often this saying keeps coming around. We wish that time would fly or that something we wish for happens immediately, but we must have patience, and the hope that when the time we are so looking forward to rolls around, everything will be ok. So, what I have to say to you is this: positive patience. 

Thoughts continue to flow through every moment, whether we choose to perceive external simulations or chew upon the cud accumulated in our brains. At various times, we may be using a variety of ways of thinking simultaneously: the previous metaphor makes us self-zombies, absorbed in our internal reflections. Interacting with people is a whole different ball game, because of the alething of being unable to empathize completely with other people. Reading the underlying subtext has a direct bearing on the outcomes of conversations. 

The novelty of most of my souvenirs hold clear links in my cavernous memories. They form the basis of reminiscences both detailed and concise. 

Fields under various stages of agriculture roll by. Some copses of trees are distant, fog sneaks in under their branches even when their tops are sunlit. Rows of sparse trees mark the boundaries of the fields, but there are singular trees that have been left to reach the maximum extent of their growth. The mustard fields with their yellow blooms made famous by Bollywood movies stand out against the flat-cropped greens. 

Ban Ganga has passed by after a succession of overpasses and underpasses. The similarities between landscaping and manscaping have emerged via conversation. Long trips are conducive to such epiphanies, because we have the leisure of dwelling on a subject till we inevitably digress to another in an infinite list. It is only through the medium of words that we can attempt to collate and understand our experience. 

Along the tracks, many trees are bent from the wind and the rush of oncoming air from trains. The Aravallis form the horizon, with arid bush going right up to the foothills and coming to an abrupt end against the ochre rock faces. 

Night has been overcome by the sun and so has distance by the train. On such long rides, thoughts have the luxury of expanding without the constraints of time. Recurring thoughts become copacetic ideas, like mountain streams carving valleys and contributing to the wider flow of shallow, routine life. 

Fleeting fictitious scenarios arise suddenly, out of hand, triggered by words read or heard. Fiction is the outpouring of all that could have been, the scenarios that the mind dreams up in its vacant parts. Creative expression in all its forms is fictitious, because it is imaginary, and consequently, infinite. 

A noticeable change in the local dialect while the rain barrels on along the west coast reminds me: Marquez recalled his ghosts from the Upar Valley; ‘upar’ [pronounced ooper] means ‘above’ in Hindi, my mother tongue, used as an euphemism for death, colloquially,”upar padhaar gaye”, the plural signifying deference to the departed. 

Death is one of the main premises of One Hundred Years Of Solitude. Apart from being meta in using his name for one of the non-familial characters that die, Marquez also reinforces ‘solitude’ through reuse, applying it to the Buendia family at various stages of their lives. Tragedy brought on by death is what drives the changes in their motives. Melquidas is perhaps the author’s nom de plume, serving as the doomed family’s historian and eventual fortune-teller, plus as the introducer and unraveler of mysteries. 

We skip through a few short tunnels, daylight deserting the interiors of the earth where we have dug too deep, like the Dwarves of Moria. The long tunnels on the Leh-Srinagar route gave off the aura of precision engineering, with their straight lanes and concrete uniformity. That was in June, and October treated me to a serendipitous view of the Kalka-Shimla toy train. In the Western Ghats, three months later, the recollections tunnel through to my fingers and onto this virtual page, inducing nostalgic euphoria. I am poles apart from Sartre’s Nausea. 

Looking out in the early morning at the sea defining the horizon renews the memory of gazing at a literally endless expanse. Waves arrive just in time to overcome each other. There can be no rhythm, because nature is chaotic. It is also stupendously tougher to erode than the fragile human psyche, yet the process continues unabated, being at the receiving end of no respite, relentlessly metamorphing. If nature’s only task was to continually confound humans, it couldn’t have done a better job. From the Challenger Deep to Mount Everest, undiscovered wonders of nature wait patiently for our species to lay eyes upon them, catalog them, add them to the minuscule encyclopedia that is humanity’s knowledge. Space! as Isaac Asimov’s protagonists are wont to utter, is not fully within our ambit yet, but I have high hopes, not altogether different from Pink Floyd’s. 

2052 hours, 4 November. My (now late; not then, even though she was in pain) maternal grandmother’s birthday. Having sat for an (easy) exam earlier today and wished my maternal grandmother a happy birthday later, I have also read about Dylan’s autobiography, Chronicles: Volume One, and thus have been inspired to mention my own historical roots as far as I know them, which is very little.

My dad was from Orhanpur, in the Nawada district of Bihar. My paternal family has lived there from way before my father’s death on 22nd October, 1987, near Jaffna in Sri Lanka, as part of the Indian Army’s Peace Keeping Force. My maternal family resides for the most part in and near the capital of Bihar, Patna. Patna, the historical Pataliputra itself, has an extremely rich heritage. Much of it would have existed today, if only there had been less people to obliterate it. Patliputra and adjoining areas find proven importance from prehistoric times. My mind gets distracted from the genealogical train of thought, because of it carrying loads of painful detail. Instead, I shall watch something for now, and give a huge shout-out to the creative people behind Mad Men. I’d much rather be an actor than a corporate slave, but I need the steady money rather than the unkempt allure of viral fame and gory glory.

1337 hours, 5 November. I have finished re-revising for the next exam, and at the end of my revision, some random thoughts left me wondering what it would be like to be a bird. Not just fly like one – to actually be one, like Kafka’s cockroach-like Gregor in The Metamorphosis. It will have its own challenges, I am sure.

I was discussing with someone what it would be like to be a dog, and how I’d feel in those little paw-socks that show dogs are made to wear, or other embarrassing things like that. My brain came around again to “all thinking = = writing,” and hence, this passage of prose. As Gene says to Betty in Mad Men, being a house cat would lead to one being “fine.” Why spend all this painstaking effort to prove yourself on others’ brimstone tests?

I make use of technology to preserve my thoughts, because I go through the trouble of looking for apt words to express them as clearly as I can. Of course, after the death of the author, all meanings are equally meaningless. I do not feel I do justice to my ramblings unless I can go through them again and again, and practice justifying them in critic-seminar-settings. Quantity of words being neither a factor, nor a constraint, helps.

There is bound to be variation in expression, right? In any case, an unfulfilled desire to study psychology in Form Lower VI (after my Boards) is one I will remember forever, as well as elaborate on it here, in my memoirs. Shall I be experimentative and try putting down a stream of consciousness? I do agree with Faulkner that all written work should come from the heart. Here is another thing from my cell phone message drafts, if not from the cacophony in my brain: 

“An epiphany for the future – there is nothing in the past! The ongoing future is of paramount importance. I must make use of these three paper clippings I have just clipped. 1342 hours, 6 November.” It is now 2123 hours, 10 November, and I do not see any clippings in my vicinity that had precipitated the epiphany above.

1350 hours, 12 November. I don’t remember writing much in C-69/39, but a quick check of past timestamps shows I did write something. Also, I made a few videos to boot. A multimedia autobiography of a life afloat, a concept ne’er done before. However, it is only through deriving new interpretations and acting on those derivations that something “new” is born. Last night while falling asleep I wished I had a top-of-the-line speech-to-text recorder for more attempts at recording my multiple streams of consciousness. If everything is not a stream of consciousness, what is it? Giving structure to thought is everyone’s choice, in any manner they see fit. Anyhow, classifications are not necessary to understand the sensory perceptions of our world. Language, too, has nothing substantial about it. Written documents have become less important and are now losing their place to electronic documents.

Staying fit is of top priority; one of a few. The onset of this bout of cold coincides unhappily with the start of football. Breaking out my Nike Marquis boots is an event long looked forward to by my mind and body. The thought that this is all a rant crossed my mind and collided into my concern (“going concern”? Finance sucks…) for KB, given his wayward rants on Facebook… [And another thing – looking forward to meeting KB after eons at the wedding of N/P]

1505 hours, 1 January 2012. Are there any limits to human thought? Imagination proves that there are not, as does the assiduous as well as non-assiduous outpouring of creativity that come from having an imagination. Note the absence of adjectives. This belongs in How I Wrote The Book I Never Wrote. It is time to move on. Time for real 6hourism. Time to live life. Time to let dreams, hopes, and futile predictions die.

Achieved! 😀 And now, on to attending guest lectures, presentations, and contributing to the shosha. One thing, though – I am glad I attended that presentation on that day. Let’s see how their infrastructure and general impression (on me) performs in my test.

The reason I write online is that I like to think I’ll re-edit and re-read and ‘improve’ all this, but procrastination is an ever-present enemy. It prevents me from realizing that later is never the present. In this moment, this is perfection, because it is the present. 

Ek kathor kadam utha chuke hain, to ab doosre se peechhe hatnaa kyaa? Hindi for ‘Having taken the first hard step, why stop now?’ It’s just that I’d like to have something to share with our kid(s?). When left open to interpretations, free speech and random events (as Nassim Nicholas Taleb would say, Black Swans) dictate a lot of the future. Perhaps the time will be right, sometime in the future.

The above thought fragment was undoubtedly influenced by recent happenings and current times (AKA HNY 2012) , and I am getting into the best shape of my life courtesy this new home – it’s working out well on all fronts, even the pessimist in me must admit.

1348/0202. At the very least, this new apartment has given me a convenient new timestamp. Coming to the point, finally, How I Wrote The Book I Never Wrote is on its way!

1442/0602. Wherever I May Roam is an awesomax song by Metallica. I’m going to keep a bowl of eclectic candies on my table to satiate my sugar pangs. Also, I’m currently working on establishing a solid personalized iTunes library for my new iPad mini.

2053/0602. I’m ahead of the evolutionary curve. I feel like Doctor Manhattan from Watchmen.

1153/0802. Like Eminem, my words are weapons, too, except they ain’t on records (yet). Which reminds me, I should also add all those songs saved in my cell to the iPad’s iTunes.

2057/0802. Waiting is such an interminable thing…there’s always something more to wait for. Waiting for God(ot), for people to arrive, for lists of such things to stop getting made – an interminable thing in itself, that last one. In any case, it is times like these that remind my mind about “all thinking = = writing,” and having achieved detestation of the mobile phone for a brief interlude, my Vaio notebook and this paper notebook become The Only way of passing time constructively, instead of, say, watching the idiot box or Stumbling Upon things of the Net. Additionally, I’m going through iTunes DJ one by one, rating as I go, to achieve a good solid iTunes library. Nobody’s Fault But Mine, Led Zep. Oh! Must resume BGAE or Kafka. Beyond Good And Evil it is. However, the lack of internet arising from my lack of intrusion-friendliness makes it not, and hence back to my green book of Kafka with a green pen to annotate it is. It has 3 of his longest stories: The Castle, America, and The Trial.

America is the least weird; Castle is quite funny; Trial is a trial for the mind, too.

2005/2002. Wanted to post something that would have really raised eyebrows on Comedy Central’s Facebook page for their competition, especially because it is Cartman we’re talkin’ a-boot, but settled for “Shoo(*) you guys, I’m going home,” out of consideration for my mind’s need to be politically correct on social media platforms.

1423/0703. I’ll remember the times and print it as A Tribute To The Number 23. A shout out to AB.

1938/0604. A month later, I’m aboard the Patna Rajdhani, going home (back to my city of birth), and seriously considering acting on my desire to carve my name in stone – literally as well as figuratively. Also, reading this article about a trip to Dharamkot and Triund has given me ideas. I much prefer public transport to friend-driven cars when I go on trips, expressly for reasons that those friends understand. Despite that, I have been on several road trips, and each has been fun, almost as much as the ones I used public transport for. Sorry about ending that last with a proposition, but then I guess over the course of my writing-direct-from-brain and ‘all thinking = = writing,’ making apologies regarding the ‘correctness’ of my texts is redundant. Backing up and getting back on track (another rarity in itself), I am thinking of taking a train from Delhi to Una (Himachal Express) on a Friday night and returning on the subsequent Monday morning. I hope it comes to pass.

Might meet AS tomorrow, but it might not be ‘the right time’ to ask for his opinion on this. Maybe I’ll show him Something Must Be Done. But that’s a maybe, too. His criticism is mostly constructive, but too mood-dependent. If that is true for all professional critics, then it is best to hope for the best. Ifs and maybes construct a false future, full of hope.

Lex pondered the human condition as Selina’s ship boosted towards Earth. His mind thought.