A Recurring Question

It is not many times when I've asked this question to myself -

What is this all about? Why are we here? What's really up?

Are we here to earn and build castles, or to understand the Universe, or to understand ourselves, or to understand a higher being we call God, or to work for the common good, or to live life whatever freaking way we want to and have fun.

I don't know at this point of my life, whether I shall ever find it's answer. Or if I do find would it be a general one or specific to myself. But regardless, whenever this question pops up, I can see life flowing by and it's like a moment when you reach a bus stop, and suddenly look outside the window to see where you've come to.

Life is an opportunity to live.

Today as I left home, trapped in my own synthetic mental dialog, I saw a glimpse of death. Or more appropriately post-death. And while I drove ahead, the image of that young boy, a deceased soul, filtered the running, executing view of the Universe around me - pedestrians walking by, bikers racing around, shops opening, items being sold on road-side stalls, children going to school, mothers holding their hands probably asking them to study well.
What's the purpose of all of this if in fact one day we all have to reduce to cold flesh and dried blood. Why did I study Mathematics for hours, sat in thousands of exams, got compared against millions in competition, fought for that better seat in a bus or train, hoped for that lucky draw to bring me a tiny speck of immaterial happiness, argued with numerous believing my solutions could fix their lives, when the same fate awaits us without exception.

Then an image came to my mind - one of a Giant wheel.
Life is an opportunity to ride a huge and long and tall Ferris wheel.

We're all riding this Giant wheel of life, and we all have been given an option to live this experience the way we want to. All through these ups and downs, some of us want to corner ourselves, hide our faces and hope the ride is over soon, while others want to spread out their arms, open their eyes wide, let the wind blow them away as they shriek in sheer madness. And while we're all thinking and spinning strategies about the most optimal seat, the position of least deflection, the orientation which will provide the best comfort, being at a better or higher or worse or lower location than Sharma Ji's son, we never really know when we have to get down. When it will all just end. Maybe for you reading this, maybe for someone you dearly love. When your parents shall say Goodbye, or you'll welcome a tiny soul to occupy the seat adjacent to you - your little baby boy. The wheel still rotates, and shall forever do. But not for me or you. For our tokens are limited, and all I can do is to be the best of myself through these ups and downs and rounds and rounds. And money? Why hold it tight closer to your chest, when none shall accompany you when you get down.
For while you're on the ride, architect your life the way you want to. Don't look at other cabins because you don't belong there, and they don't belong to where you are.

If you're reading this till here, probably some of this did click with you.
Anyway, if it did or did not, I'd just say till when we're both here on the Ferris together, let's not waste any more time finding answers.

Simply put, let's chill.

Living in the Now

So easy it is, to think life is too long. As seconds tick by, minutes fly away, hours flow, weeks pass, months disappear, and years are left behind, we look forward in a foolish pretext that we'll live forever. So would our loved ones. But they won't. And so won't we. Because if you look up at the skies, you see a silent moon look back at you with it's perfect constant emptiness. You see stars and that darkness in which they swim, exactly the same as they were when you looked at them as a child in your mother's lap.

But now you've grown up, scars drawn down your face like footsteps of time mercilessly etched multiple times. We harden as beaten steel cast in strong pillars, foundations immovable with their might, to support a life built like castles of sand, guarded by principles and emotional and wisdom and shields of true pretext. And then as we stand amazed looking at that strange face in the mirror, who looks back equally amazed at how amazed you are. That lie strikes back too hard. A lie we innocently accept and absorb in its evil silence.

The Incomplete - A Tower of Memories

You spun threads of dreams like you were God. Now in the darkness you stare with eyes bloodshot.

The PJ
The Pact
The Song
The E-mail
The Lap hug
The Apology
The Question
The Toe Fight
The Bike Ride
The Digital Kiss
The Belly Dance
The Arm Wrestle
The First Chicken
The Butterfly Kiss
The Dharamsankat
The Balcony Climb
The Breakup Stories
The I'm Watching ya
The Hill-station drive
The Dating Like a Pro
The Entangled Fingers
The Hugs from behind
The First Song For Her
The Tour to the village
The Warm Winter hugs
The Good Night Selfies
The Smiley World Wars
The Leftie Birthday note
The Online-Typing Loop
The Salsa Dance Classes
The Ass Smiley Proposals
The Morning Dhaba Drive
The Resonance of Madness
The Chocolate Ecstacy Kiss
The Cooking For Each Other
The Midnight Horror Movies
The Whispering from Behind
The Metropolitan Exploration
The DSLR Friendzone warning
The Playing with Her Long Hair
The Sleeping Wrapped Up Baby
The Perfect Duck-Face Challenge
The WhatsApp Deactivation target
The Designer Valentine's day Cards
The Getting Lost After Dropping Ya
The Date Planning and Management
The WhatsApp Rhyming message Wars
The Birthday Night Automatic Response
The Huge Building Terrace Midnight View
The Thinking Of Thinking What I'm Thinking

Let their empty hollow corpses rot every inch of what you were to give, never to be given; what you were to receive and never to be received...

A Forgotten Diminished Past - 1

The days did move, but moved bit slow. Klarke kept looking forward to eventful adventures, but none could excite him to the core. That day too, not so differently, was ordinarily interesting. As he entered the Ceremony Hall for Inauguration with his colleagues, everything around him seemed amusing, yet too moderately so. The sanguine walls striving hard to live up to the young enthusiasm of Program participants. The sound bleakly escaping through fissures amidst the Auditorium door flooding a barren Hall with tentative promise of activity. The floor which bore harsh marks of age stamped by feet of men with a vision who walked looking at the sky. A stall with colorful exhibits decorated with posters to proclaim a struggle for transformation of but many lives, and a young lady by the stall with a delicate unemotionally touching smile. Curious faces standing close examined colorfully crafted artifacts being sold - a setup that did not exist at equilibrium with the gnawing sadness of those walls.

It was then when Klarke moved an inch closer to this strange feminine face, glimpsing through the angles of her lens to find a definitive purpose to this setup - A story. She smiled modestly, her words bridging the logical gap between how these items were manufactured, and how Klarke himself could be a source of motivation for the women behind the activity. Livelihood, as he understood, culminated itself from a vertical to be studied as part of this program, to such beautifully crafted wallets, bags, bookmarks - small items which spoke of an untold story. A story of this a new beginning of a few women who woke up with a vision to create a change. Of little children with unborn dreams in their eyes, watching aliens from cities transported to their lands to talk about migration, sustainability, education, prototyping, marketing, and everything else that made them fly higher into fantasies of unknown terrains - a world beyond the borders of wet mud, mooing cows and the essence of fresh village air.

All this would come back to Klarke as days progressed, and certain people would become so special that years later when he'd recall moments which defined his life, a blurry image of this young lady with a delicate unemotionally touching smile would flash for an instant a bit too long. But that moment it was the distraction of a child-like curiosity that made him smile back thanking her for enlightening him with this piece of knowledge. Soon after he would turn back to the Hall where but a few faces rose with this strangely familiar streak of passion and curiosity. Sans the seat belt, this session was an official roller-coaster introduction to an experience that Klarke would later define as life-changing. For the first time, he took a vow which penetrated deep in his consciousness and promised itself to transform the person he'd be to not just exist for himself, but live for happiness.

Dinner soon after arrived, and he found his food packet on his lap, comfortably sandwiched on the stairs between a lady and a gentleman - both with forgiving, yet sparkling faces. They talked a lot, and as words escaped and were absorbed, there was an unabridged flow of resonating emotions which were to convert in life-long bonds to be. What was to follow was a bus ride to an intermediate stoppage on their journey - a small school by the village. Years after the extinction of his physical childhood, he slept under the stars. He dreamt with eyes open, and breathed existential freedom under open skies. His new dinnertime buddy joined him for this quest, and the last words they shared before dreams consumed both of them was 'Unbelivable'. It was a few hours into the darkness of a rotating night sky when he felt drops of water on his eyes. The first monsoon rains. They came and blessed both of them with a love that was unknown to this kind of city dwelling species. A few raindrops slid past Klarke's lips and he knew what elixir of immortality would taste like. He could have jumped all night like a little child who's found his most prized toy, but the logic in his left hemisphere reminded of a pending schedule, and so he followed his friend to sleep on the classroom floor inside, stealing a space close to a window from where the melody of tiny droplets eloping with the Earth below was the most beautiful lullaby.

The Equation Called Life

Mathematics is one of the purest interpretations of human intelligence. And human intelligence is an inseparably integral facet of human existence. Hence mathematics, even in its most basic metaphysical form, abstracts the foundations of human existence.

I remember being introduced to the beautiful world of calculus at age of 15. It was suddenly bewildering to shatter the discrete bounds of known mathematical logic, and form a ‘naturally intuitive’ way of appreciating the larger picture. This was a realization of negative infinity on one side, and positive infinity on the other. A few days back, as I was walking bare-footed on wet morning grass in a garden alongside my home, this innocent appreciation unexpectedly exploded into a moment of an almost-enlightenment.

I saw life in Math and Math in life - Isn’t life but a Mathematical problem? It starts in childhood - with understanding various symbols associated with the problem. Identifying and isolating the constants and variables; appreciating the power that operations like addition, subtraction, multiplication, division possess; their impact to the foundations of the equation. We appreciate the constancy of action-reaction – that if you add ‘x’, an equal amount gets subtracted as well, and the equation never changes.

We grow up, and as teenagers we stop just-looking at the equation, but begin our journey to find answers – the Solution of the mathematical problem cast in an equation. We learn strategies, apply them, win or fail to simplify the equation, and evolve gradually. There are times when an approach strikes the bull’s eye, and you’re filled with jubilation – the equation suddenly feels much straightened out than before. And then there are moments when you’ve complicated it so much, you’re almost on the verge of giving up. It might have been because of a bad strategy, a wrong move, or focusing on the insignificant variables ignoring the primary weighty ones. Regardless, the process is dynamic, and so life keeps moving ahead.

And then comes that revelation – your equation doesn’t exist in isolation. You connect with people whose problem looks similar to yours, with similar solutions, or similar approaches towards the solution. Maybe you even end up with someone whose equation has the same ‘roots’. With these people, like magic you see both equations unwinding and simplifying with mysterious spontaneity. Life would suddenly appear much simpler and happy, with the best part that you didn’t need any forced effort for it. On the other hand, with few others your effort for a common solution seems to go round and round till you reach a point where there is no solution. You explicitly cast common variables to – Not Defined, and though at later stages this step might probably simplify your problem, there is equal probability of it making the path terribly complicated. In any case, throughout this journey you keep learning what to do and what not to do. This makes you short-circuit strategies in your mind, which is good and bad at the same time. You apply learning, but restrict creativity and appreciation of newness. It isn’t strange then to digest the fact that a lot of elderly gentlemen always go ‘Ek tha humaara samay jab <Include random-most comparisons here>’.

With advancing steps towards simplification, you come across moments when you have to consider certain Assumptions in order to simplify the equation more. These assumptions, at times, work out perfectly. But if proved false later on, they have the capacity to screw up your whole strategy. Additionally, in an urge to reach the conclusion faster, we short-circuit assumption phases with overwhelming spontaneity. Hence, we form presumptions about people, places, situation, time, etc. This does not need too much of mental capacity, as we become champions of prejudice, that is most clearly missing in children. But even the 6^th grader knows Math is not supposed to be done that way.

So what do we have to learn from Math that can make our lives simpler and happier? First, it’s okay to fail today, but incessant continuity is the key which defines whether you ‘slowly and steadily’ reach the solution or perish trying to. Unsolved problems are ugly. So does become the lives of those who just give up.  Second, a lot of times the perfect way-to-things strikes you purely by chance. Imagine the probability of the person who invented the concept of probability actually finding it probable to invent probability. I bet all innovations are children of this mystic Aah-moment, and so it’s okay to keep walking on, knowing with positive gut that one day soon your ‘Aah’ will hit you and transform your life – another step towards the solution. Third, unless your assumption is calculated, you are destined to be deadlocked and get back to amend your assumption. So being open to creatively, to newness of life, to everything that exists ready to be absorbed, is a way to walk the journey with a smile, and a hope that one day when you put down your pen, it is not to follow the easy path and give up, but to end your bare-footed walk on the rocky bed of thorns and bushes; to place below the equation a golden mark that’ll sparkle as a ‘Q.E.D.’

*Q.E.D. Quod erat demonstrandum – which had to be demonstrated