Posts tagged thoughts

notes: buzzing around

Google’s latest experiment – Buzz – has been launched to the world recently, with varying degrees of appreciation, hate, irritation and all the reactions that every new social idea is greeted with. Personally, it is a social media outlet/inlet that I can get on board with – seeing as how it integrates nicely into my existing Gmail/Google experience. It has its caveats though.. features/glitches/annoyances that I wish they had ironed out before getting it out the door:

clubbing together a month’s worth of everything into one big gigantic post

This is the 4th attempt I’m making at trying for a halfway decent beginning to a post. Have I really been reduced to saying such banalities? I can’t quite believe it. When I look at my front page, most of my recent posts are about movies. Reviews, basically. Most of my recent posts have also ended with a sign-off saying that I will have a proper update soon. This post, by virtue of being an “update”, doesn’t count as a proper post either. I have notes here, there and everywhere galore… none of which I have really expanded on. Hell, when I was going through my drafts I realized that I had a started a post last winter which I never got round to finishing.

I’m not happy with that start either, but its a start.

what do i really believe in?

When it comes to religion, a lack of knowledge about the unknown has meant that I have come to classify myself as a sort of agnostic (as opposed to atheistic), but if you were to argue with me about God and rituals you’ll find I’m mostly just apathetic. I have been known to do rituals simply because they need to be done: it matters little to me that they are done at all; I can do them because they matter to others. My ‘religious beliefs’ are thus dynamic enough to be classified by more than one person as mere hypocrisy.

How and why I lost the absolute faith that characterized most of my childhood – I don’t know. Sometimes these things happen. A loss of faith (or a lack of understanding) in what rituals signify eventually means that religion itself starts to seem very arbitrary. Merely performing the rituals did not prove much to me, and not performing them made it that much harder to hold onto what faith I had left. Eventually, normal absolutes such as a religious basis for God became superficial.

Recently, however, events have happened to make me question my own agnosticism. There was this year’s avani avittam (related post still in progress), and the associated realization that the real depths of religion can only be understood by accepting everything about it completely. Hoping that faith is rejuvenated based on doing one set of rituals a year (no matter how sincerely) is not really doing much at all – indeed, it can seem hypocritical (as I’ve pointed out). Giving a way of life a real chance is the only way it can have a real effect. On the flip-side, my current apathy is based on the fact that blind faith does not hold up in my own scrutiny. Doing something just once a year for the sake of faith and assuming that the reason to do it will be found – and then finding none – has killed a lot of my faith. As cliched as it may sound, I need a reason better than ‘blind faith’ to accept religion completely again.

what is my super-power?

I’ve spoken more than once about my games while growing up. The cape on my shoulders: the flight, the jumping of buildings in a single bound. The vines: the jungles, the swinging and leaping through dense trees galore. The battle(s) with evil foes: the multiple times each one had to be beaten into submission. To the extent, the next time they returned I even had to show how the villains had came back. Detail was important. Swords, guns, bows/arrows, super-strength, death-defying stunts – they were enacted elaborately in my head.

Until someone entered the room.

Today I read comics. I follow multiple adventures at once: I resent the alien invasion of Earth, I remain on tenterhooks as Spidey figures out the dire plans of the next super-villain, I applaud the triumph of Batman over Darkseid (after a fashion anyway). I can live out my childhood fantasies in this world; I can hold onto ever-fading memories of a childhood game that always seem golden.

Until I close the book.

The struggle of a man to believe he matters, to believe he has super-powers and is therefore Special seems almost too real to be a movie. How many times must I have wished for one power? Forget the 40 that Superman has, or even the multitude of talent in Batman. I wanted one ability to mark me as Special. Super-speed, agility, brilliance, super-strength.. something. Funnily enough, that dream still remains. Deep, deep down inside. I want to believe I am amazingly different, amazingly gifted, unique in a way never seen before. We all probably do.

The truth is, with so many billions and billions of people on the planet, most of us can’t be unique or important in any meaningful way...We don’t have any magical powers, we don’t have any great battles to fight…We just have reality. – Les, Special (2006)

I still dream that I will do a crap-load of things that will make me really Special. They have less to do with super-strength and more to do with possibly achievable things – learn languages galore, learn martial arts, magic tricks, mastering esoteric subjects and so on. Some of these are mere approximations to what I have seen my “heroes” do in my own head, others motivated by more practical reasons, or even just because they are ‘cool’. Is that really what I should be aiming for?

Or should I ground myself in hard reality?

Maybe the ability to face reality is the only super-power we need.

It certainly seems to be the most difficult to acquire.

Based on watching ‘Special

senescence

I never really realized how the people around me have aged until very recently. Somehow the people I knew when I left India were not people who could grow old. They had dark hair, glowing faces and were always larger than life. And yet, since the day I’ve left.. every time I go back, I see something that reminds me that they are older. It strikes deep that these people are changing even now, a time warp that I cannot stop. And it includes people like my parents. People you believe should never get old. Ever. My mother tells me of recent developments in the family, it is all I can do to assure her that such things happen.. to assure her that everything is OK.

I remember the last time I could spend with my thatha a few months before he passed, and there is a sorrow that I still cannot be there for those who remain. That I cannot do more. That I am currently unable to take care of them the way I want to, the way they should be taken care of. I remember the way their eyes shine on the rare occasions when I get to see them.. the happiness apparent when they see any of us, we talk to them, we sit with them, we are with them. I cherish the 20 minutes I spent walking with my other grandfather down to the general store, helping him over the shoddy footpath, and helping him back home. His smile at the end of it all made me wish I could do it everyday. I remember the hug my grandma gave me after a year and half. Holding my hand, never wanting to let go. The smile when I told her she was looking good that night.

I hate it more because I know it means that soon my parents will be like this. People who I only remember as being young and bigger and stronger than me are slowly showing the signs of age, gray hairs and all. It is a bitter feeling, a sad one, that I cannot shake off. One of my grandmothers is suffering today in a way I did not think possible for her, it is all I can do to hear about what is happening with her. She is being taken care of, true, but such is life that you wish that more could be done.. that she never had to be this way. She has always been a strong loving person, to see her like today is something I could never have imagined. I have vague memories of playing with her before I came back to India in ‘94.. I wish I could remember more. There is my dad’s complete archival of all our photos ever.. someday I must sit and see them. They may soon be all that remains of memories that slip away before I can think about them. I want to show them to someone, to describe how wonderful it used to be with these people.

Age is cruel, very cruel.

speeding past

another new year: one set of words to sum-up time past, another set of words to try and forecast what might happen in the year to come.

past years have each had unique revelations (try as i might i cannot get that word right). i have felt alone, i have felt excited, i have felt sadness, i have felt the even rocking of a boat sailing on. i can’t say that this year was the even rocking that i realized last year, this was the year that i hit 25. it was the year that i have had 4 publications. meaning that when i search for myself on google, i don’t just find this page and some other random hits. a more professional recognition exists, something i felt most when i made an oral presentation in front of peers and superiors in my field of work. i got to “attend” and experience conferences in all their glory. i realized just how much a phd excites me. how much research can mean; spending long hours in the lab trying to figure out something other people don’t know about. yes, i am starting to realize what a professional career is.

personally speaking, i found time is passing me by at speeds well over the limit. friends got married: so many of them that i’ve stopped counting. people grew older, yes, even those people who are not supposed to. i tripped around the US, and realized some significant things about myself and some very significant people in my life. every year heralds important developments in one’s life – uninteresting considering that there are 365 days for things to happen. that said, i foresee some very interesting developments in 2009. for example, we may see the introduction of capital letters (gasp!) on regular posts that happen on this blog. i have come up with some ideas that i want to try out, such as writing more intelligibly, more creatively and more often.

i sit now to think about everything that happened in the last year, expectedly, some incidents are embellished almost indelibly in my memory: giving a presentation, meeting people who are gods in my field, watching my mom eat cotton candy in disneyworld the way i did 14 years ago, living the new york work-life (albeit only for a week), watching independence day fireworks, falling in love with a car all over again, hanging out with some of my oldest friends. the rest of the year is a blur, it sped past while i tried to enjoy the moments that make it up.

which eventually speed by as i try to realize the next set of moments.

have an awesome new year. because there is no charge for awesomeness. or attractiveness.