Words

We speak for so long. We speak to so many people. We speak on so many things. I believe the amount of time spent in speaking would be second only to sleeping. Yet it is a travesty that we spend so little time in thinking about what we say and the effect that it has on our lives.

It is just one action, amongst the so many different things that we committ daily. But the kind of effects that it has on our lives is profound and interesting, at the same time. There have been instances when people have come back to me for kind words that I have spoken and there have been instances when people have never come back to me for the harsh words that escaped me.

One time, I was returning from class and was about to enter my hostel room. I had opened the lock to my room and was feeling quite tired. This was a few days after college started and there were a couple of new guys in the same hostel. The guy who had occupied the room opposite to mine had some query and enquired the same with me. I was feeling very sleepy and told him that we could discuss it later. I left it at that and crashed as soon as I could. I never noticed it, but things never took off between this guy and me and we were never on good terms and never on bad terms either. Things cooled down a bit in the second term of college and we started speaking a bit. During one of our never ending chat sessions in my room, this guy started speaking and he abruptly referred to that incident and how he was irritated by my answer. He had taken it very personally and said that it was my snobbishness that had led to his state of mind at that point of time. Explanations apart, this guy remembers the exact words and the expression that I had when I said it and that causes him irritation every time he thinks of it. Talk about words.

I think that this guy is still harbouring those words and his attitude is still being shaped by them, those initial words. It has been more than 2 years and things have hardly changed in this relationship silo. It’s frozen in that instant when I uttered those words and attracted a reaction from my neighbour.

Words, and some more.

Time Silo

It is about a year back. I am at Benares and am trying out a new beverage called ‘Tandaiyi’. It had been highly recommended and a friend of mine, Building, as we used to call him, took us to the specific shop which was supposed to sell the ‘best’ tandaiyi in town. It was a small joint about 6*6 feet in area and we barely managed to get in without knocking ourselves on the low doorway.

There were two small wooden benches and big pictures of Hanuman on the walls. We ordered a glass each and then one of my friends arranged for it to be laced with ‘local’ flavours. The concoction was delicious and refreshing. We were on our way and navigating the narrow and magical streets of Benares. We made our way to the Ghats of Benares. There we boarded one of the small boats and were wading down the Ganges. Then the ‘flavour’ of the Tandaiyi made a comeback and I escaped into time silos,…slowly and peacefully. I hadn’t expected it in the least. I was thinking in small compartments of time. The experience matured into areas of very little interest, but abundant enjoyment. Logic ceased to exist and existence is all that mattered. There was no future and no past. There was time in it’s least unit for me to enjoy. The beauty is that we are not disturbed by any relativity, the essence of our mundane existence where everything is measured and calibrated in terms of this and this units. When this relative scale of referenc e ceases to exist, existence blooms.

These silos bring about an appreciation of time. When all your thoughts have been numbed into oblivion, all you have surrounding you is Time, vast and beautiful. Time envelopes me like the amniotic fluid in the womb, with perception pure as the fluid itself and receptive in the truest sense. Time reaches a standstill. There is refined sense of appreciation with no disturbances from the mundaneities of life.

I think about this as an apt referrence to some engagements in recent times. Have had a few friends in college. Some more outside and a few which I do not remember. Each of them is unique and there is a certain character to it. I like some and I admire some of them. But my engagements bear no semblance of how I regard them. Get to spend time and know a few friends. It is not the way I want it to be. I have tried figuring it out as to why some are this way and some are some way else.

Time has started giving me answers. There is very little point in comparing things. This is especially true for relationships. We are beautifully unique, and to compare people and our engagements with them is like fooling ourselves that there are certain commonalities between people and these are all that matter. We lose sight of the vast expanse of characteristics that make this chaos of humanity and the super universe possible.

On a larger perspective, time is not a quantity, time is an explanation for understanding, cognizance of the world around us. No wonder people who are numbed to inactivity have no use for time and people who are the other extremem look at time as an instrument. Time drifts like a stream. I would not try to swim, I would try to float and let the stream take me.

Clean forever!

Experimentation

Reading a book by Feynman . He is conducting experiments. In the process he is trying to verify things which are supposedly basic, and hence taken for granted. There is this one time when he peers down a microscope and tries to understand the movements of a paramecium whose moments are attributed to randomness, devoid of any form of intelligence. The results reveal some form of intelligence in a such a primitive organism and an enormous amount of perseverance which is common to Nature. The crux of this is the elucidation of the importance of experimentation.

This has to be viewed in the backdrop of human intelligence. Experimentation can be understood akin to trials. This holds great learning to a person like me who looks at ways other than trial and error to go about situations. I have never been too kind to the trial and error method simply because the method entails an open mind in the truest sense and enormous amount of patience to observe each and every trial in it’s own right and judge it objectively. I was under the impression that it is smart to look for some other way to approach things. The whole drawback of this method is the oversimplification and loss of detail in the process. It might be good for iterations with a priori information.

When understanding basics, experimentation seems to be the best method. It breeds an open mind, a readiness to absorb and objectivity of thought. The perfect recipe for learning.

Amoeba

Ordinary day, ordinary year. Period.

What’s the difference,…people. Stones, object this and object that. And then there are people. People lie around, talk, haggle, mumble, among other things. Very little point in trying to understand the ‘why’ part of it. They exist with absolutely nothing specific. Some say survival. Reminds me of Keynes who says, “In the long run we are all dead”. People seem to have a spontaneous character, history, some element of an explanation attached to their individual existence.

For the initiated, this character progressively makes itself evident in every element tangible to the senses.

The path from conscious action to the unconscious understanding.

Discarding primitive intelligence by the wayside.

Nice!

Am I reminiscent of Nietzsche?