The Good Shepherd

Yesterday the director asked me “Why don’t we put 'the' before CIA” and I said “Do you put 'the' before GOD?”.

Well if he had known some English he would have answered better, these words are intended to be proper nouns and so it would be incorrect to put ‘the’ before them. The Israeli intelligence is also called Mossad and not “The Mossad” . I think I should start calling my friends as “The Vikas”, “The Saurabh”, "The Srikant” and so on….

This is all there is to the review of the movie that we suffered through yesterday. Some didn’t because they preferred their dreams to this worthless story. There was a lot of important sounding music in the most unimportant scenes and dramatization beyond belief. The movie was so cryptic as to give the feeling that the director was trying to keep secrets even from the audience, and infact keep them he did!

I would have preferred to see a movie actually about a “Good Shepherd” roaming around the steppes with his herd!

The Longest Journey.

Haven't been posting for quite sometime now. I thought I would let you all enjoy a poem by Shelley that appears in E.M.Forster's "The Longest Journey". Its one of my favorites.

I never was attached to that great sect
Whose doctrine is that each one should select
out of the world a mistress and a friend
And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend
to cold oblivion-though it is the code
of modern morals, and the beaten road
which these poor slaves with weary footsteps tread
who travel to their home amongst the dead
By the broad highway of the world-and so,
with one sad friend, perhaps a jealous foe,
The dreariest and the longest journey go.

-Shelley

Arizona had been nice. Although I struggled at the start, being the perfectionist I am, especially in personal relationships, I found good people and lots of admiration by the end. I am sure they will miss me when I am gone. They did tell me not to take a red car, I don’t know why I like red so much. An analysis of the car color with respect to driving tendencies will clearly tell you that drivers in a red car tend to overspeed the most. But, red is still an attractive color. I should be able to complete the journey within this day itself I believe. I don’t hope to stop for long at any place except for a quick bite here and there.

I can’t believe my luck, first I forget to burn any CD’s and then this car has no radio, looks like its going to be just me and my thoughts now, never mind I have a lot of things to think over. Things back home don’t seem to be looking too good, financial and emotional instability can be very devastating. I will have to do my best to prevent this from happening, I have started earning quite well now and I don’t think I have too many desires for myself. So it should not be much of a burden at all. And then there is this girl. I do not know why I expect that level of perfection from everyone, so what if somebody is a little callous why is that so impossible to accept? I make mistakes too, don’t I? Well not so often I would say. It is too much emotional turmoil in the end, feels like surfing on a tide all the time, feels good in the beginning but I am getting a bit tired too. Hey damned truck, bloody insane drivers, don’t have the sense to turn on their indicators for a turn!! Well anyway, I think I get really too cynical at times, maybe things will get better with time. That is one thing I don’t have, there is so much to do, now this research deadline that I have is another thing I have to think about. Life has become quite rudderless. I do get scared when I start to lose control. What about all the girls that came so close to liking me, but I kept everyone at a very safe distance. I don’t want to hurt anyone and the distance is best for everyone. Sometimes I think if relationships are any different. Are they too different for other people? Is there a stage when boredom sets in? Well there have always been those select few who have pulled me out of every muddle, I am thankful to God for these angels of His!

Sixty percent of America looks so barren, India was so different. India is always throbbing with life at every corner. Humans, stray animals, villagers. During my extensive travel in India, I don’t remember an instant when I didn’t see any life form. But here I haven’t seen anything for the past couple of hours, maybe it’s the route but there are no food exits either. All I can see is flat lands not even an interesting terrain, just plains all round. Every fifteen minutes I see a car passing by. Feels like I am driving in some alien land and these cars are the only life forms left with nothing inside them.

Its ok things will be fine, this is only a phase, I am just upset and so I am philosophizing too much. Life is meant to be simple, didn’t some great guy say that the simplest solutions are the best. There is surely an easy answer to all the crazy happenings in one’s life. God creates a pattern out of everyone’s life and ignorant as we are, we are unable to see it until very late in life, maybe not in this life. I am sure with a keen sense as mine, I will be able to gage the pattern pretty soon, I can already feel like I am cracking the codes. I hope people like me, and especially my work at this new place. It is in Texas, even if there has been no pattern in my life, I can see the pattern in the kind of places I have lived in. Hot and Humid! Anyway I think I am only a couple of hours away from the destination, oh hell I missed the exit ……

Reggie: “I am glad you are taking over this ward. I thought I was going crazy looking at these terminal cases. There is not a single one that even says a word. Now look at this one, he has been here since on his 22^nd birthday his car hit a kerb on Highway 49 and overturned. Since, then all he does is roam about the building, steering wheel in hand, with which he was found in the rubble by the paramedics.”

Dispersion Theory.

For those thinking otherwise this is in no way related to Physics( I was never too good at Optics anyway!). The aim is to ponder into my hypothesis that engineers are more prone to being dispersed minds than people in any other profession. The foremost factor is that there is no fixed skill set for an engineer of a particular kind. For the uninitiated this is the way engineering colleges work. Beginning at the curriculum, a Mechanical engineer is expected to be familiar with Civil, a Civil engineer needs to know electronics and all of us have to know computers. At a single call each one of us should be able to write codes, software, create webpages, flash animations and what not. Although a much desired respite from the curriculum requirements, the stress on Overall Personality Development, introduces another plethora of activities on the already bulging schedule. This might include physical activity, quizzing, etc. There is no direct incentive for/enforcement of these extra-curricular activities, but it works through an indirect mechanism called “Peer Pressure”- I do it because everybody else is doing it. The overall outcome-a genre of people who can do everything but know nothing.

It would be unfair to say that other professionals do not participate in some or all of the above activities at some point in their lives, but it is not a compulsion. A researcher in pure science can do research his entire life with his field knowledge and no computer skills at all, same goes for a lawyer or a dentist. Well one might say that a doctor has to stay up to date with new technology, but it is all related to their field of specialization and they can still earn a living without garnering this fresh knowledge. On the other hand an engineer is always on the verge of losing his job at the smallest pretext( Oh, he can’t even write a C code, he can’t work on Microsoft Excel, he doesn’t talk well, he is not presentable, the list is endless). An engineer might proudly confess, “we are the people that get the work done”. Sadly, even this claim is not related to expertise in any specific field.

I know that some of might have a few contentions and accuse me of twisting facts, but well I just “engineered” them a bit to fit my requirements. I did convince myself in the process. Others can take whatever they can digest!

“My Ruminations”- From the Death Bound

There are 10 days left when I sit down to write this. Here I am sitting in a melancholy mood, waiting for the final call from Him – The Maker, or so he is called. I have never seen him though. There is but an earnest desire to do so.

It has not been a very long journey for me, but I should say it was a very eventful one, since at the age of 18 itself I was diagnosed by the doctors to have an incurable form of blood cancer. Frightful, isn’t it? Yes, even I felt the same way in the beginning. I was still in school and wanted to do all the great things in life, make my parents proud and all the usual things. But now I had only 3 months left.

Soon I realized that I must experience a whole life within these 3 months. I have been doing so since then. I have been around the world almost, since my parents could afford it. What an irony, all their money was not sufficient to save the life of their only child!

What I saw around the world was not very encouraging, infact very grim. Very few people in the world could gage the worth of this human life they have received, the worth of the beautiful nature, the beautiful world around them. They couldn’t appreciate the greatness and vastness of the world that He has created.

So beautiful, so pristine the nature was with all the trees, the oceans and the birds, and man with his never satiating urge for development was wasting them all. Even if I ignored what he did to the surroundings, there were still the atrocities that he meted towards his fellow brothers. Amongst all creatures, it appeared that human life was the least valued, it could be put at stake or taken away for something as inconsequential as Oil! A human life which even with all his power, all the money in the world he cannot save or restore.

Can somebody grant me with his power the several years of my life, the several dreams I had for it? Ask a person like myself how important and how great a gift this human life is. I want to give out all my love, all my care to the people around me, my family, my friends and anybody who comes across even a stranger. Then how can somebody kill his own brother in his full senses?

I think I have grown up in these 3 months, much more than I did in the 18 years preceding it. I have developed from a carefree 18 year old into a solemn individual lost in his thoughts. If the Lord grants me a few more years in this life, I could have tried to improve this world, at least I would have tried to my utmost potential.

But, alas death waits for no one and nothing. Maybe the Lord has a meaning in all this, as my elders always tell me. My time to go has come and so shall come the time for a lot of other people. But, how long will we condemn innocent lives to death?

I shall be forgotten soon and so shall my life, but I hope that my message is never forgotten. I might not be here to see you read, understand and maybe appreciate this piece. So Goodbye ………..

- 18^th June, 2003
Calcutta.

Don't worry I am not dying, this is a piece I wrote way way back. Wanted to put it down here. I will try to make it less morbid from next time on.

The Begining....

I would like to start off by sharing important information about me not on the profile.

Height,Hair Color,Eye Color- Who Cares!!

Built – Feather weight. (I float even in sparse media.)

Personality type – Enigmatic, Snob.

Brain Type – Dispersed.

Conversation style – Sarcastic.

View of life – Cynical.

Basic Attribute – Loner.

Sleep cycle – 3-5 pm, 2-8 am.

Thought cycle – Day minus Sleep cycle.

Dressing – Semi formal.

Basic Nature – Psychoanalytical, Judgemental.

Profession – PhD student. (Acronym for Doctorate of Philosophy).

Here for – Blogging(offcourse!!)

Purpose – Initiate the undispersed populace into the world of the dispersed.

Anti-Purpose – Catharsis.(Although might inadvertently engage in the same, but only for the sake of promoting art.)