Hmm..

Writings of light assault the darkness, more prodigious than
meteors.
The tall unknowable city takes over the countryside.
Sure of my life and death, I observe the ambitious and would
like to understand them.
Their day is greedy as a lariat in the air.
Their night is a rest from the rage within steel, quick to attack.
They speak of humanity.
My humanity is in feeling we are all voices of that same poverty.
They speak of homeland.
My homeland is the rhythm of a guitar, a few portraits, an old
sword, the willow grove’s visible prayer as evening falls.
Time is living me.
More silent than my shadow, I pass through the loftily covetous
multitude.
They are indispensable, singular, worthy of tomorrow.
My name is someone and anyone.
I walk slowly, like one who comes from so far away he doesn’t
expect to arrive.

- Jorge Luis Borge

Feel for yourself

I have always been made to grow up with the feeling of loving your work and giving it all, I didn't know the importance of heart all along, when you do a lot of thinking and no feeling you are just an agent, the human touch that takes us ahead of agents goes missing, so ideally you should hate your work, love your work, get attracted to it, demand from it,make compromises and don't leave an inch, treat it like a person who you live with 50 years of your life, and once you figure out what you like, treat your work just exactly how you would treat the most adorable person in your life. Because if your heart is empty, your mind doesn't matter.Maybe that's why all the greatest scientists of this world were either angry young men or settled and happy old men, still have to find a middle aged success

I just wanna be supportive...

He was toiling hard all day to create a sculpture, its wasn't coming along just how he had imagined it, no matter how much he tried. He toiled and toiled and toiled some more, he had given it his everything, all his skills, his courage, his blood and sweat, it still wasn't how he had imagined it all in his mind.What was he trying to do.......maybe he doesn't even remember now.He was sitting down like a tired athlete who came fourth in an Olympics race.

After a while , just when he had mustered enough courage to get up on his feet to walk away probably move on...........he saw an angel, who smiled at him with a touch of honesty and innocence that touched him , moved him,held him captive....... like someone had just wiped his forehead after a long time. He got up, finished his work and looked at it one last time which suddenly looked at ease and complete.He had just realized that the secret to doing amazing work is believing that your work is amazing.What made him realize that, the innocent,honest smile of an angel? He didn't know why, he didn't wanna know why. Some things are better left unexplained.

The sculptor was sitting near the lake, under the house he had built for himself. He was proud of the boat he had carved out of rosewood, proud of the magic he could do with do with wood and rocks, proud of how every piece of stone was an invitation to his imagination and most of all proud of being with the lady who he had always adored, he didn't know why, he didn't wanna know why..................

She came up to him, told him it's late and he should get up to go to work. Little did she know that she had still retained that innocence in her smile........the smile that had inspired this creator's heart years ago.He was happy and content and ......he didn't know why, he didn't wanna know why?

As he got up the lady said...........all these years that have been with you, wish I had understood your art a little more, wish I could understand what you murmur when you are immersed, wish i could be a little more supportive............the sculptor was suddenly staring at his energy source asking him if it could do more for him........he was smiling at himself.........he didn't know why, he didn't wanna know why :)

Wake Up Thought (Life and its heartening instances)

Continuation of a post written about 3 years back called thought block....which said,

It's like having everything you ever wanted right there in front of you,and like you are not prepared for it.

It's as if every moment from then on is another chance to make it up to it.

But it's just a dream , not like it's ever gonna come true.

You are used to being a smart-ass. You grew up a responsible student, reliable professional.These things in turn taught you the values of holding your own and behaving yourself under all circumstances.Your feelings were just musings your thoughts were unattended secrets and your heart a gentleman's lounge.

One day you drop your guard, respond to attraction which was in first place silly, which went on to become a passing fad, but it stayed and grew stronger like an un-diminishing flame which made u smile at your musings and yourself but it satisfied the basic condition for condition for staying glued to something , unexplained pleasure.(also referred as love by many).

You grow up in an imperfect world where that one thing which was supposed to be the purpose of your life turns out to be a mirage. But some day that un diminished flame comes back at a moment when you least expect it to light a sea of joy in a mind which had learnt to accept itself as rough and tough. Thank you for letting me be frank, letting me drop my guard, letting me show the person inside to someone.........it feels great to be vulnerable.

Really fulfilling your childhood dreams?

Let's not get as far as fulfilling, let's just ask, what was my childhood dream?

I want to be able to create agent smith(the villain in matrix)..............after spending years in AI i still wonder how, but that's the childhood dream.(Will post more on this later)

Prayer

Green leaves

That dawn after dawn

Grow yellow;

Red cheeks

That fade

With the passing days----

If our world

Is made up

Of such changes

As these,

Is it strange

That my heart

Is so sad?

------------HSIAO KANG

Mission Statement

Things you write when you are on top of a wave,that might go anyway.Things you write when your mid-life crises makes sense.Things you write when you finally try to answer the never answered questions hidden in your mind.

I am perfectly suited for a desk job, engineer's job, on field problem solving job.Why did I come to grad school, why did i decide to go into research, why did i choose to take a sabbatical from this typical job that am hand-made for.Simple, I didn't know what i wanted to do, i wanted a job that fills me with joy everyday, gives me complete creative satisfaction, not leave me hollow after the end of every project.I needed to self-explore, i needed to find my love and make love to it.I wanted complete intellectual gratification at the cost of anything.

Turns out that thing doesn't exist, it's a myth, anyway,but today I can clearly say I have found what will keep me engaged for the next 30 years of my life, keep the scientist inside me amused and the engineer inside me busy. Here in the world of research, where creators create wonderful things to help the world, only about 5% or less make it to any customer.Companies hire smart engineers , then why the gap.Simple, as long as things work, nobody cares. Hence, state of the art in the industry , and in the academia have glaring gaps, in terms of acceptance, exchange everything.

I plan to bridge that gap, being a computer science person,whichever system i work for, i will fill that gap between what exists and could, not only when it is required also because we have too many options and we never use them. I will bridge that , with knowledge gathering, hunting, distributing and if required developing.

Enter:HunterGatherer

Always connected to this!

Boast of Quietness

Writings of light assault the darkness, more prodigious than
meteors.
The tall unknowable city takes over the countryside.
Sure of my life and death, I observe the ambitious and would
like to understand them.
Their day is greedy as a lariat in the air.
Their night is a rest from the rage within steel, quick to attack.
They speak of humanity.
My humanity is in feeling we are all voices of that same poverty.
They speak of homeland.
My homeland is the rhythm of a guitar, a few portraits, an old
sword, the willow grove’s visible prayer as evening falls.
Time is living me.
More silent than my shadow, I pass through the loftily covetous
multitude.
They are indispensable, singular, worthy of tomorrow.
My name is someone and anyone.
I walk slowly, like one who comes from so far away he doesn’t
expect to arrive.

- Jorge Luis Borge

The pedestrian

It was a beautiful evening but Romy had to walk, he had to cross the bridge and hillock, long way to go, his shoes were wearing off, his body aching like hell, his mind numbed by the scars of past and his eyes filled with regret, guilt and self pity. He had been a looser, in each and everything he had laid his hands on, but as always he kept walking, he had lost and lost again and again but that thin line between defeat and the acceptance of defeat was still uncrossed ,so he walked and walked trying to move away from the clutch of circumstance away from the cobwebs of past, which never stopped haunting him.

He thought of Jess, and some beautiful summers they had spent together in the willows.He remembered how every beautiful spark he had ever had in his life left always was a sweet pain to begin with and a deep scar to finish up.Maybe he was always focusing on the ends not the means, maybe his means was series of ends, maybe he was always trying to have a rebound.

But this was it, he had to walk, get to the top, he was three shots down, both bullets and whiskey, he needed to sleep, he was gonna be gone forever, this was gonna end, then nothing was gonna matter, but he still needed to make the last few steps, deliver his last job, was it this compulsive need, which had been the problem or was it "i have to do this but i dunno why"..............he fell down,he rolled he died.

Not all stories have a happy ending.

He wakes up somewhere in heaven, free, easy, no hurry to do something , no worries of getting somewhere, his life had just begun.

Quitter or winner.

They were both alone having a drink at the remote corners of open-air beach pub.A wild card samba dance contest happened, and as destiny would have it,their seats were picked and their eyes met.He was at his wittiest best, she was at her sultry best.They danced under the moonlight for hours and a lot of wine and shag tobacco happened in the meanwhile. They kissed, stroked each other for hours and went back to her place.

She woke up in the morning and wiped a particular photo frame with the silk she was wearing last night.

Him: Who is he?

Her:My husband.

Him:(Dressing up about to leave)Where is he?

Her:He's been in a vegetable state for a while now, but once he had more wits than you do now.I need to to go see him.The visiting hours begin at 7:00AM(almost about to leave).

Him:Then why did you sleep with me?

Her:Because I love him.

Carl and Ellie

Most romantic video ever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GroDErHIM_0&feature=related

Dhobi Ghat: A Review

I have never posted a movie review on this blog, but this is a special movie which deserves a special mention.

It is not a thriller, not a romantic movie, not a comedy, doesn't have a protagonist or antagonist, doesn't really begin or have a clear ending.It is what you can label as a good editorial column expressing the insights of the bored and the helpless but the aware mind, the musings of an artist on canvas when he paints without trying to convey his feelings but to soak in them himself, a research project which is not done to justify some funding but because true knowledge is about dispassionately observing something and getting to realize that knowing that you don't know is much more liberating than knowing that you know.I personally call it a window movie, which shows a small portion of the characters' life where they happen to touch each other in explicit/implicit ways.

As a first thought it reminded me of some of the best Chinese movies that I have seen till date like crouching tiger hidden dragon. Very east, very subjective , very cyclical.

Anyway the movie was basically about unspoken moments and forgotten ghosts and how they mean the smallest speck and yet our entire emotional constitution.When Shai looks around, she sees people treating Munna like a menial worker, someone who is served chai in a tumbler rather than a cup, someone who has to lie about his profession when he goes on dates, so much that even the narrator himself hides one of his main jobs which is rat killing during nights so that viewers don't judge him instantly. She treats him as an equal and lives in the acknowledgement of his crush on her and understands that it's a delicate friendship hanging between unrequited feelings and momentary friendly warmth. One of my favorite scenes was when Munna sees Shai and Arun together and walks out without uttering a word, Shai runs down immediately to say hello."People who care for you are more important than people you care for."She looks at mumbai like an observer hence treats munna as her eyes, to reach to the soul of the city, but sadly doesn't realize that this benevolent treatment towards him is what is hurting him the most. He is confused between her being nice or just being plainly kind towards him(which men hate).When she discovers her real profession by chance , he runs away, like an unspoken storm had just passed by, like saying, " it's over bbye......when even i don't like this side of me, how could i let you see me like this. And i don't need your pity for chrissake." But he grows up to realize that it feels great to make people you care for happy, no matter how, no matter why.He runs back to give arun's address to her in one of the final scenes.Munna without donning the garb of the stereotypical modern indian male was a wonderful representation of one.Fighting, ugly, confident, sensitive, hypocrite but most importantly "accepting".

Shai the hot shot alpha female. Banker, researcher, pretty, sultry, photographer , confused and caught up in the mess of being independent or accepting her femininity, she has got it all. Heavily attracted to a guy who is completely into her(feminine), but not being able to call a one night stand what it stood for(confused) and unable to understand the rejection from a seemingly wonderful person after a wonderful few hours of passion she chases him like a blood hound to unearth the man behind him, a combination of the typical female instinct of solving mysteries and a typical male egoistic thought block of "how could he??".........today's woman.

Yasmin belongs to the times gone by, to a set of people who are accidentally born in today's age.The quintessential girl next door, who is happy with the flavor of "being" and kills herself because the sense of being has no synonyms without the concept of a happy home.My heart went out for her.

Arun on the other hand makes the fifth character "the city of mumbai" come alive from an interactive perspective. He moves from place to place, corner to corner, forgetting the regrets, untying the cobwebs, running away from the past, seeking pleasure in momentary escapism but forever living with the weight of a heavy conscience which proclaims that he is innocent but that itself is the hardest thing to accept.
He moves from place to place seeking peace, loneliness, but only from the surroundings, not from the people who make him feel alive, like his dhobi or his manager.He doesn't dig today's alpha female but a virtual person on the TV whom he can turn off at will, basically someone he doesn't have to demand his space from.But even this true loner, who doesn't want the burden of having close relationships, gets deeply deeply hurt from the knowledge of what happened to yasmin and moves away from that house eventually.

We work hard, we move places, we hope, we forget it all to rejoice and move on but the stark reality(represented in the form of a city) refuses to go away. This movie is a true dedication to all your shattered dreams, unfulfilled hopes, peace that is never found, mysteries that are never solved, crushes that live on to hurt, memories that live on to haunt and all of these interspersed with a few moments of "human goodness".And all that survives are a few photographs, a video cassette, memories of a wonderful night or a painting that you love to hate.

My first reaction after I finished watching the movie was, "Finally, here is a movie which will forever be loved by bibliophiles and people who care for the unspoken words."