Thursday, March 27, 2008

Random Thoughts, Episode 1

Okaaaay. So this is a random tag I picked up from The Randomiser. :)

And I picked it up for the complicated[U don't say!] reason that I've had sooo many fuller, more abstruse topics to write on this month, but I've just been too lazy to write. So I wanted to do justice to the blessed month of March. Atleast once. And in such a way that it would do justice to meself too.

Maybe I prefer thinking to writing. I say that because it goes something like this. Most of the times. Whenever I have a long, fruitful [ that's VERY important.] brainstorming session with myself, I promise myself I'll blog about it; and then, I move on to THINK about the writing part. In quite a reflexive sort of way. I think about how I have to take the pains of switching on my desktop, opening Word, or Notepad; writing, saving the document at intervals or risk losing everything to an unpredictable power cut, then doing the bloody spell-check [which gives weird substitutes for words like "li'l"...I get ill's, ill, lilt, lily, and lid's. I mean, even the just-born li'l pink one in mama's lap in the nasty disinfectant-smelling cubicle would deduce that "li'l" means "little". Not quite, but I just couldn't resist the funny statement. :D "Li'l" sounds just soo much more little!! Talk about phonetic symbolism. :D :D ], changing fonts, text colours, alignments, connecting to the LAN at the abysmal velocity my broadband has, and though my brainy neurons spew out things which are quite a thousand times worth all the tediousness, I still ultimately end up reckoning I'd rather just sleep over it.

That's what happened with Regatta; and what I now have is just a brilliant post on it. IN MY MIND. "The Spiritual Rendition Of Regatta'08 -by Miss Anuradha Ganesh." That was one of the three spiffing titles lined up.[I don't remember the other two.] That's exactly what happened with the dissection of my post before this post. Although practically speaking, that can be done later too. Granted that I don't keep on putting it off till eternity, of course.

Come to think about it, I have written some of my best posts in my mind; they could never make it to the material world with the same intensity. For by the time I have roused my tousled-up anatomy to do the many things prior to attacking the keyboard, the storm has stopped raging and become more inertial than sticky cream. The few vagaries I’ve haphazarded on these pages are mere GT imitations of what they were.


And can you believe it! I've yet again managed to drift away from the topic as smooth as silk! Random sure enough the thoughts are, random enough the write-up is, but random I had planned on putting it up in The Original Randomiser’s way[Bully for you, jd! ;) ], and random it ends up in MY ishtyle! wH0A!! Strange things lethargy can do to human beings. Maybe, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

But the tagged, I will be. For the sake of my blog, at least. :P


Random Thoughts - Episode 1

1> If YOU are a damn good writer, and MOST of your friends aren't, then U end up writing over-hyped testimonials for them [outta pure habit, more than anything else… just coz…well..U simply can’t seem to go beneath a certain level of writing u see :D]; and in return U get very humble ones, the whole procedure effectively making THEM sound more cooler[screw the double comparative! It still ain’t pun enough! ] than you, when in fact, it is quite the opposite. Believe me! You are in the drag here. :P

No offence meant, people! U know I just can't resist the sarcasm! :D

2> All significant application forms should have only two columns regarding NAME. First name.

And last name. Why do all the offices and institutions in MH rebel against me when I tell them I DON’T have a surname ?? Is it such a horrendous crime not to have one ?? Does Clause 172 of The IPC Bare Act, 1860 state that NOT having a last name pertaining to your hometown means you don’t have a hometown ?? Does that mean I originated out of emptiness ?!?! DARK MATTER ??????? WOW!!! I’m a cosmological miracle! :|

3> Why are people’s cell phones set to the silent mode and left lying around when U need to call them in life-threatening situations ?? I tell you, I’m gonna look up the IDEA helpbook one of these days and see if they have a suing facility for habitual overuse of emergency amenities.

4> Typing out in short-note form is soo much more hassle-free. You don’t need to figure out where the paragraphs are s’posed to start everytime.

5> Rediscovering things for yourself makes you feel so much more matterable. Substantive. Humble. Proud.
I mean..I could give you an example..which might sound quite childish..but it mattered the world to me. Atleast when I discovered it.

One of the most basic axioms of the most logical subject there can be: Mathematics. “Three non-collinear points determine a plane.” I always used to wonder [in 5th std.] what the heck it meant. I dunno if anyone else ever did, or I was the only one naive enough; but none of my friends ever mentioned it then, maybe coz they were just as mortified of being made a laughing stock of as a low-understanding-capacity-wala-blunderer as I was, and the professor was just as interested as a baboon would be in explaining it. Maybe he didn’t know it himself. Hardly matters. No one was game for him.

Drifting back, the point I used to mull upon was “Why the damn, THREE points? ONE point determines a plane too. Two too. ‘n’ number of points determine a plane as well as three. THEN WHY THREE MAN ???? And why NON-collinear??” And I sat and figured my head off for aeons. Everywhere. All the time. In the kitchen till the food graduated to an inevitable state of inedibility and I stomped off cursing the household for not providing me one of the basic needs of living in its most hygienic form. In the bathroom till all the water siphoned off, stimulating mom to shout her head off maniacally at the door, wanting to know if I had hung myself by the shower out of depression. I thought and thought till all I could see was a myriad of multi-coloured planes, revolving in front of my eyes…jeering away at me.. and the nerves in my cerebrum morphed into hordes of sticky points joining each other by crooked lines, resembling the jagged teeth of an Ice-Age giant; threatening to overwhelm my sanity if I didn’t agree straightaway with the three-point-plane. You’d think I was Archimedes caught in the climax of his career, just about to discover the Law of Buoyancy!

And then, one evening, in a similar state of haziness, unexpectedly, the full impact of the golden statement came crashing down upon me!! One point “convokes” a plane. Constitutes a plane. True. Two do too. But then, they might convoke MANY. But three “determine” a plane. A unique one. An entity. Four do too. True. And ‘n’ without doubt. But then again, they MIGHT NOT. THREE is the boss sure enough! The fine line between the only three probable cases. And then, came crashing down another indispensable truth. Language. The most powerful weapon mankind can possibly wield if he cares to. The difference one almighty word can make. Of life and death. Or, more euphemically put, a girl’s sanity mattered in this case. :D And believe me! With the bombardment of two apparently unrelated absurdly-obvious-once-u-realized-it-sort-of facts, on a temporarily-misaligned human system, I felt as euphoric as Archimedes did !!! I even shouted out “Eureka!” !!! Ahem! Unfortunately [or fortunately!], I wasn’t insane enough to do the physical act he did on impulse. I caught myself. Bless his bath sponge. :P

Point is: Rediscovery is just as heavenly as Discovery. After all, what matters is YOU. Life beckons you alone. You discovering it is as good as Archimedes discovering it. Hardly matters that he discovered it before U. In fact, if I had the authority, I would've penalised him on moral grounds for having deprived the rest of the earthlings the singular satisfaction of finding it out on their own. When U find it out for urself, U are subjected to all those lines of thought that he was subjected to; U understand the process of discovery. The complexity, YET the simplicity of the beauty, which is what matters. Which is what matters because, if U accept something just because it has been propagated by eminent thinkers, and has been verified by time-tested methods, its existence in your mind is radioactive; but if U know the reason behind the find, if U have experienced the minute dissection each and every aspect of the concept requires, if U have absorbed the topic illinoically; U will remember it for life. Coz it's YOURS now. It gets ingrained into you. It's just as simple as someone telling you that you'll never forget your alphabet! U gave it ur heart and soul; it gave U enlightenment. I know, I understand he circulated the idea for the timely well-being of mankind, revolutionising the world of physics alright; but still....... People don't realize the magnanimity of the find coz they are delighted enough to let others do the work. Coz they are so busy trying to avoid the trouble that they miss the sun. Coz they are lazy. Just as I am.
If YOU understand the secrets of life on your own, and revel in them, the world is ur game. If u don’t, nothing is.

6> I suck at short-note-writing!! Doesn’t point 5 seem as if it could’ve made an entire effing blogpost ?!!? Darn!

7> Darn again! Why can't I be more discrete ?! :|

8> I listened to Celine Dion crooning “ I am Alive” 7 times consecutively as I thought out on the the 7 odd points I typed above. Without realizing I did. Background music sort of. Was it pure co-incidence? Or was it that I could relate to something in the music, something so obscure that I hadn’t accounted for it before ??

9> Am I going perpetually crazy ?? I never was a Dion fan !!!!

10> I use too many exclamation marks. :|

11> And too many straight faces. (:|)

12> Well, now that I HAVE started, I can’t, and don’t wanna stop writing. And I realize it's just the getting-started-part which is tricky. Then the rhythm sustains itself. You can start with a single word and land up building an entire concept. Like the carbon-cycle. Against the laws of nature to pull out; but pull out I have to.
Cheers.

And P.S. If you think I write long whiny posts, I’d say you are blessed U haven’t seen half of it. I used to be the longest essay-writer in school. :D :D

5 comments:

Ritesh. P said...

Wow, hats off Anu.....!! That testimonial thing which you were referring to happened to me, with me jotting out words of every possible hue to my friends and me getting the plane bland ones.... Add to that, the wonderful story of the THREE non-collinear point theory, your post underscored the pulchritude of gamut of your vocabulary.... And not to forget your realization and ultimate understanding of that axiom, it was all exciting. I am enraptured to the core, which makes me hit my lappy keys frantically extolling you. Your random thoughts are just unprecedented in nature. Keep babbling babe.... Great going....!!

A half light said...

@ ritesh.p...

yeah dude...actually i just put down wat most ppl think...but dont quite kno how to put it into words...or rather...don't bother to.. :)
and yeah, thanx! :)

JD said...

This is a VERY long pending comment... Blame the net speed in hostel for the delay....

A> You have no clue how good it feels when someone picks up my idea :D :D :D :D

B> Your thoughts are randomer than mine. You need to be disposed off :|
:P

C> Hope to see more episodes :D

A half light said...

I need to get a real pick-me-up actually.
I've had 15 days of holidays and I've done every ruddy thing I could do EXCEPT for blogging! :|

and yeah! as long as they keep comin in...no worries about the time interval.. :D

Anonymous said...

ha, I am going to try out my thought, your post bring me some good ideas, it's really awesome, thanks.

- Thomas