Bryan Adams: The God of Mush...

On a day like today, when the clock is striking the eleventh chime of Eleven, I want to run to you, and confess, by shouting at the top of my voice, without Waking up the neighbors, as to how I feel about you, and how much I think about you.

The feeling I have for you, cuts like a knife, throwing me into the fire of your desire, turning me inside out. At times I get reckless, fighting against my passion for you. I know, we can't stop this thing we started, but who wants to...

I wish I could be there with you, for, all I want is you. I don't mind being your Room Service, if intimacy with you is what I get for tips.

We've had lovely times together, with highs and lows. I have no second thoughts when I say, it's been So far, So good....
Now, I'm not scared to ask you, if it is love?
And if, You want it, You got it :)

Don't you already worry if my love towards you would mellow down.
I will be the same, and only will get better until the Summer of '69 (2069). For,it's not just a statement when I say, I'm 18 Till I die. It is true deep down to the core, when it comes to the love I have for you.

Here I am, offering the Best of me, to you, A flower grown wild.

Lastly,please forgive me, for the few bitter moments between us, as you know it, Everything I do, I do it for you.

PS:I initially felt this post did not require any words: Just the collage would imply it's essence. But, then I thought, I could express in this post how big an admirer I am of Bryan Adams, for his sublime music, mushy and ingenious lyrics, sensational vocals and a humble persona.
So, all the phrases in Courier font are Bryan Adams' Studio album titles, released till date, (except Anthology, which is a collection), and all the italicized words are few of his numerous famous song titles :)

Megalomaniacs of Criticism

Critics: That one genre of people, who go on to live in a delusion of being the Omniscients (all knowing!), within their domains of scrutiny (sometimes beyond their own).

The advantage for critics is the acknowledgement they receive from the audience, or i might well concur this alone to be their talent: To make people believe in their highfalutin hypocrisy.

Let us try to analyze the purpose and credibility of Criticism. Yet again, I would project my perception of this betterment tool.

As I mentioned, Criticism is a betterment tool. There is no criticism which can be categorized as positive or negative. I haven't been able to fathom the concept of "Positive Criticism" till date. Let us not digress into this debate, as yet.


Coming to another essential aspect, the source of criticism is the point of most import.

A person who hasn't tread the path has NO right, whatsoever, to speculate of its terrains!

Simple,and this is what I believe in,with respect to criticism.

When a person is criticizing my actions, or my efforts, or my creations, the first and foremost requirement, for me to give heed to those words is: Only if that person has at least tried and failed in the context of scrutiny. If not, that would be treated as ambient noise, and filtered off my mind.

But, at the same time, when someone who has had experience in the matter of discussion, is criticizing me, I would not mind taking even harsh reviews. Nevertheless,the levels of incorporation of these views into myself is a function of my perception of the source.And, this alone must be the standard for tackling Criticism and Critics.

Any softhead, with a hollow mind, a false ego and a bucket full of vocabulary can chew out creative commentaries on - An act of creation - A mind's product - A lifetime's efforts; But, to even give heed to such ridiculousness, brings down the authority of the creator.

Unfortunate though is, in today's media frenzy world, people appreciate a megalomaniac critic,instead of the humble geniuses within the creators.
 

Birth and life cycle of personal blogs....

Why Personal blogs exist?

 A large section of the blogosphere consists of ‘personal’ blogs – biographical narratives  documenting the ephemeral experience of living every day. At the cost of sounding lyrical, I would suggest that blogs are an attempt to achieve immortality – to create documents that shall outlive the user and live in the limbo of the virtual. It is the same drive that perhaps drives an artist to bleed in paint on her canvas or an author to angst in words on his pages.
 

A typical life cycle of a blogger :

A ‘Noobie’ starts with tentative narrative accounts of the world around him/her and initiates a commentary about their daily life. This is what I call the foreplay of blogging. The writer in the narratives is exploring, expanding, nudging and unfolding the physical surroundings around him/her. Through user-pictures, personal profile pages and subscription to communities, the blogger begins to reproduce him/herself in a specific way – trying out different names, forms and identities. As the bloggers start ‘befriending’ people and increase their audience and readership, a strange thing happens. Instead of suddenly becoming more cautious of the self and the things that are being revealed on the blog, the blogger increasingly sheds the layers of pseudonymity and facades that they create in their early narratives. There is a typical increase in talking of the self in these narratives and one can notice a sharp shift from the exploratory narratives to the intimate revelatory biographies that are produced in the blogs. The disembodied protagonist self makes it easier for the blogger to strip his/her virtual garments and exposes more of the self than ever before .

Directly in proportion with the conversations that people start on the blog, the blogger becomes more revealing, more explanatory, more stripped of the layers that technology has imposed on him/her. And then comes a moment when the blogger finally achieves what s/he is looking for – an acceptance of his/her narratives and the realisation that comes from the reciprocal actions by the others who read their blogs. The content of the blog no longer matters. The blog often dwindles into something that is mundane, dull,everyday, regular, uniformly un-anecdotal – private. The blogger realises that it is not so much the content of what s/he is writing as the act of writing that is important. This moment when the blog content comes a full circle and resembles the first posts is the moment of ‘blorgasm.’ The sense that the self has been realised and that the experience
of the moment is captured in that one representation or conversation is the pinnacle of
pleasure for a dedicated blogger 

(Excerpts from an intriguing paper titled Playblog, by Nishant Shah. )

A good analysis of personal blogging, and the turn of events between the blogger, his/her blog and it's audience. 

After reading this article, I have started correlating it to myself, positioning myself in this cycle. Although, not entirely accurate this analysis gives a good idea of the blogger's intentions behind churning out posts for his/her blog.

e-machined and e-networked!

A day without today's gadgets and the cyber 'social' network seems almost impossible to cope up with.

A couple of days ago, I had forgotten to carry my cell phone and the repercussions of that act of amnesia are being felt even today :D

These gadgets have deeply penetrated into our lives, percolating to reach the very core of our being.

There are different levels of dependencies manifested by each of us, at different periods of our lives. Allow me to analyze myself in this context, and you might well feel very related to these description of events.

When I was 10, maybe that's when the craze for the first of the gadgets had started(for our generation): Hand held video games were hitting the market, and like everyone I too owned one, and eventually lost 'myself' in it. Taking it to the next level were the TV video games; I remember two novice: me and my cousin shopping for it with a few hundred rupees, going to distant places ( when you're twelve,going alone for 5 km is really far!).Then, within an year or two, computers were getting ubiquitous, and computer gaming in the Cyber Parlours, paying 40 bucks for one hour of Roadrash and Skyroads caught me up. I could never get enough of it, and spent almost all the pocket money on gaming.  Then, there was also the advent of internet, chat, mail and the natural progression into some obscure cyber fantasies (which seem to make sense now!). 

These days, kids are much more 'gadgety': I've known three year olds who fluently operate computers and use combination of remote controllers to operate their satellite TV!

And, today, when we are living lives,in a manner as if we were driving on the fast lane, these gadgets and cyber space play the roles of both friends and foes to us, simultaneously.

Recently, there was a statistic in the newspaper saying netizens spend about 2 hours per day social-networking,and I wasn't surprised, for, my own average time on the social networks, including blogging and microblogging would easily exceed two hours.

Personally, a day without cellphones,computers, internet,music player,digital camera,and other e-gadgets give a feeling of isolation and detachment from the rest of the world (I guess this is what all philosophies have been craving for:P)

At the same time, this extent of intervention by these distractions has reduced the quality of personal interactions,and has made a drastic impact on the relationships between people,making them hyper sensitive and vulnerable.

These e-things have invaded too much into our lives, well beyond the threshold, up to the extent that now, there are friendly robots being manufactured to share our emotions with, and a few to which you can make love to!

As, portrayed in numerous Hollywood flicks like The Matrix, Bicentennial Man, iRobot, we might have to face such situations if we do not get detached from this extra e-bondage.

For now, we are all stuck together with the e-glue!

Illogical and irrevocable!

Lots of instances, not just one or two, have manifested compelling reasons on my side to retract from this obsession of mine. I feel convinced at that instant, to just repel away and forget the existence of such a possibility within my realms of reality. But, within a matter of time, not before these things have settled down in me, I seem to, as if in a recursive loop, tend back passionately towards this possibility.

It operates subconsciously, bypassing my boundaries of logic and reason. And, when I do reach this state of zero-logic, I am not afraid to say: I'm boundlessly happy!
Yes, boundless...

I've been in this dilemma numerous times, and I can't explain the reasons to myself of this swinging of my being. At one instant, endorsing it wholeheartedly, almost immediately I see myself repellent.

Sometimes, it is not even the boundaries of logic and reason which put me through this, it is something more than the act of the efforts of my thoughts.

It is a delusion of a kind, and I seem to kept drawn deeper and deeper into this, irrevocably...

Team Studsat Farewell

The formal curtain call has been made for the first generation team members of Team Studsat, by the second generation propellers.

Yesterday, there was a sweet and intimate send off to all the veterans of the team, i.e, the members who had passed out B.E last year, but still associated with the project. With loads of fun and reminiscence, it was  a really special event for all of us yesterday.

The various Tag names which popped out for team mates was hilarious: names like TL/shop (Angadi), Damager (Dixit), Mom (Mamatha), JJM(Shwetha), Toodle-doodle(vichu) and Doodle-Toodle(vikku), lungi/chairman(sharath), bucket (karthik), model (arpan), and I was called Blog Swamiji !( i forgot a few others)
It was hilarious to the core.

Then, the games and pranks, anecdotes from experiences of project, dramatization of certain fulcrum points in the journey, which in retrospection seem funny, made the event even more enjoyable. All thanks to the juniors, who demonstrated the same levels of dedication even in organizing such a lovely event like the work they have contributed towards the project:)

With less than a month for launch, this event was well timed to remind us of all the ups and downs we've faced for this tenure of India's First Student Pico Satellite - Studsat :) http://www.teamstudsat.com/

The common man's simple joys :)

Recently,after work, I was to meet a friend. As, I was early, had to wait near a street corner. It was half past seven in the evening, and the weather in Bengaluru has been impeccable for a past few days- cloudy,with cool breeze and sprays of drizzle :) Such excellent weather invokes the natural trait of any Indian:To look out for hot-spicy snacks.

I was glad to find a roadside Bajji corner, on a push cart, where a man and his wife were baking hot bajjis and serving hot tea. There wasn't any reason for me to pretend and wear a mask of someone irrelevant to them: So, I straight away headed towards them.

There were varieties of bajjis; Given my non-vegetarianism,I naturally asked for the 'motte'(egg) bajjis (closest to my needs:)

The thing which was running in my mind immediately after the first bite was: I would have easily shelled out twenty times the cost for the same thing in any other superficial 'food court', but still, never could have tasted anything like it :)

The two of the hosts were very welcoming and courteous. Not just to me,but,to each and every customer who had come. Each one of us got something much more than what we paid for : A blissful smile, an intimate chat,cheering us up at the end of the day!

The hosts at the shop were people who weren't in the stablest of the economic conditions, but still the satisfaction they seemed to enjoy with the little they had is remarkable. I'd say a lesson to the rest of us.

This, as I have been observing is true with many 'common people' around us, who lead a simple life filled with struggles,but still, who never fail to enjoy the little simple joys in day to day life, on a regular basis. This definitely increases the quality of our lives, reducing the overhead of trying out futile,extravagant attempts at keeping ourselves happy by unnatural means.

PS: This post is not talking about the common people being complacent about their requirements, without craving for what they deserve (i.e.,their ignorance), but, about the extent of satisfaction exhibited by them with whatever they possess, at that instant. This sets an example to most of us, who are never happy with what we have, incessantly craving for something more, missing out on the present!

Misfits of the System

Almost every coffee time conversation at work, pertaining to the impact and consequences, we, one creed of creatures have made on the Environment and Ecosystem, naturally directs our discussion to the unscrupulous nature of our lives. The rapid consumption of all natural resources, just to meet our highly inappropriate and exaggerated needs, while, having drastically disturbed the rest of the Ecosystem speaks volumes of our so called 'Concern' towards the environment.

The immense diversity Mother Nature has developed in millions of years have been consumed in gargantuan amounts, leading to extinction and exhaustion within a couple of centuries, in the name of Industrialization by the biggest misfits of this system i.e, We, the homo sapiens !

There has been a sudden increase in the awareness about the Environment. But, this ain't something to be happy about. It is more of an alarm for saving ourselves from the deep ditch we've dug open. I would like to quote Paulo Coelho in this context:

Save the planet? The Planet must be saying, "Save yourself idiots, I will be fine"


So, the non-idiots who have realized the threat to our own existence, without bothering about any other living organisms, are the ones who are mostly doing the Political propaganda of "Going Green".

Talking about "Going Green", what an irony!
Let me take the case of Namma Bengaluru, for instance. As far as I remember, Bengaluru was always green, but only before 4-5 years. I, like most Bengalureans have been the agonized spectator of the transformation of Bengaluru from the Garden City to the biggest Real Estate Project ( The entire city now has nothing but towering apartments and gigantic tinted office buildings)!

So, you talk about planting one sapling or two, after evading into hectares of greenery.Is this going green?

The actual instigator for this post was the Gulf oil spill, and the ghastly impact it has made on the marine life and the dependent ecosystem there. Unfortunate thing though is, and as expected out of us, we are busy suing each other for monetary compensation, for our misbehavior, not on each other, but we against the environment. We haven't bothered to give any heed to all the creatures who would not even survive this intrusion. Many species, in an accelerated manner, because of this incident would see the face of extinction.

But, sometimes, I am made to think that all these atrocities are heading in the right direction -
Maybe we are acting as catalysts to enable Mother Earth undergo a metamorphosis, to help her consume the world as seen today, and to evolve into something better, without her biggest mistakes:
Us!

Aware of the Mesozoic Era?i.e, The Dinosaurs?
Encore of something similar is what we are witnessing now.

What justice!

Is there a relevance to the concept of legal justice in today's world?

The concept of justice is one of the most compelling inhibitions imposed on the individuals, by the propagandist society, to curb their natural aggression, and then to transform this as a commodity into a market, wherein only the elite economic class can afford to buy - As they wish,with full customization.

It is an open secret as to how feeble and manipulative the systems of law and justice is, in our society. Like good food, quality education, necessary health & medical facilities, and all the other essentials which add to a decent livelihood, legal justice is another costly commodity, which keeps drifting away from the common man.

Justice in today's world, actually, hurts more than the crime itself.

26 years, and now a few scapegoats, not the actual culprits are being sentenced to two years in prison and a meager amount as fine, for taking lives of about 15 thousand innocent people, and destroying an entire community, which still is afresh with the repercussions of the Bhopal Tragedy!

Same has been the case with the Godhra riots, Uphaar Cinema fire, terror attacks, and innumerable other major tragedies, which have prolonged for ages, only to end with agonizingly feeble verdicts.

Imagine the lives of the people who have spent waiting for long painful years, at last, just to witness this silly, so called 'justice'. Don't they get a chance to vengeance, if at the least, that would make them feel better.

Talking about vengeance, it is not something evil or inhuman as portrayed by the hypocrite system. If a person has committed a crime, he mercilessly deserves the reciprocation of his/her own actions, with no room for sympathy. But, today's ironical system does nothing which even hints at healing the victims.

I fail to understand, what is the necessity of such a complex, but still inefficient system of law and justice, if it cannot yield a hint of relief to the victims! Instead, it only succeeds in infuriating them, burdening their lives with more of longing and painful trauma.

If it is said that justice can be made possible only in such excruciatingly long and ineffective methods, then, isn't it right to scrap this system and adopt a more 'responsibly responsive' system?

It would never happen though. For, most of the architects of this system are the ones who are taking shelter, under the umbrella of the loopholes in the system; A system which they have fabricated to fence themselves, while abandoning the rest of the common people!

In today's world,
He who bids higher has justice in his basket!

Crunched!

Crunching my routine, and, all the other extra activities into my day have been getting a little too tough these days. It ain't that I'm not able to, but the ease with which it used happen has reduced, and I am somehow left with a hollow and incomplete feeling at the end of the day.

This could mainly be attributed to a certain phase of recklessness I am going through, mainly because of my randomized allocation of time and other resources to the broad gamut of activities I am involved in.

One thing I do have realized is the necessity to press PAUSE for a small duration of time, to serve as a breather for me, and to get some headroom for better improvisation. It is not to be considered as complaining, but a pit stop to better my efficiency.

Although, I cannot deny the fact that I seem to have been witnessing ripples of disturbances from various distinct, but correlated arenas. It might take a little while before I can get 'uncrunched' and start flowing as usual.

In Transition....

This is Change: A change that is politely, but convincingly demanding my compliance to it.

I'd argue, it is more than just a 'paradigm shift'; I am undergoing a metamorphosis: A complete metamorphosis of my relation with the rest of everything, consciously.

It has put me through a phase of confusion, retaliation and reconciliation.

When change presents itself in the most convincing manner, leaving no reasons to complain about, and, daring to numbly ignore it, in retrospection would seem like a huge,self committed vicissitude. 

With my fully operational critical skills in scrutiny in this direction, I have been meticulously elucidating to all my other facets of understanding and reasoning the ramifications of this new Ideals' Infrastructure,on which the rest of my ideas and decisions would emanate from.

It is very important to base your opinions from a conforming platform of philosophy, unless you are able to create one of your own. And, when you encounter this 'whole' of which you have been a part of, it substantiates the stand you would take on all the issues of criticality in the interaction between you and the rest of everything.

But still, transition of this intricacy naturally would take quite a lot of time, for it to get inculcated into my being.
Until that happens:In Transition.