Sleeplessness

Woke up at 12.45AM.

Yesterday during tea, Amma was asking me why I've been looking so dull ever since I came back from the US. I asked her what do you mean dull. She said I used to be full of energy earlier, now something's gone wrong.

Finally I think I realised the reason at 1.15AM. I need to read, write, study and paint.

I opened one of the books on the basics of pumps and blowers out of a sudden urge. And I actually kinda liked going through it briefly, because I could relate to its terms quite easily. Then it dawned upon me that my mind has been sleeping for a long while now. Its a very bad thing to do, letting your mind sleep when you're not physically sleeping. I was wondering whether this field really holds my interest - and I have a gut feeling it does.

Teju I don't know what great things I can do in the field of mechanical engg. But I've always liked this field the most in engineering. I feel the least I can do is get my basics right, by reading up. At least.... at least I'll know where I stand at the moment. I don't find the text uninteresting, so why not give it a shot? I'll have to structure my reading sections and take notes to make it effective.

These are my thoughts for today.

-P

Pink Floyd - Echoes

Overhead the albatross hangs motionless upon the air
And deep beneath the rolling waves
In labyrinths of coral caves
The echo of a distant time
Comes willowing across the sand
And everything is green and submarine.

And no-one called us to the land
And no-one knows the wheres or whys
But something stirs and something tries
And starts to climb towards the light

Strangers passing in the street
By chance two separate glances meet
And I am you and what I see is me
And do I take you by the hand
And lead you through the land
And help me understand the best I can

And no-one calls us to move on
And no-one forces down our eyes
And no-one speaks and no-one tries
And no-one flies around the sun

Cloudless everyday you fall upon my waking eyes
inviting and inciting me to rise
And through the window in the wall
Come streaming in on sunlight wings
A million bright ambassadors of morning

And no-one sings me lullabies
And no-one makes me close my eyes
And so I throw the windows wide
And call to you across the sky

Today's grammar lesson

Past perfect,

Present conditional,

Future tense.

What to write?

Damn it. I have to write something. Something at least. Its been so long since I wrote something, I really should write something. Come on pratap, how hard is it to write something? This blog looks like a nothing without writing something.

Ummmm...

Aha!

Ok...here goes:

Something.

(Phew, that was really something)

Rage

For four minutes I walked in the shadows of blood

A scar of anguish marked for a lifetime

How will I express this pain within

If tomorrow my children die to this heinous crime?

Dead

The longing is dead

Dead is the innocence

The passion is dead

Dead is the future

A hollowness creeps inside

As the poison slowly kills me.

Tragically,

Beautifully.

Voluntary Motion

You might think this is crazy. Nevertheless...here goes.

How does one define boredom? I would define it as the unwillingness of absolutely any voluntary motion. To explain, the human body has involuntary functions, like blinking, breathing and the heartbeat which occur beyond our will, and voluntary functions like what we see, taste, move, etc. I tried to test my level of boredom today, it was amazing. Boredom has a tendency to creep into our mind and our actions. Most often we try to shrug it off like a cat or a dog which flicks its ear when a fly lands on it, and slowly try to get back to work.

But now I let it creep into me. It was a weird feeling. I was sitting on my bed with washed clothes all around, pending to be folded and stacked. With great difficulty I put my feet on the floor, but by then the boredom had seeped in so rapidly that my muscles grew increasingly stiffer and eventually my feet, my neck and finally my hands, which normally is the most mobile part of the body, froze right in front of my eyes. I had just completely lost the will for any voluntary movement. I couldn't turn my head. Even moving a finger or shutting my eyelids forcibly seemed impossible. I was neither scared, nor was I shaking. In fact not a single thought was running through my mind. Blank. 

And there lay an amazing paradox. I can't really call this a feeling because I wasn't even feeling anything. What surprises me is how I drew this conclusion, when I wasn't even able to think anything at that moment.

Probably the best compliment I've ever received

Ms. Debangana is a PhD student in Fine Arts here in LSU, and lives with her husband Mr. Suparno, who's doing his PhD in English, here in the Nicholson campus apartments. Both have studied from Shantiniketan in West Bengal; in fact the Kala Bhavana (Art School) is supposedly one of the best in the world (Ref: Wiki). I've been eagerly waiting to see Debangana didi's works and am still doing that, because they are all in her office at LSU. But today I got a chance to talk to her, so I rushed home and got my Wolverine drawing to receive her feedback. 

Upon opening the covers, she said "Wow. I have to learn this kind of drawing from you." 

I have no words to explain how happy I am today. When I came back home, I could only think of Maynard's intense words of the song Wings part 2, from Tool's album 10000 Days:

'Its time now, my time now

Give me my, give me my..........WINGS !!!'

Stray dog

I met Ashok from our Kannada group at the empty parking lot of a restaurant on the way to the convenience store at the gas station, a pleasant evening before Gustav the hurricane's arrival. Out of nowhere came an average sized black dog and was skipping around until it finally reached us and was jumping around me playfullyand was probably hungry too. I saw it had a blue collar, but then Ashok said 'we don't get to see many stray dogs here, do we?', so I didn't take much notice. Then we left and the dog kept following me up to the store. When I came out, it was still around and looked at me innocently and hoped that I'd something to offer. By then I thought it really was a stray dog. So after walking a little I turned back and bought a small packet of biscuits from the store, but this time it had gone away. Looking around I caught a glimpse of it near a group of people near a house at a distance, so I dropped the idea of feeding it and turned homewards. Hardly had I walked 2 minutes when a fat white lady looking tensed appeared around the corner....with a leash in hand. She asked me 'have you seen a black dog?'
'Just take a right at the road from the restaurant ma'am'.

Cycle repair

I went to the cycle stand outside my lab after 2 days. The key fitted properly and the lock opened neatly to separate the front tyre from the stand. Funny thing is, that was all that was left of the cycle. So this was the second time that my bicycle got stolen. And this one wasn't even mine, I'd borrowed it from Sunada. Now what to do? I knew that complaining to the authorities or lodging a case would be of no use, because nothing came out of the previous one. A new one would cost me 55 dollars. I kept the lock and tyre as there were, because rolling a cycle tyre down the street with a stick in hand would've been fun as a kid; now it would be embarrassing.
I saw one old cycle lying beside. It had a torn seat, a rusted chain sprocket and the front wheel and the lock were missing. How it came to be in such a situation is beyond my analyzing powers. I waited for a week and saw that no one had even bothered to pick it up. Lifted it; it fit neatly on to the hub of my front tyre. Tightened the nuts, unlocked the 'new' bicycle and took it home. Justice is served.

Who you are

Let the emotions come out,
let the tears drop to the floor,
scream until your lungs ache,
scream until you know who you are.

Black, white and colour

As I slogged in my lab today, I just realised -

My art is in charcoal - black and white.
The colour of my composite materials - black and white.
The people of my resident country - black and white.

What's a colourful person like me doing here?

Which reminds me of a black man's poem I read somewhere:

When I born, I black,

When I grow up, I black,

When I go in sun, I black,

When I cold, I black,

When I scared, I black,

When I sick, I black,

And when I die, I still black.

You white folks....

When you born, you pink,

When you grow up, you white,

When you go in sun, you red,

When you cold, you blue,

When you scared, you yellow,

When you sick, you green,

When you bruised, you purple,

And when you die, you gray.

So who you calling colored folks???

The forgotten beauty of tranquility and empty spaces

Aug 9, Saturday, 10.30pm: I finished my lab work and sat under a flagpole at the empty parking lot beside the football stadium, waiting for my friend to pick me up in his car and go back to my cozy home. I was getting anxious, because that was primarily a black people area and there was absolutely nobody around. Slowly I gazed upward at the deep blue sky and I felt my nerves tingling. I contemplated, was it really the fear of black people making me anxious? No. It was merely the vastness of the empty space and the absence of sound. We've become so habituated to walls, noise and people (most being noisy walls), that we get the jitters and our imagination runs wild. We always need some company, some room, some talk, some music, just about anything to hang on to. Our restless souls have forgotten the blissful peace within.
How would it be like to stand at this tip of northern Russia and stare at the outstretched emptiness in front of me? Heh, I would rather have this void in front of me than in me.

_ _ _

Enslaved by three walls,
The fourth a barrier in my way.
And break it I must,
Leaving behind a hollowness,
Sighs and screams...
Begging to be free,
But free I am.

Free is my mind.

-Teen Deewarein (2003)

Click Start

This is how it begins.
The end.