Category: Life Ordinary

  • Tea and multiplicity

    We sat in Infinitea, sipping green tea and munching fried momos. It was her first visit to Bangalore, and as my contribution to her introduction to the city, I had given her the experience of navigating the one ways of the city on a two wheeler. It was less than a month since we’d been first introduced to each other, and that turned out to be the subject of the conversation, at least the lion’s share of it. Of how technology had reached a point where one could perhaps land up in any city and have such conversations, because of the connections that pre-exist. No pre-exist for years or even months, but just a few days, thanks to the people we trust, who connect us. We perhaps have nothing in common culturally, but we can still relate to each other in terms of ideas and thought streams. Communication protocols are changing, and with that, relationships too. We discussed the subject of my post a fortnight back – evolution, and she told me the story of a guy who had a camera fitted into his glass eye!!

    She’s traveled a lot and shared anecdotes of places and experiences. Her stories reminded us of how destinations have become like trophies, simply to be collected as part of a journey which we no longer appreciate, much like the beautiful sights that nature has created. We compared notes on clicking images versus capturing it in the mind’s eye. I could totally relate to that as I remembered the Leh trip from earlier this year and told her of how I paused before I took the step into the plane that would take me back, knowing that it perhaps was the last time I’d see the place. After all, there are so many places to see, never mind the trophies, because there may be some I haven’t even heard of yet.

    I think that I might have come across as an absolute anti-capitalist, because at least twice I said that the only thing that stopped us from enjoying life fully was money, because it tends to become an end in itself, and we make the things it can buy, the things that hold value to us. If money wasn’t a constraint, I’d travel all over the world, write about the things I saw and be happy with the five odd people who read it. But it is, and so one has to save up, and choose from destinations, and hope one has made the right choice.

    We debated a bit on what I thought was a paradox of sorts. She said that many people felt lonely when they landed in an alien city (work,not vacation), and they yearned for a taste of their own culture. I said that, with increasing connectivity, we were all moving towards global citizenship, where the individual cultures had blurring boundaries, or rather, the differences seemed to be becoming less important. Typical example being how we were able to converse on a range of subjects without getting bored. (though we have only my word for it) And how with each passing generation, traditional customs were getting packaged to suit lifestyles…until they will become ‘user agnostic’. (much like the platform agnostic technologies) But yes, that is more futuristic than present, though I may have more in common with a London based Twitter user, than my next door neighbour, on several fronts.

    We spoke about the great divide that technology was creating, and how the human race has perhaps yet not identified that as one of our greatest challenges. A real time battle against time. Which made us realise that both of us were getting late for our (respective) next meetings.

    I drop her back at the hotel where she’s staying. We have to take a convoluted route, thanks to the one ways that dot Bangalore. Its funny because in terms of actual distance its really close by. I wonder if the roads are a good metaphor. We bid each other goodbye. Its easy to remain in touch, connected. After all, geographic distances don’t really matter. Sometimes its the divide in the immediate vicinity that is more difficult to bridge.

    until next time, a lot can happen over tea too 🙂

    PS: The day had two wonderful conversations, and as I start out to share the other, I realise I am trying to short change the next one and crunch the content. That’s unfair, so we will do a Part 2 soon 🙂

  • Life…streamers

    Sometime back, I read an extremely interesting post by Chris Messina – how we’re now hit by a plethora of data and information on the real time web, which our brains have not adapted to, and how, in order to process this, we’d require an augmentation of our existing abilities.

    The information overload has been happening for a little while now. Between reading blogs, writing them, microblogging, Facebook and all the shiny little tools that keep coming up, it’s a constant juggling act. I’ve been on Twitter for over a couple of years now. I can see a drastic change in the relationships there already, as compared to the banter of the initial days. New people, new thoughts, old people who’re changing with time, old thoughts recycled.  A simple @ tag connects lives. Meanwhile, its not just relationships and thoughts that change, but also behaviour – the need to share an experience, attention deficit, and so on. These would obviously vary with an individual’s usage of Twitter, facebook etc, but I’m sure there are more like me.

    While I’ve been dimly conscious of the vastness of the Twitterverse, I had a more tangible realisation only after i came across a tool (from an article shared by Shefaly). As I sat watching the pictures streaming across the screen on Twitcaps, I felt I was somehow connected to all of them across the world sharing images – from parties to churches to landscapes to death to raunchy stuff to coffee mugs and so many many other things. There are multiple images being shared every second, and I had an acute realisation of the magnitude of change happening, in terms of connectedness and sharing. The population of the world, the population of your own city, the number of people working in your office/living in the apartment complex- as the numbers come down, the people slowly change from a blurred intangibility to a focused person. But as we get more and more networked, the number of persons who become tangible are increasing, the arguments about their relative importance to self notwithstanding. As Chris says in the article, can human beings cope after a point?

    Sometime earlier this year, I remember writing a post about speciation – the evolution of the human species, and how replacement of body parts and advancement might finally end up in a being that may not match our current concept of human, or even living, like the Cybermen in Dr.Who. In that post, I had also mentioned Homo Evolutis, one of whose characteristics was networked intelligence.

    As the information deluge gathers momentum, there may be those who choose not to be part of it, who are comfortable not being part of this vast stream of consciousness, while there may be others who use their abilities and the augmentation to embrace this. These are obviously two extremes, and its quite possible that humans would figure out a middle path. But I already see this divide happening – some leaving it by choice, some left out by circumstances. The learning curve is becoming so steep that after a few years, it might be difficult or even impossible to catch up. And that’s how I begin to wonder whether we’re rapidly approaching the point when the species will diverge. Maybe not in my lifetime, but within a couple of generations?

    There’s another aspect of all this that I wondered about. With the increasing amount of information and the speed at which we’re forced to process it, will we have time to acquire more perspectives, or continuing that cycle, accumulate more baggage? Will that change the way we behave with people, and the way we live life? Will we become more objective? Or will we become more biased, relying on notions we don’t have time to change, and behaving accordingly?

    As I write this there is a stream of thoughts running in my head – of times, friends and relationships. Poignant moment as I realise the vast yet connected nature of the universe and its inhabitants. In the miniscule amount of my lifetime that I have spent on Twitter, I realise that people and relationships have changed, perhaps irrevocably. The lifestream will be an interesting read for me later, if I do manage it. Meanwhile life flows, faster, faster, until each second and beyond is accounted for, with streamers in between, so that we might remember…just..

    until next time, you’re here..now..reading post #700..thank you 🙂

  • From the corner of his eye

    Dean Koontz

    That Dean Koontz is an amazing writer of supernatural stories is a known fact. What makes this book special is the mix of several themes that work in superb harmony – a psychotic killer, quantum physics and faith. I’ve always wondered about parallel universes and in this book, the author has tried to put a structure to it through the theories of Thomas Vanadium and the abilities of Bartholomew, Angel and Mary.
    Koontz uses Enoch Cain’s obsessed journey to find Bartholomew as a background to highlight the connection between human beings’ lives, a sort of ‘Butterfly effect’ among people’s destinies. Each character is built perfectly with specific roles to play in this journey, and they all fall into place magnificently, like a jigsaw puzzle.
    There is an underlying theme of hope that runs through this book, and Koontz does a great job of balancing it with the pure evil that is Enoch Cain.
    The pace never slackens, and while I like all the author’s works (that I have read so far), this one just went beyond the regular gripping thriller category.

  • Damn.. on the backburner

    It has come to be this way. The pattern. After every break I take, whether its a trip to Kerala, or a vacation to the beaches or the mountains. Its fairly easy to understand, the daily grind leaves very little time to ponder. Spend 5 days looking forward to the weekend, and maximise the two days for all its worth. Which is perhaps why the trips away from the routine premises have a way of giving one more perspective. An opening of the mind, so to speak.

    It brings in a few new experiences, it puts old  things in a new light, it gives a more objective view of the daily routine.  It highlights the things that are really important to one. It helps one revisit the tags. Most importantly, it shows glimpses of what could be, it opens up new avenues of thought – of building a revenue model for this life that one can be happy with, to figure out those things that one likes to do and would also get paid for, to wake up in the morning and be inspired about what one is going to achieve that day,  other than doing the bit to ensure the EMI gets paid. Existential angst that can be resolved only by living, instead of existing. 🙂 Not that these thoughts cannot happen on any given any day, its just that the trips offer a more conducive environment for the mind.

    But the pattern. What typically happens is that these lines of thought don’t stay with me for more than a few days. The flights of thought run aground when they meet the daily grind. I always wonder if they are really that far apart in the current state that they don’t even stand a chance of co-existence. Perhaps they are.

    But this time, after I get back from Kerala, I decide that its time to break the pattern and stretch beyond the limits I have set for myself, in thought and deed. I wake up, eager to start the day and make the necessary changes to my life, to go beyond the posturing and figure out the way forward. As I get busy with the morning yoga routine, the mobile rings. I stretch my hand out for it. The neck and the back refuse to shoulder any responsibility for what the mind and the rest of the body seek to achieve. A kind of neck jewelry results, the beige collared worker has arrived. 🙁  But I’ll be back.

    until next time, exercise caution

    PS. Too many introspective posts these days, I had to make a clean break 🙂

  • A flaky post

    Paperweights. The ones with either a dancing girl/couple or a snowman at the centre. Turn it upside down, and the ‘snow flakes’ come floating down. Long trips away from routine make me feel like those flakes. I float for as long as I can, but i can’t defy the gravitational pull, there’s no way but down. All my floating is restricted to the confines of the paper weight, I can only wistfully look outside. When the upside down movement happens, I know that I’m in for a ride. I know it will be wonderful while it lasts, I also know the inevitability of the descent. In the initial moments of the floating, I am able to forget the ending, and enjoy myself, but towards the end, I end up counting the moments left. It is time to land, the journey is over.

    Remember Forrest Gump? Through the movie, there’s a white feather that floats around. A while back, I read somewhere that it represents destiny and luck, which is why it is shown to appear at opportune moments. Its free, unconfined and goes where the breeze takes it. Sometimes it gets stuck on to things, and then a gust of wind helps it resume its journey. Does it keep track of its journey, or does it just enjoy the ride?

    I read a piece by Fred Wilson recently, which talked about failure, and making mistakes, and learning from them. It led me to thinking about the words and their connotations. Both the words signify an end result that didn’t turn out the way it was supposed to. It made me realise that these days I have to figure out destinations before i start. And I’m not talking about trips or vacations, its about daily life. There are expectations set – about how the week should go, how the work should be, how the weekend should be, how the movie should be, what i should write, how it should turn out, and so on. The expectations are about people too. When it doesn’t happen the way I want it, there is a disappointment.  This might sound obvious, but I don’t know how conscious each of us are about our dependency on the plans we make, the expectations from life and what we do, our version of ‘what should be’.

    And as this happens day after day, the habit and the conditioning gets stronger, till we don’t even pause to think where this is all leading to. I realise that the more the conditioning is allowed to settle, the more the pattern for the journeys will be set, and the more it will limit the journeys that can be had. So its not even about work or entertainment or even a way of life, it is about the way the mind has begun to function, the thought processes, the walls and the defense mechanisms that  increasingly seem to have a will of their own. Somewhere along the line, there’s also the concept of ‘hope’. Hoping for a better day, a better way of life, all within the structure that I have brought into being.

    What if I let go? One of Forrest’s lines go “I don’t know if we each have a destiny, or if we’re all just floatin’ around accidental-like on a breeze. But I, I think maybe it’s both.”

    Destiny, these days, raises a paradox for me. I could say “That is my destiny”, and work on something and perhaps achieve it. Success gives satisfaction and then I move on to the next objective. So its a bit like the destinations and the traps there. Or I could say “I’ll float and let destiny take its course”. But if I did that, can I be sure where I land and what I will be is my destiny? The best destiny possible for me. Heh? Ah there, control again. In either case, it seems a retrofit. Can i un-expect, not ‘control expectations’, just un-expect? Is that getting closer to objectivity?

    It is written. The post has to end. Did you expect it to end this way? Did I disappoint? 🙂

    until next time, nishkama karma points 🙂