Zarquon is not very punctual

Life, I say, is like, well, Vicks Vaporub.

Didn’t you expect nonsensical metaphors here? You haven’t read my earlier blogs then. Please do.

Okay, so back to Vick Vaporub. You rub it on your chest, your neck, around your nose, may be if you mistook it for Zandu balm, then on your head. You do it when you are sick. It makes you feel better. And it makes you better by evaporating itself, when it leaves your skin.

Life is something that you rub on yourself superficially. Haven’t you heard people (especially brown-haired, satin-skinned, beaming-eyed woman) telling fat nerdy bearded geeks - “You’re sick, Get a Life!!”. So typically those geeks would try and get a life… by rubbing it superficially… they’ll go and swim, play a game of pool, or watch a movie, or chase girls, play guitar, sketch, paint, flirt, write, drink, drive, act, debate, code, design, orkut (v), discuss etc… Drinking following driving in the above line is purely incidental. (To be legally safe, the author does not take any responsibility for the urges emanating in the readers mind)

So yes, it seems they got some life rubbed on themselves. But they still feel sick. Because, life, like Vicks Vaporub, makes you feel better only when it leaves your superficial skin. When it evaporates.

But, why?

Because, it has to get in to you, to be able to treat you, to be able make you feel less sick. And it can get in you only when it evaporates, only when it enters your lungs through your nose. It opens up what is clogged inside. That something, which is preventing you from breathing freely. That something, which is making the head heavy. It enters you, settles down and you start breathing freely.

Life is also like that. There is nothing intrinsic about those get-a-life-actions that will give you a life. Let it be, putting some colors on a canvas, or some charcoal on paper, or letting the visuals of a movie reach your eyes, or letting your body float on a swimming pool, or writing poetry for a woman, or putting your leg hard on the accelerator while driving on an empty highway. There are no measurable units of life in any of those acts. They are just superficial rubbings. You have to let it evaporate, let it leave your body, and enter you on its own.

But you still have to start by rubbing it in, and have faith that it will get inside you on it self. And remember that it would not get in, if you don’t rub it, to start with. You have to make the effort and let it go, and have faith that it will enter you … relief will follow

Good punch line for the Procter and Gamble guys … right? “Relief will follow”

So, life, like Vick Vaporub, being volatile, will leave your skin and go onwards and upwards, and finally get inside you.

So, what’s the conclusion of the metaphor? It is not new. Somewhere in the planes of Haryana, some 5,110 years ago, a saarathi told a dhanurdhar - “Do your job well”

This is some page.

Somethings are known about it. Such as, it is some page. But, there are some other things which are not known about it. Like, someone must have written it. We don’t know who that someone is. There might be someone who might tell us who that someone is, but we don’t know this someone as well.

Anyways, lets talk of something else about this some page. So, it was written at some place. Though, we don’t know where this someplace is, but we surely know that it was a place. We say this with some certainty, because things are usually written ‘at’ places.

We thought for a while, and asked ourselves - is there something else we can say about this page with some certainty. And we found that it was written on some day. Perhaps, may be on some night. Or maybe some such time which can’t be classified as day or night without some error in judgement. Or maybe because you can always find some place where there is night right now - and also some place where there is day.

Hey, wait - there might be places where there is no concept of day or night!

Okay, so we conclude that this page was written at some time.

Further, there must be something this page was written for. You know, some purpose, some tangible outcome the writer was looking to achieve. But then, we cant say this even with some degree of certainty - there are some people, who do somethings, without a purpose.

By this point, we surely have reached a stage to talk something about the content of this some page. So this some page, predominantly talks somethings about itself. It is fairly egotistical. Well, though it is sprinkled with a lot of self questioning gestures, so reminiscent of the ageless wisdom of the East.

Some of us might find it somewhat absurd. Some others might find some of it absurd. Still others might find it thoroughly absurd.

The logician might stop midway in the page because of fear of finding paradoxes due to the self references. The Vedantin might be pleased by seeing ’self’ being discussed so many times. The Buddhist or the agnostic might be thrilled by the importance given in this page to the ‘uncertain’ pronoun ’some’. The skeptic would detest the ’some’ and would strongly affirm in a knowledgeable sounding tone that ‘nothing can be known about this page’.

The physicist, might find the affirmative singular used in ’some place’ incorrect. He would be happy with the ‘fact’ that the page might have been written at many places with varying degrees of probability. The chemist, well what can a chemist ask or think? Let me think of something - may be “what ink was used?”. Well forget it. The mathematician might find this page amusing as it might remind him of the Cheshire Cat saying - “We all are mad here. You are mad. I’m mad.” No wonder Lewis Carroll was a mathematician - they all are mad.

The grammarian should find this page ‘correct’. They found this correct. The linguist would frown at the page as utter abuse of language as a means of expressing nothing. The poet might smile. The muse might blush. She would have blushed anyways - without this page.

Heisenberg was right - somethings can’t be known. And, Salvador Dali would love it.

This page has many stakeholders, it is hard to say what it is, it can be passed as anything, it is accessible on the web, it is created after 2005, it is useless, and it is blogged - Tim O’Reilly may find it Web 2.0.

This is one of the many ends of this page. The other one is above. Some people count two as many, sometimes. Others don’t. We are not others.

I know it is enough frustration you have already gone through if you are reading this line. Rest assured it was not to irritate you. I just needed a break from sanity.

Free. The mind is free today. Free not as in free gift voucher. but free as in free India or free software. Okay… like free India… free software sucks. Well whatever, the mind is free today and blissful. It feels nice when you do things the right way. When all the wrongs that happen, don’t really count, because you know you have done the right thing.

So it all started with me staring at the LCD of my laptop for some one and half hours and not doing anything. Then suddenly, something happened. As if the Buddha decided to sit beneath the Bodhi tree, or as if Gabriel found the address of the new prophet, or as if the left eye of the princess turned red because a mosquito bit it. Basically, something STRANGE happened while I was staring at the LCD purposelessly for an annoyingly-long amount of time. I took a deep breath and had some water. No no, that was not the strange thing. Then decided to go for a walk, it was strange, but still not strange enough to be THE STRANGE thing. Then somehow I noticed a ‘chai ki tapri’ near my home which somehow has always missed my attention like so many other things in Mumbai, and though i happen to cross it daily. So today I decided to give that tapri the due respect. I went and asked for chai, even this was a strange enough act for a Mumbaikar, but still not strange enough to be THE ABSOULTE STRANGE thing. I had the chai and as I put the typcial cutting chai glass with the dark sediment of chai-patti remaining at the bottom of it, on the half broken counter on the tapri, i realised that I haven’t brought the wallet. Even this was strange for me, I remember carrying my wallet everywhere… yes everywhere… to toilets as well. So it was a substantially strange event, may be good enough to conclude that I was out of my mind when I left home for the walk, but yet not strange enough to be the ABSOLUTE SO_MUCH_TALKED_ABOUT STRANGE thing. So I just asked for udhar, to my surprise the guy said ‘ok’. Strange… right?? but just good enough to say that Mumbai is a strange city.. not good enough for the COVETED ABSOLUTE STRANGE thing spot.

So have I successfully created the atmosphere where everybody is either eagerly wiating to hear the strange thing OR nearly convinced that I’m going to do an anti-climax here? I request the second category to not to mistrust me. I know I’m really good at cracking PJs. But this one is not one of them. PJs are supposed to be poor, not strange. So now, are you eager to ask me what the strange thing was?

Well I can tell you, but what’s the point if you go from this place without getting annoyed.

And I’ve discussed with my lawyer. You cannot sue me for it. ) The constitution of India gives me the liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship. And you can consider the above post as any of them. After all, India is a free place… just like my mind… Isn’t it?

BTW, isn’t this post strange?

And, will this post qualify as surreal? Its a new concept I want to evangilise, surreal blogging… any takers?

:))

No!! Alcohol has made no contributions towards this post. It entirely is the intellectual property of Nikhilesh Ghushe.

There was a knock on the door. I opened the door. There was no one there. I was oscillating between the thoughts of whether I’m overhearing or is there somebody playing a game with me. This was not happening to me for the first time. And I failed to remember since when this was happening to me. But there was something inside telling me that I’m waiting for someone; whom I didn’t know.

Next day, the knock was there again. I chose not to open the door this time. And it never knocked again, at least for a long time.

It is a new day today. It has been some four and half years since I heard the knocks first. And there is again a knock today. But, on a different door now. I’ve moved a lot since that time, and I live behind a new door now. But this time I want to open the door. Probably somewhere deep inside the feeling remains, that perhaps I should have persisted with my routine of opening the door. Probably the last time I decided not to open it, someone must have been there … waiting. And I walk towards the door, with my hand close to the knob, and stop.

I want to capture this moment. There may be a time, when I hear the knocks again. Or perhaps no one would ever bother to knock my door again. Or may be someone is really there to be greeted. Whatever, I just want to log this thought and freeze it in time. And that’s why this post.

See the coins in the back denoting the conventional material world, wealth, success. And the ash tray, the cigarette denoting succumbing to the gray. The gray overrides the conventional. It is closer to you, more prominent in the frame.
You give up the laughter (the joy of the conventional game) and the lies (the rules of the conventional game), and transition from the material mattering so much to where it just does not matter anymore. It hurts at first to end that game you played with your sweat and your blood. But you know it does not have any more for you. It will not follow you. It’s not your fascination anymore. The old rules are gone. The old game is over. You are no longer trying to die. Perhaps, in some ways you are dead already. The passing over to the new world. The End.
(Words by Sumit Mudgal, a friend)
(Image: taken by Sumit’s cam by me, June 2005. Edited by Sumit)

Today is an important day of my life. I just want to remember the date. That’s why this post. There is nothing else to say.

Ya I know there is a risk that I may not be able to remember the fact that I need to remember something, but anyways if that happens then the thing I want to remember must have lost its importance. So its fair.

I feel like zaphod beebelbrox. Hell!! now I feel like Sandy. Read this.

I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it.