Nocturnal Programmer

There are reservations for people who had circumstantial accidents in their lives which would not have been afflicted from their own mistakes though they tried hard to bring things together. Reservations such as not to contaminate the beautiful life of someone, who never had an accident, by associating into their lives. They can never be understood and accepted by such naivetes whose world is too ideal. But accidents do happen, and people might be inescapably pushed to the realm of the handicaped. Hope is when two such people chance upon one day, and save eachother’s lives…

A photosynth of my landlady Preeti’s Garden. This is on the floor where I stay. I’d recently come across this amazing technology which is ironically from Microsoft. Maybe they just got some kids from Washington state univ a computer or something, but anyway, this is amazing. This synth is composed of 115 pictures, well, I could’ve done with less as karan would say, but I just mixed in all pics of my multiple efforts together and got this to complete a 360. Again, this is simply brilliant

2AM Sangumugam Beach, Trivandrum, India

He was too old to cry. Wisdom they say. An attribute of the old. His mind was rather as calm as the sea, yet not without the waves, a turbulence that is constant as long as the sea remain. They say, the sea has the power to wash away all worries of living, just being near it, watching it. Rhythm. Teaching the mind to resonate as you watch it rise and ebb away. Rhythm. Like learning music. Like being trained in the army to march. Like an athlete’s footwork. Done again.. and again… until you look like you were born that way. It is easy for the world to pass it of as a natural talent. Lazy world, what do they know about hard work. About life’s destiny. About dedication to commitment.

It has been 6 long hours since that destined hour since his love of life orbited past his skies again. An orbital path never expected to cross again in his lifetime. Across the same skies he’d look up to pray for peace every night. Damn. Pagan skies. He wondered if early christians were love lost.

She’d been there briefly. Scrolling around the beachside with her new family. A conversation of confessions. About how her girly confidence was long lost and she thrown into the world of womanly uncertainty. Ah.. the days of confidence. He was just one of the flowers the frolicking girl who ran around the fields plucked to beautify her hair. How innocent is growing up, one would write about. But the flower was young, not a drop of honey broken, not a full days sunlight relished.

Was it enough to let her find life her own way. Was it enough to save her when she got lost? He wondered if every person were to learn everything from scratch and repeat history in his own world, how can the world pass of anything as common. Earth turns. Sun rises. Everybody falls in love. Everybody dies. History by design is bound to repeat itself. He wondered if extraordinary was just happenstance or calculable only in fiction.

And then his phone started ringing. Jasmine.

“Hello Jasmine.. Have you landed?”

“Yes, just now. Damned fog, an eight hours delay. Were you sleeping in the car waiting?”

“No I’m at the beach side”

“What are you doing there? Getting drunk seeing crabs hanging out having late night parties in their underground joints?”

“Hmm I wish… I was rather just missing you”

“Yes. Me too. It is very hard to be married and be away like this Vijay. I only wish I could get this course over with fast, so that I can be with you all the time”

“Alright, I’ll come around to pick you while you check out”

“Ok… See you soon David”

“Who is David?”

“Oh sorry Vijay, its this friend of mine whom I met briefly while at the airport waiting. I just accidentally spilled out his name for you.”

“Ha.. Alright. I thought you met him briefly”

“No actually… he came to drop me too to Chennai airport. You know he sort of works with me in the labs sometimes, so we are just friends”

“Yeah ok. Come fast Keerthi, I’m waiting for so long”

“Who is Keerthi?”

“Hah hah.. I was just kidding”

“Bad boy!!! Fine, I’m walking over Kerala now. Come over fast”

“Ok. See you soon…” Click

He was bored. Looked at his watch. 5AM. Day Break. His wondered if loyalty was just a perception. He couldn’t care less. He walked back to his car singing- “Sunrise… sunset… sunrise… sunset… simply flow the days…”

The sky. Bright sunlight.

A crowded cafeteria. White spots in the vision afterwards.

Boredom.

She was looking at her friends talking over lunch talking something. She asked herself if she was having problems with memory these days that recent events seem too vague as if they’d happened too long ago. Is it her body confused from all that chemical imbalance induced from all that frequent drinking lately? She wondered lazily.

She had difficulty in breathing well… a sort of suffocation as if she was depressed. She wondered why she was overcome with such intense a bout of boredom. Was it a craving? The precursor to habitual addiction? She tightened her lips while her mind drifted into a resolution to try and restrict drinking only to friday nights.

She was woken up from her reverie from the natural change of scenes as notified by her vision, being in a busy workplace cafeteria. She was amused how visual notifications can also wake a person from a day dream, the eyes being open unlike that of a sleep dream. She lifted her head and looked around , lips still tight , releasing a breath that she didn’t know she was holding. People talking. Flirting. The happiness in the faces of people as in from a tinge of adventure of the attempts at being casually unfaithful. Her mind drifted again into its dark miserable existence. She had a fear for such tendencies exhibited by people. Wondered if her love of life felt a similar sense of adventure and happiness when he tried to play what he wanted to be just a casual attempt at what many pass of as fun. Was he a weak heart? Or was it a physical need for variety in living? Wondered why such memories remain so etched unlike the rest. Questions she feared would remain unanswered to her grave. Grave. She feared old age. Wished she died young.

“Alamel!!”, she heard Karthik shouting, “Come, lets go back, its been too long a lunch break”

Karthik. Hmmmm. Somebody cares. She felt important. Wondered when her human nature would conveniently choose to forget such good done by him. She despised human nature.

“Alamel, how are you feeling after all that happened yesterday night?”

Yesterday. She strained to remember. Felt very odd why she was so forgetful lately.

Distributed storage. She broke a smile as the phrase occurred in her mind. She always believed that human beings don’t really have to remember anything, because of their abilities to social interactions and utilization of tools, information could be stored in different places or in people. She always performed malpractice in exams with small pieces of paper, following the very same philosophy. At this point she reasoned to retrieve aid from his memories.

“Karthik”, she lazed to outsource reminiscence, “I only remember the part were we got drunk too much and while we were driving back, you wanted this chewing gum…. which I took from my pocket…. and it fell down…… and I was distracted from driving, and I nearly hit a garbage truck… ha ha.. It was so dangerously adventurous. Cant remember a thing. How did you people sneak me into my room without waking that crazy landlord?”

“Ha ha.. interesting… funny how physical abuse can affect the mind so much”

“Oh-no. Not another complex metaphysical discourse. At least, not in my dazed mindset.”

“What? Are you kidding me? I was just joking about getting back to work after the break. Wondered if you’d subconsciously walk back to our workplace when I said that. You see, I’m experimenting with this new thing we are into”

“Hmm. I guess I’d so much to drink yesterday; I can’t even decode your surreal jokes. Can you believe it? So you meant the bill? I thought you’d paid, I was about to ask you that anyway”

“Alamel…this is going to take a real while getting used to. Lets see how lost you are. Try and answer this totally simple, non-surrealistic, general awareness question.”

“Okay, shoot. But don’t ask me who the vice president of India is. I hope you know I don’t really read news papers that much”

“Hmm”, he shrugged, “it’s a much simpler question actually.” He’d a sudden strange concern in his tone and expression with the brows, as if he was a doctor about to inform his patient about childbirth or death, “What do you think you are now?”

R: “Hey.. look over there, thats Beauty!”
N: Shrugs.. “you’ve bestial tastes pal…”
R: hah.. “Well.. maybe you got it wrong, but then her real name is Beauty”
N: hmm “theres still hope for you…”

following this conversation, I (R) happened to meet with a videographer who is into local tv serials, but direly aspires to be a world class movie maker. it was a day with a topic on beauty

Ever since the rock star ran away, the “durbar” has been shut down of its usual daily proceedings. Jack Black’s, School of Rock, seeded some thought for one such conclave.

Let me quote from the movie

One day, Ravindranath Jr, a friend of mine, showed me a poem he wrote. In it he was making a comparison to Icarus who tried to fly with wings of wax seeking the sun, only to fall down when he reached eventually.

He was basically referring to life’s difficulties and that the wings of wax symbolizes our hopes, our aspirations, the dreams,the illusions; and we search for the sun. That is the truth. But the irony is that, if we ever actually find the sun, the wax will melt and we fall like Icarus, but we still are on that quest. Icarus represents the metaphysical rebellion within us, like he himself put it.

Sometimes signs just dont seem enough, and god sends his messengers to deliver a personal message to you. This is a very strange thing. Like one day there was this french journalist who wanted to write an article on linux as a threat to microsoft. Somehow he was routed to me, and I had to speak out philosophies to him about why this could be a possibility and why it couldnt be. He seemed rather not amused or “converted” even after my usage of strong vocabulary to maximise the effect of the delivery about the feeling of the revolution. Then, he told me something very strange. Rather a very unpleasantly out of the world comment.