Language

“You just don’t understand me!!”

 

The high-rise skyscrapers, the huge supercomputers, the swiftest Concorde are the first few technological marvels achieved by mankind that come to my mind. But what set us off in this direction, drawing a sharp line between humans and all other animals? 

Experts often say it’s the invention of language that gave us the edge. Our ability to communicate with each other using the spoken language allowed us to convey information in a near-perfect syntax that is difficult to misunderstand, and thus helped us build teams, raise empires and colonise Earth like never before. Research is still going on in order to establish if languages had a common origin or a handful of them originated separately at different times and in different places. I support the latter view because given a head full of intelligence, imagination and the desire to share the excitement, inventing a language is the most natural thing to do.

Thousands of years ago, there was a little honeybee who danced for both pride and joy at having found some nectar, and to attract the attention of the other members of his hive who had previously never really thought much of him. There was also a certain single crab who was waving his claws, desperately trying to attract the attention of the pretty females who had their noses high up in the air (only figuratively), pretending to look at the leaping whales in the distance as more and more whales joined in the action. Far, far away there was a fluffy white rabbit with red eyes who shuddered at the noises a female gorilla was making to pacify her husband who was doing nothing but sticking out his tongue, and the rabbit was so terribly concerned about her sisters that she repeatedly jumped on her hind legs to make loud tapping sounds that would scare her sisters away from that place. 

This happened all the time. And the little rabbits slowly learnt to tap their feet to warn all the others of possible danger. However, there was one particular rabbit called Miffy who was very naughty, or so they said, because she used to play pranks on all the other rabbits by tapping her feet even when there was no danger and thus sending them off scurrying frantically. They said she enjoyed it and that she had a hearty laugh each time she did that. Some even said that she was mean, that she misused the tapping to send off other rabbits whenever she found reserves of lush green food that she did not want to share with anybody else. 

Little did anyone realise that Miffy was grossly misunderstood. Contrary to popular belief, as a child, Miffy used to be a shy little rabbit lost in her own world. Busy building her own castles in the air, she never pretty much looked around to see what the other rabbits were up to. While the other rabbits learnt about the tapping, Miffy was busy chewing a particularly juicy patch. However, Miffy was an obedient child and always ran away from somewhere if her mother bid her to (by giving her a push). She never knew what they were running from but she could see the contagious fear in their eyes; she had never paid enough attention to realise that it was mostly the tapping that was followed by the scurrying. In fact, she did not know how the tapping sounded, for even though there were certain times when she heard them, she never remembered them, always diluting the memory with those of other jungle sounds.

Miffy wasn’t dumb, if that is what you might be thinking. She was pretty intelligent, curious and creative, but her energy was directed towards other things- those which most other rabbits found uninteresting. 

One cloudy day, Miffy was playing about in the dust under the banyan tree all by herself when quite accidentally, she discovered that she could make a peculiar sound by tapping her hind legs. She enjoyed it immensely. To add to her amusement, all the rabbits nearby scurried away in fear, as if there was some danger! So funny, she thought, and she used this newly learnt technique to scare the others whenever she wanted a little laugh.

Poor Miffy! She never understood why some of them disliked her so much!

Well, if Miffy was a human, someone could have just spoken to her but Alas! Anyway, that was a little story just to amuse you. Of course it’s not irrelevant, and you know that too. 

So coming back to our discussion, I want to ask you, how many languages do you know? If my alter ego was reading this article, she would have thought inside her mind: “English (fluently), Hindi (fluently), Bengali (fluently), Telugu (poorly), French (poorly), C++ (fluently)”, just as she had entered them in a certain website.

Is it, then, that a person who does not know any of these languages can’t communicate with me? Of course he can! Well, he could draw pictures (you must have surely played Pictionary sometime!), or he could make gestures with his hands (hope he knows more than one way of saying it when he wants me to go away :P ), or he could make expressions on his face, and, if he’s inventive, he could perhaps do much more...

Didn’t you ever feel ‘spooky’ when a friend of yours told you EXACTLY what was on your mind? Haven’t you ever had a conversation with a BSNL mobile number, where the signals suck so bad that most of the time you are just guessing what the other person is saying, and yet talk for an hour? And don’t you see movies where two humans of opposite genders bounce photons off each other’s retina and immediately know what to do next?

That’s some communication.

And theses definitely ARE languages.

Some Languages are taught in school. Some are instinctive. The rest are learnt by observation. There is no room for ambiguity in C++ (or is there?), few in the spoken languages taught in school (we call it subtlety and we love it), but the rest abound in ambiguity due to lack of any kind of standardisation and a general assumption that a child will ‘learn them naturally’. And therein lies its beauty, and therein lies its flaws.

The first step towards learning a language is association. You associate a certain representation with an object/idea. That representation could be a word, gesture, etc unique to that object/idea. (Can we give EVERYTHING a name? Scientists routinely christen new bacteria, the IUPAC has its own rules of nomenclature, but can you name a new ‘feeling’? It will most probably be named after you...lol). The kind of ‘association’ we are talking about is highly statistical. The more number of times you see two things happening at the same time, the more you establish a relationship between them inside your mind. In school, you teacher says ‘apple’ and shows you the picture of an apple. 

On somewhat similar lines, people establish causal relationships between various happenings. Characters, motives, etc are literally read off people by their appearance and behaviour. But these kinds of languages can be easily misunderstood.

And this is what bothers me at the moment.

Some people are very good at these unspoken languages. Especially those who are less mathematical (well, statistics say so). These are the people who are observant. I’ll in fact classify these people into two groups: one, who can read people’s moods/feelings and two, who can read people’s background/motives. Well, they have bothered to observe boring people, they deserve the cookies.

I’ll take the license to set off another tangent now...

Why do we standardise things? We want less chaos, less ambiguity. The Standard International Conference on Weights and Measures happened because we wanted to mean the same things when talking about quantities. The IUPAC met so that from hence two chemists will know exactly which chemical they are talking about.

Feynman, if I remember right, was very fond of using symbols of his own invention in Trigonometry. He sure provided a key for the reader but he soon realised that people in general couldn’t appreciate his work because they had a hard time reading it. They had learnt in their school to represent sine as sin, cosine as cos, not as some weird symbols. Feynman was in fact asking them to learn a new language before reading his book! He was, however, an intelligent fellow, and soon realised the merits of following a uniform language.

In the mean time, in a small town far away, around midnight, the police arrested a prostitute who was waiting in a dark alley in a red-light area. The girl vehemently claimed that she wasn’t one, but then, everybody does that on getting arrested, isn’t it? However, does waiting in a dark alley in a red-light area at midnight amount to prostitution? In the language the policeman has learnt, certainly yes. 

Now we have in the spotlight, a saga of tragedies that arise whenever the people involved do not speak the same language. This happens every day, isn’t it?

Let’s have a countdown. Top five.

5. Person who drinks/smokes/does drugs is definitely bad, without a second thought.

4. The girl wearing short dresses is surely trying to attract the attention of the guys, and she would welcome that attention. 

3. A person is ignoring another person because he/she is not interested in that person anymore.

2. That person who is wearing rich clothes and not mingling with the crowd must be very high-headed.

1. One person just behaves sweetly to another person from the opposite gender, and ...do I need to mention more?

0. (Sorry for cheating, I just had to add this point.) This person who doesn’t do things in the normal way is one heck of a rebel! Or a wannabe weirdo...

Although the above might be true in most cases, it can never be 100% deterministic. So as long as there is a tiny bit of probability of non-convention, why be prejudiced? ‘Prejudice’ is a wrong word here. I mean, of course, it is prejudice but it sounds too negative for its meaning in this context. Suppose you start investing with various people, over time you’ll understand which kind of people to trust and which kind not to. So this is some kind of knowledge gained based on statistical associations, on the basis of which you judge people/situations. It is also called ‘experience’. And it is very, very necessary. How else will you learn?

Isn’t it funny that in the above sentence I have, kind of, equated ‘prejudice’ and ‘experience’?

Trusting experience is good but one should always be ready to face exceptions.

Leaving this vagueness hanging about like that, maybe I’ll end this article now, on a personal note. I’m sleepy, anyway. I just hope you aren’t dozing off on your keyboard yet.

It goes without telling that I have written this article because I feel that I have been misunderstood and I have misunderstood the society all along. As the unspoken language of the society dawns on me, I am reluctant to accept it. It’s as if by the way you dress, the way you talk and the way you behave, you are telling something to the people around you- it’s a language. It’s never a reflection of who you are, really. It’s rather, what you want to tell others about yourself. If you want to tell people, “Hey, I’m rich!” you’ll wear fine clothes or casually talk about certain expensive jewellery, or you want to tell them, “Look, I’ve got really hot legs!” you’ll wear short clothes. It’s unlikely that you felt like doing it just like that, or perhaps your dress made you feel like some childhood hero of yours, or  they were gifted to you by someone special and you were just remembering them, though all of this is probable, and I sympathise with you if this is the case.(That doesn't mean I wouldn't wear short dresses to show off. It just means that it's not always the reason.)

At least, this solves an old puzzle for me: Why Sonia Gandhi wears sari when she has a figure good enough for jeans and she would look much better in them.

I feel I am beginning to understand this kind of language a little too late (I’m 20 now!!), and I have no idea that’s good or bad. I’m just feeling a little unsettled. I’m realising how big a role it can play: WHAT I PORTRAY. And with all my heart, I really dislike this language. It has caused people to have a lot of false expectations from me, and consequently the other way round. (Who is to blame: they, who misunderstood?  Or me, who 'told' things I never meant to?)

But I guess, even if I decide not to speak this language, it is good to learn it since majority of the people DO speak this language. And it’s a kind of practical knowledge and I might need to use it sometimes. I can just take consolation in the fact that I need not be the person I show people I am.

However, I want to continue exploring possibilities and interpretations but I am not sure if it will have very pleasant consequences, and also if it will be a foolish thing to do or a really noble one.

Well, who knows?

Mood

7^th September, 2011

1:32

Today I won’t stretch myself. Because I don’t want to. I feel strangely relaxed and a desire to pamper myself. It’s a good mood to be in, I’ll say, but I don’t know how long it will last. At the moment, frankly, I don’t care. But in retrospect, considering all that have been going on throughout the past few days, my mood swings haven’t been something you would call rare. I mean, at times I have felt, like, abnormally elated, you know, and so much in love with everything around me and proud to own the things that are mine. And quite quickly, a sudden fit of anger. Sometimes guilt. Sometimes jealousy. Sometimes hopelessness. Sometimes inferiority.  Sometimes claustrophobic. Sometimes... many times...

Throughout the day, I think, I’ve wanted to write at least four different articles at four different times, in four different moods, titled: Raw, B and M, Pursuit, Silver and Gold. I don’t remember what B and M meant, obviously it had a full form but I just wrote down B and M in the margin of my notebook and now I don’t remember. I’ll have to wait, I guess, and hope that the mood will come back, sooner or later. Hey ‘Cosmic Conspiracy’ could also be one!

Anyway, I am kinda happy, so I guess that suffices at the moment and there’s no need to elaborate. Actually, you know what, I cannot elaborate. Not because I don’t have words or I don’t have time or I don’t remember but because I am so full of things to write that I can’t write any of them! And if I do attempt to do so, I’ll get so much into that single thing that I won’t remember the others anymore.(Collapse of the wave function)

Okay, things are not as hopeless as they seem. You know what I’ll do? I’ll open several word files, one for each article, and I’ll randomly type whatever comes to my head regarding it. Things may get mixed, articles may converge, and it might be a mess. So be it. The storm can’t go on forever. It’ll finally settle down. For gravity if not for anything else.

# A beep, a message, and then total mood reversal. I won’t react now because I am expected to be sleeping. But what shall I do about the heartbeats?

Okay, I’ve written this new article called ‘Fast Forward’. It includes the Cosmic Conspiracy concept. AND it reflects my current mood! :P

It depends...

“It depends...see, suppose I...”

“Oh, cut it! That’s the typical diplomatic you!”

Did this happen to you, ever? It happens to me every other day. Like, you try to see both sides of a situation and you are called diplomatic. They say I’m not frank, I’m trying to appease, never giving a straight reply to anything. Pretending, hiding my own opinion, even among friends. Going roundabout, with no single answer to a question. Basically, not being me.

Darn! That’s me.

Whatever reply I’m giving is exactly what is going on in my head. If I am not giving a direct answer, it just means that according to me that question does not have a direct answer. They say I must have an opinion of course. Maybe I do, but there are always so many factors to be considered. Something might be good in some context, and not in another. But do ‘I’ like it or not? I might like it in some way, in some place, at some time, but you can’t give such things an absolute value, can you? And if you’re giving it an absolute value, you better mean it. And then, when you can see across to the other side so clearly and understand the implications, how can you escape? Your own opinion is bound to be affected.

But I was called a diplomat, always. So I thought I must be a really diplomatic person, you know, with all the subtle politics I’ve played in my home to maintain peace with, and between, my sister, my mom and my dad. My sister was very outspoken, and that did not have very peaceful consequences. No, I respect her way but it is not my way. And if things can be done in peace, what better way can there be?

So, what about friends? Quite obviously I do not have the same obligations here. Well, let’s see, I might want to know someone’s opinion without biasing them. Then again, I might not want to hurt them, so I say the same thing in a more acceptable manner. But in most cases I am so indifferent about the things they ask that I don’t even have an opinion of my own and so I think about the various possibilities associated and give an answer in each case. That’s when it’s serious. At other times, I just make fun of their questions.

Coming back to our discussion, there’s this girl, who calls me diplomatic and calls herself the rebel. But she cries when a professor has a bad impression of her, and then there’s this guy she does not want to talk to but she will not tell him that, she will tell him that she would love to talk to him but she is really busy at the moment. And yet, to everyone, I’m the diplomat and she is the rebel, she’s just being sweet.

Then one fine day, I meet this guy in some of these organisation meetings and we become great friends. Although I like the amount of effort he spends reflecting on things, I would really appreciate if he beat about the bush a little less and came to the point a little faster. ‘Little’ is just me being very diplomatic, or sweet, according to your liking. What happened once was that some junior girl had made a cartoon and she wanted to give it for the magazine. I missed the meeting that day for some reason, so I had called her to my room to have a look at the cartoon. I was simply awestruck by its dumbness and she departed, telling me that the guy, my friend, he had asked her to darken the shades a little before submitting it. If he, by any chance, meant it, he would be so dead. Well, he would be dead otherwise too, poor girl, she was going to colour it up for nothing! What a mean way to say ‘no’, I thought.

And I brought up this topic with him the next day, perhaps subconsciously using the adjective ‘dumb’ more number of times than usual. “Why the fuck can’t you just say what you mean?” And he retorted, “What do you want me to say? Should I have said her that this cartoon that you have made is so dumb? And hence we do not want it?”

I did not retort. Something struck me hard. Of course he couldn’t tell that to her, that would be mean. But he should have made the ‘no’ clearer, isn’t it? (Come on, girl makes her ‘no’ so clear to a boy but still he doesn’t get it. And over here you are making the ‘no’ so ambiguous and she is so passionate about it, how would she ever realise?) What I would have said, I thought...

It’s true, you know, someone has put in honest effort into something, and to her it might actually seem nice. To her, it might mean a lot. A ‘no’ should be very polite, I agree. But one shouldn’t confuse ‘polite’ with ‘ambiguous’. Okay, suppose I write an article and someone higher up does not want to publish it, there are many possible reasons: he might not like my writing style (It’s too informal I know, but I really can’t help), he might not like what I write about (he might find the subject irrelevant), he might not like the way I dealt with the topic (here he’s being biased). The first reason would hurt me the most. But if I am being refused I would sure want to know the real reason, it is very important to me. I would certainly consider it very disrespectful of him if he would have given me an ‘excuse’ and not a ‘reason’. Hmmm... Maybe I could have said her, sorry it’s not that funny, you must improve on the content next time. You know, criticism can do permanent damage to an artist. However, if you are 100% sure that the person in question is no artist, you can throw away your guilt.

The above situation was ridiculous, I know, but the way he thought, the reasons, they were not wrong. Here’s a diplomat, I thought. Worse than myself. Maybe, my friends feel the same way about me, what I felt about this guy. And like me, this guy is a diplomat, by his heart. There is no cure for such a disease.

There was another guy I knew, and a lot of times he just did things to satisfy other people. Normally I would have thought that’s gross but then I realise, to him, that is what life means. He does not have an identity without his friends, and their goodwill defines the person that he is. You can’t ask him to stop it and be himself because the moment he stops it, he won’t be himself.

Then again there’s this guy who claims he hates fake people but at the Subway Counter (it’s a food outlet) he asks the guy to put a little less tomato and more of jalapeno, and he has admitted that he says it just so that he doesn’t appear dumb. Okay.

There seems to be lots of Schrodinger’s cats at loose.

And then there’s this woman, who is accused of being selfish and egoistic, and sure she is, in some ways. But she balances it by doing things for everyone else behind their back, very selflessly, and so quietly that they never come to know and hence never appreciate. But that’s her.

Some people ask me, what your passion is. According to them, I am supposed to just do what I like and chill out the rest of the times by perhaps watching a movie. How do I explain to them that watching movies interests me in the least, and there is no one particular thing that I like?

You cannot apply the same formula everywhere. Everything doesn’t work for everyone. Every ‘natural’ behaviour is not ‘natural’ to everyone. Each individual must be seen in a light independent of prejudices past. Everyone applies different logic; everyone wants different things out of life.

I might sound very diplomatic, but what I say, I do mean. And I think THAT is more important, than giving a single answer that is correct 99% of the times. The other 1% still deserves to be talked about. (I guess that’s the reason I suck at ‘objective’ questions.)

I am not asking for much; just let me be what I am.

If I’m giving you an opinion, it is very likely not mine. But if I’m being diplomatic, it’s certainly me.

Tangled

It’s like, weird. Normally, I do have a title for an article in my mind, which pretty much sums up my feelings at the moment of conception of the article. But now, I have none. I guess my brain’s gone more disorganised than ever and I think so much that it’s difficult to untangle facts from imagination.

Tangled. Just like those wires behind the CPU I was cleaning today. Hey, let’s call this article ‘Tangled’. :P

So, yeah, I was cleaning up stuff today and if you know me closely you would know how obsessed I get while cleaning up stuff in general, intolerant of any speck of dust larger than perhaps few microns. I was at it continuously the whole day, and at night when dad came home, he scolded me like hell and asked me to abandon it immediately. And like always, very sentimental about whatever I’m doing, I started crying and I stubbornly continued to wipe a table with a scrap of cloth I had in my hand. Then he scolded me even more and I cried even more, deciding in my mind that I wouldn’t give him a goodnight kiss today. Then deciding, I would never kiss him today onwards. Never wish him goodnight. Never talk to him. And if he dares try and stop me I wouldn’t step into that room again or sleep on that bed. If he’d force me to go to sleep, I would sit in a corner of the living room and scream and throw tantrums and not allow myself to be taken to that room until I’ve cleaned it and satisfied myself to my heart’s content.

That was inside my mind. But all the while, I was just crying.

And then, since he allowed me to finish, I forgave him. I even kissed him goodnight. Actually, I wasn’t angry anymore. Why? I don’t know. Perhaps because I was happy I had finished cleaning.

But, you know, he wasn’t really scolding me all the while. He was scolding that obsessed part of me which pisses him all the time. He was scolding my mom, who doesn’t care much about the dust. He was scolding himself since he gave me the idea about cleaning up. And he was scolding himself for scolding me. But that was inside his mind. Outside, of course, he was scolding me.

But there is one theory that has shattered this time. A theory about compatibility. I always thought I was very compatible with my dad and I would want a husband who’s just like my dad. And over the years I’ve found out most girls think the same. However, I do not think it’s really practical. It just appears so. There are so many things, you know, which I just do to humour him. Same goes with mom. That’s because I never expected mom and dad to be logical and understand my point of view. So I really don’t care what they think of me as long as I’m able to keep them happy. But with a partner, I’ll definitely expect that understanding. And then it’ll all go wrong. I can’t always humour him in all his various moods, I’ll always tend to force him to look from my point of view and not invalidate it. Maybe I’ll also expect him to give me little gifts and surprises, something you never expect from parents. Surely my dad wouldn’t cater to those expectations; he’s actually quite boring in terms of romance. Or maybe that’s because he’s totally disillusioned about it by this age. And mom and dad, they’ve long forgotten the rosy days and just remember how much they sacrificed for each other, and how much the other hurt them. That in turn makes them more stubborn with each other. It’s pathetic, I would never want to end up like that.

I am crying a lot and ... Oh, well, I forgot what I was actually going to write.

Missing Magic

Dear Maddy,

Thanks a lot. People in general would have given me relationship advices but I don’t need them. I know them all, I just can’t abide by them. There was something else missing. And that something was what you reminded me of, today. I guess that was exactly what I was forgetting- everything settles down in the end. And like, properly.

I always thought so. It has always happened with me, believe it or not. Suppose I had forgotten to take the Hindi homework to school, the teacher would surely be absent on that day. This might sound funny and trivial, but there have been many such incidents, and that too in perfect coordination, all to my favour. And this has happened so often that I used to actually depend on them and take them for granted.

And then, I grew up. And I just forgot all about that magic.

That magic was my belief in my own sincerity. I knew I had done my best, given my maximum. I wasn’t unhappy with myself. I could forgive myself for small mistakes. I was confident. And this confidence worked like magic. I never gave up hope, so nothing ever seemed impossible.

I do not remember since when I began screwing up things and forgot all about this magic but I am sure it’s gonna come back because so many coincidences do not happen for nothing- I always get too many cushions to fall back, and good cushions, mind you, not cheap ones. :P

So, basically, everything will be fine. 

Love you,

Shreya

PS: As for first feeling satisfied, and then thinking there’s a lot more to achieve- I guess you had become too complacent because you might not have really give a serious thought to what you would do AFTER getting into IIT. And now, since you are thinking a lot, you realise how much far there is to go. Not a problem, take it slow. It’s quite good, actually, something to chase.

Hey! Trains are actually great places to think. After I started staying in hostel, I never found the kind of peaceful privacy one needs to... contemplate. I guess I’ve found it again, here, in the Hyderabad-Pune Express! :P

And oops! I forgot what awesome sentence I had got in my head that time, which I was going to put up as my status in fb. It’s OK. I might remember it again sometime later, but it won’t be relevant then. 

Right now, I’ll finish up all my incomplete articles. Quickly before I forget! :P

My Favourite Colour is Blue

It isn’t windy any more outside, like it used to be in October. It had also rained sometimes then. And at other times, they were the trees dancing. I do miss it all but that is not the reason I have been hesitating to press the ‘send’ button on my laptop screen. Yesterday, I was very excited about the idea of this summer project in biophysics. I typed the mail, made a CV and got the recommendations. The internet wasn’t working in the night, so I wasn’t able to mail it. But now, I am not sure if I want to. I mean, am I going to pursue that subject? If not, then this is totally useless. Sure it’s exciting and all. But useless.

What could be useful? Something that I like, that I’ll be committed to. But how do I know what I really like?

I like particle physics. I like Quantum. I like electronics. I like organic chemistry. I like genetics. I like ecology and evolution. I like thermodynamics. I like relativity. I like spectroscopy. I like cell biology. And systems biology.
And then my phone rings...

“Hey, it’s nice but it’s pink. No offence but you do know that we want to please people from both the genders alike. Think upon it. I know you like pink but, well, I’m sure you’ll come up with something better...err...something more universal?”
“I do not like pink! In fact I hate pink most of the times. It’s sickly sweet. BUT PINK LOOKS GOOD THERE. That’s the only reason it’s there and I do not want to change it!”
“Alright, alright. We’ll see about that. It comes as a shock though, that you don’t like pink. Anybody would have taken that for granted, seeing that a lot of your belongings are pink in colour. So what’s your favourite colour then? Blue? (Laughs)”
“Of course it IS blue. Those things are pink because they look good when they are pink. But they are not ALL the things.”
“Okay, chill! I’ll suggest you look around yourself and see how many of your things are actually blue in colour, and then decide the validity of your statement.”
“You are not telling ME what MY favourite colour is.”
“Right. The work at hand, think of an alternative. We want to avoid pink.”
Roger.

My roomie, at that time, was sending a mail for some astronomy-related project. Aah... Astronomy! Some cosy rack back home must still be filled with all the astronomy books I had bought in my 7th and 8th classes. It was infatuation. Pure romance, before I decided I wouldn’t become an astronaut, and after some more time, not an astronomer either. Did I ever DECIDE that? Hold on! I’ll have to go to flashback mode. Perhaps I’ll be able to find some kind of an answer.

I think it was back in class 2 when I and my then best friend, we had decided to become scientists. We called ourselves that, and we solemnly mixed muck, shampoo, sugar, leaves and the like, changing our formula every weekend, hoping to invent something extraordinary. She has moved to commerce now but I’m still on. What I realise is that she moved to commerce because she was thinking seriously. I never did.

I was scoring the highest marks in mathematics, so I loved the subject. Then, in middle school, I was doing well in history, far more than anyone else. This was when I briefly considered doing archaeology. I was so fascinated with Egypt and all that I went to the library everyday to look it up (I can assure you I have enough material to write a book on the topic). And during the classes, I doodled myself among the pyramids discovering some great secrets of the past, which I converted to some sort of games with my sister once I got home. I still like Egypt but I stopped thinking about archaeology ever since my dad told me a strict and justified ‘no’, and I knew what he was saying made sense even though I wished otherwise.

Thus was born the concept of ‘utility’. But my love for mysteries remained. Science, sort of, fit that bill. In any case, it was one of the very few professions I knew about, my dad being a scientist. And for reasons I do not understand, money-matters never seemed to bother me as much as they did the people around me. I lived in my own, blissful world. Perhaps I still do. Perhaps I have been pampered too much. I don’t know.

Academic achievements apart, I started performing very well in Physics, and I had always liked it too. It seemed so exciting, and more importantly, so true and perfect and beautiful. Now that I remember, I actually loved it! This newfound love and newfound confidence sustained itself through the next few years, till class 12, around which time it became a sort of overconfidence, and a consequent “under-confidence” after some exams. All for that elusive target, a good rank in some very hyped exam, and a good college. All the old romance of Physics was forgotten.

As of today, I find myself in a Science college. I am miles away from mathematics and I do not intend to go back. I like Physics but I do not know enough, my confidence wavers. I like Chemistry, I am good at it- but that’s only the theory part. I am good (well, that’s something relative) in Biology and I like it and I’ll go there eventually perhaps, but not now.

Although my interests have been changing over the past, at some given time it was something definitive. Now it’s not. That scares me. I want to hold on to my past interests, just like I’m holding on to “My favourite colour is blue”. Yes, my favourite colour used to be blue but there have been seasons of brown, seasons of green, seasons of black, seasons of maroon and seasons of violet. The pinks were sporadic, though. I do not remember why I used to like blue so much but yes, it’s good that I liked ‘something’ so that I could give a truthful answer to a trivial question.

Today, if you ask me what my favourite colour is, I will still reply without a thought: blue. Sometimes, life is easy when you have got no choices. You don’t need to worry about making a right one.

If you trust your sanity you will know that if you had once made a conclusion in your right mind (and not while you were experiencing some emotional spasm- this is where the problem is), you must have had some very good reasons. Failure to recollect or understand those reasons under present circumstances does not mean you must abandon that conclusion. On a paper full of variedly coloured splashes, you might not be able to locate that spot you could once see distinctly when the paper was white. But that spot, it is still there.

I need to find my blue among the subjects, that too before the fifth semester. Sometimes I think it does not matter what I choose because in whatever I choose, I’ll still look for what I have always been looking for and I know I’ll find it, no matter what it is. In fact, the choice might seem trivial after some years, but it bothers me now. Just like this hair falling over my face. Oh I just can’t wait for the stipend! I badly need a haircut. Meanwhile I’ll have to do with these hair bands. I have two hair bands: one blue, one pink. I’d bought the pink one for my sister but then decided to keep it. My wardrobe- just one pink top. Most of them are blue. There’s a lot of black too. And Maroon. My bed sheet, the notebooks upon it, the pen, the pen-stand, the files: they’re all some shade of blue.

Hey, I must really like blue.

Empty

A fairy tale so beautiful...
Oh! It has all shattered!
I know the broken pieces
Because they pierce and bleed...





I wonder about in a wasteland
Among the ruins of the fort
We had built together.

Darkness comes over
But I do not have the lamp with me-
I had given it to you.

You are not around.
Many months have passed.
I am tired of this darkness!

I can see a glimmer in the distance
But it is not you.
Should I go, or should I still wait for you?

Undecidedly I proceed
To have a glimpse, at least
But oh! What is this happening?
A nearby bush is tugging
At my mantle
And I cannot go.

I begin to undo my mantle
I’ll have to leave it behind.
Now I move forward.

It looks attractive
Like a doorway to another place-
Beautiful, shiny, lighter, happier.

“But don’t open the door!”
Says a voice in my head,
“You never know what’s on the other side.”

“I can keep the door open”, I argue,
“And come back if I don’t like it.”
“Dear, you cannot come back”, says the door,
“You have to choose.
But sure, you can open me a little
And take a good look inside.”

It indeed is beautiful!
As beautiful as my fort used to be
Once upon a time.
Yet I can’t breathe freely,
Revel in its beauty or glory
Because my eyes are taking a critical look.

A ghostly shadow of long-lost feelings
Creep back into my heart
And I am scared.

I had felt this way before
When we began building our fort.
Only, it was stronger.

But I don’t care.
I want to go,
I want to feel it all again!
I want to be happy!
There is nothing happy
About the way I am living here.

I cannot call you, you cannot respond,
Our heartbeats don’t resonate anymore.
For what formality am I staying here?

It’s all empty! Empty!

I know you are there
Although you never come and see me.
That makes it even worse.

I had thought
We were building the fort together
But you stopped abruptly
And started building another cell
For you, and only you.
You thought I wouldn’t notice.

Why can’t you understand
This fort means nothing to me
Without you?

And so the fort crumpled down.

Of course you came to see me
Pretending everything was fine.
Perhaps you cared.

But I hid myself.
I didn’t want to see you.
I couldn’t take it.

It is not so bad now
Because in this desert of feelings
Nothing feels bad, nothing good.

I am standing on the threshold.
Perhaps, I must leave now.

It’s the memories- they weigh me down
But I won’t be fooled anymore
By this mirage of promises.

I must go.
Inside your cell you may be happy
But it’s all a broken place for me.
Yet I stayed- for the sake of a broken dream.

I am standing on the threshold.
Perhaps, I must leave now.

What if this breaks you?
I don’t want to hurt you anymore.
I know you are already hurt by my behaviour.
And I am hurt with yours.

I am standing on the threshold.
Perhaps, I must leave now.

Won’t you call me back?
And start building this fort with me again?

I am standing on the threshold.
Perhaps, I must leave now.

Are you calling me?
Should I wait?


----
Oh, thanks for bearing with this depressing poem. I wrote it very very long back, actually. Was too shy and all to post it. But a friend of mine happened to read it accidentally. Since its no more a secret, I thought I might as well share it.

By the way, she liked it. :P

I’ll finish it by tomorrow, yaar...

“That’s cool!”
“Me too!”
“I’m up for anything new!”

These phrases happened to follow the mention of a daily game of football. Scholars all, wrapped up in blankets, fervently discussed and almost fixed the timings of the games and the teams involved, while the winds continued to ruffle the pages of books lying open on the bed.
“So we start tomorrow?”

Interestingly, all ‘good’ things in life always start tomorrow, or they will be accomplished by tomorrow. And “tomorrow” seems to have attained a broader meaning than its dictionary definition, broad in terms of the number of days included. Procrastination, the anthem of student life, is here to stay. And after putting aside my incomplete Physics record, I wonder: Why?

Why didn’t I buy a refill today? It’s alright, I’ll buy it tomorrow, and the shop is so close-by I can buy it anytime.
I should have recharged my phone today but I can’t. The shop is so damn far away!
Shall I read the chapter Sir has taught us today? Or I’ll read it tomorrow, its better I read the chapter entirely after it’s completed in the class.
Oh! I remember I have to give in an article for the magazine. I’ll do it by tomorrow, for sure.
My sister gave me some very good movies, I must watch them someday.
The people outside are calling me to play but I am too busy. I have to do some Math. I suck at Math.

Hey, I see her coming. I must ask her...
“Hi! I was looking for you. Could you lend me that book of yours? Thanks. Hey, don’t you think Natural selection is not a scientific theory because it is not falsifiable? Never mind. Tell me what exactly did that guy say to that girl that day?”

This is the sad story of a student.
Sad. Not because something tragic has happened but because nothing ever happens.
And we come back to our question: why?

When I was a kid, my grandfather used to tell me a story about a rabbit and a tortoise. I’m sure everyone has heard of it, where the rabbit quickly reaches near the finishing line of the sprinting race and then becomes lax and decides to take a short nap. The tortoise in the meantime slowly crosses the finishing line and thus unexpectedly wins the race. So have we all become overconfident like the rabbit?

Paulo Coelho, the philosopher, says that when we get too close to our goals or dreams or whatever, a fear of realising that dream arises within us. We suddenly start feeling guilty and forget all our hard work of the past. We commit a series of blunders and lose it all.

My dear friends let me tell you, this is all bullshit. Our problem is that we are just plain lazy. And the sad part is that we revel in it. It’s the best excuse: Sorry, I’m lazy. What can I do? God made me that way.

I should not ask a student to go against his nature, but if you are not counting this as a solution, there is none. Blame God or blame your fickle teenage hormones. If you are happy with your life, that’s good enough. Or else, it’s only you who can do something about it. Think again.

Confused

I'd written this around the middle of our second semester

There was some sort of frustration. However, a blast of air, rich with the scent of rotting tamarind, swept it away to some corner of the mind. The other things came into focus.

I was returning to the hostel, from mess, seated near the window of our IISER bus. The night was cool. The humid burden that was building up in the air since the past few days was finally shed this afternoon. The rain-washed earth gave off the most delicious fragrance. As an immediate aftermath I was high. I kept chattering, even while I was in the process of spreading my bacteria on the agar medium, or while I was preparing my molybdenum blue. I wasn’t yet tired. Till I remembered I had got work to do.

And work always consisted of much more stuff to do than the ‘real’ thing. I didn’t go much further from here.

Then I reflect, things were not so tough back home (Oh, how I miss home!) when I used to go to a school I loathed then. But I miss it now. All the memories whizz through the mind. I realise there was really no valid reason to hate school.

And then I came to this Institute, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research. I was very excited. I had seen the wonderful instruments around. I had seen the pictures in the ‘Kalpa’ magazine and some light-hearted printouts stuck up near the PhD experiment tables. Wow! I am going to become a scientist! And that too, a creative one, I thought. It will be wonderful working with these people I see around. And since this is a new institute, it is going to be us who are going to shape it. We will have so much scope! So much freedom, so much opportunity.

The first semester seems to have passed in the wink of an eye. Everything was new, everyone was enthusiastic. There seemed to be so much time and yet not enough. We always wanted to do something though we did not know what.

Why don’t I feel the same now? It is the second semester. I am beginning to feel homesick. Things around seems to have changed. And I do not know for how long this is going to remain. Some sort of boredom, some sort of emptiness has set in and I am still trying to fight my way through- this must not be an equilibrium.

I ask myself, why? A flood of thoughts respond at the same time and in the commotion my answer is lost. I ignore it and go on, trying to keep my mind occupied with neutral things, like science.

I see people around, lost in their work, not caring to reflect. I envy them. I wonder, did they ever have to face the confusion I feel at the moment. Or am I the only one confused?