The Great Gatsby.....Trekking time....

Read this book last week....loved it...the story, the style of writing...F.Scott Fitzgerald has written a gem of a book, IMHO.
Its a thin thin novel but i was totally absorbed in it till the end.

Went for a trek last weekend, to a place called Harishchandragad, in Maharashtra. The 3 day trek was good exercise and a lot of fun.
Rode in a truck, slept under starry skies, lived in a cave, climbed a lot, relieved myself out in the open, saw a snake and a scorpion at arms length, peered off cliffs at 4700 feet above sea level..and generally had a ball of a time.

Its crazy how the clammy feeling of fear can blank out everything from your mind...even if only temporarily.

It would be great to share those scenes with with you but given my abhorrence for cameras, I will have to wait for science to be able to print memories from the recesses of my brain in order to do that. :)

Anyways, have a great friday tomm and a great weekend ahead.

Peace,
Me.

2 quotes from the Great Gatsby :

1. Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope.

2. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning——
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

When it rains..it pours

I travel in a local train to work and since its a good half hour everyday...i generally have something to read or listen to inorder to bide my time.... I have a small mp3 player that has some songs that i generally listen to when in the mood...I am a bit careless with my player and generally tend to drop it every so often....(No respect for hard earned money, my parents always complained)

I recently dropped my player at the platform on Dadar station and something really unique happened to it since then...Probably some component got badly shaken up but the net effect of that is that now....when i play a song, the lead singer / music takes a backseat and the backing vocals / music is pronounced for most of the songs। I am guessing that the wiring for channel which carries the input for the leads somehow has got messed up in the fall....

The best part of this is that I am now seeing my old songs in a completely different light...the same song can sound so distinctly familiar yet distant when the voice that you are hearing is that of the backing vocalists...and the lead is but a shadow in the background। Ditto for the instruments.

I am also hearing notes that I never heard in the song ever (There is only so much clarity you can get on a cheap portable player :)).

The feeling of seeing what was once centrestage and the cynosure of all eyes being relegated to the wings and those seemingly unimportant non-entities taking pride of place by an abrupt and sudden twist of fate is a unnerving and a humbling feeling...

Till I bug your lives again, Good Bye and Good Luck (A really really good movie. Thanks, Nikhil, for the recommendation)

P.S: Two mails in quick succession, you must be saying, if u managed to reach this far :) Congrats.
P.P.S : Leave you all with a poem. A wonderful one albeit sad. So ditch reading further if you are in a good mood :P

When we two parted - Lord Byron

When we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted,
To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this.

The dew of the morning
Sank chill on my brow
It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame:
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.

They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o'er me
Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee too well:
Long, long shall I rue thee
Too deeply to tell.

In secret we met
In silence I grieve
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?
With silence and tears.

A Moral Dilemma or am i just too touchy ?

On the flight back from Seattle to Amsterdam..2 weeks ago…I was lucky enough to get a aisle seat (thanks to 24 hrs internet check-in) which is always a great relief. Though I am no Gregory Peck, squeezing my legs into the cramped economy class leg room is a huge pain and with a 10-hour flight ahead, I definitely don’t want to get stuck in a middle seat…

So, as I was sitting blissfully happy in my aisle seat trying to decide which movies were worth my attention, I noticed that there was a BIG Indian fellow in the adjoining aisle. This chap must have been definitely taller than 6 feet in height and a good 3 feet in width…and he didn’t seem thrilled by the prospect of the long flight ahead but was probably buoying himself with the consolation of being a little more comfortable with his feet stretched out in the aisle….

I have no idea if u have seen dreams being shattered in front of your eyes but this was the closest I have got…A middle aged Indian lady who had the seat next to our big fellow came and stood in front of him in the aisle and REQUESTED him to let her sit in the aisle seat…citing her AGE as the reason for wanting to sit in the aisle seat….Our chap, brave lad that he was, started to explain that he had specifically picked this seat as it has more legroom and that it was extremely difficult for him to fit into a MIDDLE seat..At this, our dear lady actually cited her age and her health as reasons and made a blatant and poor attempt to try and act old and frail.. In the face of this emotional assault coupled with our sometimes silly emotionality, our poor Indian hero succumbed and actually made way for that lady and sat himself in the middle seat….

I still vividly remember the crestfallen look on his face as he squirmed uncomfortably in the middle seat. I couldn’t help steal glances during the rest of the flight to check on our Indian hero and I think his face reflected his pain so clearly along with the expression of “If only I hadn’t…”
The scary fact is that I kept wondering what I would have done in his position and it is a toss-up as to whether I would have acted any different.

I wonder if it is all the so called values instilled in us during our formative years that prevent us from having the courage to stand up for our rights resulting in us ending up as suckers for a sob story.

Moral Dilemma : Respect / Concern for the aged and infirm V/S Being taken for a ride by pretenders

Cheers,
Me

P.S: Some great Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan songs : (Been listening to them for some time now)
Daata ke ghulamon ko.. Haqq Ali Maula .. Hae Kahan ka Iraada sanam.. Gham hain ya Khushi hain too… Dulhe Ka Sehra…

P.P.S: I haven’t heard a singer yet whose voice reflects pure passion the way Nusrat does. Brilliant!!!!

P.P.P.S : This P.S’ing habit is a relict of the Infy KEC-General days J Don’t remember the name of the guy who was most famous for it back in the day. Chandrashekhar Garre, was it?

Logic...

Logic...helps us reason.....decide....think....

logic is common sense...logic is the explantion....logic is the key..

But there will always be things that throw logic out of the window.....there are just so many variables..and i guess thats what makes us human or else we would all be Vulcans a la Mr Spock (Star Trek)..

Hey ...even Spock took an illogical step when in dire circumstances (or like he said.... a logical decision to do something completely illogical :))

Hope you had a great weekend...Have a good week ahead.. and while on the topic...here's a song to keep you company.. Listen to it..if you can...its a mindblowin song.....

Peace.

Supertramp - The Logical Song
When I was young It seemed that life was so wonderful,

A miracle, oh it was beautiful, magical

And all the birds in the trees

Well they'd be singing so happily

Oh joyfully, oh playfully watching me

But then they sent me away

To teach me how to be sensible,

Logical, oh responsible, practical

And they showed me a world

Where I could be so dependable,

Oh clinical, oh intellectual, cynical

There are times when all the world's asleep

The questions run too deep

For such a simple man

Won't you please, please tell me what we've learned

I know it sounds absurd

But please tell me who I am

Now watch what you say

Or they'll be calling you a radical, A liberal, oh fanatical, criminal
Oh won't you sign up your name

We'd like to feel you're Acceptable, Oh respectable, oh presentable, a vegetable

At night when all the world's asleep

The questions run soo deep

For such a simple man

Won't you please, please tell me what we've learned

I know it sounds absurd

But please tell me who I am, who I am, who I am, who I am

Atheist ...am I ?

"He who says of me that i am an atheist says and knows nothing of me. The question as to the existence or non-existence of God, the opposition between theism and atheism belongs to the sixteenth and seventeenth century, but not to the nineteenth. I deny God. But that means to me that i deny the negation of man. In place of the illusory, fantastic, heavenly position of man which in actual life leads to the degradation of man, I substitute the tangible, actual and consequently also the political and social position of mankind"

- Quoted by Feuerbach in the book Essence of Christianity

Liberty, Feynman and the Deep Blue Sea

Saw the statue of liberty a few weeks ago. It is imposing and when u stand and stare at it looming down on you with its stelly eyes...it kinda goes through your soul. The celebration of a spirit of freedom that it conveys hits you like the river breeze. There is an abandonment, a defiance in its stance, the broken chains at its feet, the folds of her clothes especially at her sleeves...every inch of it a cry for freedom...every detail conveys a defiance to fight for it

Feynman - I enjoy reading about Feynman...maybe because he was such a character, a showman but mostly because he chose to have the freedom to do things the way he wanted to. Maybe also coz of his irreverence to all things that were deemed to be reverent but not to him. Maybe because he was pretty brilliant, to say the least or maybe most of all, because of his desire, if not his ability, to want to find the simplest possible way to convey even the most complex of topics...he noted once that if he could not put down any topic in a manner simple enough for a freshman in college to understand, then it just meant that he didnt understand it completely...there may be exceptions..but i think that observation holds good...even outside of phyiscs..Read the first chapter of Six Easy Pieces at Amods place....will try and read the rest sometime...:)

Deep Blue Sea...what better symbolism of freedom can i think of..than the unfettered, the unbounded deep blue sea. I love the sea :)

Cheers,
Me.

And what is good, Phaedrus? And what is not good? Need we ask anyone to tell us these things? "
- (Its actually from the Symposium by Plato but most people are likely to remember it from the first page of a very famous book - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance)

Thinking Apples and Oranges...

I thought of something...and its been years now since that last happened..so I thought of bragging to u all.

If I had 4 apples and 2 people amongst whom I had to equally divide them, then 4 / 2 would mean 2 apples per person.

But if I had ZERO people to divide them amongst, then 4 / 0 = Infinity or Undefined (as per what i remember from school)

Does that mean that anything is infinite / immeasurable in itself as long as there is no one to start dividing it up for ?

Peace,

Me.

Quote : No matter how desperately you may want something at one time, give yourself the chance and with time, you will find that its nothing you cant do without
- Me :)