Root Cause

Me and my very good friend Abhijit Kaore just saw the amazing The Motorcycle Diaries chronicling the journey by the eventual Che Guevera and his friend Alberto.

Musing, while I let the movie soak me, I saw what must be one of things that Che must have seen and felt - Hunger; with a capital H.

We saw people evicted out of the land that they once called home only to be someone's petty slave and lead a life in servitude where once a chest was pumped with pride. What drove them to do this? Or what forced them? What was the root cause? What IS the root cause?

Hunger?

Hunger for food.. very basic
Hunger for money.. thats the way the world works now
Hunger for respect.. what a man or woman holds dearest
Hunger for love.. what steeps you in selflessness
Hunger for more.. what drives us to be the beasts that we once were

It is strange that a movie on Che made me think of Buddha.. yes, *the* Gautam Buddha. He said, "*Desire* is the root cause of all evil". If you could think of Desire and Hunger in a little abstract terms, you realize that they are the same. Hunger is the root cause of all evil.. Maybe hunger is the root cause of all Desire too.. Maybe Hunger *IS* Desire. I wish I could extrapolate..

Che sought to level Hunger with his revolution, Buddha to quell Desire with with his resolution.

I am not here to take sides. Just to put forth the the thought-trips that some of the best English movies take me on. What makes you think?

Tense

Had a life
Have an insipid existence
Will have an uncertain future

Had a few leeches
Have a couple of will-do-anything-for-me
Will have no one to cry for me

Had fallen in love
Have struggled to get up
Will have to go about it alone

Had blood raging thru me
Have a sense of the what heart gone cold is
Will have to wait for 5 billion years to thaw

Had my people around me
Have a terrible time seeing them go
Will have get accustomed to the vicious life and what follows, or maybe never will

Had not lived in the past
Have a terrible feeling about the present
Will have not such a great future tense

Why do I blog?

More than 6 years ago, I had maintained a small yet very useful website with lyrics and NIRVANA information. The dot-com bust was in and Web 2.0 was yet to be dreamed up. The term "blog" was not bandied about by the high and sundry.

Back then, I had noted that I would have wanted my site to also be an online diary of my life. What purpose would it serve?, why would I want hapless surfers a peek into my mundane existence?, I did not know. But I did start it and soon gave it up - blogging never happened and it was too cumbersome to maintain a blog when you have write the code too!

And, in circa 2006 when Google and Web 2.0 was everybody's baby, I signed up to blog. Why?

1. Everybody else is doing it, so I should too? (Nope, I am not so good at following crowds and trends.)
2. I have a lot to share with people from my variegated life? (Unlikely.)
3. I have my Oscar acceptance speech ready and this is the closest I am going to get people to hear (or read) it? (Ideally true but considering the # of people who ready my blog, very ambitious.)
4. There is a hidden writer in me craving for release? (Probably.)
5. Something to brag about? (That 2 people read my last post and commented?)
6. I have nothing better to do? (Close)
7. I don't know (Pretty close too!)

Wondering...

Negativity, by a Pessimist

This is a thought in progress.

I have been a pessimist ever since I knew what that meant. And a touch fatalist and nihilist to boot. I have also been of the firm opinion that it is this negativity that gives any meaning and importance to the transient happiness that flits in and out of our lives like the dreams of dating Pamela Anderson! lol..

But seriously, had it not been for the all pervasive negative energy, we would not have been eternally running after the happy shit. The yin and yang, matter and anti-matter, positron and electron all exist to justify the other half's existence. But I digress (I do that often, running off on tangents and hyperbolas).

The point I as trying to make is that I am soaked in negativity and all things associated with it. Heck, I am left-handed even - the classic negative example. So inspite of all of this, I suddenly came to realize that I have been consistently creating negative energy around me by mouthing off. See,I talk too much anyway and that means talk too much negativity.

Pointed criticism of my employer, contracting firm, salary, friends, ex-girlfriends, colleagues, India, Pratibha Patil, America, Bush, the new hot chick at work (what you can't get, you pretend is bad anyway), the list of things to spew venom about is endless. I realized that I have been drawn into these vacuous conversations all because of needing to to spend time here (see my post about the work-feed-sleep repeat routine - Life aboard a Spaceship). An idle mind is the devil's workshop - spot on!

So, I have made a conscious decision to quit (or rather minimize) talking about the negative highlights of our mundane daily existence. Not only does it give me a convenient excuse to be quiet in public conversations, I do not end up being drawn into the vicious circle of repeatedly bashing things we can't control or those people who are not around but also saves me energy and lets me focus on doing other things (reading thru Shantaram is one).

I am not sure if this is the right thing to do and how long can I sustain it, but I am going to turn a little more introspective and see what comes of it. Like a said, it's a thought in progress and I am going to let it wander.

Always Late

I have been late,

Late in realizing that I was wasting time in engineering college (3 years after under grad)
Late in starting to study (last semester is too little too late)
Late in abandoning unworthy friends (a few more to go yet)
Late in getting married (Rush is so right for me)
Late in getting into IT
Late in quitting IT (still no balls to do it)
Late in acknowledging people's gratitude and love ( you know who you are, I don't)
Late in blogging (I have been thinking for a long time and not jotting it down)
Late in sleeping (everyday)

P.S. My taxi driver in Kerala said "Sir, today very laight..". I heard "Today, very light". I thought he meant sunny, but I was late for my sightseeing...

What is my catharsis?

As I fight my sleep yet another Saturday night, I wonder what is my catharsis, or probably more appropriately, my release. What delivers me from my calculated, modulated self into a free flowing human? What's my liberation?

In my teenage days (that's how far back I can recollect my self as being introspective), it used to be music. Just the daily dose of my MTV followed by ad nauseam discussions with friends to break it down thread bare was liberating.. It was followed by the boyish craving of females (not that it has died! ;) ) The off beat movies came later on, interspersed with movies about sweaty females in procreating poses (how tacky! :( )

See, its always been a shifting target, steady ever so little until you become too comfortable with it and it stops being effective. Dissolving myself in work was a very weird way of doing that. My seemingly huge and complicated programs were but a mere speck of dust in the castle I would have wanted my code to be.

What has not shifted is 2 things - Books and Friends (notice the emphasis). Unwavering true friends and the one sided conversations with books (yes, JSha, we spoke about this) are the perfect deliverance for any pathetic mood swings, pangs of loneliness and general frustration at being ineffectual in changing the world. Books are that perpective you've ever had, maybe always had or never would have had if not for that writer putting his thoughts down for the others to ponder over. I digress, but does a writer think about the readers when writing?

Friends have head banged with me, split those countless inane jokes with me, helped me stay alive when puppy love caught up with me, have tried to keep me on the path to sanity when life was crazy. Isn't it funny how we realize the value of most of the precious things in times of distress?

But these have their limitations. Whom can you have at your beck and call when you need them? At 3 in the morning, there are only so many things you can call upon. Rush would probably do.