Time!

"Ek baar waqt se, lamha gira kahin,(2),

wahan daastaan mili, lamha kahin nahi....", so sang Kishore Kumar, for Amol Palekar in Golmaal. 

I've heard this song many many times and this line always touches something in me every single time. The idea contained in these lines seems so simple when you first hear them, but is so profound. The idea of time being fluid, the analogy of moments of time to drops of water is so beautiful that every time I hear these words, I imagine a sparkling fluid diamond physically dropping and vanishing into nothingness, leaving but a trace, a memory of it ever having been...

What is time? Time is relative, time is fluid, time is elastic, time is everything and yet, time is nothing. We can't even define time yet. We have no way of measuring time absolutely. We ca't measure time in the absence of something to measure it against/ We can take length and say something is longer than something else, but can we honestly and correctly estimate time? It is not a physical dimension of matter that we can see, touch, feel, hear or indeed sense in anyway. In the absence of external stimuli or influences, for the lack of a better word, it is impossible to tell time. Sometimes it speeds by, leaving you wondering where it went, sometimes it drags on, leaving is wondering when it will pass.

Going off on a tangent... Is time really the fourth dimension?  Does time have its own dimensions like space does? Can you really travel along time like we do in space? Do we really want to? Other than for the express purpose of seeing if we can?

Going off on another tangent... Assuming reincarnation and parallel universes exist... If you can be reborn anywhere, as anything, at anytime, isn't it possible that you can be reborn in the past in your next life??

Coming back to what prompted this post, what are moments? Is it a duration of time that is universally defined?(NOT scientifically speaking). We define our lives by the moments that make it, by the moments that impacted s, by the moments that we remember. Some of these can actually be seconds, days, weeks or even years long. This ambiguity of time is what fascinates me most about it.

Is time only in our minds? Our mind is capable of moulding time to anything it wants... (subconsciously of course). We can spend an eternity lost in thought, and yet return to find that just a fraction of a second has passed, and yet in the blink of an eye, lose days...

Is time real? is the mind real? Or did Dumbledore say it right when he told Harry "Of course it is happening inside yor head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"

Devika

Perfect Match

I was watching something on TV the other day, something that mentioned a software to find your perfect match. You input your answers to various questions, you input your data, like age, gender, etc, etc, and the software will scan it database and return, in theory, your perfect match.

Of course, this is assuming every other person on Earth is part of the database, and has answered honestly.

Is it honestly that easy? Even in theory? You just match answers and vital stats and VOILA! "THE PERFECT MATCH!!"

But is that your perfect match? Truly? Is your perfect match the person who wants the same colour of walls as you do? The same number of children that you do? The same everything as you do? Yes, of course! To a computer maybe.. Perfect compatibility in case of a computer is the perfect match of all attributes. Is it true for humans as well? I don't think so.

While I don't believe opposites make for the perfect matches, another person who is you isn't your perfect match either. S/he can be your bestestest friend in the whole world, but your perfect match is a whole new ballgame.

This person should not be diametrically opposite but should not be perfectly aligned as well. Imagine how boring life would be if you were living with your replica/clone/call it whatever. You would never be surprised, always know what to expect. While this seems like a perfectly fine arrangement to many, I am not talking about perfectly fine. I am talking about divine. I am talking about mad. I am talking about the magic that they show in movies and you read about in book.

To me, perfection is flawed. It is cold and aloof. It is something you admire from a distance. It does not touch me.

Finding someone who shares your fundamental beliefs, your core values and yet is different enough that you don't know what to expect. Someone who challenges you, who excites you, who forces you to think and is yet is familiar enough to want to be with would be your perfect match.

Go look for your perfect match... I found mine... :)

Devika

Cats' Tales

Hmm... so finally, a post on the two most recent loves of my life... My Cats :)

1. Simba:

2. Pebbles:

Although not necessarily in that order.

A lot of people tease me about my cats. Seeing as i was not so much of an animal person before these two climbed onto my back and clawed their way into my life (pun intended). Although, if I really hv to type that then the point of it is lost. But whatever... I'm straying from the topic.

However, stray does bring me back to it. My mom found the two of them on the road when they were just a few days old - our estimate is a week at best - so they were strays, no matter how little. she picked them up and brought them home. I wasnt at home at the time, thank God! else i would hv not let her bring them home and i would hv missed out on so much.

Point to be noted here, I am still not too much of an animal person. Seems oxymoronish right? (is that even a word? spell check over here seems to think not. is there a better one for it? i cant think of one right now, so if you can, then HELP!) Anyway, i am absolutely in love with these two darlings. maybe because they are so human....

yep, you read that right...

i know that people like to pretend that their pets are not pets, and that i hv joined the bandwagon, but no, i hv not. (btw, i hv pets!!!! unbelievable!) i am not amongst those who Mr. P.L. Deshpande, better known as Pu. La. Deshpande by those who know him, or of him, has so hysterically spoofed in one of his sets. i hvnt heard it fully, though my aunt says i should. My aunt btw was one of those who ridiculed my claim that my cats are part human. Suffice it to say, i hv her convinced. Also in the convinced list would be anyone who has spent a decent amount of time with these cats... Given below are some anecdotes which may or may not support wht i'm saying..

One: Food habits.... other than regular packaged cat food, my cats refuse to hv food which otherwse cats love. big example: fish....

my cats refuse to eat raw fish but will happily finish off a piece of fried fish which is brought for us. same goes with milk... they will hv milk only under threat of starvation, in which case they will deign to take in a couple of slurps that are needed to avoid them from keeling over.

but, they love cheese, butter and all those guilty dairy pleasures that you and me have... :)

Simba loves non veg food, whether it is chinese chicken, or mughlai chicken or fried fish... you get the picture... when we order food, he is the first one to jump onto the tbale and demand his share.

Pebbles is more of a vegetarian who likes wheat based foods... so whether it is bread, biscuits, cake (!!) roti, khari biscuits.... anything.... all of it she loves. she is not too much of an eater tho.. she eats daintily and in small portions because thats wht princesses do.. oh, did i fail to mention that earlier?? that she's a princess?? but dint you see it for yourself?
both the cats hav very distinct personalities.... one is frisky and playful, whereas the other is a real life garfield... no prizes for guessing who's what! simba flops down in the middle of nowhere while even walking, whereas pebbles will get up to run after a paper ball even if she's just woken up...
simba used to be curious tho.... and thin too!!
We played holi with them this year... Simba enjoyed it...
Pebbles, not so much... :(
Simba lazing.... i wish i had some more fotos of him sleeping... but he changes position before i can click a lot of times.... but then, sleeping on their back, with arms in the air is not something i hv seen or heard of any "animal" doing.... pebbles does this too... sleep like humans.. remember, i hv witnesses... so dont you dare laugh at me..

no this is not pebbles sleeping like a human... t is her sleeping though...
i know you HAVE to say AWWWW to this one.....


Pebbles licking her mouth after having biscuits... told you she was proper.... simba is a slob... :D
i hope you can see the love in his eyes as well as i can... becasue this has to be the most affectionate cat in the world... he misses me almost as much as i miss him... pebbles is not too much of a people person, but she cant be incredibly loving also... she licked my sister's nose!!! and simba here has gven me countless kisses on my face! :-*

this is simba foraging for food in a bag that he knew contained food.... this is another thing... no matter how many times we change the location of their food, these cats know it...
this is pebbles showing cat like behaviour.... she is very very very curious.... simba - not so much!

this is simba hiding, playing, burrowing.... under pillows...

there are so many many many more instances that i wanna record here, however, i'm out of patience right now as these photos took forever to upload.... however, another post coming up about the cats... more text than this one i hope... although as i hv millions of fotos of these two, i doubt it :) anyway...

Ciao from now...

Devika
This is simba scooting off too!! (time for his massage...)

Recent (in)activity

Hello, I'm back again with a foto blog.. its been a while since this has seen activity and this seemed as good as anything that i could think of, so here goes...

This is a no occasion dessert that i made recently.. walnut brownies with vanilla royale icecream and chocolate sauce..

Brilliant, even if i say so myself..

These are diyas that i painted this year and gifted out to ppl.... not many ppl got them, so if you did, you are spl!

p.s. these are not all tht i did... these are just samples.

p.p.s. will take orders for next yr.. yes you'll hv to pay me! :P

This is one of my fav fotos of simba, one of my kittens... it is from when he was just a baby.. he's growing up so quickly... God, i sound like a mom! :|

This foto was taken in elephanta caves and features my cousin, who was "enlightened" by the experience... :)

Simba with his sister, and my other kitten pebbles this time... posing in a bookshelf... my dad's idea... will probaly do another post sometime about how much they've grown.. they were so tiny...

Me with simba and pebbles, or simbbles, as my sis has dubbed them...

My hand, and simba's paws... (readers cue: aaawwww!!! :P)

i realise i'm being unfair to pebbles here... will make up for it later..

Some other diyas that i'd painted... these were limited edition... sent to my nani's house... painted them in 15 mins flat... got more paint on my hands than on these.. but i liked the result..

p.s. i'll still take orders for them!

Anyway... hope you liked these... will post something else soon....

Ciao!

Devika.

P.S. I dont believe, neither do i care abt 2012. que sera sera.

Thoughts....

My sister created a blog sometime back (www.inidnan.blogspot.com) and something I read there caught my eye.... She said that her blog was to pen down "mental doodles". I was thinking about it and I realised how apt the comparison of thoughts to doodles was.

A doodle is a type of sketch, an unfocused drawing made while a person's attention is otherwise occupied. Doodles are simple drawings that can have concrete representational meaning or may just be abstract shapes. - this is courtesy wiki.....

Thoughts have a way of occurring to us when we least expect them to.... I am not suggesting that we don't think all the time.... Coz I know that we do... but when your attention is diverted.. or you are engaged in a mentally non challenging task, we can get some of the most surprising, sometimes revolutionary thoughts... (not that I've had any of those recently, but whatever.)

How many of us actually take care to put those down? Even if we have place where we express ourselves, do we take care to note down all of our ideas? Our minds are filled with millions and millions of thoughts at the same time, but we hardly take the effort to separate mental chaff from what is actually good... It is said (I don't know by who or when.. but I read it someplace) that nothing can beat the speed of thought.... I know this is true... It is possible to be thinking of something and in the blink of an eye, or in a fraction of that time, to be aeons away from it.... there have been so many times that i have caught myself thinking of such amazing things just to lose them in a moment of distraction... it can be very frustrating to have this happen... its like remembering a dream you had and want to remember but it keeps slipping away... i wonder why that happens and we cant remember something that we consciously want to remember... seems like our mind likes to work out by doing this. I often realise that what i am thinking about has nothing to do with what i originally started thinking about. How 2 absolutely random thoughts are separated by n degrees of separation. it is quite fun to retrace the mental steps that you have taken in order to arrive at that particular thought.

Funny, how I was thinking about what the next line should be and I lost my train of thought...

Which brings me to one my my fav. Calvin and Hobbes quotes...

"His train of thought is still boarding at the station." (About Moe.)

which brings to mind so many other Calvin quotes...

I'm learning real skills that I can apply throughout the rest of my life ... Procrastinating and rationalizing.

Calvin: I'm a genius, but I'm a misunderstood genius.
Hobbes: What's misunderstood about you?
Calvin: Nobody thinks I'm a genius.

"The world isn't fair, Calvin."
"I know Dad, but why isn't it ever unfair in my favour?"

"Why should I have to WORK for everything?! It's like saying I don't deserve it!

Hmm... now I've lost my chain of thought again and am too distracted to go look for it. So till next time, when some inspiration strikes, ciao!

P.S. Tell me what you think about it.

Images.....

These are some fotos that i have taken that I love for various reasons... I love clicking pictures and there are some that you like more than others... I'm sure there will be more posts like this one but for now, I hope you enjoy these as much as I do..


I love the pattern on these leaves... The colour gradation is not intentional.. It happened automatically that the color in the middle seems more vivid...



This was drawn by a beggar child on the road outside Jehangir Art Gallery in Mumbai.... After seeing the paintings inside, this drawing seemed a lot superior... I did not place the leaf there... it was kept like this.... All I did was click...

A Neelkamal in the pond at an ashram in Mitmita, near Aurangabad..... I love the foto even more because it is a bud.. showing promise of a bigger beauty tomorrow.. I have a foto of a full grown lotus also that is just as beautiful, but i like this one better... Maybe i'll put it up some other time...

Diyas I painted for Diwali... I love doing things like this...

Mehendi I drew on myself recently.... I took this foto in the middle of the night because i liked it so much and i'd done it after very long....

Till Next Time...... Ciao...

An Ideal Man??

Yesterday, I went to see Geet Ramayan with my family. Ramayan is the story of the Hindu God Rama, who was born in Ayodhya. You can get the whole story on wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramayana).

Geet Ramayan is the same story narrated through songs. The one I went to see/listen to yesterday was sung by Shri. Shridhar Phadke, composed by Shri Sudhir Phadke and lyrics by G.D. Madgulkar, also know as Gadima. Almost every Indian knows the story, as did I. But as the story came to an end, I realised that there were some parts of the story that i hadn't paid much attention to. The war with Ravan is over. When Ram sees Sita again, he asks her to prove that she is pure even after being in the clutches of Ravan for whatever time. Sita steps into a fire and is unscathed. This horrified me (just to clarify, not the comes out unscathed part but the request obviously). On the one hand, people sing praises of Sita as the ideal woman, and on the other hand, her husband, who was said to be the ideal man, doubts her integrity.

However, the story on wikipedia cleared my doubts about this. It says:

Ram tells Lakshman that when Sita arrives he will have to make her pass through fire. To this Lakshman gets angry saying that it is a sin to be cruel to a woman. Ram explains that Lord of Fire has taken Sita with him to keep her safe from Ravan. He has created another Sita, A shadow of Sita that will remain with Ram in the forest. This way Ravan has taken away this shadow of Sita. Upon return of Sita, Ram will have to make her pass through this fire to bring her back from Lord of fire. This act will also make people trust Sita as a pure goddess.

Ok. ideal man indeed.

But then in the next paragraph it says that :

Ram and Sita perform their duties as King and Queen. However the people of the kingdom have doubts in their mind about their Queen. In the interest of his people Ram has to take another harsh step, to send Sita to the forest. For Ram Duty for his people was more important. He himself went away to forest in the past. Thus once again he had to take this step to keep the honor of the Kingdom.

This got me outraged. Whta kind of honour are they talking about if you can't put faith in someone tested by fire? What duty was Ram performing by banishing his wife, who he knew to be pure, to the forest? Sita had willingly gone to the forest with her husband when HE was exiled. She dint HAVE to go. She CHOSE to go. So how could he banish her because of what some people thought?

According to me, Ram would have been ideal if he had stuck with his wife regardless of what people thought.

It is very easy to say that he was human and the to err is human. But the thing is, He is not human. He is worshipped as a God. But this is a very big and stinky skeleton in his closet that noone seems to have thought about.

Who?

On my way to the gym some days back i got thinking....

When i was a kid, i used to think (or maybe imagine) that maybe our world is not as big as we think it is. What if our world is just a part of the play set of some giant being, someone who has no idea we exist and who is playing with the earth like it is just a ball. or maybe a speck of gigantic (to us) dust.

This got me thinking about the movie "Horton hears a Who". This whole movie is based on the premise that a whole world can exist on a speck of dust without us knowing about it. That life has so many different shapes and sizes and forms. Even in the world we know, life exists in so many different forms. Then i got thinking, what is life?

i know it seems like a very heavy question, but i wasn't thinking about it spiritually or even philosophically. I was thinking rationally. What is life? The answer seems easy. Life is what is used to classify beings into living or non living. But what authority do WE have to classify something as living or non living? A being is a being isnt it? It exists. So what if it doesn't breathe? So what if we can't see its motion, or its reflexes?

Every single thing on earth is made up of molecules and atoms and sub-atomic particles and maybe even sub-sub-sub atomic particles that we don't know about. All these things come together to form just about the whole universe. These things have energy of their own; they have a pattern of their own. Electrons go around nuclei in fixed paths. Neutrons and protons stay together in the nucleus. There is something that keeps them there, and the electrons away. Yeah yeah... I know... gravitational forces, electrostatic forces etc.. So why are they not part of life? Sure, they're a part of living beings, but are they living beings? If no, why? Why dont we classify them as life? Beats me.

When we go searching for life on Mars, what exactly are we looking for? Something that exists on earth that we have already seen or heard about? Or are we looking for something new and different? How are we going to recognise this "something new" if it doesn't fit into our idea of life? Do we know what the parameters of life are? Maybe what constitutes life on earth is not even a beginning of what is alive in the universe.

When we say that the universe is made of the same basic particles, are we so stupid as to shun ideas that maybe these particles took on a new life (pun intended) in other environments. Mercury may be a hostile planet for us. Maybe it wasnt for some other beings. Does that make them any less alive? Hell no. The same can be said for any place in the universe can't it?

Maybe there is a whole civilisation out there that we don't know about becaust it doesn't conform to our idea of life and we haven't broadened our horizons enough. On the flip side, maybe the same can be said of them also, which is why there has been no contact yet. Or maybe there has and we have been to blind to see/feel/notice it. There isn't an absence of unexplained phenomena here on earth. Maybe someone was saying hello.

So are we going to say hello back? If yes, then how? I dont know. I was just musing on the way to the gym and knew that I had to put this down somewhere. Maybe you can tell me and we'll share the credits of that Nobel Prize. :-P

'Til next time, ciao!

Doomsday!!!

CERN has finally announced that the first attempt to circulate a beam in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be made on 10 September.

Anyone who has read angels and demons will probably remember the LHC... it is that big big machine that is in the breaking news right now.... it is also the reason for the post....
before i go on further.. i'll give you an idea of wht the LHC is meant to do... no.. i wont write it... why should i? when wiki has sone it for me? its CtrlC-CtrlV all the way....

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest particle accelorator complex, intended to collide opposing beams of protons. Its main purpose is to explore the validity and limitations of the Standard Model,the current theoretical picture for particle physics. The LHC was built by the European Organisatin for Nuclear Research(CERN huh?), and lies under the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva. Basically it will create a collision b/w particles in order to find out if smaller particles exist... these smaller particles might be antimatter... which you can look up.. i'm not going into tht now...

anyway.... when matter meets antimatter they both vanish and produce energy... (anyone remm e=mc2?) anyway... so this monster of a machine is going to be fired up tomm..
but news ppl in india (and also abroad if the internet is any indication...) are already fired up abt there being a possible doomsday tomm... they seem to think that this thing is going to misfire and tht the earth is going to open up and swallow us all and will become a blackhole.... india tv has gone to the extent of saying tht a "mahadanav" is going to come out of the earth as it tears open and swallow us all..... what a load of shit....

{a} i think 1800 scientists who are working on this wouldve thot of every possibility of how things could go wrong taken care of things...

{b} even if some unforseen calamity happens, why would you want to predict it and scare ppl now? if wht you're saying is true then arent we all dying tomm? then whts to fear? does it make any difference? no.... so stop...

anyway.... if i dont die tomm... see you next post...
Ciao!

Jaya Vs Raj? Or is this just sheer loss of common sense?

Jaya Bachchan, at the music launch of Drona said tht the movie was in hindi and hence tht hindi should be spoken... she then added tht since they are from up they should speak hindi...
so wht is wrong in this? beats me... ask raj thackeray... raj thackeray went on record to say tht jaya bachchan saying tht was an insult to the marathi manoos...(manoos meaning man... or aadmi if you please....)
excuse me... i may not be well known but.. what a load of crap.... i'm half marathi and i dint find wht she said even a wee bit offensive.... so wht if she wanted hindi to be spoken in a function in mumbai... its her city too... who the hell is anyone to say anything abt it?
language is supposed to be a medium of communication... so where does the marathi vs hindi part come in?
we live in a country that propagates atithi devo bhava... meaning guest is like god... so more often than not, we go out of our way to make sure that anyone who comes home is made to feel welcome.. so how come this rule does not apply to bigger "homes"? if raj thackeray(i mention raj thackeray co he made the recent remarks but isnt this applicable to most of us?) considers maharashtra to be home, and anyone who's not marathi to be an outsider, then shouldnt he be welcoming them instead of shooing them out? why this shor sharaaba abt marathi? our country is a multilingual country and is counsidered a whole... not just states meighbouring each other,, the same rules apply to every state, to every city, to every town.... so why distinguish?

i stayed in hyderabad for 12 yrs... and i refused to speak the language..... many of those who know me find this very odd... i can understand telugu, read telugu, write telugu(to a certain extent) so why dont i speak it? ive lived there long enough to have picked it up....
fact is... i dont speak telugu coz i dont want to.... there is a certain dislike for it... why?
because when i moved there, it was difficult to understand anything... noone made an effort... ppl continue to talk in telugu regardless of whether the other person can understand or not... as a 10 yr old in such a circumstance, it is easy to develop dislike something.. and so i did... as i grew up, i realised tht it is not just the kids... everyone does this... the minute ppl know you dont speak a language they try and confuse you...
why do i hv to learn a new language to fit in? its not like i dint try... i distinctly remm trying to learn to speak and being laughed at... this put me off forever... when you go to an english medium school and are proud of it and we have a language in which we can speak then why do i hv to learn a new language? i dont hv anything against learning the language mind you... its just the principle.... did the other person ever say... oh you're marathi... why dont you teach me some? yes they did... you know who did? my friends who were non telugu.... telugus... almost all of them, are extremely clannish in behavior and will treat you like an outsider no matter what....(i hv met some who are very very sweet tho....)
i know wht it felt like to be an outsider all the time... its not nice.... and i wouldnt want to face it again....
now tht i'm back in bbay, it feels nice to be in a place where you're not an outsider... but wht do i see? tht ppl are treating others like they are outsiders... how many of us make an effort to accomodate an outsider in our midst? is saying something secretive or nasty or just plain gossip so necessary tht it cant wait for sometime? why do we endorse a person's outsider status using language? why not just forget the language and make new friends? why remind someone tht he or she is not at home? and wht abt the ppl who are not marathi but consider bbay to be their home? how can anyone call them outsiders? bbay is considered to be a melting pot of cultures.... one tht is a microcosm of all of india... every community in india has a representative here.... so why spoil it? why not focus on the niceness in us all? why not be welcoming? why do you want to criticise all the time? is it so difficult to praise someone? or do you want to be clannish,(sorry couldnt find a better word here....) and then finally end up disintegrating this melting pot of ours?