Beats of a Tabla

A simple, straightforward, no nonsense girl called Vedika. That's what her orkut 'about me' said. Well, she definitely knew that much to be true about her. She was nothing much beyond that. Better average in studies, came among the toppers once in a while in class. Had developed a liking for science. But there was one thing she really had the passion for. Beats. Rhythm. They ruled her life. And yes, I plan to stick to the title by telling you, she was learning to play the revered percussion instrument called Tabla. I still remember the first time she came to me, with the child like glee in her eyes, literally 'checking out' the instruments laid up before her in my room that give an observer, the ambience that'll right away make them connect to the echoing rhythms from those simple off white walls of the music classroom. There were kept series of synthesizers on stands, grand looking guitars on the walls, two triangles swaying in a corner as she brushed by it; most of the able ones connected with headphones so simultaneous classes could be held. But her eyes moved to the other small room where she saw a dust gathering 'dhari', lay on which, two bundles that looked like army bags. Her eyes curious, her expression as if she wanted me to give her a nod to open the 'bundle'. She uncovered the tablas and brushed her palm over their surfaces, as if showing an instant connect. The way she braced herself immediately for playing the new musical instrument which was soon to be the love of her life was just how a priest would perform religious ceremonies and ironically, just how an engineering student would open the books first time before the day of his exam.

We were on a first name basis. She called me Dhrupad. After her first encounter with the tabla in April 2006 when she'd just finished with her class V exams, she continued for another 10 years with me, by which time she'd become a friend. She was a performer now, juggling her seemingly boggling aeronautical engineering studies with a daily 2 hour practice at a place 30 km from her hostel where she'd shifted after her parents got transferred. I have absolutely no idea how, but she sailed through the toughest of her decisions as if she knew the end results of everything. She had chosen tabla over an averagely great placement offer just a couple of days before her Semester VII exams, almost ignoring her parents' great fury and rage against her pick. Vedika had always wanted to travel, see the world and most of the time tapped her palm or feet in simple rhythm, especially while reading.

Her journey as a performer was like going in a rickety state transport bus. After finishing her double diploma in music, she finally had decided to become a professional tabla player for life. However, for lack of funds, all  the already meagre sponsorships going to the glamorous group instrumentals and western musical instruments, she came to the realization that her 'see the world' dream was coming true only if she took everything upon her shoulders and obviously, she'd never ask her parents for financial support for a decision they didn't agree with. Her late start into the performers' galore, the look of bewilderment and muse and mock in people's eyes when they learnt about the 'Tabla playing engineer lady', her running away from all the social obligations, working double shift for a year to save up enough money to enter into an international musical event where she'd in a sorry voice, asked me to get her 'jack up entry' did take a toll on her. And it was enough to get her into a state where she'd remain silent and isolated for 3-4 days at a stretch, and still come out everyday to arrange for a performance. Her 2 dreams of a huge applauding concert audience and a house for her parents were now fading into her still and quiet bouts. She now held her hands in 'Namaste' before her instruments, a habit that remained instilled in her since 15 years. She now smiled only when she met kids in the NGo boarding house, where she was a regular.

Typecast into the role years ago, she remained the background performer in all the local events, concerts and radio programs. In the little free time she got, she tried creating different rhythmic combinations. The ones not defined in Classical music theory. The ones transcending tags of 'Western', 'Indian' et al. She'd recorded them all in a CD which was released years after she'd passed away. And she did get a concert audience applause for it. She thence was known to be 'Thaal-Vedika' (The restorer of the knowledge of Rhythm). All of her previous work and biography were all over YouTube and Crossword stores in the form of the so called 'Tributes'. The huge photo collection from her laptop was also turned into a pictorial autobiography where they said, "Walk not far into the lands, deep into the hearts". Vedika had 7 years ago, come to meet me. This was one year before she'd presumably stopped playing and 2 years before she, the fighter, oddly gave in to Alzheimer's and Nature at the young age of 40. As the tradition stands, she'd come to give me the 'Gurudakshina'. All she said to me was, "Take good care of this. This is YOUR work".

Avatar

I finally saw 'Avatar' and boss, the graphics are mind blasting. The imagination that gave rise to the beautiful life-size touch-me-nots to displaying movement of single butterflies and the life, culture and physical state of evolution for a particularly new planet which was albeit hilariously based on earth and showed floating mountains. Awesome experience that I got in say a  100 bucks more than what it was worth. The 3-D did not really come up so well. There was nothing 3 dimensional to show there except a globe-like real time model-display of Pandora. Well whatever it is, whichever alien cried at the story, Avatar deserves excellent.

Only so much

There's only so many verboten one can have.
While I stood on a grassy land, somewhere beneath a cliff
So short of breath and worried sick,
She still was there just by me and
smiled and sighed at the sight around.

How could one have so much freedom?
Not that we weren't at par, and,
Not that we were mirrors of each other,
But by choice she smiled in the darks, I say,
There's only so many a sacrifice you ask of someone.

If she didn't care, she never let go too,
while I hung on the rope with the hope to rise,
She happily slid down oblivious to everything,
To not explore, but embrace what was in store.
I came up. I hardly mattered then.
There's only so much one can 'live'

Just a li'l bit more

Mull over the forks on roads,

Stew over customs all around,

why, keep looking back at the gates?

Let go of the much stretched

strings for heaven's sake, open your eyes,

just a li'l bit more.

Between two ends of bridges

Within layers of worlds,

Pulling yourself out incessantly, why,

always is the feud on?

Think not, or talk for a while

about anything, anything at all,

Look through windows before you sleep tonight,

And, sleep tonight, just a li'l bit more.

Cliches within small things

You know how they say, "When you path IS your destination, it is homecoming." Minuscle small incidents exemplifying this cliche often come across you and you'd fail to notice it if it were not for something called 'retrospection'. These were really long back. My taking part in this particular quiz competition was as usual with all small things, made out a big deal somehow. I was, under elderly influence, preparing for this particular encounter which happened also, to be my first of the kind, as one would prepare for their class X board examinations. In retrospect years later, I now remember none of the answers, questions or anything whatsoever of the preparation stages. All I remember of the quiz is, the quiz had an introduction section where students were asked to tell people about themselves along with what they wanted to be when they grew up. I told my parents I needed a witty answer to follow suite (trust me, the other teams were way wise-crackers). So we thought of many good lines for the quiz banter and had many a good laugh over them while driving to the venue. Somehow that had become a rare kind of laugh those days for no reason. Somehow short trips in the car that smelled like a fresh seat cover and paint always were good times. Finally, we came up with a gentle and naive, "I want to be a neuro-surgeon so I can get my hands on those who get on my nerves". And I remember nothing else from the 'competition'.

Similarly when there was that contagious 'Friendship bands' craze all around in school some 27 light years ago and like all kids, I too was looking for some in the market while they worried about where to park, grocery items on the list, office committments and dinner menu at the same time; suddenly he turns and asks, "How do you do it? How do you be glee-full with a thing as small as a friendship band?"

Wonder how many we could count like these. Definitely on finger-tips.

Two kids

Pushto was God's favorite child. Interchangably, her parents' favorite child. Not that she had siblings. And not that she had friends. A rather plump good-looking girl with boy-cut hair, fair, hazel green eyes with boundaries of her rectangular framed spectacles. She looked intelligent and what one would refer to as 'nerdy'. An open book. Chapters of her childhood contained pages of her playing the good student, the good daughter, the talented. She was, let's just say, a 'Jack of all trades and master of none to the point of versatility' sorts. She sang, danced, wrote, played badminton with the same rigour as basketball and road-rash and still managed to knock off people in karate lessons. Her parents attempted hard to expose her to everything that a child could possibly do in that small town setup. Her father taught her cycling, skating, swimming, chess and such while her mother sat hours together with her math and science homework, which, like all kids, she hated doing. She was of course, lazy. They’d wanted her to be me.

Every morning her mother would shout out at the top of her voice, for Pushto to wake up. Father would come by softly and tickle her feet. One thing about mornings she totally hated and loved at the same time. He'd carry her sleepy self to the toothbrush completely spoiling the 10 year old. Her mother would prepare her lunch box and drop her off to school. Pushto would laugh at the way her mother was always in a hurry. School was fun. One could compete for finishing first in a handwriting class or literally throw your weight around in a kabaddi or basketball match or just ask stupid questions and have your teachers confused. One could enjoy the laughs while someone erred in an assembly speech or order everyone around to form a line as the class rep. Good times. Pushto's father had bought her a set of books called The Knowledge Bank once for her birthday, which she hated at first, and knew inside out within 6 months.

I know all this because I studied in her class. We were tracks of that train. Together from the 1^st till 12^th and she was always a competition. Not that she scored more than me. Not that she got all the prizes. But she just couldn't care less about anything of that sort. She never had the word 'competition' in her dictionary. Everything fell in her own track. If she heard someone humming a tune behind the wall, she'd go to them and say they sang well; not to those who won the first prize in singing. If people talked to her about books, she'd start discussing the characters or the story. She liked the English class a lot. Though teachers for the language didn't much favour it, she made it a point to put forth her own analysis inside the classroom as well as on the answer sheets, which cost her lots. Funny I still remember that English project of hers wherein she'd given a Robert Frost biography. I was friends with her for some broken periods when we played through evenings at my house. I'd therefore never know what her house looked like. I was busy being the obedient, straight-headed one. I never crossed deadlines or limits, the no-nonsense types, had the best handwriting in class, eternally straight As, plaited hair and the neatest uniform. I hated people living in a dream-land.

After school we drifted apart. 7 years later I was in my office where my table read ‘Manager, Scherman Investment Bank’. I had an MBA in hand and a suburban company accommodation. I had come far from that small town of course and had forgotten everything about it. I was now busy meeting deadlines and meeting people who made those deadlines. Out of the blue as any story would have it, I had to meet one of the appointments back in the very state where I was taught. I decided to take an extra day off and visit my old school to see what had changed. My meeting there got delayed and while I got just about enough time to rush up to my place and back, 7 years later, all the nostalgia came like a movie flashback to me.

The campus had changed a lot since then, but some constant could still be felt around. You know what it was. Pushto. She stood there on the playground instructing students of class VI about a simple science activity. She had visible signs of those 7 years, far less than mine. I considered going upto her. Decided against it. While walking back, a child came running to me and pointed back toward the class. Pushto was signaling and waving her hands with a smile on her face. She recognized me after all. We caught up over tea. She had done B A in English Literature and returned here to teach. Along with that she told me, she’d turned writer. After some reminiscence and fast forwarded whereabouts of batch discussions, it was time to go. We exchanged numbers. I was still jealous of her. She still remained good; at everything she used to be. I was not. I was caught up in the so called rat race while she had jumped along, absolutely unaffected. It looked like she held time in her hands stopped it at those very moments from school. She knew all of her students, current and graduated, inside out and was still in touch with her. She’d with delight shown me a couple of postcards and greetings they’d sent her. She was earning enough she said. She still remained God’s favourite child.

While on my way back as luck would have it, a black and red cover caught my eye in the new releases section of the airport bookstore. Two familiar names. One was mine under the dedication. It was called ‘God’s favourite.’ Guess who the protagonist was.

Wide-eyed

Naïveté to intricacy and then to simplicity

Do all feet seem to walk in the books,

While everyone scrambles and rushes forth,

The sounds call me again to rush along, then,

 I guess I too am one of them,

And I learn by seeing, wide-eyed.

I try being selfless, selfless enough,

To run along, with the waves for everyone,

To care about the wheels carrying me around,

And to bring sun-facers their own ray of hope,

I guess the coaxing wasn’t enough really,

‘Cos I still remain selfish and watch wide eyed.

They’d make me jump over the high wall,

At one go, only one, for the greens beyond,

I had a pasture green enough, albeit the chains,

Cheers, now I turn into mistletoe they cry,

I guess I’ll forget everything around,

And put on, wear a gaze, wide eyed.

While all this is on, I see what

Didn’t ever happen to people around,

That with all the grey, they neglect the rainbow,

That Time is something artificial sometimes,

That rebellion and peace could be same side of a coin,

I guess that’s what I observe but again, wide-eyed.

Fear is what engulfs on such days,

Even of overwhelming happiness,

Of stepping out of the cocoon you made yourself, et al,

Yes, a state of mind and a powerful one,

But in a state of purity even fear can’t be scathed,

I guess I put up a constant fight,

With one of these selves of mine still, wide-eyed.

Multitudes in humans and why they are vital.

Just as the previous post deals with the physical segregation of conciousness, this time I thought I'd write about a similar segregation on the basis of human characteristics. This is a proof by definition. Proof by exhaution and contradiction can be worked out easily. Multitude, as we know it from the dictionary, is the 'state of numerousness'. This is by itself a great definition. People in a person. Each side has a personality, characteristics and will respond uniquely to a particular stimulus. The 'black', 'grey', 'shades of grey' we talk about, is too a part of us (funny they are not optimistic enough to include off white :P). The existence of human multitudes can be attributed to, ultimately, one factor. Evolution. This is because the difference in personality traits can be traced back in broadly two major areas. Genes and anthropology. They can derive the others of course.

If you browse through the poem, 'Song of Myself' by Walt Whitman, (link here): The poem is of 52 small parts. Ideally, you could google 'about it' out.
http://www.daypoems.net/plainpoems/1900.html

The poet here mentions 'I' as what Wiki calls an 'expansive persona, the one that has exploded the conventional boundaries of self'. Not the 'what we want we can be' type. But the multidimensional life inside a single physical entity.
The question remains why is it vital for us to be many in one. Why complicate things? Consider a painting. If the artist brush in too many things, or too little, the whole point is lost. But what's the variable here? The 'strokes' of the artist's brush. Control that and the painting automatically gets all its due colours, features and art. And what's the constant? The painting itself. However, a stroke of the brush without colour on it does nothing. The pressure on our brush makes a leg look like a log. Absence or presence of water or oil with the actual paint in a stroke decides whether you meant the sky or the ocean.

Similarly for us humans, a lot of parameters are involved with the one collective control which we call 'concious' here defined as 'perceiving with a degree of controlled thought or emotion' analogous to the painting as a whole.  This is also congruent with a archaic meaning of 'conscious' which is 'sharing another's knowledge of an inward state or an outward fact' and the previous write up on hive minds.

The Bhagvad Gita too says in a shloka, that different parts of the body are like the different parts of a chariot. And if you see the Big Five personality traits of behaviorial science, you will realize why there exists a link between the instantaneous human concious and the anthropology behind it. Therefore, there are many qualities. Therefore many characteristics. Therefore many versions and therefore a multitude. And that's exactly where the word 'versatility' gets its definition from. Simply put, just like we had centimeters because we couldn't measure kilometers on a scale and vice versa, the human concious is a large enough entity to fail to be cast upon as, "Oh look, there goes the geek. He can only work on computers. He can't paint, write, swim, sing, shout at people, kill AND worship" or "Guess what, democracy and human mind are the two best examples of multitudes." (No they are not).

Infomation Tech. people's mini struggles

When we technologists are working our minuscle neurons out to bring the cost of almost everything down even Solid State Devices; there's one place where some stagnation can be observed. Where people, specifically those in IT, need to pay almost unnecessarily. I'm talking about examination fees of the various standard examinations conducted to certify an IT pro, which actually ranges in $100 onwards (emphasis on the latter). And most of these exams are online. Some do provide materials to prepare for the exam with, but they are soft copies too. So one would wonder where exactly do they require this kind of investment? Well, don't look for answers here.

Where everyone does raise a hand to free education (those very corporates) or market themselves to be a great promoter of education? Did someone ask why we have to pay you to actually give an exam on the computer? Even if a fee is required, surely it can't be more than your entire month or two month's  salary! I mean, that way, no student per se should be able to give them. What's more, those exams are usually to be cleared by memorising some 'dumps' of material as they like to call it. Well, what's the whole point?

Hive minds a reality? Warning: the image may gross you out.

Assuming you have seen Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, I'd directly go on to what hive minds mean. Also roughly synonymous to collective conciousness, hive mind a.k.a universal mind is an aggregate of all factors affecting every living entity in the universe. For humans, these factors could be namely,  components, constituents, relationships, personalities, entities, technologies, processes and cycles around them.  These minds are physically separate and contain enormous gigantic amounts of information even in a single entity (imagine what they'd do as ONE).


Nowadays our Jargon refers to 'hive mind' as the quintessential metaphor for digital revolution. If you see the videos from TED talks (into which, I was just initiated and have turned a fan...please check them out they're really some worth!) you'd notice a common pattern amongst nearly all the speakers, at least the recent ones at the 2009 Mysore leg of the conferences. That, we use things we call 'Mirrored neurons', 'Metaphorical analogies' and such abstract-but-nearly-real concepts to fill in the gaps and completely justify the working of the yet unknowns like human brain, merging of digital and analog worlds (Sixth Sense technology! I nearly had tears in my eyes after that vid!), predicting future (or patterns as of now I'd say on the safe side) etc.


With such ideas becoming a reality, the science fiction writers have a lot to keep upto. (Guess which sector would end up deriving the maximum profits out of it....Advertising! I mean, have you seen those ads lately? As if they'd create the human epitomes of limitlessness. Like those Facebook quizzes whose results boost your already on the crack egos). But seriously too, we are tending towards creating one single collective control over ourselves and our environment which might end up very close to the meanest cyborg you might have seen who could control weathers and you at the same time with relative ease. I mean, either we'll turn ourselves into walking digi-stores with usb slots in our head or the internetwork might become one of that kind. I don't remember the name but there was a movie in which a humanoid data centre of an investigation agency itself plots an attack on prominent people of the nation.
(Found out later: 'The Eagle Eye')


I'm not taking a neutral side. We do need technology advancements. All I'm saying is, even now nobody don't have a Lopamide for a technological loose motion. (okay gross for an analogy but you got the point.) I mean, have you seen the images of 'Earth dust'? If not, google it out. I bet you'll gross out. Here's a sample to what the artificial satellites have given the Earth till now aside from well, lots of information (though it's a deviation from the original topic that I meant to write on):