'All That is Gold Does Not Glitter' by JRR Tolkien

This happens to be my favorite poem. Its just eight lines, but as I was telling a friend the other day, everytime I read them I get goosebumps. Read them slowly, and experience the power that surges forth!

All That is Gold Does Not Glitter

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king. 

'The Garden' by Dom Moraes

A wonderful poem by a wonderful Indian poet (who by 14 was reading essays by Eliot and at 19 won the Hawthornden Prize )

The Garden

I wake and find myself in love:

And this one time I do not doubt.

I only fear, and wander out

To hold long parley with a dove.

The innocent and the guilty, met

Here in the garden, feel no fear.

But I'm afraid of you, my dear.

There was a reason: I forget.

And I by shyness am undone

And can't go out for fear I meet

My poems dancing down the street

Telling your name to everyone.

The lichen peels along the wall.

My conversation bores the dove.

He knows it all: that I'm in love

And you care much and not at all.

I shall stay here and keep my word.

Glumly I wait to marry dust.

It grieves me only that I must

Speak not to you, but to a bird.

Inks and Pens

Recently one of my close friends Sharad, inspired by his boss, started using a fountain pen for the fulfillment of his writing requirements. This inspiration inspired me too, and I soon found my faithful Parker roller ball (blessed be his soul) replaced by a new, non Parker fountain. And guess what? I quite love it! It definitely would hard, if not impossible, to go back to the gel and roller now. I now wish that I had taken Mrs Chaddha's advice (my 10th grade English teacher who quite hated me and my handwriting...more the former than the latter) and had turned to fountain pens (and cursive writing books too).

It is firmly established that the fountain pen gets out the best in you as far as handwriting goes (remember your 6th grade teacher instructing you to use one? Remember your not giving a damn about that instruction?). But there is also a certain degree of refinement and sophistication associated with it; it has that certain vintage quality to it. The myriad kinds of nibs, inks, ink - suction mechanisms and bodies all come together and fuse to give birth to a wide spectrum of pens from which one can take a pick - from the desi ones that can be purchased for under 15 bucks and have life spans of a few months, to all the Crosses, Watermans, and Mont Blancs, which with their gold nibs, exquisite engravings and gold/silver(platinum?) exteriors (and perhaps a few diamonds here and there) can diminish your savings account by anything between a couple of grand and a couple of lakhs.

But there is something more to it; something more fundamental. Something which makes the fountain pen the perfect writing instrument. The nib of a fountain pen, over time, is shaped by factors which are very idiosyncratic - the way you hold the pen, the amount of pressure you apply, and the angle at which the pen glides across the paper. The nib, which culminates the process of transforming your thoughts into words, is shaped by factors which are very specific to you - which belong to you. I feel that this gives birth to a certain intimacy, a certain oneness, between you, and what you write.

Silly notions of a silly Romantic eh?

Cups and Saucers

I go to this small, cheap Muslim establishment (I would have called it a restaurant, but I do not think that the definition of a restaurant includes this place) for my tea breaks (please don't ask me tea breaks from what ?!?). The tea over here (and at other similar establishments) is slightly different in flavor from the usual Mumbaiyya road-side Thela tea: its milkier, sweeter and less strongly brewed. As one of the waiters puts it: 'Ismein kaala paani kum hota hai...isliye jaada tasty hai'. Well I have to agree with him on it being 'jaada tasty'...I am hooked to it!

Anyway, today in between the moments of trying to be mindful of drinking my tea (a Zen practice...I'll talk about mindfulness at length some other time), I observed again what I have been observing for the past many days: people pouring out the entire contents of their cups into their saucers, and then proceeding to finish their tea within a couple of minutes. This time however I decided to take this observation to the next level.

The first step was to deduce approximately what percentage of the tea connoisseurs patronizing this place (touch of sarcasm there) actually drink their tea like this. So what do I do? I resort to the ever helpful mathematical realm of Statistics. Now lets see...first I need to choose a sample space (now what exactly had the Prof said about sample spaces? Something on the lines of 'it being representative, to a reasonable degree of accuracy, of the entire set...'? Oh fuck it...this isn't for a mathematical journal! I think my not sticking to the precision and accurateness that mathematics requires will suit me just fine!). So, as my sample space I decide to pick out ten random folks and observe their individual idiosyncratic ways of drinking tea (at the cost of being cursed for staring at them while they try to dilute the fatigue of the day with their precious cup of tea).

Now it turns out that 8 out of the 10 folks I chose, had tea via the saucer to mouth route. That would be 80%. Its a substantial percentage; substantial enough to make the remaining 20% look like there is something different about the way they were drinking tea!

So how does one explain this? Obviously drinking tea from the saucer is some kind of custom, but all customs usually have a logical starting point. There must have been a reason why some man (or woman...these feminists!) in the past took up the cudgel, tightened his balls and said: 'No way am I going to use the cup. Why use a cup when you have a saucer?'. This perfect logic would then have attracted some followers, who then attracted their own followers, until it became a cult following, and produced an army of tea-from-saucer drinking soldiers.

But what could have that reason why the whole thing started be? I see plenty of reasons why the cup, as a tea drinking instrument, is superior to the saucer. Or in other words why the saucer, as a tea drinking instrument, is inferior to cup. Or in other words this business of drinking tea from the saucer just doesn't make sense!

• a cup has a handle and a smaller circumference, and hence it is easier to direct, and control the flow of tea into your mouth. Being able to direct and control the flow of tea into your mouth would directly control your tea drinking experience
• owing to the smaller exposed area to the environment, the tea would remain hotter for a longer duration in a cup. And it just makes sense to want a hot drink to remain hot for as long as possible
• drinking tea from a saucer requires the additional effort of pouring the tea into the saucer from the cup. For an amateur, this manoeuvre could involve loss of tea on account of spilling

So, what could have been that mysterious initial motive for drinking tea from the saucer? Maybe we shall never find out.

(Oh by the way...the name of this establishment is Rahat Restaurant)

The Autowallah's of Mumbai

Before you start reading this...know that I have written this after consuming a whole bottle of Red Wine, and what I have written might be in whole, or in parts, unadulterated drivel.

So, its raining like hell, and I need to get to Ghatkopar station to catch a fast to Dadar. What do I do? Duh! Take a Rick! ('Rick' bole to Autorickshaw...a noisy, shaky monstrosity that runs on three wheels and CNG and charges around 5 bucks a Km). Halfway down the 'circuit', fighting our way through waterlogged streets and traffic, and people and cows, I realize that I just have 25 bucks in my old, worn out wallet (which every now and then begs to be replaced by someone younger) , and as luck would have it, 25 bucks is just short of what it would cost to reach Ghatkopar (around 30 bucks). So I think: Nothing to panic about old boy, we (me and and my mind) shall just hop off when the meter tells me that my fare is 25 bucks, and walk the remaining distance of around 0.5 Km. Of course the only problem in this brilliant analysis is that it is raining sheets outside, and any attempt at getting out of the Rick would mean having a bath a second time over in under 30 minutes! And no soap either! So I keep my butt on the Rick's passenger seat, and anxiously keep looking at the meter whose unit dial is mercilessly (and I imagine with derisive laughter) making 360 degree rotations thereby incrementing my burden by a Rupee each. I listen to the the rainfall outside and also to the subtle 'clicks' when the dial completes each rotation, keeping a track of how much further I can go in the shelter of the Rick.

Finally, and much to my dismay, the dial strikes 26; which means that I owe the Autowallah 25 bucks; which means that I have to get down. A conversation between me and him is born at this point, and it grows as follows:
Me: Bhaiyya, bas yaheen chod dijeeye
Autowallah: Par station to thoda aur door hai Sahib
Me: Par mere paas sirf 25 Rupayein hain; aur aage jaane ke paise nahin
(Few seconds of silence...I am expecting an attack of indignation at any moment now...)
Autowallah: Aap pehle aadmee hain jinho ne aisa kaha hai. 2-3 Rupaye se kya pharak padta hai Sahib...hum aapko station tak hee chod denge
(Few more minutes of silence; I do not know how to thank him for his kindness.)
(We reach Ghatkopar station and he parks the Rick into a corner. I get off and get into the process of taking out out my wallet)
Autowallah: Rehne dijye Sahib. Aapko Agar kuch paise chahiye hon to mere se le lijye

What the...?!? The immediate thought that comes to my mind is that he is being mercilessly sarcastic. But there is not a tinge of sarcasm in his voice. His voice and his expression says it clearly that he is not only ready to waiver my fare, but also to give me some money! Give money to a total stranger! I do not know how to react. I take out all the money that I have (which anyway is not enough for the actual fair)...I fold my hands and say: 'Dhanyavaad', and leave. He takes another passenger and is off to his next familiar destination.

The Autowallah's of Mumbai come in a rich and varied kind: some are loud, some are taciturn and business like; some have radios in their mean machines with dhinchaak music blaring at ear - drum shattering decibel levels, some are quiet and contended with their idols made conspicuous by multi colored, flashing LED's. But all said, they make a unique clique who without an exception charge by the meter (a practice not detected anywhere else in the country....yet) and also help out the occasional 'firang' looking poor customer. Wonderful chaps I say eh?
(although they do sometimes get a little frustrating when they start refusing to take you where you want to go!)

Dreams or Reality?

What are dreams? Cynics will say that they are just random sequences of fragmented memories, and that they really do not have any significance as far as reality is concerned. Psychoanalysts will probably say they are manifestations of your subconscious or unconscious desires; a sort of communication you might say. They might be, but then I have always wondered if it is so, why do they have to be so cryptic. If my subconscious or unconscious mind wants to communicate with me, why does it have to be in a way that would not be understood by me! (Unless of course I decide to devote 10 years of my life in trying to learn enough whereby I can guess on what they probably mean) Anyway, what I want to do is share an experience which got me thinking of a possible relative relationship between Dreams and Reality.

I was in one of my afternoon comatose states, and somewhere down the line I went off to sleep. (something else which also has fascinated me for quite some time is sleep just suddenly creeps up. I mean one moment you are awake, a hundred thoughts swirling in your mind, and suddenly, without your realizing your are asleep. Is it possible to ever be conscious when sleep comes? Its obviously not possible to be conscious after sleep has come...sleep after all is defined as a state when you are not conscious. But is it possible to be conscious, just for that one moment, when sleep just comes? Anyway...enough digression!). Now it so happens that whenever I sleep during the day, the frequency of dreams is much higher. So, even if I doze off for 20 minutes, there is a good chance I'll have a dream. So on this particular afternoon, I sleep for around 4 hours, and the I experience the following:
I go to sleep for around 30 minutes, I have some dream and then I wake up for around 5 minutes, still lying down and staring at the white ceiling, and then again I go off to sleep for 30 minutes and the same sequence follows for the next 4 hours. Some of the dreams were actually, in a way, continuations of the previous ones, not precise continuations, but continuations in the sense of having the same 'story line' and 'characters'.

So after 4 hours of almost continuously going into, and coming out of dreams, at the end, when I woke up, for a good 15 minutes I was not sure about anything - Who was I? Where was I ? Is this a Dream? Is this Reality?

After some more time, things started sinking in. I had a faint memory of the dreams I had had (why can't we ever completely remember our dreams? ). Needless to say, they did not make much sense at all. But what I had experienced, gave birth to the following thought experiment:

We are awake for 18 hours a day, and hence we experience Reality for 18 hours a day (for the time being let us forget about the time in Reality lost to daydreams, arbitrary thoughts etc; let us also forget the possibility that Reality itself is an illusion!) and are asleep for 6 hours, during which we experience Dreams (again, let us assume that for the entire duration of our sleep we Dream continuously...this of course is a very strong assumption). Now suppose for a sufficiently long period of time, the opposite happens, i.e. We are asleep for 18 hours a day (or would it be 18 hours a night ?), throughout which we Dream, and we are awake for 6 hours during which we experience Reality as is being experienced by someone who is following the original scheme. Also make the rather strong assumption your Dreams are continuations, and that in your Dreams, you can remember your previous Dreams. Now, after a sufficiently long period of time, a month, a year, 2 years, 10 years, wouldn't Reality for me become my 18 hour long Dreams? And would not my experience of Reality for 6 hours become my Dreams? If you modify the experiment for 12 + 12, instead of 18 + 6, would Dreams and Reality merge into one single, pseudo Reality, where they aren't any Dreams? or would I go completely insane by the pull of equally strong, but different states of existence?

It seems to me that the states of Reality and Dreams are relative to each other, with respect to the amount of time spent in those states.

Infinite Kinds of Silences

I came across this idea in this book, 'The Indian Clerk' by David Leavitt. The book is a fictionalized account of the life of the great British mathematician G.H Hardy during the period 1910 - 1920, a period which witnessed his unexpected association with Srinivasa Ramanujan and the First World War. The book was a great read and I'd highly recommend it.

Anyway, one very interesting idea that I came across in the book was this : there are infinite kinds of silences. This may sound rather absurd...infinite kinds of silences! But it stops being absurd as soon as we look at silence, not something as by itself, rather as the absence of sound; the negation of sound. So you could think of one kind of silence being the absence of human voice, and another kind being the absence of your favorite melody.

Delightful ain't it?