The Shooting Star

"Thar she blows," I heard on the laptop somebody was playing a movie on, as it turned out the geeks were never in doubt about what they wanted to bring to a train.  Entertainment that's all they wanted and in their quest for it, they labored through movies ranging from the docile love stories to the stormy passionate ones, there was action too, and that's what I heard on the laptop, sounded like one of those war ship movies, there was a lot of noise of stormy seas and splashing of water as the sailors tried to keep the ship afloat.

The train was rocking, it was probably the tracks, they were old and the clatter was keeping the passengers quiet, the attendant walked in with a tray full of fruit juice, there was apple, banana and orange, I kinda preferred the mixed juice but they didn't have it, so I picked up the orange juice for myself and an apple for Anjali.  It was tangy and sweet but there was nothing about it that made up for the pieces of oranges that floated in the drink, it was sweet and soothing for the mind, it had the flavor of large wine drink in the mid summer afternoon, and my mind started to drift to earlier conversations.

"The wine glasses in the art magazine, they look fantastic."
"Any idea how they are made ?" I asked equally curious about what she had read.
"They say that the wine glasses are smoldered through a cauldron and the smoke is felt through the glass to give it shape."
"Isn't that the best possible way to make things work ?"
"I was thinking maybe it is rational to think of questioning the established authority glass making," she said mockingly.
"That seems to be alright assumption."
"So what if I put the melted glass through a pot of sand and leveraged the pieces to get the ideal mix out of everything, see the melted glass would create very creative art pieces and then these could be cooled down in cauldron of water to give them solid shape," she said thinking, obviously she had done a lot of thinking while I had been designing my computer system.

All thought came from our senses and our senses received these inputs from some "matter" as yet undefined in my head, so if all our actions were a matter of the information that our senses receive then surely there was going to be a vast quantities of inputs that our senses would receive from our environment.  To sift through these inputs would be the job of our mind and it came to traditional pass that if we could define this "matter" then we were all in control of our lives.

The "matter" that gave inputs to our senses and hence made our thoughts dependent on was largely emotionless and probably connected to the cosmos.  In line with whatever the rest of the world thought, the Cosmos is much larger than what seems like the sum of two numbers, it is frequently thought to be inaccessible and yet at the right moment there is a tell tale sign that leaves us mighty befuddled.

"I saw a shooting star last night, it trailed a glorious blaze across the skyline, a tiny wisp of a star with a blazing tail, it was a lovely sight," I said trying to hint that all creativity, as it was a information received from our senses, was Cosmos's creation.
"It must have been a wonderful sight," she said now moving away from the art magazine.
"I walked across to the balcony for a tiny fraction of seconds, must have been like 15 of them, and there it was riding right across the sky."
"What timing ?" she said equally unsure what she was supposed to say, thoughts and especially philosophical ones are not easy to answer back to.
"I was amazed too, if I had been 5 seconds either side of the clock, I would have missed it."
"There must have been a reason to why you were there on the terrace at that point in time."
"I have been wondering about it ever since, was I meant to see it, at that point in time, was I specifically called by the Cosmos to behold this wonder and I distinctly remember it was 4 am in the morning," I had this questioning tone but found no answers forthcoming, "Sometimes we see things because we are meant to at a certain point in time in our life cycle."
"The standard deviation from say an art magazine to a research on the Cosmos are two different topics aren't they."
"The purists or classics as I have often called them think only rationally and therefore they never get past their dogmas and the theorems, to them life is a formula, either you have it or you don't."
"So what am I ?" she asked equally involved in the conversation, I had always thought of her as an artist caught up in the corporate entity, often it is thought that is the normal thing to be working in a corporate and be stuck with jobs that we don't want to do.
"Do you like your job ?"
"Not too much," she replied casually.
"Then don't stick to it, if you have the courage, leave it and walk out to a new world that is your creation, where your creativity defines who you are, however you do need the job, then stick with it and stop cribbing about the bosses and the colleagues and the work culture," I said rapidly, after all it wasn't a question of whether Anjali was a classical or romantic bent of mind, it was important for her to figure out what she was doing with her life.

She was stunned to hear me talk like this and for a moment I thought I had said the wrong, she recovered her composure and continued to browse through the magazine.  To soothen the blow I spoke softly now, "I left the corporate world some 4 years back and never looked back, its been a tough ride discovering what I have wanted to do but here I am today, just happy."
"I want to be happy too."
"Then follow your heart and the Cosmos will hear you and connect you to its source, there are things waiting to happen and open up as you take up what your heart beckons you to do."
"To Learn Who Rules Over You, Simply Learn Who You Are Not Allowed To Criticise."

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Oranges in Spain -VI

There were times during the train journey that my mind was wandering, the thing that was strangely obvious was that this trip was going to be another belter, I had come out of my reverie with Anjali talking about the configuration that her computer should have, hardware configurations always got my head in the right place.  Hardware configurations were a matter of personal preference and that being a matter of interest to a person more than the community.

So an I5 would look pretty similar to the following :

Pentium I5 processor with expandability options
Minimum 4 GB of RAM
1MB L2 cache
DVD R/W


This was the bare minimum that would be required to make a creative person make full use of her talent.  On the whole there was barely anything to it, if there was a part of the computer that was under utilised.  So, under normally circumstances there wasn't anything that could be said about how to buy computer except walking into a showroom and picking up the configuration that was planned for and then paying for the bill and walking out of the showroom with the buy.

Then it happened, a flash of lightening in my head as it often happened, buying as always was a pleasurable activity especially the kind that leads to taking the load of the head, so I visualised myself walking into a showroom filled with computers, the Tata Croma showroom was the ideal place for such an activity, it was a largish showroom with a ramp that took you down to the lower mezzanine where all the equipment was stacked.  It was like a 3 D walk through that was running through my head, technology had this thing that moved me, it had a calming effect on me, like food for the brain, human beings were more focused on the mind then they were on the heart, if the mind was calm then all was generally well.

This was akin to a computer, all parts, some moving some semi conductor driven, requiring just electricity to drive them, if all was going well, these parts seldom thought of anything else, they just mechanised with each other and worked on a full scale.  The heart of the matter was important aspect of the technology, easily forgotten amidst all the humdrum of daily life.

Like magic the attendant appeared again, "do you want some more tea," he asked and we both acquiesced.
"How is the dinosaur in your garden doing ?" I asked her.
"What do you mean."
"I mean that new guy you are seeing, all well with him ?"
"Ah, him, he is fine, I haven't spoken too much to him lately, there is no time."
"We have nothing if time," I said casually.
"Yeah, but he is too much time at work."
"And so are you," I retorted back. Relationships weren't like machines, they required very good caring and loving, it was the heart of the matter that was important, "Do you love him ?"
"I don't think I love anything in this world."
"You love your Channa Bhatura," I said, referring to the Indian snack she so enjoyed, "Should I order some for you ?"
"I'd love that," she was right back in the mood, for a moment I thought she was going into a negative frame of thought, but then we were right there now.  I pointed to the item to the attendant and he understood immediately what we wanted.

Machines could have heart too, I think that is what Artificial Intelligence, also called AI is trying to develop in machines, R2 from Star Trek had more heart than most human beings, he was so attached to Luke Skywalker that there wasn't anything more he wanted than to be with his master.  The term "master" was probably derived from Asimov's definition of a "Slave" and "Master" methodology that computers worked on, till they invented the peer to peer protocols that allowed machines to see each other as equals rather than a server driven methodology.

The Channa Bhatura arrived, it tasted like heaven, she ate every single morsel and even licked her fingers like a kid, it was fun seeing her eat, almost like a cat that had had its cake and the cream too.  Sated, she decided to go through the art magazine that I had got back from our co-passengers and she starting leafing through it, I had made notes on the magazine and she eyed them quietly, that was the thing about her, she loved reading my notes because it opened her eyes to my thought.
"Beauty Is Where The Heart Is"

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Oranges In Spain - V

The train attendant was serving another round of tea when the driver braked suddenly, was it the signal or something else, it was a foggy evening and the night had descended on us, we had travelled two and a half hours and it was beginning to dawn on us the importance of being in suspended animation with our co passengers.  The train stopped at a small station for 5 minutes, during which the outside world became evident to us.

"What station is that ?" I asked the attendant.
"Tohana," he said with knowingly, they all felt that way when they knew something that the other didn't, but in this case it was somebody reassuring us,"we have a two minutes stop here, its a small town famous for its vicinity to Damdama Sahib where the famous Sikh guru, Guru Tegh Bahadur had his hometown."
"Seems like a very small town," I said eyeing the station that was small enough to be called a Level C township, " more like a village."
"It looks strangely quiet and peaceful," Anjali continued as the attendant walked off to serve the other passengers.
"Small towns give me the feel of people who have been there and done the real thing, they don't need any road signs to tell them where they are going."
She smiled smugly, she knew my disdain of road signs, and my feel for country roads and the liking for the scenery.  She knew I loved the city but travel had to be in the country.  Road Signs were meant for people who knew exactly where they were going, in a hurry to get to the destination ignoring the not so obvious beauty of the journey.  The train started to move and gather up speed and momentum.

"Isn't it strange that the moment the train stops the conversation also stops," asked Anjali, actually it was more of a comment than a query.
"The spell is broken as we reach a destination."
"I hate travel and you know it," she said tweaking her nose.
"I know, I know."
"I wish they had faster trains, cutting down travel time," she for the first time acknowledged that technology had its finer points.  Technology was methodical and precise, the more accurate the better the results.

The Shinkansen in Japan had achieved speeds up to 320 km/hr and test speeds of over 400 km/hr, sitting in the Shinkansen would make up our journey in one hour.  With technology upgradation came the need for cultural acceptance, people who preferred country roads wouldn't ride in the Shinkansen even if the cat was after their life, it wasn't as if these people didn't understand technology, it was just that they preferred longer journey's that provided knowledge and understanding of the world.

Technology upgradation for a train meant laying down new lines, understanding infrastructure requirements like train sheds and parking bays and even though the Shinkansen ran on standard gauge it had taken Japan well over 50 years to reach the speeds of today.
"Where is that art article you were reading ?" she asked curiously.
"I passed it on to the lady in the next seat."
"Do you think I would excel at languages like Geetika, I have been thinking of learning a new language," she continued and I was listening.
"You have everything going for you right now, what language are you thinking of doing, I could suggest Spanish, French or Italian."
"I haven't decided that as yet though Spanish seems just right."
"Spain has a history and culture that spans the continent, the language is spoken by as many people as Mandarin, maybe a little less than that but is catching up."
"I could do a course that gives me a degree in the language and then move to translation, don't you think ?"

The speed was increasing and without knowing the buzz of the conversation had also caught up, we were moving again and in the middle of mustard fields and chirping birds that were endless, I was thinking of languages in the coach, they were a mixture of English, Hindi and Punjabi all that I understood, was catching strings of conversation going on between people around us, it was hard to concentrate but I understood the significance of what had been told to me right now.  Anjali wanted to be afoot with newer things, she wanted to try her hand out at new ideas and concepts that were a conceptualisation of all that she was today.

"Wouldn't it be fun to buy a new computer for your den?" I asked her thinking she was ready for the new Pentium I5.
"I kind of like that idea, why don't you select one for me ?"
"That's easy, a fast computer with lots of memory would be ideal for you, you could publish mails, newsletter and modify graphics on its fast graphic card, all part of your work profile."
"I like these new desktops with good audio."
"Yes that would be important part of your work."
"Yes, I am sure there are half a dozen DVDs in the market that I could browse."
"I got this new DVD with the art magazine," I said showing her the DVD in its cover, she took it from me, opened the cover and had a look, "Isn't it the magazine itself on the DVD ?" she asked.
"Yes, that is correct."

We were two hours from our destination and I was sure there was more conversation that would pick up and I had to plan her new computer, my mind was already churning out configurations.
We Dream And So We Are.

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Oranges in Spain - IV

The train was speeding at high speed, the scenery around us was a blur, the lights in the train glowed to a bright blue, the humanly conversation was fading into the whir of the wheels and as we approached another non-decrepit station where we wouldn't stop, I put a blanket around Anjali, she seemed to be so deep in thought that she didn't notice that it was getting colder.  I was thinking of the trains and the passengers, we were suspended in this train, far away from the thoughts of the others.
"There is something really romantic about a train journey," I said with nostalgia on my mind.
She was far away, and still thinking, "I suppose you could say that."
"Take for instance, this thought that there is no destination," I said trying to get her attention.
"But there is a destination."
"If there weren't then would we still travel in the train," I said still trying to wake her up.
"I suppose then this would be suspended animation," she said finally thinking.
"The train by all means seems like medium to get to a place, however to the contrary, its a tool with its own personality and fixtures that make it up."
"That is correct."
"Well, how often have we seen that with equipment, it is built to last and perform a certain activity, over and above its lifetime, if the equipment is taken care of then the equipment performs well past its life time."
"Certain nostalgia about living with equipment that loves you back, isn't it ?" she said knowingly, though I knew she was just beginning to understand my fascination with new equipment.

The first piece of equipment that I ever owned was a hand held video game, I remember, PacMan, these funny little creatures that gobbled up everything and had to scurry around from other equally menacing looking predators.  I owned the game for over 4 years and I think my fascination with equipment and understanding of it started from there.  PacMan was around the ubiquitous "theory of survival", we all eat others to live and run from creatures that try and eat us in order to preserve our species.

"Do you see that lady in the pink ostentatious suit sitting and chatting with her friends ?" I asked nonchalantly pointing to no one in particular.
"She is dressed like the peacock ready to charm the peahens."
"See, that is the typical Punjabi lady, they dress to flaunt their money," I said knowingly now and she smiled at me knowing that I was a Punjabi too.
"I don't see you dressing up to charm feathers off though."
"I have function on this Earth and abide by it, every human being is sent to this earth with a certain genetic code built into them.  It's the concept that machines are built on, difference being that human beings have pleasures to distract them, while machines run on true concept."
"Interesting, so that lady in the Pink Suit was brought to this Earth with "Ostentation" code ?" she asked slightly more interested now.
"Do you think that she is truly what you see, she is probably covering up for her inadequacies, which would imply that her code would be "Cover Up".

The point that I made to her was pedagogic and could well have been taught in a structured form in a philosophy class.  The "Cover-Up" lady continued her rapid fire conversation with her friend, they were talking in Punjabi, the kinds that made city goers like me salute her skill at the language, Anjali was beginning to listen in too though she understood very little of the language, curiously when there is curiosity there is learning.  Her skills at being an attentive listener not withstanding she had this innate art of being structured in her thoughts, well read and creative, she not only excelled at her work but also formed bonds with friends and family that lasted for eternity.

It was indeed interesting that I could continue to talk to her and not get bored, my prolonged presence in her life had given me a sense of purpose as also a sense belonging, as far as I could think I hadn't formed a long lasting bond like this, so was it possible to modify the genetic code bred into our head, I decided to give it further thought and quietly went back to reading an art magazine that we had purchased before our departure, this magazine had all kinds of articles, there was one that interested me and I started reading it.  The propensity for human beings to romanticise about their creations is unparallelled, the sculpture I was staring at was built like a monument in its miniature form, the curves on it developed from the mind of the artist, every artistic creation was a thought process in the artists mind.

"She is wearing some nice earrings, and a gold necklace to match," Anjali said taking my attention away from the magazine, "I wouldn't think of buying that jewellery even if I had the money to buy it," she was always very prudent in her buys.
"Well, she could be you in another world."
"And how's that ?"
"What if she did everything that she didn't do, like eating fat food, wearing designer jewellery, moving around in flashy cars and relating to false friends."
"How could she be me, if she didn't do a single thing I do ?"
"If we are the creations of a larger mind in the Cosmos, then it is the Yin and Yang, the two sides of a coin that must and do exist together, each nothing without the other though diametrically opposite," I must have sounded like I had thought about this, however I was thinking even as I was talking, "so in all probability there would be more of you depending on your likes and dislikes, the point being that your friends and family that you relate to are your own and we together form a world that is different from the world that they form with their friends and family."

Anjali understood this immediately now and when understanding dawned on her, it brought a smile to her face, it always did when she understood an abstruse point that I was trying to make, I didn't do this deliberately but it so happened that my thoughts became clearer to myself as I shared it with her. Cosmos had a philosophical term for it, it was called "Parallel Universe," and Anjali being a keen reader related to it immediately.

To me, this sharing of thoughts with her was akin to moving from lateral knowledge to frontal knowledge, thoughts that came directly from the front as I moved further in life.  My notepad was always ready with me to jot down points that came rapidly into my mind and nowadays it was always overflowing.  The art of assimilation had dawned me, when Arun had shared "Zen to Done" with me, a remarkably small book but filled with tit bits about how to manage life professionally,

"The Things That Matter The Most Should Never Be Left 
At The Mercy Of The Things That Matter The Least."
                                                       --- Goethe

Nowadays I followed the policy that could be briefly summarized as below :

                          1. Collect
                          2. Process
                          3. Plan
                          4. Do

"Doesn't seem like that is a tough thing to do," Anjali was peeping into my little notebook.
"Actually all the collection happens in this notebook, everything that I know from A to Z for the past week, month, year is collected in this book."
"Seems to me that the assimilation is the harder part ?"
"It is, because knowledge comes to us from all sides and as we start to move forward from the front too and pretty rapidly too."
"I barely manage to write my notes in Outlook at work,"she said meekly, I knew it was feigned as she wanted me to continue talking.
"Smarty pants, don't tell me you don't plan, you do a fabulous job of it."
"I manage," she said with a wink.
"Peace On Earth, Peace Of Mind."

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Oranges In Spain - III

The train took us through mustard fields, that was the predominant yellow that I saw outside, there was talk in the coach and it was abuzz with conversation when I woke up.  Anjali was reading her magazine and drinking a cup of tea that she had asked the attendant to get, I saw my cup lying there too and took it up from her table.  The thought predominant in my head while I had been sleeping, and there are times when we sleep with thoughts in our head and then the other times there is a nothingness.  This time there had been thoughts all pleasant ones, I was thinking of Geetika, my friend who had done her Spanish Language Course, language translation came easy to her, she had the skills and the aptitude to do a good job.

I had met Geetika when I had travelled with her on WWF organized journey, during those days I was associated with them as an affiliate member and had gone on a trip to save the Bengal Tiger.  We had cameras and lens ready to click species of all kind, Geetika had been sitting quietly in the corner when I spotted her during the trip and I had approached her with a bottle of water, she had gracefully accepted it and from our conversation from that I time I realised that she was an avid animal lover too.  The Bengal Tiger Project was on her mind and she had spoken avidly about it, the mangroves of Sunderban where the project had taken us were shared between India and Bangladesh.  The Tiger Species as she had explained to me, was one of the top species in the chain but the Sunderbans were under threat from rising Sea Levels that had a brought about a climate change.  She had explained that the total population of Tigers in this vicinity was only 2500 and the creation of a Poaching reserves on the Indian side had helped stabilise the population by protecting the tigers from poachers.

"I was thinking of Geetika," I said to Anjali while we sipped tea.
"That's nice," she replied back handing me some biscuits as the train rocked on the rails.
She was eager to talk, my sleeping had given her enough time to read and think and there was always music that she enjoyed.
"This tea is good, there is something about good tea that is rare when produced in mass."
"Isn't it ? and then there is always the thought that the flask aren't clean enough or you didn't pay the attendant enough," she replied back.
"What about Geetika ?"
"Well, when I had first met her was a WWF photographer and writer, she was pretty as can be, dark skinned and with a attitude to match it.  Once on a trip to the Sunderbans, she told me that the only way to save the Tigers was to be like them.  Her thoughts had been radical those days and she had reminded of a She Wolf."
"We had been sitting on a bench at a tea shop in Sunderbans, both of us tired of the human race, getting used to living in the wild, she was rampant with her thoughts."
"How so ?" she asked curiously.

Geetika was a creature made to be admired, everything she did, she did with this thought of self possession and upholding the truest values of man kind.  She had this thing about her that said "I am what I am," she was a virtuous human being and held on to her values no matter what the consequence.  "So what were values," she had asked me once, were they thoughts put into our head by the supreme cosmos, and interesting thought this was because human beings align themselves with their true nature.  "Whatever we do," she had told me, "at the end of it all, the search is to align ourselves with the Universal Laws of the Cosmos."

The Cosmos was about taking care of the planet we live on, the creatures that we co-habitat with, once these universal laws were reached the search was over.  This was a classical and romantic thought rolled into one, "Look at the gang of people with us in Sunderbans, it is the romance, the search that has got us into this place together."

I had suddenly realised that it wasn't as if we were tired of the world we lived it, we were running from the machines that ruled our lives, the coffee machine, the refrigerator, the Aircon and etall, to connect with nature was our supreme thought, the romance of living in the wild where the primitive man had lived in all his literary glory.

"Staying with Geetika had taught me that there was nothing romantic about the primitive man," I said to Anjali, she had turned in her seat away from the window and was fully facing me, deep in thought herself.
"I think she was a Romantic."
 "So was I in those days," I said relieved that I had told her this, it was a load off my chest, thoughts blazing in my head while I was sleeping had to find an outlet and she was always there.
"Tea was good, any luck with getting another Samosa from the attendant."
"Here he comes."
"Maybe I will ask him for a pastry ?"
"Do you think he would say yes, I don't think they have pastries in the pantry."
"We should ask for a bottle of lemonade, that would be safe."
"Your dreaming child," I said jestingly.
"Yeah and you are Batman himself.  Save me from the Lemonade monster."

Food was due to be served in another two hours, till then the conversation would be rampant, I had no doubt, when we got together it was always that way, it was just that what with her job and all, there was so little time these days to have a tete-a-tete, a real heart to heart was what we both wanted and when we did get the time for it, it brought the memories flooding.
"If You Try And Don't Succeed, Then Cheat."

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