Cuppa' Joe

Anger, apathy, the fire burns so cold. The flat grey sky above, the cold morning light, the world seems so indifferent. The sun is lost in clouds, having perhaps tired of the routine. It’s freezing out – at least there’s something to feel. Children walk to school rushing headlong towards a future of certain bleakness. The world, it would seem, has fallen off its axis. The morning’s news only makes it worse – greed, apathy and worst of all, naïve optimism. The fire burns brighter but it doesn’t warm – instead its harsh light makes the dullness even more impossible to ignore. The once comforting ritual of coffee brewing seems now oppressive and forced – enjoy this coffee before it turns to ashes in your mouth. And then, the coffee pot burbles plaintively and an aroma tickles the senses – the smell of what a morning ought to be, reminding me of the faint ember of life that still glows in the corner, weak yet defiant. The first sip is a tidal wave of sensation and thought, the ground shifts underfoot, the world rights itself with unbridled violence. Vast as the blackness is, it is nonetheless powerless to resist the flashlight beam cutting a swathe through it… context! In one glorious swoop, context redefines reality… I exist, I live, I thrive. And, people ask me why I don’t get my coffee at Starbucks…

Shifting sands

Have you ever returned home from a trip to find it intangibly different from the way you left it? It’s happened to me lots of times. But always, the feeling has been transient. Except in the most recent case; and, this time, it wasn’t my apartment that felt vaguely alien. This summer, I traveled to Chennai (the city formerly known as Madras), India – the place I’ve thought of as home for some years now. However, when I finally landed there, after some drama with an overbooked connecting flight, there was a nagging emptiness, a lack of emotion that just wouldn’t go away.

[Cue a segue out of left field.] The feeling reminded me of a rather peculiar neurological disorder – it results from damage to the brain, specifically to the connections between the fusiform gyrus (the face-recognition area of the brain) and the amygdala (the emotional center of the brain). People with such damage suffer from a curious form of face blindness, where they recognize the faces of people they know but think the person to be an impostor. The rationale behind this pathology is rather simple: from memory, they recognize the pattern of the face but the recognition is not accompanied by an emotional response from the amygdala, as happens in healthy individuals. As a result, the brain concludes that the person, who looks familiar, must be an impostor.

Now that I’ve wandered hopelessly far from whence I started, let’s return rather abruptly to the main plot. The problem wasn’t that I was bothered by Madras having changed in my absence… I had noticed changes during every visit too. But it had always retained an ineffable quality that made it unmistakably Madras, unmistakably home. However, this time was different… it had changed in a way that I couldn’t quite put my finger on… I felt like I’d walked into someone else’s home, nonetheless at the location where mine had been. And what bothered me most was how indifferent I felt about this. What had changed?

Like a child relentlessly picking at a scab, I kept digging into my thoughts until the little voice in the back of my brain was suddenly a deafening scream: “Fuck it! Nothing is yours! Nothing remains!” Ah, at last, a clue! Despite the oppressive summer heat, the city felt cold, aloof, uncaring, even unfamiliar, it’s rhythm suddenly different from the one that had so mesmerized me years ago. I realized that the city once again felt every bit as unfamiliar as it did when I moved there in 1997. But what had changed about ‘my city’ that should bother me so? Or was it really I who had changed? Before I even began to find an answer, I knew it would have to involve both… I had certainly changed but the city had likely changed too.

The answer came to me in a stunning moment of clarity as I sat in a restaurant eating an excellently cooked dosa. The food was excellent, I was in the company of family… but something irked me still. And then I put my finger on it… it was the rest of the restaurant… the activity, the buzz, the palpable impatience – people wanted me out of there – the harried waiters who could no longer even feign politeness, the hungry customers with pocketfuls of cash waiting for a table…they all wanted me out of there. And that was it… there was simply no room to relax any more, the city was too busy being a rat race to be fun.

The why was easy enough to figure out – all I had to do was drink a few glasses of tea (yes, glasses, not cups) and keep my ears open. Road-side tea shops are the real nerve centers of Madras, where one feels the pulse of the city at its strongest. (And, I am mixing up my metaphors, I know.) So, there I was, sitting on a wooden bench drinking strong, sweet, creamy tea and listening. With each conversation, I felt my perspective widen, my understanding grow clearer.

As it often does, it all boils down to time and economics. The 21^st century has witnessed economic progress hit India and hit it has, with all the subtlety of a tropical cyclone and as much balance and planning as a riot. Not that it could have been much different – this is India after all, and we Indians jus do not do simple. And Madras has definitely kept pace with the rest of the country, if not led the charge. It’s visible – lots of shiny new Audis and BMWs on the roads, stores peddling every luxury brand under the sun. But not all is well – the nouveau riche must still drive their sports cars past the same old slums and at every stop light, they must still ignore the destitute beggars. In a city trying unabashedly to gentrify itself, land is at an all time premium and as the rent rises inexorably skyward, all but the very well heeled feel the ground eroding away from under their feet. All this has turned Madras into a city full of people hanging on with grim determination and desperate people do not have the time to be nice. And, so it is that the place I once called home has turned too cold and unfamiliar to give me the time of day now. Suddenly the saying that “home is where the heart is” seems like rather cold comfort indeed.

A Momentary Lapse to the Dark Side

I was watching a documentary about the legendary Pink Floyd album The Dark Side of the Moon and something that Roger Waters said triggered off an avalanche of thoughts and memories. He talked about how “everything up to [a certain] point was preparation for life that would start later and [he] realized suddenly that life was already happening. [He] realized that life began at dot and at any time one could take control of it…” When he said that it made me think of my own life and the influence upon it of the Indian social context in which I grew up. The notion of education and ‘growing up’ being preparation for life that would start later is very much the way of thinking in Indian society. Even as I grew up being a good little hamster, keeping his wheel turning as fast as was demanded and then some, I began to question the fundamental principles that the worldview I’d been taught was predicated upon. By the time I was out of high school, I realized that the massive edifice of a life’s plan I’d constructed was built on a foundation of well, nothing. I also realized that the loneliest place an individual could find himself in the midst of a collectivistic society.
"And if the cloud bursts, thunder in your ear
You shout and no one seems to hear.
And if the band you're in starts playing different tunes
I'll see you on the dark side of the moon."
Lyrics like this suddenly felt a great deal more personal.

Thereupon followed the existential crisis and period of darkness that I imagine everyone goes through in some form and to some degree. Thinking back to those times brought to mind yet another bit of Pink Floyd brilliance, this time from the song Time…
"Hanging on in quiet desperation
Is the English way."

Whether it was the way life had always been in the subcontinent or a dark remnant on the Indian psyche of the colonial past, it is certainly how I looked upon the Indian experience of life in those days. At that thought surfaced memories, all to vivid, of fears past… fears best summarized by more Pink Floyd lyrics,
"And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun."
And out of all this angst came the person I am today… someone consciously trying not to lose the here and the now in the formless mists of possible futures. Thinking back on all this I realize it’s no mystery why music and prog rock/metal resonates with me so strongly… it’s been, and continues to be, the soundtrack to my life. And every night, when I sleep, my fears come out to play in the dark garden of my dreams:
"The time is gone, the song is over,
Thought I'd something more to say."

A couple of first paragraphs

Arguing with BULLSHIT

How could one, knowing fact from conjecture, knowing inference from observation, ever be totally certain? And without selling the truth short to put on a mask of certainty, how does one then debate the illogically obstinate? Employing logic against blind, stupid lunacy leaves one in much the same position as a wave crashing against a rock. How then does one deal with such a situation? How does one argue with BULLSHIT? More importantly, how does one keep at bay, cynicism and apathy? Perhaps, Max Planck was right when he said, “A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

Cold Days

At times I wake up knowing that the day will be passed in quiet desperation. Some time during the night, my mind must have wandered somewhere dark and the old, familiar monkey is back upon my shoulder. First glimpse of daylight and I already feel tired… life, it seems, is an oppressive, utterly pointless tedium. I look out the window and the sky is an impenetrable mass of gray, which seems rather appropriate. I got through my morning routine – calisthenics, shower, coffee – even though every thing seems harder than usual. I step outside and there’s a cold wind blowing rain drops into my face like little, icy needles. Pile on the misery! But through all this, there’s a glimmer of something somewhere in a corner of my mind that tells me “This too shall pass.” So, I can’t stop, I can't even really slow down… I must just keep on keepin’ on.

The Linearity Trap

I have not written for some time now – over a year – in part because I’ve not felt the need to put down any of my thoughts but also in part because I’ve been struggling to find the words to express myself with. There have been many, many first paragraphs, even a few second. But nothing seems to translate, to flow. My conscious mind tells me I should be very troubled by all this, but curiously, I’m not. Realizing that brought a fresh question to my mind – do I need turmoil to fuel my writing? I’m certainly cognizant of how much I’ve depended on writing as a means to find clarity in times of confusion. Indeed, most of my writing was fueled by mental flux. Emerson was right on the money when he said “Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.” But oddly, in learning to live through difficult times, I seem to have forgotten how to deal with placidity.

And perhaps, along the way, my writing has become dependent on mental flux as a source of inspiration – all indications certainly point to this being the case. The past six months or so have been a period of relative calm (I think) and I have had the hardest time writing anything at all – and this has bothered me immensely. The resultant unease drove me to reexamine myself and my recent past. Careful recollection tells me that these months have not really been entirely calm – no more so than substantial chunks of my past, anyway. So, what’s different now? The answer, it would seem, is me… more precisely where I stand with respect to the events that make up my life. It appears I have moved with respect to these events, suddenly finding myself closer to the eye of the storm… that little island of calm from whence I can observe the gusting winds. More importantly, with respect to my current predicament it would appear it is the perception of flux, rather than flux itself, that I’ve come to depend upon as writing fuel.

But why would any of this unnerve me so? The reason lies what I see as the value of writing: it has helped me to learn and to grow. And, without growth, there is only stagnation – the thing I fear most – for stagnation is decay and decay, death. So, it is that writer’s block felt every bit like an existential crisis – oddly, a quiet but persistent one – and therefore, I persisted in my efforts to write. As with every task, I set myself a seemingly easy goal: to write a page of something, anything at all. Weeks turned into months and the accursed page just wouldn’t fill up.

Jump across space and time to at cinema hall at a multiplex, the evening of last Wednesday. I’m watching, in 3D no less, Werner Herzog’s new documentary, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, about the Chauvet cave in France. The cave, apart from being a place of breathtaking natural splendor, is home to the oldest known cave paintings. And they were far indeed from simplistic stick figures that I expected. Even as I marveled at the beauty of the lions and horses painted on the walls, the thought crossed my mind that they had spent thousands of years hidden within the cave while history happened outside: the dark ages, the renaissance, two world wars… a whole lot of history.

And then, I got to thinking about that notion itself. It was a fairly interesting thought but it wasn’t much more than that. It was not the start of a chain of logic that led me somewhere more interesting. It wasn’t the only such thought I had during that movie either… there were several such isolated, amorphous thoughts. Each one interesting in its own right, within its specific context, interrelated even but not in any linear fashion. That’s when it hit me: I’ve had a lot of these amorphous thoughts over the last several months. But I don’t know what to do with them. Even the descriptors I can muster for these thoughts – amorphous, non-linear – only tell me what they are not. Therein lies the fundamental problem: I am limited by the linearity of my thought. In identifying this limitation, I have discovered my next challenge – to move beyond linearity. Perhaps, in time, I will make some headway in that direction and write about it on this blog. For now, I can only wonder how such a post would be structured.