Bloomington Diaries: In the altar of knowledge…

It seems like we are experiencing difficulties in getting the next part of the tale online. We will resume the tale the moment we regain transmission. In the meantime let us hear about some episodes of my life spent in Bloomington, if the readers will forgive any overly emotional seizures that I might experience during this narration. These events are not mere memories as yet. I still live in Bloomington and these are things that I can touch and feel, very much unlike the Electronic city’s amphitheater, the tank bund view of the Hussain Sagar or the dreary sand washed roads of Shollinganallur. These events are poised precariously somewhere between the present and the past, in some ways, in the future too. Thus, I am bound to be more biased.

With that clumsy disclaimer out of the way, I will tell you about one of my favorite spots in Bloomington – My University’s main library - the Herman B Wells Library! How would you feel about a battlefield where you’ve fought a thousand lonely battles and have won most of them? Won’t there be a bond between the very earth that reddened your skin as you whirled and thumped and your soul that was a mute witness to your entire struggle? That’s how I feel about the place. I have spent many a sweat stained hour within the confines of the library’s solemn walls that are so wise with age and still silent with wisdom. Looking back, I can easily count those hours spent wading through pages of American Economy or fending off enchanted spreadsheet models, among some of my best ones spent in Bloomy.

Somehow this massive structure induces a sense of awe and humility in me. One can never get a true sense of the grandeur and the scale of the accumulated knowledge of the human species in a Google search (you don’t get to see their storage servers, do you?), as you can within the walls of a library. It holds more than 4.6 million volumes of books and journals! And I can sense that I am not the only one who is so awed by it.

Take up the case of the American students here in my university. These students mostly are a people who revere the material and physical world for all its beauty, joy and Strength. While single pack is the norm back home, six pack abs are as ubiquitous here as dhotis in a Madurai village. The weekends are reserved for Alcohol, madness and the ultimate carnal bliss. Their minds seem so rooted in such a Greek-Roman culture of merrymaking that it would be difficult to imagine if these guys would ever be enchanted at all by anything that is subtle. The life here is all too gross, for the most part.

And it is precisely at this point, that they enter the halls of this library and all of a sudden remind me that this is the land that produced the greatest scientists and business men of the past century – people who glorified and worshipped the subtler ideas of knowledge and enquiry. It is a heart-warming sight to watch the young American students, the descendents of Hercules, Thor and Venus, whose pursuits seem so materialistic and sinewy, bow down in this massive altar of wisdom and offer obeisance. All their noise and bravado disappears and a reverential silence prevails as they wade through their pages of ‘stuff I’ve gotta do’. As long as this country reveres knowledge, it will live, despite all its shortcomings.

I have always been a sucker for peaceful spaces and moments. Be it a splendid sunrise along the lake shore or a silent moment spent in the sanctum sanctorum of a temple – they all are snapshots of the immense glory of God and in some way reflect the absolute stillness that he resides in. I should’ve felt the same about this place too, to have fallen so utterly in love with it. I will surely miss the library when I take leave of Bloomy.

There and back again...the Adam's tale!

Ten months have sped past me since I landed at the Newark International Airport, looking for a change in life. I don’t remember now what I was thinking when I made that decision to quit my job and fly to the U.S. to study. But I am so glad I came here for life would never be the same again!

A flight and a drive later, I found myself in a small town snuggled up in a cozy sylvan mattress. It was late evening when I landed here. All was fine, quiet and nice, merry people and innocent fun – just like it was in Frodo’s Shire. But just like his tale, the peace did not last long. I was thrown headlong into a whirlwind of action, reaction and delirium. There was a relentless fight to run the rat race of course! But the fight did not end there. I had to keep fighting to stay sane, stay alive and stay human amidst this mad scramble for glory and life. In the end, I did get to carry the magic ring, but it came at a cost.

The ring was heavy, just like Frodo’s. At times, it tried to tempt me with ideas about how noble and deserving I was, only to have been fought back with the knowledge of my share of flaws and how divine grace had chosen to overlook them. Along my way, I did meet fairies, witches, spirited friends who made the journey lighter, evil Gollams which acted like true friends and later had a change of mind, guides and teachers like Gandolf and Dumbledore whose enigmatic directives I did not comprehend but nevertheless made my days.

I have had silent nights which I have cried through, in my loneliness and pain; buzzed evenings that I could only gaze at, having nothing much to say, numbed by merciless action; boisterous afternoons and late nights lighted up by laughter and some very dear friends; and very very sleepy mornings that have seen me sleep as they waned meekly into warm, sun-soaked afternoons. I have stood at the foot of the glory called Niagara, been a star and an outcast, dabbled at the art of Sambar-making, relished everything from the Burrito to Baklava, built a snowman, bear-hugged a duck, locked myself out, listened to friends pour their hearts out, fallen in love with the Midwest and have almost forgotten that I have a blog :P

I wouldn’t be exaggerating even a tiny bit if I tell you that this past year has been a small little capsule of life itself. Every possible human emotion has been lived through, every possible variation of human character observed; every variety of confusion encountered and a lot of happy times laughed through. There has been anger, betrayal, discomfort and shame juxtaposed with love, mirth, wisdom and earth-shattering success. There have been revelations and realizations, misgivings, lot of understanding and comforting, fear, disregard and change, indignation and indecision, sheer hatred and mad affection – all melding into a beautiful mellow glow called life at 25!

It would definitely take a separate blog chain to recount this tale which I hope to God I get to do. But for now, this is just a post to let you guys know, “I am back and I am so glad to be :) “
The tale of three cities will resume shortly. Have fun!

Random Octaves!

Hope my relatives and friends of blogosphere are enjoying good health and cheer. Adam has just completed his first semester and is basking in the glory of lazy holidays. The skies have been merciful today and Bloomstown is soaking up a good amount of sunlight after endless days of snow, slush, ice and rain. Without much ado, then, lets re-visit the tag that Venus tagged me with, I guess in my last birth :D

Here are the rules:
In the 8 Facts about Yourself, you share 8 things that your readers don’t know about you. Then at the end you tag at least 8 other bloggers to keep the fun going.

RULES:* Each blogger must post these rules first.* Each blogger starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.* Bloggers that are tagged need to write on their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.* At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.* Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.**

Random habits…hmm…now those are easy for someone like me…I make an interesting case study in randomness embedded in an orderly framework!

Here we go :

Math scares Adam!
Sometime in 1990, in the sixth or seventh year of our lord, his royal highness, Adam the last, had his first child abuse experience. He was, in the most inhuman of all acts, forced to multiply two numbers! How cruel! But it just got worse! He was asked to find out whether a number was a prime number or not using this archaic method called long division in an exam. The helpless child cursed and abused his maker while simultaneously, wildly winking at his friends and throwing furtive glances at the other papers of the exam hall. Alas! His friends were equally brilliant and their exam papers remained equally white-washed. Thus began one of the most enduring battles of all times, (that often makes him wonder if he was born autistic) where little Adam lived through pathetic fifty and sixty percentages in Math for a whole of 12 years. Did the situation change after 12 years? Well, it did and it didn’t.

Through years of systematic learning, Adam had found out that he need not answer and solve every problem completely. The higher secondary and university instructors used this benevolent grading tool called “Step marks” where they awarded marks for an “attempt” to answer the question. Thus riding the step mark rewards for his “half-eaten-cookie-kinda-problem-solving” and his luck, he managed a decent 96% in Math in school finals and even managed to stay in the 90’s in the university exams. But the scars of his numerically challenged childhood never left him. He still cannot figure out how he managed them but he’s glad they are over. Thus having braved a heart-rending battle, he walks on!

(I wonder if anyone else could jazz up a message like “I suck big time in Math” to this extent. Anymore of this and I can rest assured that I’ll receive a bag of slippers from my readers. Let’s move on!)

He remembers...
Talk about an elephant’s memory! He remembers all the wrong things for the right reasons or the right ones for the wrong. Whatever the previous sentence may mean, just know that he remembers stuff. They are saved in the form of images or movies of the past and he can almost “see” what happened twelve years ago or twenty one years ago! Scary! I know!

Just the other day, he was telling his dad about a certain sandalwood colored t-shirt his dad used to wear to work in the mid-eighties…his dad had no clue. He remembers the bi-cycle rides with his uncle when he was barely able to talk. The fly-pasts across the well irrigated rice fields of his native village or the late evening chats in the temple precincts or that evening when he chased down his high-school crush, looked her in the eyes and walked away smiling!

The other day he saw this guy rummaging peanut packets in a grocery store and could immediately recognize his playmate from the first grade. It took a lot of memory-prodding for the other guy to remember a rolly polly Adam (in the first grade I used to look like a pillow) who was adept at wooing girls even then ;)

Pablo Picasso.
He thinks he is a gift to the world of painting. The only problem is that he is years ahead of his peers in terms of concept and skill, so people think what he paints is trash. There will come a time, a couple of centuries later, when people will recognize the sparkling genius of Adam. Until that time, let this sample painting bear testimony to the mastery of the next Picasso!

Water water everywhere!
H2O is such an integral part of his life. He cannot go anywhere without carrying a bottle of water and he needs to drink water every 20-30 minutes. There must be some problem with his system. Needs to check :( May be taking to beer will help. Let’s see ;)

Thou shall be called…
Adam has a tough time calling a spade a spade. So he calls it “Spadoo” or something like that. In other words, it is difficult, no, well nigh impossible for him to address anyone by their original name. If he does, he is either gonna discuss a serious matter or he is plain high on coke! This being his nature, he has evolved an extra-ordinary ability to come-up with outlandish nick-names or “call” names. I hope he at least remembers what his original name is! Crazy beggar!

Nature concerns him
Growing up as a lonely kid, nature was kind to him. He smiled with the sunshine, laughed with the rain, jumped with the gusts of wind and fell in love with the sunset. Perhaps he knew that nature was his beloved creator in disguise. So he tries to avoid anything that will hurt nature. He switches off lights and fans back home if they are not being used. He chides his brothers if they light up match sticks for fun. He tries to use recycled paper and minimize random print-outs. And he is trying to grow more and more conscious of wherever he may be hurting Mother Nature. When he breathes his last, he wants that last breath to be green and pure.

Beware of dogs!
Adam is known to be this nice, friendly guy who goes around smiling or cracking PJs depending on whether he is buzzed or not. And THAT is his problem. People perceive him in a certain way and attribute a stereotype to him. But then he is perfectly human and is equally vulnerable to fits of anger and irritation. When that happens and somebody gets shouted at by Adam, they get really hurt. They almost go into a shock and they cannot bring themselves to believe that Adam is capable of doing this. Thus, by virtue of what he is, what he is perceived as, he is capable of hurting grievously. Can’t help much, that’s the way the cookie crumbles.

Those long walks alone…
He likes to go for long walks and usually he goes alone (no points for guessing why ;) ). He becomes really indrawn and quiet as he walks. He actually walks at a brisk pace and it’s not a stroll. Sometimes he makes me wonder if he’s out to catch a train. I tell him, “dude, this is a walk, slow down!”. But he can barely listen. He is lost in his own little world. Bah! Lost cause!

well, that's heavy enough for now. I will come back pretty soon with another chapter of the tale. Till then, Alvida!

A tale of three cities – Part XV - Hyderabad – Khalbali continued!

Soon, I observed with some satisfaction that I, most certainly, was not alone in my quandary. All around me I could see that a lot of my batch guys were grumbling and cribbing for the same reasons. The first job was not going down well with the folks. Like me, realization dawned on many of my friends that this was certainly not where they wanted to be. This realization led to a variety of decisions. Some guys saw the CAT as the only way to emancipation. Some others dug into the techno babble and came out with strange arrays of certifications that would eventually take them to the doors of Microsoft. Some others like me scripted grand dreams – grand in their themes as they were in their improbability!

In hindsight, that period of frustration seems to be the best thing that happens to a newbie in an organization. Such pressure cooker stuff chars away the distractions, holds you by the scruff of your neck and trumpets “Why the hell do you think you were sent down?” The focus gained after such trauma is invaluable.

Someone who stands out from my friends of this period is Abchon. I haven’t seen anyone with a more beautiful smile. “What’s the point in cribbing the entire time dude? Might as well enjoy your life” he remarked casually one day. That remark certainly made a difference to me and I started looking for ways to get myself out of the slough rather than complaining and lazing around. There was a child like freshness about him; a glint of brilliance that he so skillfully concealed; a spirit of positive energy and a cool attitude towards life. He was a walking, talking encyclopedia of bollywood. Shoot him any question on the subject and you, for sure, will not go away disappointed. In those days of hellish turbulence and soul searching, he brought such a refreshing charm to my workplace atmosphere. I would often laugh to myself, wondering, “If at all this guy realizes his IAS dreams, watte filmy collector he would be!”

At another level, the forces of nature were conspiring meticulously to drive me out of Hyderabad. Mom’s health was failing repeatedly and I had to increase the frequency of the trans-Deccan journeys. On the other hand, trouble was brewing in my place of stay, and it was tough to stay unruffled.

Unmindful of all this drama that was unfolding; my spirit was soaring in its journey towards infinity. I couldn’t stop wondering at the efficacy of the yogic technique I had learnt at the feet of my master. At times I used to experience such spiritual ecstasy that I will not be able to speak for hours together, for the fear of overwhelming an already overflowing heart.

At the same time, I was alone in my joy and that’s such a misfortune! The only person who could have understood what I was going through, Zahir, had left for Pennsylvania some time ago and had lost touch completely. Past experiences had taught me not to discuss such experiences with anyone and everyone, for, to someone who has no idea of what spirituality is, all of it will sound like the febrile ramblings of a lunatic. What sense will Omar Khayyam’s exquisite poetry make to the oil merchants of medieval Baruch? “All in good time!” I would mutter to myself. It is a terrible pain not to be understood; the pain worsens all the more when you know that what you know has the power to change lives! Such a pity!
All the same, the wheels were turning. The tale had to move to its third city and Mr.God the band master was scripting a grand score to suit his story.

PS : I Have a tag from Venus that I've missed answering...hope to add it with the next post..till then, chllOutz!