When I listen to western music, I don't understand it. When I listen to Hip-hop, I don't like it.
-Daft
a) Prayer : "Pray and you will get what you want".
b) Meditation : "Meditate and you will know yourself".
c) Action : "Act. But know that the action is not the cause of the result."
All three, are of course related and in the usual long winded way that some scriptures have, can be said to be the same. Some interesting things are:
a) The way Truth is defined. Take the statement "Pray and you will get what you want". Here's the funny thing. You might start of praying for a car. And you don't get it when you pray. You believe (or are told) that you didn't pray hard enough or properly enough, so you pray harder, and harder and harder. And soon (okay, not so soon, it seems), because of the way prayer is structured, you will get what you want, except it may not be the car any more.
b) The concept of Karma ceases to hold value once you understand a few things. Of course, if you do good, good might happen to you. But what seems to be said is that you should do good anyway, without thinking about the result of what will happen.
c) Meditation is what interests me the most. That doesn't mean I have the patience to do anything about it, though. Anyway, meditation allows you to question everything and believe anything. It lets you believe that there is no God, or that you are God. It lets you question what is right and wrong for yourself, and judge for yourself the results of your actions.
Why Linux is Better than Windows/Mac:
a) Package Management : The installing, removing and updating of programs is very, very well managed because. Lists, descriptions and ratings of thousands of programs are available with what is known as a package manager. Extremely simple to use, no need to learn new stuff and all.
b) Coding : Linux is made by people who code, I believe and it seems like it's much better suited for the job.
c) Speed : It's only in the last few years that Linux is taking as long to load as Windows. But once it loads, it beats both Windows and Mac. And with a little customization, it can work on a Pentium III with very good looks and amazing performance.
d) Compiz Fusion : The things that this program does are amazing! The cube, falling snow and rain on the desktop, fish floating around, windows that wobble like jelly when they're moved, and some useful stuff too!
e) The Open Source Thing : Programs that get updated daily, plugins added daily and requests completed and staying on the edge of programs. For example, Firefox 3 was shipped with Ubuntu as a beta almost 4-5 months before its final release. With a little effort, you can even get "nightly" versions of programs.
f) The Terminal and Customization : The terminal is amazing and Linux's file structure allows for so much customization with such speed. Awesomeness it is.
g) Fun : It's a lot of fun fixing bugs by reading stuff online. Lots of learning too.
Why Linux is Worse than Windows/Mac
a) Flash and videos on the web: Browsers suddenly crash (sometimes only) while playing flash videos. There is now way to control streaming divx movies.
b) Drivers for Wireless and Graphics : Wireless is a pain, especially with WPA encryption and what not. So far, I've found only one wireless USB card that really works out of the box. Video cards are getting better though.
c) Support for IPod Touch and other Ipod stuff: There's nothing that can be done about this, I guess. Support, even when it worked, messed up album art and what not. And now, with the recent software upgrade, I have to wait and do the whole jailbreak thing again.
The blame for all of the above lies with the vendors and not with Linux, say lots of people, because it is they who have to provide drivers and stuff. But whatever, it doesn't work means it doesn't work.
So there. Dobaara mat poochna :P
has it's own value.
It's not immediately apparent
though.
That's the problem.
You might also notice that my punctuation isn't too good either. Well, maybe I'm like James Joyce, and after I die, people will say that I invented my own system of punctuation. Or like R K Narayan, I'll learn to make everything interesting.
Shit happens,
of course it does.
Body clean.
What are you trying to say?
Positivity?
Nonsense?
Coherence,
is not my style.
Beauty in chaos isn't it either,
Is it?
Someday,
I'll tell you the Point.
-Daft (unsure of grammar, certain of purport)
Think of a play. The actor knows that he/she is not the character being played. The audience knows it. The director knows it, and the writers knew that the character they wrote would be played by someone else. Isn't that wonderful?
-Daft's Mom, on yoga (or so Daft thinks)
When a bridge falls, it makes noise, maybe even if no one is there.
That is not the point.
The people are blamed, not the equations. That is the point
-Daft
-Daft
A neurosurgeon was talking to my mother today and he was saying that he had performed surgery on a seventy year old muslim woman that very morning. During all the scans that preceded the surgery, he noticed that her spinal cord was in perfect shape. He said that this was probably due to the fact that she offered namaz regularly (the net seems to be sort of doubtful on the fact whether women offer namaz at all, but there do seem to be women who do it regularly). It wasn't that God kept her in shape or anything. It was the position of the namaz, which is similar to vajrasana and the way jains and buddhists and us hindus do our namaskaras in temples as well. Christians do something similar, he mentioned, but I don't know, so will not comment.
Vajrasana, supposedly gives "maximum" (whatever that means) stretch and exercise to the spinal cord and...and...what are they called, the muscles near the buttocks...
to be taken seriously.
No, let's not be so cruel.
Let's just say the words
have to be
Heavy.
Makes sense, doesn't it?
Serious and heavy matters,
need serious and heavy words.
Hmmm...
- Daft
Yesterday, I saw Princess Mononoke, a brilliant movie. I have thought of many stories involving God and I've always shied away from writing them because I couldn't come up with a satisfactory image for God. God is shown here, mortal and completely believable!
I had a bigger post in mind when I started this, but this is all it ended up being. Oops.
do they come to you
Broken,
or do you break them
at will,
to add meaning?
That's how they come.
I know they don't stack up
Well.
But well,
that's the way the ball bounces,
these days.
1. Linux : Takes time to learn and set up, even with Ubuntu, supposedly amongst the simplest distros (as the "flavours" of Linux seem to be called). But once you've got it set up and running, it's much faster, more efficient, looks much better, has many more cool effects on the desktop, and by default, is much more suited to Latex and every other coding language there.
2. Porcupine Tree : The only categories of music I seem to be listening to these days are 'Porcupine Tree' and 'Everything else'.
3. Embedded Systems : I thought I liked robotics. But turns out my real fascination is with embedded systems and getting the small things right. Fun, it is. Last semester, I practically watched from the sidelines as my labmate made an electronic drum-kit (though I did contribute "significantly" to the making of the sound files). This sem, I modified almost already available code for a TI microcontroller and a mobile robot platform to complete a course involving following white lights, walls and picking up cans and golf balls. Next sem (if there is one), this shall continue.
4. Dynamic Soaring : Interesting it is, that sailplanes can stay in air for theoretically forever without any propulsion.
5. Python : I'm starting to learn it.
That's all I can think of, and it appears I don't like making lists. So I shall say no more.
as I type this,
backspace, change, and type again.
Soon, Wash finds himself talking back, like he hasn’t talked in a long time. He tells her of his childhood. He tells her how bored he was and how many novels he read. He tells her of the weird little girl and the old man and the nice woman on the wheelchair. He tells her about his job and his life and the sea and how he wants to go sailing, but is sure he never will. He notices that she fills plays with water in her mouth before swallowing it and that she keeps changing position in her seat every few minutes.
He is amazed that he’s speaking so much to someone he’s met just a few minutes ago and he’s amazed that he hasn’t even noticed that they’ve already finished two cups of coffee. He says all of this aloud. He’s amazed that she agrees to everything wholeheartedly.
She tells him about a fantasy she used to have as a kid that a man would save her life someday (they both laugh at that point, and Wash can see the “but” coming), but she would never know his name. She says that she hopes he understands, but understands if he doesn’t. She cannot see him again. She thanks him, hugs him, and leaves.
These kids are so stupid, he thinks. They have such romantic ideas. Then he remembers his own plans for their future and laughs out aloud. The waitress looks at him and smiles. Everyone is smiling at him today. He smiles back. He gives her a big tip when he pays.
On the way home, Wash imagines that he’s in a murder mystery. He’s the killer and wants to commit the perfect crime. He plans everything out to the last detail and executes it. He never gets caught. He thinks about writing the story, and decides it’s too much work. He’s not clever enough to make all the small details work.
The shops are closing down now and Wash hasn’t had dinner. He isn’t too hungry, however, and decides to skip it.
He’s had too much of an interesting day for it to be spoilt by eating alone. He smiles the smile that happy people have and walks back home.
****************************
So did you read it? Did you like it? :P
The sheer magnitude of the whole thing amazes him as a hand pulls him back suddenly. “Hey, the walk sign’s not on. You might have killed yourself,” a girl says. Wash notices her before he thinks about what she’s just said. She’s about twenty, has black hair, sad eyes and a tiny nose. Then he notices that she’s right. The signal is not on and he would probably have caused something of a traffic jam if he’d tried to cross.
“Thanks. You saved my life” he says and waits. She smiles at him and they both turn to look at the signal.
The “Walk” sign comes on. She’s the first to start walking, without looking at the car that’s headed her way. Wash imagines for a moment the irony of the scene where the car hits her and she dies. He smiles, grabs hold of her arm and pulls her back. “You might have killed yourself,” he says to her, mimicking her voice.
She laughs and they cross the road together. “You want to get a cup of coffee?” she asks.
Two women have managed to read Wash’s mind today. Going for coffee with her is exactly what he is thinking of. He is already imagining the first date, then the second, maybe a third before they finally get around to something physical. Marriage in maybe a year, two kids a little later. Old age, companionable silence, pointless fights and a lot of soap operas.
Wash laughs at himself. The way my mind wanders, he thinks and pulls it back to the invitation. “You like a girl, you go tell her. Girls like to be told such things,” the old man’s voice says in his head.
Wash is scared. He’s not sure exactly what it is that’s frightening him, but there’s an uncomfortable knot in his stomach.
“No. I have to get to work,” he says insincerely.
“What rubbish. We’ve saved each others life and deserve a cup of coffee for the effort. My treat,” she says and smiles. He decides he likes her just for that.
They walk towards the café and she doesn’t stop talking the whole way. Wash learns that she’s in college and she’s going to become a journalist in three years. She’s too young for me, he thinks. She likes blue more than pink and she hates any kind of mess in her room. She’s in some athletics team though she doesn’t like running. She tells him she’s from far away and that she wants to go somewhere else far away and that when she dies, she wants to be neither burnt nor buried, but donated to a medical college for the betterment of mankind.
“Oh, she had this smile. If you were sad, all you had to do was thinking of her smiling,” he says and pauses, waiting for Wash to say something.
“What happened then?” Wash says, and tries to smile that way himself.
“Nothing,” the old man says and smiles. He is no longer looking at Wash. He is lost in the past. Or maybe he is lost in the present, and the past is where he really wants to be. “I used to live down the street.” He points at an apartment complex far off and continues, “I would get on a bus right here every day to get to college. She used to be there too. I would look at her and imagine what it would be like to have her has my girl. But that never happened. You see, I was kind of a shy guy.” He pauses, as if remembering that Wash is listening. “You shouldn’t be shy. You like a girl, you go tell her. Girls like to be told such things,” he says.
Wash smiles and puts the advice into a corner of his mind, with all the stuff that he knows he should do, but doesn’t.
“I never even spoke to her. I just made sure I was here every morning, to watch her board her bus. After she did, I would dream for a few minutes before my bus came around. The day would pass, tomorrow would arrive and I would do this again.
“One day, her bus was late. ‘What’s the time?’ she asked me. I told her the time and said the bus might be late that day. My bus came before hers that time. That was the only time she spoke to me and the last time I ever saw her.”
“She didn’t come to the bus stop again, ever?”
“She didn’t,” the old man said in agreement. “She must have moved out of town or something. Oh well, my bus is here. I should go now.”
Wash watches as the old man struggles to pull himself onto the bus. He wonders how many people must have heard this story at the bus stop. The old man must like telling it. Old people always like to tell stories. Well, I can go get my coffee now, he thinks and begins to walk towards the café.
The lights are all on and the street looks beautiful. There are so many people walking around, eating the junk food that Whitebread row is famous for, drinking coffee, talking loudly, and of course, buying bread. The whole scene is very lively and Wash himself is feeling very enthusiastic about life. After a long time, he is not contemplating how boring his life is. In fact, if he had were to start keeping a diary this very night, he would probably begin with something like: My life is not as bad as I thought it was. There is interesting stuff happening everywhere. And then he would go on and probably write about the little girl and the old man and the nice woman on the wheelchair.
He looks at all the people walking up and down the street. Each of them has their own story, he thinks. How many stories Whitebread row must have seen? How many fights, how much love and hate and sorrow and joy?
***********************
For those who do read the stories, there are many "tributes" (you could say lack of imagination as well) I give in this story...Guess if you can :P
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