Digging for Meaning

i came across a video about the number stations, essentially a broadcast of seemingly random numbers or words being monotonously spoken. About 7-8 years back, in the night while supposedly preparing of an exam the next day, fiddling with the radio on my stereo, (used to love listening to foreign stations on short wave. different music, different programmes.. i even got to listen to a russian elvis presley) i had stumbled on similiar gibberish. the feeling of stumbling onto something utterly incomprehensible but of some obvious consequence is awesome. i can't forget this one instance as well. this was a time when i was heavily into astro physics, Carl Sagan , marcia bartusiak , SETI , drake equation , wow signal and what not.. here i am researching in free time about life outside our planet n shit, and lo and behold you hear stream of possibly encrypted data. btw, at that time with a group of friends we were trying to build an interferometer.. so that should give you a perspective. ...

its 6: 50 AM now. its raining pet animals outside. already had a failed attempt at tea with far too much water, and nearly not enough milk. lets not talk about tea and sugar and proportions thereof. i am proportionally challenged. what to do? what needs be done is, to take hold of the umbrella... pry it open. open the door and out of it. presently pleasantly wading through sheets of undulating water. walk through the narrow gully in my neighbourhood of slums. strategically place umbrella so that the water streaming down the plastic/vinyl or corrugated n rusted sheets don't bathe you. on the road to the left, i see a battered auto rickshaw split open. I walk ahead, buy 'the indian express' and sit down at the local tea stall in an august company of folks. two of them working at the stall. one a middle aged man with rouded eyes and round face and a rotund belly. he is preparing garam garam bhujiya! :D :D :D (hot pakoras, if u will.. ) the other a older guy in half pants si...

are they inter-dependent? by sanitisation, for the argument here, i mean actual physical cleanliness, though the metaphorical equivalent will hold just as good. sanitisation essentially reduces the input to our senses. smells suffers the most. i have written about it somewhere in this blog.. essentially, we are sanitizing smells the most, while polluting sight with proliferation of glowing rectangles (TV, laptop, computer). also, suffering is the sense of touch with touch getting eroticised and societally frowned upon. and well, memories are made of our experiences with our senses. here too, visual memory is so prevalent with photographs and videos and what not. when arundhati roy reminisces about the smell of steel railings in a bus on the conductor's hand in her book 'god of small things', it came as such a fresh insight to me, i was bowled over by the genius of the writer. with the western onslaught, why has india managed its survival of its societal memories, whereas th...

am watching werner herzog's 'stroszek' right now. stroszek is a down n out guy, alcoholic, in-n-out of houses. He consider's his piano to be his best friend. he is in love with eva. she often runs away only to return battered and bruised. eva is involved with some hoodlums. she prostitutes to raise money so that they may leave berlin for US. this all triggered me to question the notion of a relationship. i mean, when u say you love someone what is it? a certain comfort level? or a 'home' that you return to (but need not necessarily stay in)? or shared trust? or simply a good long conversation that lasts for a life time (of the relationship)? priority towards someone? or lives intertwined? lack of options? desperation? convenience? what is it? and what about now? that things seem just as important as people? in my family its a running joke that my real relatives are my books and compter and not them, because i tend to be a reserved person. its like we are picke...

whats about them old hindi songs!? they are magical. its only old hindi songs that spring into the media player of my head for any slight emotional gear shift. some of these songs i have never heard in original. its as if the collective memory of the world around me seeded that song in me. a big pool from which this memory draws these songs is antakshari. through numerous games of antakshari, i know so many old songs that i have never heard in original. some others i had heard as background score in movies. mostly its people around me humming those songs. my dad's singing is another source of this memory.. though he is just as bad with remembering lyrics as me, so its the tune mostly that sticks. Speak about viral! these are bloody the best virals ever. which viral ever lasted for decades? yesterday i was humming geeta bali's 'taqdir se bighdi hui ...' what a wonderful song. and i had never heard it myself! i googled straight away and found it on a obscure website.

woody allen. watching his movies is like gazing at a lake. its beautiful, its easy, it needn't be turbulent, and after spending enough time with it you actually feel content with a light buzz (that a glass of shiraz wine (nasik's \m/) would lend). the movies may not be realistic but it always portrays a certain reality. the reality of life through a narrow lense, a narrow politics. this lends a simplicity to his movies which lets it wash over you without any undue excitement. its like having a nice conversation with an old friend, comfortable in the contradictions/arguments and with a confirmation of knowing each other a little more better. cheers! and go watch manhattan. p.s. : i have written about conversations and movies here .

certain days are meant for writing.. certain days for gazing.. certain others to waste away and some other to walk about.