The Comatose Man

It could be a man's biggest nightmare, and most of us are equally unprepared to face it. I recently read about an IIT professor who went into coma months ago, if he can sit again in the future, it'll be termed recovery. I won't explain how he reached such a state, the reasons were trivial, needless to say the perpetrators deserve a consumer rights lawsuit, but it was a mere excuse to enter an vegetable-like existence.

Imagine, being able to think maybe even as much as about the courses you last taught, being able to sense the fundamentals, hearing your mother speak to you in loving words as if you were the little child again, but having no control on you body, being piped on for food, water, even air. It's imprisonment. Being imprisoned in your own body, and there is nothing you can do to end it, and you think and you remember and you hallucinate. You cry for yourself, you cry for your mother, and you wait for the misery to end. You've heard the doctors give up on you, and the nurses treat you like a carcass. You flutter, like a caged bird, but you realize the cage is real, and there is no one who can open it. You see things, you hear things, you wish to say something, you remember people you wish to meet and greet, you wish to go somewhere, you just want to change the channel on the TV, you want to tell your mother not to cry, you want to tell the nurse to pull the plug, but you can't. Imagine a life, where just sitting up is an achievement, and bed sores are pending anxieties. You can only lay in bed, wait, watch, and let others decide your destiny.

Makes me want to thank the almighty for a mind, a tongue, for a set of limbs all of which currently function, for a society, for the ability to go places, see things, do things, listen, taste, feel, and talk about them. We take everything for granted and moan for more, till we realize everything we already have are gifts in themselves.

The Pleasure of Pain

I would've titled this "The King of Pain" (after one of The Police's greats) but I figured I should restrict myself in the use of superlatives. I already have a reputation of exaggerating trivia.

No, I'm not talking about physically torturing myself, or being addicted to drugs or the likes. I'm talking about the curse of programming. Twice, I've been reminded of the code bases I've worked on in the past. I don't really miss any of the vocabulary or grammar of those languages, i.e. I'm won't be bursting out in poetry in C++. I do, however, remember the hours spent banging my head against the keyboard in solitary confusion as to why the editions in the thousands or millions of lines of code (depending on who wrote it) didn't produce the desired results or, better still, crashed the execution. After days of debugging, did the mystery unfold itself, only to provide fleeting relief before the next problem arose and smiled gleefully at my misery. For about 10 years, I was in perpetual pain, the sort you get used to and then can't live without.

Today, the world is populated with code jockeys. Those who'll write the next billion/trillion or however many lines of code to ultimately make everything around us intelligent. Nothing against them, they'll be the ones pushing us in this millennium. It's just a life philosophy I see, in me and those around, to find comfort in pain and in the false hope that tomorrow will be better.

An Attempt At Fiction - Harry Potter Style

Harry and Hermione were at Ron's place for their summer vacations this year. In a matter of a couple weeks, Hogwartz seemed like a distant past with the warm and sunny days spent bicycling in the neighborhood, watching tv, feasting on ice-cream and candy, swimming, and visits to the near by public library. Hermione was trying to figure how well astrology, of the muggle world, actually worked and forced the boys to the library along with her, the boys, on the other hand, really wanted to have little to do with books.

This morning the 3 had planned to bicycle to the lake to watch the local toy steam-boat racing competition. Hermione was up early, and chanced upon the newspaper which seemed mysteriously open and folded as if to accentuate a certain line. The daily horoscope under Leo read 'Kids, beware of buses gone haywire!'. 'Funny', she thought, 'not the sort of lines you usually read in muggle newspapers, and btw isn't Harry a Leo?'. 'Oh, well', she continued, 'don't want to be late for the event because the boys never get up on time', and she went upstairs to wake Ron, Harry and Ron's mother, it was Saturday and she didn't seem to be in a hurry to get up either!

Off they were, cycling down the thin and winding ways to the lake. Hermione led the way. She wanted front row seats to all the action that this sleepy town was about to get at least for the next couple weeks. She caught a blind turn and all of a sudden saw a bus heading right towards her. The newspaper flashed by her once again, and she yelled, "bus gone crazy!", and went off the road and crashed straight into a tree. Ron and Harry were close after her and heard her cry and followed suit but were able to get off the street and control their rides to escape any accident. Harry rushed to Hermione. She was bruised, but ok, he sensed she just saved her life. You could sense Hermione wasn't in pain after the accident, she was happy to see Harry unscratched and took his support to stand, and limped to Harry's cycle. The trio head home, this time slow and careful, they didn't want a repeat of what just happened. They decided to stay in the next few days.

Ron got up first on lazy Sunday. No one seemed to be in a hurry, but he wanted to play on the Xbox 360, alone, without his elder brothers shooing him away. He ran downstairs, only to find a colorful candy box at the door. "It must have just fit the mail flap", he thought and picked it up. It read, "A weeks supply of candies! Don't buy any outside." "Interesting!", he thought, unwrapped the box, picked out 1 of the dozens of flavors inside, and threw it at the dog. The dog, chewed and salivated and chewed and salivated and salivated. Yup, the candy was good, and his dog is still alive. Ron hid the candy and pulled out the Xbox and was lost in no time, playing halo 3. Slowly, the family members came down, and finally everyone sat for a late breakfast. Everyone, except Ron, his brothers were going to steal the console from him after they were up from the dining table, so he only had 20 minutes of play left. Little could Ron hear, but there were at his door 3 muggle girl-scouts on a fund raising drive selling candy. Hermione answered the door, digged deep in her pockets and bought all the candy she could from the money she had. She announced her loot after closing the door, "See what I bought, candy, and it looks delicious!". Something tickled in Ron's head, he threw away the game console and ran to Hermione and before she could make out, knocked off the entire stack from her hands, even the one she was ready to munch on. Ron's dog rushed by and caught the open candy between his teeth, and chewed and salivated and chewed and fell hard on the floor. Everyone was aghast. Ron's parent's picked the dog up, dashed for their garage, and rushed the dog straight to the vet. Hermione wasn't angry at Ron anymore, there was gratitude in her eyes, and relief in Ron's. Before she could ask, "How did you know?!", Ron pulled out the candy box he found this morning. Hermione related yesterday's newspaper incident. Seems the trio was in trouble and an angel was saving them each time.

Tonight they needed to know more, they decided to bring their sleeping bags down into the living room, and stay awake as long as they could to find out who this angel was and why it was saving them. Night fell, they camped close to each other, right under the windows that faced west. Ron tried hard, but couldn't stay up too long. Harry was up. He looked slightly worried. Hermione was staring at Harry. 'He looked adorable when he was anxious', she thought. An hour passed, dark and mostly silent, the 2 couldn't risk missing the cue they were up to catch. 2 hours and they were feeling drowsier by the moment. 2 and a half hours, and the clock struck midnight. All of a sudden, Hermione could sense the window east facing being opened from the outside. Harry woke Ron up and the trio hid behind the sofa and watched as the window slid up and a girl about their age slipped in with a bunch of flowers. As the three peeked from the side, they could barely make out the facial contours. 'She looked so much like Harry!', Ron thought. She kept the flowers on the center table and head back for the window, but before she could climb out, the 3 pranced on her. They picked her up and held her tight. Hermione asked, "Who are you and why are you here? Did you drop the newspaper and the candy box before?". The girl smiled, "I'm Sally and guys, you're quite the detectives! Yup, I dropped the newspaper and the candy box before. I'm Voldemort's captive. He's planned those murderous attempts the past 2 times. Voldemort feels he failed twice because he's weak. Little does he know, I thwarted his plans. I have to return before he finds out what I've been upto, or else he'll kill me. We're leaving for Hogwartz tomorrow morning so Voldemort can invigorate himself". Her eyes sparkled as she saw Harry. "Harry, I'm so happy to see you today! Guys, pls let me go, I won't be coming back again". Hermione and Harry let her go. Ron was reluctant, there was something about her similarity with Harry that made Ron just fall in love with her. "Bye, guys, and take care!", and she hurried out into the night.

'Sally's face looked so much like his mother's!', Harry thought as he picked up the flowers Sally left on the table. There was a card inside which read, "Harry, be careful. I hope to see you soon. As soon as you finish Voldemort. Your loving sister, Sally Potter." A tear rolled down Harry's cheek as he realized there was a secret about his family that nobody told him, probably because she was kidnapped by his parent's murderer. As he wiped his tear, he figured out what he was born to do.

Main Joru ka Gulaam Banke Rahoonga

If you don't watch Bollywood enough, the title loosely translates to "I guarantee I will become my wife's slave". This is what Sh sang when I visited him in the Bay Area, maybe an year ago. He added a spank-his-behind-with-one-hand-and-ride-a-pony-with-the-other dance routine to it, and it all turned out fresh and hysterical. Yup, Sh has a way of expressing himself, blunt and to the point. Sh was back from a long distance trip he made to meet a chat-pal, to see if his hunch of a possible matrimonial alliance was true. Turned out the lady spoke the same language to all the guys she knew and wasn't quite ready for or was blissfully unaware of the implications of marriage. Signals misinterpreted.

The same song came to my mind last week after my own similar experience. Yup. But, in my case, the girl was smart, and she had an agenda: to get rid of me asap. Took a taxi to her work place to pick her up for lunch, she whisked us to a near-by pizzeria, and before you can ask "How was the pizza?", we were out and on our way back to drop her off at work. Somewhere between the 2 slices I chewed on, I asked, "I'm here to see if there is any possibility of this working out, but I guess you've already made up your mind?" Trying to make a point without sounding desperate or defensive. She smiled, retorted, "How many times have you done this?". "This?" I asked, "as in marriage-related meetings?". "Yes", she said. Innocently and sheepishly I replied "Once". "Really? Come on... you can tell me truth.", she said. I guess that's what it all reduced to. A competition on who had more such marriage-appointments! You win lady! Thankfully I met so many of my relatives after about an year, that the rest of the trip was worth it.

I'm sensing a shift in strategy now. No more Mr. Niceguy. Doesn't work. No need to woo the fairer sex with retarded jokes etc. I'm realigning my targets. In-laws. Yup, father and mother-in-law. They're who I should bargain with. Astrology will still be employed, but I'll have my charts matched against my prospective in-laws. And I'm going to quote a price too. Some quotes and negotiations later, I'll probably be zeroing in on my actual going rate. What better way to a happy contented life, than to find a home of rich in-laws and move in as the perfect ghar-jamai!

Consciousness Needs Expansion

It's 2008. Happy New Year. Sorry, the excitement is absent. It's just another day here. If mere existence calls for celebration, so be it, otherwise the only change I see is in dating records with a different digit. Time's flying by, the feeling of being limited, roped and tied, walled, being a citizen of a small world looms regularly. Will I ever take in a deep breath and experience the doors of my mind open up?

Meeting a random stranger, vicariously living another man's life (albeit for a few moments), reading an article about an act of courage in Iraq, watching a movie about the penguins on Antarctica, learning about how the internet will be after 5 years... and all of a sudden the selfish thoughts about my meager existence are brushed under the rug by something more magnanimous, more powerful and more interesting than anything I am regularly pre-occupied with. Consciousness needs permanent expansion. Confined in a tiny world and life becomes painful, growth-inhibiting and even self-destructive.

My baby sister leaves to complete her higher studies and take up a job. Her journey is far and long. Being my preachy self, I've tried to brainwash her to figure life is more than a project, a team, an apartment, a job, a salary, or a bank balance. To live her time well, she needs to travel, read, observe, meet and greet, get involved, be passionate, be excited and motivate those around her, appreciate, love and enjoy, not consume or save as much as to invest, not in stocks and bonds, but in ideas, relationships and experiences.

I know it's easier said than done and easier instructed than put into practice. I, for one, have missed the bandwagon many times. This time round the bandwagon resurfaced and I was temporarily rescued from my tiny world, so I felt the urge of committing the feeling in writing.