"smashana vairagyam"

this is deep thought. its also rubbish and fragmented. its been written over atleast 2 months of one sentence a week, so if it makes little or no sense, it is most likely that you are not losing your mind... but then again... may be you are....

recently, i saw death. fairly up-close. not in the kinds that motorcyclists describe as the last few seconds before their heads get smashed in the pavement. but like the kinds where an aged relative who was slowly fading just ceased to exist. the post departure motions and the talks that ensue always makes one wonder what would people talk about when i am gone.

my mother taught us a phrase very early on. "smashana vairagyam" which badly/loosely translated means the divine selflessness attained at the cremation grounds. its the end result of the introspection that happens once you see the futility of living in the eyes of a dead close relative. you feel that all they did, is summarized, as good by the close ones. mundane by the ones that aren't so close, and as stern silence by the ones who watch cynically. you suddenly start looking at life from an obituary perspective. what would people say after i died. how would dad react, or mom feel or my aunt who never liked me talk of when she's consoled. what would my cousins who now look at me as an anomaly say. what anecdotes would be brought up? would it be the ones where i rebelled. or the ones where i obeyed. the ones where i was idiotic or the ones where i was brave? and after all these questions it suddenly starts to dawn... you need to live better. you need to do more for people. you need to be a better son, brother, friend, support to those so related. your desire to hoard money suddenly becomes a thing of great guilt and you wish you had done more for society in general.

the thing with SV is that it only lasts as long as the fires burn. the minute you are back home, the minute you interface reality, you start to slide back into your ways, you worry about the insufficiency of funds provided at work. the futility of asking for a raise, the promotion politics. the new car, the unpaid credit card bill that you got your tv with. all come back as if they never left, and all that is left of that moment of absolute renouncement is a shred of determination that you will one day rise above it all. i would like my V to last longer than that. i would like it to translate into everything i do. i wish to live life with complete abandon of someone connected with things but only to experience them. i wish to be rid of all things lineage driven. my investments will be in people and the things they do, not tangible assets that will give me dividends and returns when i turn 70... i want me experientially abused today... i dont want to wait until i am old and over ripe to experience life... i want to travel, move, be uncomfortable and learning everyday. i dont want tomorrow to be like today and like yesterday... a brand new tomorrow in all sense of the word. coming back to my obituary, i want it to simply read... karthik natarajan lived. fully. and i dont want people to remember me for the things i did, i want them to remember me for the fun we had together. at my funeral i want everyone all drunk and disorderly and mildly riotous. i want it attended in clothing of your determination, and i want it celebrated with the gladness of having being transferred to an exotic location for work.


funeral day playlist:
(guns and roses) november rain
(iron maiden) number of the beast
(metallica) turn the page
(pink floyd) the entire discography
(doors) ghost song
(doors) truckers song
(U2) even better than the real thing
(U2) even better than the real thing
(coheed and cambria) welcome home
(nadaka) pick any and other songs that will be determined over the course of the remainder of my life.

dead at the funeral.

it happened right there.

after the super heavy post of last week, i thought i should go lighter this time. may be something not involving explosions genocidal idiots and such. but then only time will tell if i can let that happen. (this is like the recap section that so many day time televison series have)

(title track)
(silly adverts of soaps, perfumes, insurance companies and their likes)
(and finally the plot fades in from black)
we were at a funeral this week. a friends father had just passed on. (or as they say 'expired' here) but this incident has nothing to do with the death, or the funeral, or even the friend. its just to tell you that this was the kind of place that almost screams out meaning less discussions to keep the place from going explosively silent.

so there we were, talking about our worldly stories, exchanging stories of holidays, work, and others, the newly weds talking of the recently gone valantines day, and how they had the coziest little dinner, or how work ruined their weekend but they still managed to do something valantiny, and the always evident married ones preaching to us singles as to how awesome married life is and how we should get married the minute we can. (at this point i always imagine that they suddenly turn into these preacher like clothes, the white cassocked, balding bearded men and very nun like clothed women without the bald or the beard, preaching/sermoning us to get god/religion or what ever it is that they are selling). thus wading from meaningless conversations to meaningless conversations we waited for the decent time to leave.

one such topic we walked by was the existence of a digital life, social networking, mafia wars, farmville and such. and people ridiculed the obsession that others had and how when we were kids we had such games we played offline and on LAN. and how even seniors today have gotten on to these trivial pursuits. then like any other conversation between friends fingers were pointed on how that person did things the same way as those described earlier. when it comes to anything remotely on the internet, i am generally the one to be pointed to. not because i am good at anything there, but because of my dependence on all things digital. my phone, ipod, macbook all of these things that i shall shamelessly acknowledge that i cannot do without. what if started to emerge, what if i woke up one day, my laptop wouldnt boot, my phone died, m ipod wont play, my email addresses erased, and everything that i did on the internet just basically vanished. (this blog included, but no one mentioned that because i am sure no one reads it) and so on and like every other time, it would end in if that happened i would kill myself. and they all somehow enjoy that ending. something about, now i know this man is mortal. his life can be in our hands, its not diabolical, its just natural that people dont like to know that there are people whose weakness these people dont know.

(commercial break. bad adverts and such. go grab your popcorn, or change the channels now, cos the tone of this series is about to get preachy)

but then i started wondering, dont we all have such things? for some its their little blinking screens, for some it is their online persona, for some it is their money, they pride, for some it is their loved ones. everyone has a set of things, that enable them to get by without which you would find it difficult to function. if that thing, is your digital persona so be it.

the argument they have against it, is that its not real because i cannot touch it. and because i can go to all those places without leaving my chair, those places dont exist either. i think that is a sad assumption to make. the internet, and therefore all things that happen on it are real. the places, the people the things that these people do in those places . second life is not an extension of you on the internet, it is you online. the mind does things that the body just cannot catch up with. so when you lose something online, when your associations with it are purely that of the mind, you would tend to lose it.

imagine if your house got bombed. would you understand if someone killed themselves over it then? (i know i promised not to talk of bombs and death, but this is just to show you why someone would kill themselves over lost facebook pages)

we are ok with people jumping off buildings over lost jobs. but we are not willing to accept that there are some who would do everything they do, online... and if they lose it they almost lose it all. in this day and age? wake up neandrathal and smell the instant coffee!
(fade to black....)
to be continued...

(meaning less white noise between two badly made series.)

death of a drive.

today i lost something.

something valued. something irreplaceable. it was my years of hard work, collecting, saving, swapping, and creating little bits and pieces to put it all together there. it was my hard drive. 320 gigs of portable entertainment. all gone in one single drop of my bag. one careless/carefree gesture and all is gone.

to the untrained eye, it is like a watch being broken, or a favorite tshirt with moth holes in it, but to me, and i am sure to a lot of others to whom half the fun is in the amount of space it occupied. but to me, is the 1900s equivalent of having a big fire in your workplace. or a california wild fire of the 2000s, or losing your own hut in the haiti earthquake. no matter what you get after this.. your life can never go back to being the same. you may rebuild your fortunes, you may work hard enough to make all of this seem like a bad dream, but that day you change. you become someone you were not before and someone you will be for the rest of your life.

the hard disk was fairly new and it isnt that i lost the drive or that i lost money today that i am sad, its a lot more. it is that today i am reminded of my helplessness against all things that i thought i was using for convenience. i cant go without my phone, my ipod, my laptop, the hard drives i own, none of that. its almost as if i am slave to it. and thus the unbearable loss.

almost reminds me of the matrix reloaded dialogue between the council man and neo about dependencies. and he ends with... 'are we truly free?'

and so shall i.


(alright may be just a little foot note.

i know i know. i am a day late. but in my defence, i was a day early last time so there that and thats that! plus i am a grieving man this week. i am allowed a day off aren't i? i mean 320 gigs of movies, music, may be a few bits of work too all gone. never to be gotten again. i am allowed a day off!


i also have to do this..

happy birthday sister.

she thought this would make up for a good excuse for a post. may be she was right, this does seem more intelligent and mature than crying over a dead drive. but then... i dont want to seem what i am not. )