I just came back from the station after dropping a friend who had to leave for home .His father suffered a brain haemhorrage this evening.

Rode back from the station down those lonely roads of the village ,empty but for the light of the headlights , murky darkness emanating from all directions,pondering over the fragility of life and the inevitability of the end.One of the greatest pleasures known to man is flying , and a mechanical beast racing at a speed of some 90 odd kilometres an hour in the darkness gives you some idea as to what a bodily pleasure it can be, even if you live in denial of all the attributed sexual pleasures of flying ,as Freud would have suggested.

You can feel the universe rushing past you ,and how miniscule a particle you are in the entire scheme of things,that life is just momentary , and a second's mistake could take you beyond known paradigms.Yet our lives our so precious and this fact that is rooted so deep and driven home so strongly into the mammalian psyche right from the time we can perceive nurture and care in the mother's womb.As life sprouts ,love is the most primitive,most basic emotion that a human ever experiences and that is what he will crave for, in different people , in different forms ,in different places , consciously and sub consciously , throughout his lifetime until death will put an end to all maya.

With them the Seed of Wisdom did I sow,
 And with my own hand labour’d it to grow:
And this was all the Harvest that I reap’d —
 “I came like Water and like Wind I go.”

Were it not Folly, Spider-like to spin
 The Thread of present Life away to win —
What? for ourselves, who know not if we shall
Breathe out the very Breath we now breathe in!

But for all the respect that time deserves right now,how I wish I could go on and on.

I am tired of of all the sleeplessness and the kind of punishment it seems when you have to face a night when sleep plays coy and refuses to come by easily.It has been a problem that has stayed for a bit longer than it ought to have or so I believe and if I were to listen to everyone around me I must be seeing a shrink for sure.But then the gravity of the problem becomes even more magnified when it is at hand ,rather than when it is in hindsight and given all the procrastinating talents that I possess things will be as they are at the moment.

I've seen through the first of the last three end semester examinations I have to appear for, that will formally herald an end to the endless saga of tests and mid sems and end sems over the last four years.The only remaining effort will be defending my work that has to somehow pass itself off for my BTP.That is all I have to do now ,to make myself eligibile for a BTech honours (mind you) degree in Computer Science and Engneering that would duly elevate my stature in the academic world ,to that of an honourable graduate.

So that is looking forward to a perfect grind over the next two weeks until the formalities are over by the 5th of May.If all goes well I would be free-free after that though I am not very sure and not exactly looking forward to anything after that ,but for finally landing up in Bangalore in the first week of June to start earning a living for myself.That painfully reminds me that I have to leave behind so many things ,and that vein of thought is presently restrained for the lack of time to exhaust itself to its fullest potential.

Time and again I am being told by different people that I am a very cold person.That I MUST say , is a matter of great relief.Thank you.

Run, rabbit run
Dig that hole, forget the sun
And when at last the work is done
Don't sit down

It's time to dig another one

Pink Floyd,Breathe/The Dark Side of the Moon(1973)

Apparently this is the pilot ,as I start digging another hole for myself,a hole i can look into ,smile ,crib ,cry,wince,whimper,rant,rave,shout and spout ,shrouded hopefully ,in a cover of anonymity.

Not much water has flown under the bridge and if I am to take off from where I left in the previous post ,well the party was great,lot of good wine was served and yours truly after having had his fill of a meager four and a quarter pegs ,made bed of a hammock in a room ,that thus marked the first night that was ever spent ,quite literally hanging in the air .

Then there has been a lot of running around to do as usual ,the rabbit's BTP is even farther from completion and the guide expects a lot of blood and sweat to be shed before he thinks he could call it a day.Tears though might come in handy somewhere down the line.My parent's have already started planning for Bangalore while the rabbit out here is stuck in a dilemma."To be , or not to be" ,"to join in June or July" is the question of the moment that has left the rabbit counting his carrots.Joining in June would mean getting into the job as fast as possible implying running without much thinking that has quite been the order of the day.July would mean spending quality time in the lab learning up a few things and working on far more satisfying and stimulating stuff ,thereby losing close to fifty ks in the bargain.Taking a decision has never been the rabbit's stronghold and all he can do at the moment is leave something for time to tell.

In between the running and the farewells ,all juniors to be treated and other treats to be deferred there has been a constant thought that has been nagging me.The running has been directionless to say the least.Its mostly running away from the self.Everything has been bland like a mundane breakfast .Call it disillusionment ,the lack of purpose or the unavailability of a goal.There have definitely been lesser people to please , classes to attend and time to socialize ,the lab eating into most of the hours that i spend being awake.Also there has been a spell of sleeplessness to bother me but then I am so unhappily aware of its reasons and suddenly I've started seeing sense into all that was said about hating kids.

Things must change and change for the GOOD.And this time round I am in a hurry.

Damn!

What lies ahead is a seemingly eternal four day long weekend and as usual I have nothing much to do besides sleeping ,spending a few hours in a desirable air conditioned lab in the afternoon , having arbit conversations with equally arbit people and brooding over pretty inconsequential things.The last few days have been what I can best describe as "hell" with temperatures soaring and humidity that is almost life threatening.Midst that there has been a lot of running around , a lot of loopholes to fill ,a lot of debugging to do that would offer some amount of solidarity and respect to the almost abstract work that has to pass itself off for my BTP ,and thus buy me a ticket to freedom ,out of this village, for once ,and forever.It is not that I am dying to get out of this place that has been my home for the past four years ,but the heat and a consequential palpitating forhead and a foul temper makes me see enough reason as to why a place like Bangalore will be more than a welcome change.That would definitely mean bidding gooodbye to the laid back life that I've been so used to in this serenely sober,sleep deprived campus and saying that I'll miss this place, would just turn out to be an understatement of sorts.

Among other things that have been playing on my mind lately ,has been the condition of a friend who at present is having some sort of psychological problems.To my knowledge there are no apparent reasons as to why such a problem should have occured in the first place.The person is headed for a fairly decent university in the US of A and things have always been smooth on the personal front.Come to think of it and this realization dawns on you that four years at this place can bring about a phenomenal amount of change in a person.An exhibit for that matter is the one whose fingers wearily plod on an inanimate keyboard ,but that is another story , kept aside for some other day.

The fact that someone is going through all this can be disturbing when you have known him for three years and have been reasonably close to him, shared notes, studied with, taken lifts from and troubled him to no ends as a lab partner. While talking to him today I realized how difficult it is to be of any help to him.He has been on a dosage of anti depressants and sedatives ,not having had any sleep for the past five days and looking every bit sleepy and groggy throughout the time we spent together.He seemed to suggest that all news that had been coming of late has been fake and the phenomenon is a consequence of a chain reaction that has been triggered by his blog.That was perhaps the only wierd part in the little conversation we had.Yes he demanded a Marlboro with chai and for the lack of resources all I could get him was a Gold Flake King.He also admitted to have thrown away the pharmaceuticals that were prescribed and described his encounter with the psychiatrist in a rather amicable manner.

All through the conversation I couldn't help but think of the way the "psyche" would have been working , given the things he had to say.It is much like a Hidden Markov Model. where given a sequence of outputs you have to find the most probable transition over a sequence of known hidden states that would maximize the probability of obtaining such an output.Its strange how beautifully everything fell in its place and I laughed at the naive analogy I seemed to have drawn at the moment,quite unknowingly out of thin air.Anti depressants is just a means of treating a psychological condition (that would mean tweaking a few unwanted states) though with extremely physiological means , inducing chemicals that increase the sertonin levels in the brain to arouse some sensations , that by larger knowlege is perceived as happiness.
Thus,everything boils down to organic chemistry at the end of the day even when something as remote as the "psyche" is in question.

Existential problems if I might take the liberty of calling them so ,the ones that plague the multitude,trying to find meanings for our lives ,searching for reasons for our own existence and the frustration that breeds as a result of having had to meet with a failure or a possibly dead end.The state of affairs makes me sad to say the least.These are the people who have been successful in most aspects of their short lives that they have seen to far and I must confess it has been a very short one.Yet the fears that creeps into these lives leaves me with a lot of questions.

The other day a dear friend in quite an emotional outburst suggested that I had been too stressed out of late and that I should start taking life a little more easily.What element of truth the statement contained is merely subjective but what struck me was his observation and the manner in which things were said.I must admit my forbearence gives out everything that might me playing on in my mind,which more often than not turns out to be a pain in the ass given situations where I must restrict myself from being visibly perturbed.Of late there have been numerous occasions where I have shouted at different people for no reason at all and although I've realized that I was the one who was to be blamed ,not once have I apologized.Blame it on the weather ,or on the repressions of the Freudian "Ego".

Its often simpler to leave these questions aside and "live" ,which paradoxically makes our existence follow an escapist approach .What appeals to the lower levels of consciouness are feelings that are more earthly , more materialistic in nature say love,affection,desires , dreams that make our lives apparently a little more meaninful.Materialism is endearing as it offers some diversion from the mundane and the meaninglessness that we so often refer to as boredom.What we see as success and failure is so deeply imbued in materialistic connotations that it makes me a bit wary of the truth.

Talking of existential problems , and the consequences thereof most of them as I see are borne out of the emotional loneliness that pervades our lives.If I try to explain this loneliness it would be the absence of people around you who can empathize with you at a resonant intellectual level and more often than not this is where the problem begins.Going by Erikson's stages of psychosocial development ,a direct prdecessor of Freud's psycho-sexual development stages ,this age is marked by the identification of the "self" in terms of isolation and intimacy.An individual shuttles between two extremes trying to identify himself with the world and as an isolated individual at the same time.Alternatively it is the unison of the atma and the brahmana and an imbalance as a result can play havoc with our evolutionary instincts and spiritual growth.

I popped up this question one day to a very interesting person who I see as an iconoclast in every sense of the term.Success is self awareness and faiure is self delusion is what I was told.If one is aware of himself at ALL points and ALL times he can think of himself to be successful.If he's not,he's lost and that would be a failure.Let us think of ourselves as a leaf in a turbulent flow of a river.The leaf it seems is so unaware of its own existence ,so very limited by its choice to resist the motion of the flowing water.The flowing water in turn is synonymous with the conditioning that we receive which shape our perceptions and our consciousness. To quote Tagore,

This is your beginning, this is my end

You and I together make this current.

Your lamp burns, you've a companion at home

For me it is night, for me it is the star.

Yours is the shore, mine the water

You remain sitting, I go on wandering.

Your hand can hold, mine knows decay

Your mind knows fear, mine is above it.

Though extremely poetical in thought and content , this answers the intersection of all my questions.Self awareness is the goal , a journey which is the destination because a thing as destination does not exist.The hunt IS the kill .One cannot arrive THERE , just that you are there.

This post owns its existence to our man for sure and all the thinking that has gone over the last two hours and transformed itself into a set of characters against a grey background, to some extent makes me a little happier for having explained to myself a few things well.There is obviously LIFE beyond all this non sensical blabber and frankly speaking I am looking forward to wrap up my day with some mindless drinking ,thanks to a friend who is comfortably waitlisted in IIM A at number 3 .

Meanwhile , let peace be with you.

Ideal communication is to replicate your own thought process in the listener's mind and no language can do that consistently so, language is imperfect and hence, it makes no sense to distort an already sad situation by talking about an imperfect system, using the same imperfect system although Godel seems to have succeeded very well .To my mind, mankind's single greatest collective discovery of the 20th century.

This is a part of a conversation I had a few days ago over Gtalk.

Talking doesn't help much.

True ,but listening does and I am listening.

I don't believe in a deterministic universe. There are empirical truths that are unique to each one of us and yours are different from mine so the only way we can arrive at the WHOLE truth is to agree on it deterministically, through logic and to arrive at it EXPERIENTIALLY, through self-awareness .

Does anyone know the truth?
To pull out an over-used cliche …….everyone does and to substantiate it with my favorite argument everyone knows he is going to die and yet, no one actually does.

Death is the ultimate truth then
nah there is no question of 'ultimate'. A theorem is either true or false.There are no gradations in truth neither is it something holy to be viewed with awe.

But everything in life is so fuzzy
I know . So is a cellular automata but it has deterministic rules and it is replicable .About a week ago i felt so HAPPY when i formulated the following ……what Krishna told Arjuna in the Gita was "arjuna, be a finite state automaton".Forget it i always assume everyone loves math as much as i do.The whole point is its not fuzzy at all its fuzzy to me , if i am too lazy to look at the source code if i do, it becomes very clear there will be randomness and chaos, of course.

Whats the source code?
I can't describe it to you because you have your own as in its written in a language that is individual to your consciousness and so, you are the only one who can read it the code is the same for you and me

I am the machine and a unique machine for that particular language
YOU are not the machine YOU is a recursive cycle of awareness that observes the machine in action , so YOU are the machine, and YOU are also the operator and which YOU is which is decided by the level of self-awareness you are at and, to my mind, the higher up in the managerial hierarchy you are.Its not something you can THINK of, thinking presupposes logic and logic can never examine ITSELF ,whereas that is what self-awareness requires to be able to communicate with other consciousnesses.Well, you see all of us are running the same source code and it is compiling differently for all of us

Let's say you have a company say GE it makes a light bulb who has made the light bulb?Can any ONE entity take responsibility?No the same way there are so many levels of consciousness and if you say, "I am unaware" you are saying, "this level of consciousness is unaware" and the only thing to do is to rise up to the next one.

And we are limited
No, we're not because we can all access the level of consciousness that is pure awareness.
But wait a minute when i say, we can all access it that is the equivalent of saying any divergent sequence can go to infinity can we see it going to infinity?We can't .Can we, at any point, look at it , measure its value and say , it has crossed the threshold for being considered infinite? We can't and yet, they all do now, to answer your question me. You just need to be "aware" to divert your consciousness towards the act of being "aware" infinite levels of consciousness? If you could enumerate them, then, yes, there would be an infinity. Its a contnuous spectrum, you see can we, at any point, look at it , measure its valueand say , it has crossed the threshold for being considered infinite?We can't and yet, they all do.

So how do we climb the levels?
By being "aware"that's it just THAT there are different systems that people use.You have yoga
you have bhakti.

What about drugs?
That is a tricky one. The thing with drugs is that they do it temporarily they do and so does sex.The experience is genuine but it is not self-generated and hence, does not help.Its like hard-coding a program with numbers you will see a nice graph every time you run it but you won't advance in solving the problem ,will you ? Sex IS a drug they can be useful if you stay AWARE of the objective the fear is that the experimenter will start mistaking the nice little graph for the objective.

"Language is always going to be imperfect" because it involves taking a last common denominator.One self-generative system is trying to communicate with another self-generative system and both have different compilers so, there is naturally going to be information loss."
Indeed.

Although I have been lucky enough to be born with a lanky frame ,seven bottles of beer over the weekend can tamper with the designs of nature.Add to that a wingie with a disproportionate distribution of fatty acids across his torso and you’ll figure out why I have had to do a lot of running over the past few days.This exercise as a matter of fact started a few weeks back when a friend due to repeated requests from his girlfriend finally came to the conclusion that he had a few(actually lots of) extra kilos and it was high time he started doing something about it.So all these factors somehow colluded to offer me enough inspiration to run,and this is one of the good things that has happened to me lately.

Coming back to the tale of a wonderful weekend that I had,Friday witnessed me writing what hopefully will be my last midsemester examinations and thus ended a week of three sleepless nights and three exams.That called for a bit of celebration, a term which somehow has become synonymous with drinking.So we drunk like fish and did few other unmentionable things after that.Golu got the final fellowship call from CMU that night and he deserved it for every bit of all his sterling qualities.Golu ,Electrical Engineering department rank 1, a cgpa of 9.41 and most importantly my next door neighbour since the last two years will then honour CMU with his presence over the next few years before he comes back to India to get married to the lady of his dreams.

Saturday morning and afternoon found me sleeping .Actually all mornings and afternoons find me so.I was pulled out of the bed and taken to another treat where I was forced to drink against all my wishes and pleas .I never mind a drink when it comes to celebrating someone making 10k every month for sitting in a lab ,talking to a probable girlfriend(who surprisingly has Harry Potterish eyes and Hermione Grangerish hair) over Gtalk and pretending to work for a startup company.I had plans of leaving for home that night but a few conspiring wingies interjected to change my plans for another treat at Kolkata on Sunday.

Thus a group of seven left the village for a taste of civilization on the fateful Sunday morning.We were on a treat thrown by two wingies who had pocketed jobs in oil companies with obscene pay packages.So everything that we would spend was promised to be sponsored Our first stop was Flury’s where we had a lot of sundaes whose names I don’t dare to remember.But ofcourse there was the one with little fruit jelly filled balls called juju-babes or so i am tempted to say.Our dear friend Saru meanwhile feasted his eyes on what he confessed was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his lifetime.We followed it with a luncheon of pizzas ,another rare delicacy at our village(besides women that is) and watched RDB sitting in the front row of the theatre.The day ended as usual in another restaurant in the city of joy where I was forced to drink again ,against all my wishes and pleas.And then the group of seven ,sleepy young men ,a few drunk ,treaded their way back to the village.

Thus ended the tale of a weekend and seven beers.

Returning to this blog sometimes is like visting my sins that I must admit I enjoyed committing and in the process assimilated all sorts of experiences ,good or bad, that I encountered in the process.However this even remotely doesn't mean that I am very proud of all that I've been over the past one year.Nothing that I say can offer any justification and no excuse is going to be good enough.But this blog offers me a certain degree of anonymity that I so much enjoy and I can talk freely about things I couldn't ,for the fear of disapproval or a debate over a mess table .This post should keep the ball rolling.

Our greatest fears and our greatest hopes are seldom realized.But when they are ,they leave us as a better person because we learn and appreciate the virtues of reconciliation.

Thelostsoulinafishbowl is at peace with himself though now and then he gets into the perpetually lost mode .Earlier this year,some company found him good enough to work for them.If things go well he'll start earning in another few months and will make enough for his bread and butter and that occasional tandoori chicken and beer.BTP is going on well though there are occasional hiccups.His inclination towards alcohol and grass has fairly reduced though he doesn't mind drinking and getting other people drunk once in a while for celebrating a few good things in life.Grass always appears greener on the "other" side but things are pretty much under control.

Suffering is a great teacher and it has taught him a few things well.It has taught him to count his blessings and be thankful to God for whatever little he has . It has taught him that a few things are better left than pursued.It has taught him that happiness is just not about great things happening in life.Its about getting a good night's sleep,its about knowing that there are people who enjoy your company,its about knowing that there is enough love in this world and hoping that there might me a little there for him too.

Honestly speaking this blog is a child of the extreme boredom and ennui that of late has crept into my life, that has been in total shambles due to reasons I believe don't even merit a place here.My naivette,carelessness and disillusionment to far more important things in life would provide a subtle explanation to my present plight which has been magnified to gargantuan proportions by the fact that I am a final year final semester student in a college thats far away from what deserves to be termed as "civilisation".

Last year during a period of ten days that I had spent at home ,I had visited a lot of astrologers.The sudden interest in astrology could be attributed to the fact that things weren't going well for me.I had spent two months in Mumbai as a summer intern followed by a tour down south.I wouldn't term the phase as traumatic .But to some extent emotionally I wasn't strong enough to cope up with the turn of events.Logic had betrayed me long ago and something made me believe that the answers lay somewhere else.I was so unsure and afraid of the future that astrology seemed to be an instant refuge ,something that could offer me instant gratification.But it did not.

Over conversations with a friend and a lot of soul searching I had started to develop a strong bent towards spirituality.Until now my spiritual life was what I can best describe as "nil".The concept of deeksha seemed to be both appealing and engrossing one.It has its roots in "Bhakti Yoga" that I had come across as a part of a Humanities and Social Sciences course in my third year which if I can recollect correctly was called "Science and Humanism".It talked about the love for God and complete surrender to Him.We humans waste a lot of energy in the process of loving and hating others.This energy if suitably directed could work wonders for us. .However the spiritual calling wasn't strong enough or maybe the time wasn't ripe.Things didn't fall in place and I returned to this place for my fourth and final year.

During this time I underwent a lot of change.I was slowly turning into a regular drinker and my smoking had considerably increased.I was drinking alone in a quiet closed room.I had already been introduced to grass in my second year but had never felt the need to try it again barring a rare occasion when a friend had painstakingly tutored us to roll up and smoke it in the most distinguished manner.But during this time I was taking a lot of this stuff.Nicotine ,alcohol and grass.

I hardly attended classes and when I did I was usually doped up or had a hangover from the previous night's drinking.The previous semester I had touched new lows as far as my CGPA was concerned and resurrecting myself out of this abyss of academic disillusionment was slowly turning into an unsurmountable task.A lot of D's had started governing my life drinking,dope,DIP,Dave Gilmour and lots of them on my gradesheet .I had a BTP that I couldn't make heads and tails of.I was assigned to a Phd who appeared to be cerebrally challenged.

Most of this semester was spent in enriching my Bohemian experiences.The only bright spark if any would be my tryst with CAT that eventually dwindled into another shattered dream.I started popping pills as I hardly got any natural sleep.I slept during the day that lead to sleeplessness during the night.I started avoiding people barring a very few who fell under the class of friends.My eating habits took a backseat because of my nicotine intake and consequently I was losing a lot of weight.

The month of December was particularly a painful one.The semester had come to an end .The BTP evalutaion had been done.I had managed to make a decent show of the little effort I had put in over the last few days .CAT was over.Most of my wingmates headed for home with just two of them staying back to complete their apping work.I decided to stay back and keep myself busy with the BTP and also because home put a lot of constraints on the sense of freedom that I had acquired of late.Moreover I was hardly able to spend anytime with myself and being at home would have meant doing that most of the time.

The mornings and afternoons were spent mostly in the Lab.The work of my BTP was slowly taking shape.The BTP title had been decided at the very last moment and I was happy about being able to do something in a very long time.The day usually ended with me drinking alone in my closed room and having conversations with an inebriated friend over the phone.

During this time I made a few friends who had tastes similar to mine.We drunk and doped together.I started listening to Floyd and was introduced to psychedelic .I started studying Floyd lyrics looking up everything I could find about them.Dope sessions followed by videos of Floyd was something I started to relish.

Its strange but somehow my mind bends towards spirituality when I am going through a real torrid time.I started going to a temple every evening after returning from the Lab and spend some time there sitting on a bench outside,looking at the people come and go, who in turn gave me long lingering stares until one of broke eye contact.Perhaps the jacket I wore that had the name of my college had to do something with it.There was a strife between the inner self and my exterior.Everything inside was manifesting itself in my behaviour.My mind was not at peace.Spirituality was turning out to be an excuse or probably an escape.I was afraid of the suffering and the sorrow.I had immersed myself in alcohol and smoke just because I was trying to escape reality.This reluctance was turning out to be an impediment in my spiritual growth which slowly had started affecting my sense of independace and individuality.

One particular night deserves a special mention.I had as usual consumed a lot of alcohol and grass with another friend ,watched a few videos which I found disturbing in my state of delirium .The images danced in front of my heavily doped eyes.Flashes or hallucinations if I had to put it in words.Probably it was the insecurity and fear that I had been living with for quite sometime now.Dope might just have been the catalyst.

What i saw was a brightly lit room.I woke up with the sun on my face and a spirit to live.It was as if some fluid had been injected into my body that ran through my veins urging me to live.It lasted for a few seconds if I can trust my instincts and sense of timing.Dope does strange things to you.Unlike alcohol ,it affects two people differently at the same time.The quantity inhaled might be the same but the levels of high it gives can vary. I remember having the hallucination that night,coming back to my room,messaging a few people who were close to me and then crying before drifting into sleep.

Reality is so different from an illusion in the absence of an intoxicant.The next morning I woke up in the same dark room and fumbled for my pack of cigarettes and out of habit I lay on the bed with my eyes open.My hallucination might have been a projection of some inner wanting that I might have harboured over a very long time,or so I thought.It was December and if my calculations were correct I had spent close to twenty days at home that year.I couldn't spend another night in the damned room that of late had started haunting me.That night sitting in a general compartment with some fifteen people stuffed in it and hardly enough room to sit,and air to breathe ,I remember feeling overjoyed.

Lonely paths
bend here and there
into lonelier alleys
And the lonely sun like an orphaned child
sitting pretty in the lonely sky
casts lonely shadows
around lonely lives.