Monday, October 12, 2009

That old “long-notebook”….

Most of us who have written a few things during school or college days, have had that favorite old note book or note pad where we wrote regularly or irregularly….

I have one of those preserved too. It’s the typical long notebook printed by some odd local publisher and titled the book with some typical Indian name like “Kamal Books”, “Vikas long note”, “Saraswati Pustak” or something equally non-attractive (at least to me). Mine doesn’t have a front cover.

But to my happiness, I remember my notebook without the front cover ever since… the first page interestingly is full of the different styles of “signing my name off”! This was a regular hobby with me and my Dad used to be pretty intrigued too. My dad has the most unusual signature I have seen for a simple minded Engineer. So there’s this page with signatures all-over, some with English & Hindi alphabets mixed up to give the whole thing a different look, that happens to be the face of my fav writing pad.

The last page almost mirrors the first one, while the difference is in the directions of the scribbled signatures.

But the essence, obviously is between the two.

It holds some of my fav old poems and articles, I wrote years back. There’s something with nostalgia that makes you feel sentimental. So I keep going back to that note-book and read from it. I haven’t wanted to change or copy stuff from there onto a newer better and beautiful note-book. Something just stops me (It’s become like an artifact for me ).

The other reason of the fondness, probably, is that it belongs to my college time. The era of romanticism, youthful energy and also some solitude. All three of these attributes reflect in all that I wrote at that time – new ventures, homesickness, My Mother, my gang of ‘yet-to-be-engineers’, my crushes, my dreams as a young man, times of dilemma, time itself, solitude and sorrow….

So it’s a mixed bag of some most cherishable times of my life.

Another fact that adds to this is that I spent more than a year in a small village in Assam, exposing myself to a totally different world. Some of the most remembered people (young n old), some of the most lonely nights, some days of bizarre travelling….

All in all, my fav long-book is a drop of rain that takes me back to the Sea, where it came from.

Thursday, October 8, 2009

The Continuum called Evolution

It appears to me as if:


“There is nothing such as Individual progress or decline, it is all but a miniscule part of the infinite continuum called Evolution”.

So, whatever we do, good or bad, has no major impact on the moving status of universe or the human race. I am here, not denying or defying the Law of Karma, as our deeds will yield results unto us, definitely. But, those deeds and their results will not find (or rather – may not find) direct correlation to the dynamic equilibrium of evolution.

While on the other hand the heterogeneous two dimensional (space and time) effect, (I’d rather call it three dimensional, with the addition of a collective human conscious as the third), of the deeds of thousands and crores of us produces this continuum – “evolution”, which is hence the triple integral of our deeds over the three dimensions, as their ranges tend to infinity.

To find or deduce the impact of one human’s deeds, is hence, next to impossible. But the impact of the said integration has produced the transformation of one living cell to this whole diverse and complicated array of innumerable living species. The same law could apply to the universe, starting from the big bang to the structure with galaxy’s including star systems (like our solar system), planets, satellites, meteors, comets etc etc.

So, why are we even talking about all this if there’s no way we that one can measure the consequence of action. It is because this is not about measuring our action and deducing its impact on evolution, since, none of us is trying (or can try) to give any particular direction to this continuum. The objective is not to turn evolution your way (if there’s any “your way” at all) and that, anyways, would be impossible and futile, considering infinity as the end point.

Then,
1. There’s nothing we can decide
2. There’s nothing we can do
3. We cannot direct the motion
4. W cannot define the end point
5. We cannot control the trajectory or speed of the process

BUT:
Once the whole scheme is clear to us, once we realize the abysmal infinity of the continuum and our relation to it as a part of the collective transformation, maybe a few (Or all) of our queries have answers and solutions.

I loved the below quote:

“When the doors of perception are cleansed, one will see everything as it truly is, infinite”.