Big Brother?

Fact 1. 

I have a nexus 4. The phone has Jelly Bean Android operating system preloaded on it. Since it is a smart phone, smarter then most of the people around, it has all the bells and whistles like GPS, NFC, Bluetooth, WiFi and what not. And since I consider myself one of the tech savvy people I ring all the bells and whistle all the whistles. I use GPS for finding my way around, WiFi to save some cents on the internet, NFC for sharing playlists and Bluetooth for brushing my teeth (just wanted to see if you were paying attention).

Fact 2. 

I go to work every day in the morning to the same place (yup some people do go to different place for working) and come back home in the evening. At around 6:00 PM I head to the Recreation Center to 'unwind after a hectic day of work', come back home and sleep at the same address. Everyday. 

Fact 3.

 I take my phone everywhere with me.

Fact 4.

Google Now is an app that is a part of your Android 4.2 experience. You can use it to ask your phone to search for restaurants around, look up a recipe, find what's the temperature outside. Almost everything that a 'human assistant' does this app can do, and can do it faster and it doesn't roll its eyes at you when it is acting on your 'requests'. The results resulting from these requests pop up as 'cards' when the app 'thinks' you might be needing them. 

Observation 

This '6 Minutes to work' card pops up of its own volition at around 8:30 in the morning-the usual time that I leave for work. A similar card 'X minutes to home' pops up around 5:30 PM- the time I usually leave the lab. And around 6:00 PM so does a card politely telling the time it would take me to reach the Rec Center. For all my tech savvy I never set up either of these places as the place of my work, my home or the place where 'I go to unwind'. 

Explanation

As I explained earlier I believe in 'ringing all the bells' I always keep the GPS on because it helps Google to provide me with accurate weather predictions and the events that happen around the town. However Google went a step further and observed (using the GPS coordinates) that I-like any other normal person was spending more than 90 % of my nights at the same place and in the morning I went to the same place (presumably the place I work at) and in the evenings I peroidically went to another place and came back within an hour. So Google using its knowledge of human behavior and some chunk of its huge data to ascertain that one of these places is my home, one is my work and one's where I go for 'unwinding'.  

Conclusions and Comments

Its a pretty nifty feature isn't it? Google uses your coordinates to provide you with traffic information and what route to take and which street to avoid. You can save upto 10 minutes of your commuting time, and you can spend that time binging on burgers getting fat. How awesome is that?

Disregarding the rhetoric, let me tell you, how awesome I feel that is. 

In my opinion it's a gross violation of my privacy. I agree that this information might be helpful to me but I never explicitly asked Google to store the GPS data of my movements. I feel like I am being spied upon, a private eye is keeping tabs on me, taking pictures with his hugely expensive telephoto lens. And he is doing that at his own leisure and he is doing that without being discreet. 

Now tell me how awesome that is.

Adios.

PS.

I now know how to make Urad Chane ki Dal. 

PPS 

At times like these one is inclined to believe this. 

In love, just two days more...

The second season of Games of thrones, based on the George RR Martin's epic fantasy series- A Song Of  Ice And Fire will air this Sunday. Never before I have been so excited by season premiere of any tv series barring Sherlock of course, I mean who wasn't, Moriarty and Sherlock were on a way to an epic showdown but I digress. Apart from the obvious reasons - politics, intrigue, betrayal, love (sickeningly so), nudity ( :D ) and fantasy, I like this series this TV series even more because it introduced the world of the seven kingdoms of Westeroos, which in turn forced me to devour all the 5 books (I read book 5 on PDF instead of having a hardcopy back at hostel just because I couldn't wait for 3 days).  

Now if I start writing about what I like in this book it will take ages, so things that I shall be looking forward to in this season 

• The war of 5 kings

• Melisandre 

• Melisandre's shadow children.

• Wildfire

• Tyrion's chain

• Arya and Valar Morghulis ( I know its a word not a person but still...)

I shall be watching each episode and in my opinion you should too :)

Adios...

PS: Watch Sherlock (BBC TV series) if you haven't already

The Monster And The Bully

In the age when the witch was the doctor and the inn was the pub and bar and the muddy creek was the swank swimming pool and the prostitutes well were the prostitutes- it’s the oldest profession you see-our story is set in.

In one of the many villages –villages were abound then- was a hill(of course what’s a village without a hill- remember “jack and Jill went up the hill”) and on the hill there was a cottage( and what’s a hill without a cottage) and around that cottage was a garden( there are gardens around ever cottage on a hill- didn’t you read any story or for that matter harry potter, remember his friend the weasel lives in a cottage and boy they have a large garden). In that house or should I say the cottage lived a monster (no monsters don’t usually live in cottages).



So that monster that wasn’t a monster per se but since he was a child he had an unusual countenance and so was called monster by everyone. And since he lived alone he started to think that he really was a monster and started behaving like that. See this is how we ruin our children; they have an impressionable mind you see. But I digress.

That monster did what all the monsters usually do. He scared the shit out of anyone who ventured in the woods around his garden which was around his house or for that matter the cottage. And hence he lived on plying his monstrous trade.

And as with villages go there was a bully there in that village too. And as with bullies go he used to bully. And again as with bullies go he met his match. This match wasn’t a bimbo nymphet but one other bully who bullied the other bully into venturing into the monster lair.

The monster was sleeping when our brave, heroic, gallant and spunky (well euphemism for big scaredy cats ready to shit in their pants- we use euphemisms a lot you see) bullies entered the cottage with a garden around it lying on the top of the small hill. And while they were jumping the boundary wall a fly sat on the nose of the monster, and as it goes with monsters he swatted it, missed, hit his own face and woke up with an ouch that was mighty roar for the ears of the bully.

One of the bullies wet his pants and fainted- at this juncture I don’t think that we care which bully that was, the one who met his match or the one that was supposed to be the match- and the other started to cry. The monster that wasn’t a monster per se saw him and since he wasn’t a monster per se went out to console him.

Bully: "don’t eat me please."

Monster: "Why’d I eat you, I only eat vegetables and fruit and sometimes dirt too. I don’t eat ‘humans’. I am a vegetarian, a ‘v-e-g-e-t-a-r-i-a-n’. Now come to me and let me console you."

The bully caring not to make any sound with his feet, caring not to breathe loudly, cursing the vile wind that was spreading his vile bodily smell, albeit silently, approached the monster( who was welcoming with his arms spread),closing on the bully opened his mouth, picked up the monster, chewed him to pieces and swallowed him whole and merrily went back to his home.
Adios...

PS: This post is a satirical take on our habit of typecasting anyone and everyone. For us anyone with a  bad habit is a bad person. While all those who are don't indulge in any vices are inherently good. However in actuality this is not always the case. More often than not a seemingly normal person is the one who is a monster. 

PPS: The word monster is used in a broad sense.  

A Tepid Start to 2012

The good

•  I am reading books.  I loved reading books, back when I was a kid (I still am a kid, but others have started treating me like some grown up adult ), I always had a book in my hand. It didn’t matter where I was or what I was doing, and even what I was reading. If it had a cover and printed pages and I was nearby, I read it.  However somehow down the line I lost that habit. I forgot the pain you felt when a beloved character died or the sense of loss when you finished a particularly good series of book or when you read the entire works of an author. So after a period of 6 years, in the winter of 2011, when I didn’t have any distractions I started reading books again. And by reading I don’t mean reading 100 pages, and then leaving the book for the other day, I mean picking up a book and reading it nonstop till your mother starts shouting at you and confiscates the book. Yeah those kinds of reading, when you read like a fiend without a care in the world. So, in these 15 days I have read 7 books, and the 8^th one is in progress, and boy I am loving it.

•   I am not watching any mindless TV series

•  I got 99.08 percentile in CAT without studying, without preparing. This was a much needed boost for me because the results came when I had started doubting my abilities. It was a bit of a restoration of my faith in myself.

The bad

•  I got 99.08 percentile in CAT without studying. It’s like running the marathon and then collapsing on the finish line just because you didn’t drink enough water so you dehydrated. There will be a small part of me that will always nag me, that small voice which will always claim if only I had studied a bit more. If only I had remembered the formula for sum of a GP. If ONLY.

•  I broke my laptop, and had to pay a lot of money to get it repaired.

•  I messed up my application forms. I won’t give out details; however the gist is that I am a big moron, and it would hurt that even after getting a good (read as awesome) score in GRE and TOEFL I would not get an offer from a graduate school just because of my idiocy

The Ugly

•  I realized that there are some people who will use you for nefarious purposes. Like for example there exists a certain someone let’s call him Mr. X  who will bitch about someone else  and should you say anything against that someone else, Mr. X will promptly go around and relate the things that you said to him with utmost relish. This was something which I always understood and tried to stay away from such persons. However there is something good that can be found in these kind of people too, they never kick you when you are vulnerable. Hence it was news for me when I found people of other kind, whose sole purpose is to derive everything from you, no matter how it may have harmed you. I can’t comprehend how a person to whom you presented your vulnerable side use you to make your best friend jealous by presenting as if something is going between you and her (she was his girlfriend long time ago, a relationship which she broke). I never thought that I shall be the dupe of such kind of people, and it is ugly because it will be very difficult for a misanthrope like me to be vulnerable again.

This start of 2012 had more lows than it had ups, and it kind of scares me because I rose very high in 2011 and it’s a long fall when I look down.

Adios…

Edit:  there has been a change in the situation, it appears what I feared has been delayed. :D

A question of decency.

It doesn’t look like it (it is always the same case every year) but the consensus is that the annual cultural festival of IIT KGP for the year of 2012 has started. Today was the first day. And like every earlier edition this year too they had a Hasya Kavi Sammelan (transliteration: humor poet convention) and like every year they invited some of the famous poets. This year too, there was overcrowding towards the back of the OAT, while front seats were kept reserved for the “faculty” who were conspicuously absent. This year too, the poets arrived late, all in all, the event was every bit mismanaged, just like the earlier years
.

However there was a change this year, a change which made me aware of the mob mentality of crowd, how they are like the pathetic sheep that need herding, and how they have such a low sense of self esteem that they feel proud of humiliating a person who is standing on the stage. Now before you start wondering what actually happened (here I am assuming that I am not the only person that reads my blog) I shall explain.

So there were 4 poets, who were invited this year. The first one to come on the stage had a knack of writing poems having intelligent humor. He was standing on the stage reading his poem, trying to mix it up with jokes, anecdotes just to make it interesting for the audience, and I think that he was doing a good job. Enter, a group of students (they were a motley bunch, of various colleges and states) and the drama begins.

Some of these people were sitting just behind me. These people starting mouthing off the poet, trying to add something vulgar, produced weird sounds when he was trying to say something and made obscene rude gestures. From their acts it looked as if they were never chastised by their parents or they never were taught the basic tenets of living in a civil society. Now that thing is also pardonable, there are some cases when even the best of parents can’t inculcate the desired quality in their offspring. What was not pardonable was the enjoyment, the satiation that I saw on their face, the smug look which conveyed how they pulled one over the person standing on the stage. What was unpardonable was how the most of the crowd took the leave of their senses and started a proud display of similar antics. What was unpardonable was their continuation of this when the seniormost of the poets- a septuagenarian tried to calm them. What was unpardonable was their blatant disregard of his age, his prowess, his mastery of sarcasm and even his requests to calm down.

There was a person in that earlier group of miscreants who I know; I wanted to ask him why he was doing what he was doing. But, I knew the answer that I would receive beforehand. I knew he would simply tell him that he didn’t like him. And I knew that he hasn’t even tried to listen to him, he just wants to have a centerstage among his group of friends, and that he wants to be able to boast about how he was better than the poet on the stage.

There was another person in the crowd who picked up the baton, who I know; I wanted to ask him why he was doing what he was doing. But, I knew the answer that I would receive beforehand. I knew he would simply tell him that he didn’t like him. And I knew that he liked the poet but the mob feeling, the crowd was telling him not to do so. And I knew that it was not in him to be individualistic, that he wanted to find conformity from the crowd.

And I knew that they both made me nauseous.

I don’t say that you don’t have the rights to boo someone when you don’t find him good enough, I don’t claim that you don’t have the right to criticize a performer (In fact I am a big criticizer of Twilight Series and Justin Bieber, and Uttran and Roadies and Big boss). But I say that unless and until you listen to him, you see him perform, you hear him sing, unless you see his feet moving on the floor, you don’t have the right to judge him. You can’t bloody claim that he is not melodious when you were sitting on your arse listening with ear plugs in your damn ears. You can’t claim that he has two left feet when instead of watching him perform you were looking at that pretty girl and were fantasizing about her. And even if you have listened and watched him you can’t shun your decency and shout at an old person who is requesting you to keep quite.

 If you are reading this, remember no one held you in high esteem for your behavior. Nobody applauded your efforts. The words of praise that were showered on you were interspersed with “Jaahil” and “Ganwar”. So take a long, hard look in the mirror and I know that if you have even a bit of shame left inside you, you will realize how despicable you were in that moment.

Adios… 

A scary feeling called love

It’s a disconcerting feeling when you start caring for someone beyond the circle formed by your close relatives.  You don’t even think about it and at weird unexpected moments your thoughts turn towards something that someone did sometimes. You feel a slight euphoria, the same kind which you felt when you had your first drink a few years ago. This giddiness is more pronounced when that someone is of the opposite sex.

The feeling of being disoriented turns to that of scare when you realize that gradually over the time you have stopped just 'caring' and have fallen in love with her. A bit of despair starts hanging around you after this realization. As you sink deeper into this quagmire of one sided love the despair grows. You try thinking ways of talking to her- a task which becomes more difficult because you don’t have any clue how to behave around her. So you take the refuge of the cupid of our times, yeah you scurry to your Facebook account and start visiting her profile ten times an hour, and wait for her to come online. Unfortunately for you she is not slave of virtual world and has a life beyond it-which is utterly incomprehensible for you, So you wait, and you wait for a long time and when she comes online you lose all the courage that you had built up during that vigil of yours, instead you update your status with innocuous remarks stupid comments about anything and everything under the sun. Then one day she pings up to ask for some casual detail, for you that’s like Christmas came early. That innocent chat has given you more excuses to have further conversation with her-online of course.

However the jubilation doesn't last long. You wait painfully for her replies, misconstruing her silence for her indifference, you shun food, you become resentful and start hatching desperate plots. You consider sending her a mail, and then after sending that mail you consider calling her up.  This thinking goes on and on and for you that’s painful. But you soon develop some camaraderie and are chatting every day. Now your helplessness take another shape, you lose any sense of purpose once you complete the daily chat quota, anything else in the day doesn't hold much of a promise.

You console yourself saying that this is not love, it will soon pass away and you try thinking about something else but your thoughts always return rabidly to her hair, her eyes or her smile. You have thought about other females in the past but those thoughts had lust written all over them, you try imagining her in such a scenario but try as you may that is not possible. You see her face, her smile and you imagine a kiss, that kiss- a tender caress of lips, staring at her eyes never breaking the eye contact, all the while trying to convey the depth of your feelings from that simple but potent gesture. And that’s when you realize that you are firmly entrenched in a quicksand up to your neck, your only solace being her ignorance of your feelings. True she might be having an inclination about it but she can’t be sure unless you tell her.

One day you receive a call from her, you are in a train travelling to some place to be away from the sorry state that you are in. You excuse yourself from the conversation you are having, and attend the call. She confesses her love for you.  You give a yelp of pleasure; however it takes all your self-restraint that you don’t start dancing around. You are beyond ecstatic.

But this euphoria soon passes away, and you start assessing your situation. You think back to those moments when you doubted yourself, the see through plots you cooked just so you can have a conversation with her.  And that’s when the nightmare strikes you, the despair that was lurking in some back corner of your mind descends upon you.

You feel like a marathon runner forced to crawl even when he knows that there is nothing wrong with his legs. The feeling is utterly debilitating, because you know that your love is not unrequited, however you have seen your descent to such despondence that you know that is not in you to love someone. And how could that be because you always had a logical mind, but you find this logical mind betraying you.

You don’t find in yourself to trust the other person, every fiber of your being already cursing you for becoming dependent on someone else for your happiness, of taking that proverbial crutch, the knowledge that you can’t ever go back to “playing” that carefree happy person you earlier were.  This helplessness forces you to think of her and the despair at that sorry state of yours doesn’t let you accept her.

It’s now, when you realize that you are deeply madly and irrevocably in love and that this feeling sickens  you to your core
Adios…

Apartment 2 : The journalist

He probably, remembered “it's Behrman's masterpiece - he painted it there the night that the last leaf fell” when he saw leaves falling during the autumn. I know I would if I would have been in his place, for his was a story much similar to what Henry wrote.  He sacrificed his love so that his love could be with the love of her own.  He is in pain, he never would admit it, but the pain is small compared to the happiness she has in her life now.

Back at the newspaper they used to say that you have arrived when the editor calls and hands you an assignment; that you are going to be the next big thing when he calls you and gives you his little grasshopper speech; that you are going to be the next Pulitzer winner. So there I was, standing awed and cowed in front of a large mahogany desk, cluttered with an “organized mess” , the little man scrutinizing me, peering at the me over his horn-rimmed glasses gave me an assignment. He told me in no uncertain terms that I had to interview random people from a random housing complex. This assignment was to check if I could find something interesting in seemingly mundane and boy! I did find something interesting

.

Hopped up on the never ending carousel of drugs, he spent his days cooped in his dark melancholy room, searching for meaning in life. Something that could interest him, something that would motivate him something that would tell him what all the brouhaha about life is. He had read about love, had gawked at the magical moments glorified on the big screen – something he used to do during the days that seemed ages ago, so the next logical step for him was to find meaning in love. He proposed, and realized that the acceptance or rejection of his proposal didn’t matter, his proposal didn’t arouse any feelings in him. So he went back to his sanctuary, cooped in the dark, trying to ascertain how the spots on the wall changed under the shifting shadows of candle light, all the while blowing smoke in the air.

Hence there I was talking to people, trying to pry into their lives; I had to sweat a lot in order to elicit an honest response from the seemingly honest people out there. Put anyone in front of a camera and everyone has something to hide. However, I got most honest response from the shunned, the pariahs, people who didn’t care about others’ opinions. In a way the society’s indifference had set them free.

He didn’t come off as scary, not even a bit. There was a peace around him; his house in its simple strict austerity seemed more welcoming than those of the ‘sane’ people in that building. He felt guilty, there was remorse in his eyes. If only he had been sober, if only he could have let go of that poison for one day, then he could have saved her. She was nobody to him. He had seen her only once, but he could still remember those eyes hers filled with hope and her mother’s with desperation when she had realized that she won’t see her daughter anymore, and his – first lustful, and then reflecting the jubilation that he got away with another.

He quit. He planned revenge and killed that bastard in a cold heinous manner that was befitting for him. And after spending 5 years in an asylum – a funny name for an equally funny place, he sits in his room asking for forgiveness, not from god for he knows there is no god, but from that girl,  for he knows that if he was sober he could have saved her.

I met them, and I was humbled by my experience, their life was flawed, and no person would consider that life to be a life. Hell! I wouldn’t have done that if I hadn’t come to understand their motivation. I learnt that a human being is a complex being something I always knew but never understood. I felt the joy felt by the “wife less guy, the guy whose wife left him, left him for another man.”  I bore the crushing weight of desperation felt by the “junkie- who destroyed his career”, I rooted for him, I willed him to find some meaning in his life. I shed tears with the “mad man” cried for the helpless girl, I shared the punishment meted out by him for himself.

And I realized that I was not the same person anymore, I realized that why that old sly dog is the editor and I am just a journalist. And here I am sitting in from of this old typewriter with a glass of scotch in my hand trying to drown the multitude of feelings that rise up when I remember those 4 days with the pungent “poison” – as that “mad man” would put it.

I also know that this article won’t ever see the light of the day, the editor would read it and he will say that it’s not complete, for this is the evidence of that journey, which I took for the discovery of my self

Adios...

PS:

1.  This is an account of what the journalist who visited the apartment has written, so for this to make any sense please give blogs of the apartment series a glance
2.  Also read this  . It will answer some of your questions. For others do comment. 

Friends or Enemies

I was recently watching Thor – released in 2011. Though I was aware of the fact that the principal villain in this series is Loki- the god of mischief and Thor’s brother, I never dwelled much on it. However when I was watching the movie I suddenly started looking for similar connections in other superhero series. Spiderman has one (Harry Osbourne dons the mantle of Green Goblin), Smallville- a prelude to superman, shows that Lex Luthor and Clarke Kent were best friends later turned mortal enemies, Erik Lehnsherr and Charles Xavier in X-men, Naruto and Sasuke in ‘Naruto’. In most of the superhero anthologies this thing is common.

But the similarity doesn’t end there, in real world too there are many such examples.

There is a sense of hatred between the people of two neighboring nations. Take the case of Canada and the USA. The Canadians don’t like Americans and vice – versa.  A more familiar example can be India – China. If India and China join hands, they can easily revolutionize the whole world. Same is the case with  England-Ireland, Australia- New Zealand, they  all have a history of rivalry which is often reflected in sports.

Yet it does not happen. The irony is that they themselves know this. All these examples beget a simple question- Why is it that the person closest to you hates you? Why do friends turn into foes? Why ?

The answer in my view is simple too.

I think the reason for that lies in the fact that we try to or in fact we over analyze anyone and everyone and find fault in them. This fault finding is supplemented by constant nagging to change their personalities, mend their ways, get their shit together etc. etc. etc.

 Now this process is applied universally on everyone but the person closest to us is the most affected by it BECAUSE he is closest to us.

You are not satisfied even when the person you are trying to change, bring about changes that you wished. Then it’s the case of “you are no longer the person I was friends with, you have changed”.  I don’t mean to say that it’s the fault of an individual, in my view it’s the fault of human character itself. I believe that humans by nature are attracted towards people having characteristics opposite to them, not because they supplement each other. It happens because they believe that they can change them; and the most potential of change is in the person who is their antithesis.

Thus this constant nagging introduces friction between two persons and soon the “relationship” reaches its breaking point.

I didn’t mean to be preachy in the above post, but if I have been then I don’t care. I do care about your views though, so feel free to comment

Adios…

 PS: American dragon: Jake long \m/
PPS: this post was inspired by a note which my friend Pankaj Agarwal posted on his facbook profile.

Apartment 2 Room #206

So, you’ve finally come. I was wondering when you shall show your face here, of all the resident of this building I must be the most interesting one. Why shouldn’t I be? I am the only person who has spent a decade of his life in a mental hospital; ergo it must be interesting to know how I cope up with the mundane day to day life.

People are afraid of me. They think that they would drop dead if they made eye contact. And why shouldn’t they be? Not long ago I was a raving lunatic who was straight jacketed, and thrown in a rubber cell. When I was sane before I never knew that there could be so many stereotypes that exist in this world. Or you could say that I was mad before, because I couldn’t see this world for what it is-An inflexible rigid martinet. However this was a lesson learnt long before I was certified. 

Look around you, you won’t find a single thing in this apartment that doesn’t serve a purpose. Many people who welcomed me here, who imposed on me to see what stereotype I fit in, told me that I lead a “Spartan” existence. They told me to buy frilly looking things, advised me on interior decorators, some even proposed to find me a girl because my apartment needed a “woman’s touch”. However this was before they discovered that I was institutionalized.

 So everything that lacked a woman’s touch was now attributed to my madness.

I don’t blame them. I learned my lessons long ago, in my previous life. What previous life? The life that I had before, the life when I was a pathetic drunk, spending the obscene amount of the money I had on booze. Then also I was a stereotype- a rich drunk kid or rather a brat, who is used to wave his money around and had his way. My neighbor also was a stereotype, another rich philanthropist who earned only for donating it. And by God, people had it all wrong. I never broke a single law in my life. I just drank. And he, he was a monster.

I remember that day, when I was leaving my apartment badly drunk and I saw him with a girl of around 15.  I dismissed it, thought that she might be one of his charities; he was usually involved with waifs nurturing them and caring for them. However I didn’t realize that he didn’t just nurture them, he forced himself on them deriving a sadistic pleasure from their misery.

When that girl disappeared, was killed by him, I told police that I last saw her with him. However I was a drunk the joke of everyone, my testimony was summarily dismissed. That was the last day I touched alcohol, in an instant I went from a bottle a day to bone dry. If I was not addicted, I could have saved her, I could have realized him for the monster he was. But I couldn’t. For all my lavish life, I couldn’t save her. I should have seen that hungry look in his eyes. I should’ve…

However I couldn’t have left him to his own devices. I didn’t. I entered his apartment, to apologize for my accusations. And I killed him.

You want to know how I did that? I tied him down, made an incision on his stomach, took two rats, pushed them inside and then sutured it. And then I watched. I sat there for all the time it took the rats to burrow their way out, and it was not long. And then I watched him bleed. And I sat there listening to his screams. And I sat there for a very long time even after he was dead. I was ready to face the consequences of my act. The killing of that bastard was reward enough for me. However I was again stereotyped.

The policeman who first apprehended me was a sudden hero for the media. He told them, that in his career he hasn’t seen such a scene. He said,”the criminal (that’s me), was unapologetic. He was calm, such calmness that only comes from madness. He was unremorseful, delirious, and his eyes. I can never forget his eyes. It was as if his stare could kill me.”

Adios…

PS: one more to come.

Apartment 2 Room #105

I shall always remember that kiss. Oh! What a moment that was. It was raining and there was sweet fragrance all around and someone was playing a violin as if to serenade us. As IF. It was in a theatre, old and ramshackle. But the ambience didn’t make it less magical for us. We were young, and we were spellbound. Me, more so. I realized that she will be the first and the last girl I shall ever give this kind of kiss. And she is.

So I know that you have been running around taking a measure of the residents of this building. Well good for you! But I don’t understand what you are looking for, what you hope to find? I mean you don’t see journalist-You are a journalist aren’t you? So I was saying that you don’t see journalists running around talking to senile old men, even if they have some juicy tidbits to share.  You know I don’t think that anyone in this building knows my name. They know me by moniker – the wifeless guy. The guy whose wife left him, left him for another man.

If you ask me they have a gist of that sorry affair.  These are not my words. I never felt sorry for myself, If you ask me that thing was a reprieve.  You can’t keep on looking at the face of person you love and see that she is unhappy with you.  No you better let her go. And let her go, I did. 

You know our eye see about three hundred frames per second. Of this the brain is capable of drawing information from only two hundred. The rest of its ability goes in supervising our movements. This is the reason you stop, like a deer  caught in headlights, when there is a sudden movement somewhere near you. Because then the body thinks that it’s necessary to analyze every bit of information relayed by your eyes.  And this indecision is often the end of you.  A predator won’t give you the time to stop and look around for a threat. He will pounce upon you during the moment of your weakness.

I decided that I won’t be weak. I won’t let that indecision be the end of me. So, I decided to leave her.  Yes! I left her.I moved out. Surprised? Why won’t you be? People don’t call her husband less, do they? The only thing that earned me that moniker was my decision to never marry again. How could I? I am still in love with her. I was in love with her and always will be. Leaving her was the most difficult thing that I did but I am happy now that she is happy. I became a villain, a monster so that she could live her life.

I have lived 55 summers and shall live many more.  I run, I work, I eat and I sleep, I have friends, I travel a lot, I earn, and I spend. I do crave for companionship, but then I always remember that kiss. In that old and ramshackle theatre.

Adios.

PS:this is the second in the apartment 2 series. Now you can be sure that the first one was not an autobiographical account. 

Hello World

For the uninitiated “hello world” was the first program that any respectable programming language book taught the user. Consequently this phrase has been incorporated in the everyday lexicon as the first step at anything you do. Got a twitter account, the first tweet is hello world, Have a FB? Say hello to the world.  Thinking about blogging the first blog should be hello world.

Now why do I care about it? I mean I already have a blog and I have been posting seemingly arbitrary and random stuff on that for the past- let’s see 3 years. Why Hello world? It’s easy I already explained it above. Why now?

Well now would be a good time as any to write this. Isn’t it?

On a serious note I have been pestering my friends(?) to read this blog by posting the link on their wall, putting it up as my status message, even sending them an IM about the recent updates. So for their convenience and for mine, I am writing this because I don’t want to explain certain things again and again. 

• Please don’t read too much in the title, or for that matter in the address. When I registered this blog page,  I was reading Naruto, which has three legendary Sennins , or was it inspired from the hermit crab or from some similar kind of stuff. The gist is that people thought that the title suited me and my personality and that was it.

• The caption “I am just a puppet who can see the string” is not of my own creation. They are plagiarized from what Dr. Manhattan says to Silk Specter in one of his melancholy moods. The lines kinda fit the whole hermit thing I had going on. 

• All the posts that have some mention of any girl, love affair, marriage proposal, divorce, kiss, hug, etc have no connection to the reality. At any instance of time I am influenced by a multitude of things that I am reading, watching, listening, observing( when I am not being my usual narcissistic self) and the posts are “inspired” (just like Opal Mehta was inspired) from them. So if you find a post about someone killing someone else just for getting off, you should not conclude that I am a psychopath( but then again no psychopath just comes out and claims that he is one, so you are free to draw conclusions of your own. )

• The posts that have narcissistic tones are all me.

• I don’t have any particular thing that I blog about. No Niche, no expertise on offer I just blog about what I see. So there can be a post that is seemingly considerate, and there can be other which portrays me as an obnoxious, irascible, condescending and selfish idiot. 

• I was able to put a name to the face I saw when I looked at the  mask in Venice, I won’t tell you who she is another thing altogether.

• Since I have already explained that the posts are not of personal nature, you are free to comment on them. However I am also free to make fun of them if I find them too critical.(on a serious not please leave comment even if anonymous ones, because it adds to my narcissism)  

That probably sums it all. If you want to know anything else then please don’t ask because in all probability I won’t want to tell that to you. But still you can try, because nobody knows that it might be your lucky day. 

Adios

 

Modeling and Simulation, Or how I lost sleep for a night and missed classes in the morning.

 
(The following is a recipe of destroying your life in the final year of your study. Those who want to try this out please beware that you have been forewarned of the consequences and the author won’t be held liable for any losses of sleep, mental faculty or life as you know it. )

• Start towards the end of third year by getting an ambitious project as a Btech. final year project .
• Choose project guides who are enthusiastic, intelligent and hardworking, who in turn expect you to share their enthusiasm, intelligence and most important of all - the capacity to work hard.
• In the summer after the third year of your studies go on an intern to a European country- so that you won’t like the life, food or the humid and hot weather when you get back here.
• Resolve to get a good job or a PHD in some foreign university.
• Screw your CGPA over the three years of your studies so that you don’t have an alternative other than to work on the BTP if you want to get what you resolved for.
• Clear your courses and enter the ‘final year’ (otherwise everything on this list is redundant).
• Take up an additional to cover for the scratched course even after acing it, due to some obscure rule that says you cheated “academically” by taking the said course in your second year.
• Meet your BTP guide and promise him that you will share his enthusiasm and the capacity to work hard.( You can’t share the intelligence because frankly speaking it’s not in your control)
• End up getting a task too onerous for the limited mental faculty you possess. Promise him that you will complete the task in one week. 

Sometime during this register yourself for a GRE and start taking coaching classes for CAT

• Start preparing for GRE. Procrastinate. Start preparing for CAT. Procrastinate. Leave preparation for both. Start the background study of the Project assigned to you.
• Get bored.
• Download a new TV series. Promise yourself that you will watch only one episode per day.
• Finish 3 seasons in 4 days.
• One day before the meeting.
• Panic.
• Enter crash mode. Decide to skip meals, sleep, whatever it takes to complete the task given to you.
• Pull an all nighter to complete the background study. 
• Rejoice at completing the background study, before 7:00 am in the morning.
• Decide to treat yourself for an hour of sleep after breakfast. Class starts at 8:30.
• Sleep.
• Wake at 12:30. Panic. Jump up and down. Shout.
• Realize that you have only 2 and a half hours left to come up with a good and solid model. (Remember you chose intelligent guides, you can’t pull wool over their ears.)
• Calm down. Start working. Realize that model was actually easy. The concepts fit in once you understood the background, the sleep actually helped you consolidate the concepts you studied over the night.
• Get stumped again. Start jumping again. Panic again. Again calm down.
• Pull out the mass transfer book, get ideas from it.  
• Sometime during this ordeal make a promise to yourself that you will complete the assignments on that very day on which they are assigned to you. Update on facebook about this resolution of yours.
• Get an epiphany. 

(Ok, this goes here, this goes there, and Einstein says this, Newton this and voila your model is complete.)

• Check once. Find some mistake. Check again, find some more.  Finally have a sigh of relief.
• Check the time. Shit!! Its 2:50. Get dressed up in a hurry.
• Realize that you have had an acid build-up in your stomach due to not eating which has developed a stink in your mouth.
• Brush quickly.
• Find your cycle. Paddle more than one kilometer to get to the department.
• Reach the department. Good news, you are only five minutes late. Move your watch back five minutes. Now you can walk in and claim nonchalantly that your watch was running late.
• Park your cycle. Lock and bolt it. (this is not a figure of speech, I really use a bolt but then again you have to use what not to secure your cycle otherwise it’s very easy to steal it.)
• Receive a phone call from your guide informing you that due to some reasons the meeting won’t take place. It has been postponed to the next week.
• Curse Murphy and cycle back home. Sleep. Forget your resolutions. Watch another 3 seasons in another 4 days. Repeat from top.

Adios

Excerpts from Italy #2: The Florencian Guitarist

Florence is a city that assaults your senses with a barrage of stimuli as soon as you get down at the railway station of Firenze SMN. You encounter the vestiges of past interspersed with modern glamour. Churches stand together with modern shops selling everything ranging from suits, sunglasses, jewelry to designer lingerie.

Visit Duomo and you see the magnificent cathedral of Saint Marie of flower with its ancient dome designed by Brunelleschi- the evocative fresco of last judgment painted inside it, the campanile which offers a panoramic view of whole Florence once you climb it- all a beautiful relic of the past. However the outside is as modern as it can be. To give an example you have an outlet of Ben and Jerry’s icecream, where you can have a large cup of ‘gelato’ just for 4 euroes. This was just an example. The cohabitation of the ancient and modern world is visible all over Florence.    

However the ‘peaceful cohabitation’ is a cohabitation limited to the material things only- a fact that I realized when I visited Ponte Vecchio-  Florence’s  only medieval bridge that survived world war.

Its free to visit the bridge, no fee of any kind is required; you only need to exert your feet. That’s why there is a crowd of tourist taking pictures, looking at the scenic view of the undulation of the river flowing underneath or just lounging around.  This large number attracts a group of performers who showcase their skills looking to earn appreciation and some coins.

So there I was after the harrowing climb of the Giotto’s campanile and a spirited walk that lead us through the corridors of Uffizi to ponte vecchio where among other things I saw a guitarist. The guy was dressed in simple jeans and shirt with a waistcoat and a simple hat (kinda like jack sparrow but in a more sober and sensible manner). His arms were slightly tattooed which reminded me of the rockstars of the yore. The guitarist and his bass guitar both were, to say at the least old, if not ancient. However when it came to playing, he had a surgeon’s finger- decisive, unhesitant and unwavering with the guitar responding with a maturity that can only come after year of practice. It was a sight to see him- deeply immersed in the music giving no damn to people congregating around. It was as if he knew that people needed his music more than he needed their coins. 

At that time I was in a hurry for the Baboli gardens were about to close, so much so that I almost didn’t notice a group of young musicians setting up the stage for their performance. They had high power speakers, a portable generator and what not.

When I came back the already cacophonous bridge had one more sound added to it-a sound that overpowered everything else.  This was the group of young musicians belting out their tunes from the top of makeshift platform. The songs were melodious; however they didn’t possess the old man’s calming effect. Unlike him their music was the music for the sake of crowd. They didn’t care for their songs as much as they cared about the coins. And for that they were ready to do anything.

Their loud speakers drowned the weak sound produced by the old man’s guitar. The strumming of the guitar produce no discernable sound, it was as if the strings were mute. With no other alternative in sight the old man packed his guitar and left the stage with a sad smile on his face.

This raised some questions in my mind. We look at the buildings and appreciate the master of ancient craftsman but when we come across someone or something old, be it tradition religion or even a person, we dismiss them. Their point of view, their knowledge, their wisdom, is given no attention by us. And soon they fade away in the background. In my view they at least deserve some respect.

What do you think?

Adios.

Excerpts from Italy #1: the Venetian Mask

Lost in the crooked and narrow streets of Venice, armed only with an A4 sheet-an excuse for a map, I had no better option than to take in the sights offered by the city of canals. Forsaking the picturesque view of the web of canals (shortage of money so no Gondola ride) crisscrossing the city, appearing just like the gossamer strands of a spider’s web, we decided to visit the shops instead.

It was during this mindless wandering I came across a shop. Set in a narrow alley behind St. Mark’s cathedral this shop was not unique. It sold the same fare- the same run of the mill Original (actually made in China) Murano Glass, the same handcrafted Venetian artifacts as numerous shops around it did.  I was so saturated that I was in no mood of paying the shop a second glance. However, something caught my attention- something that stopped me in my track, garnering the attention of my friends, for I was never the one to stop and stare at the “souvenirs”.

The shop had a large collection of masquerade ball masks. These masks were of the same ilk of those sold in the nearby shops- hand made by professionals adhering to the strict standards. The uniqueness was with the mask put up as the centre piece - the Pièce de résistance. (To remove any doubts before they even surface, the mask was pretty cheap).

So there I was, stopping here and there looking in the windows with a saturated mind not noticing anything when that black mask suddenly drew my attention. There was no jousting, no clamoring; the control was as complete and precise as that exerted by a magnet on helpless iron fillings around it. Almost in a hypnotic trance I stared at the mask without giving any heed to the world around me. The time slowed, external interferences lost any meaning, and my mind went blank except for one thought- one that surfaced, pulled from the dark shadowy depths of brain by the mere sight of that exquisite object.  

I was devoid of any feelings but for the longing kindled by a solitary thought, an intense longing to have someone- a girl in my life, a girl who I love madly, and then to see her wearing that mask. The radiance of her fair skin: a direct contrast to the black of the mask, her long dark hair cascading down to the middle of her back in all their natural glory free of any adornments or style, with a few of her unruly tresses kissing her face. I imagined myself staring at the angelic apparition for all eternity occasionally reaching out to tuck those few strands of hair behind her ears-where they won’t stay. In my stupor it was easy to feel envious of them because they didn’t need any excuse to touch her face. I was overpowered by the emotions. It was as if thunder without sound jolted the air- exquisite, violent though for that instance sovereign.

I tried to capture the image of that mask in my camera. Though I was not able to do justice to the exotic piece of art, I somehow am able to create the same feelings- though toned down in intensity whenever I look at it. 

I am putting up that image here. If possible, imagine yourself in a narrow street, standing outside a shop, staring at the actual object. Imagine losing sight of anything but that mask, and then think the same thought that I had when I looked at the mask. Allow the feeling to burst through. Imagine a face wearing that mask. Imagine yourself basking in the glory of that face. Savour it. If you are able to recognize that face and if you are able to put a name to it, then I believe that she is the one for you. 

 

Adios. 

 PS: I was able to put a name to that face

 

Is Love Absurd (counter view )

The question that Is love absurd poses is an elementary one. Can you love anyone who is there to love you unconditionally? it doesn't matter if that thing is machine or not.
i read about something similar in a comic book series-preacher created by writer Garth Ennis and artist Steve Dillon, published by the American comic book label Vertigo. this brilliant and thought provoking comic questions the creation and the will and idea of god behind creating man. the protagonist Jessi Custer questions a number of angels that meet him and even the god himself when he appears before him.why did he create man(though he knew that there will be a war between him and the angels due to this). What was that which led him to create someone that is free to love him, hate him and even question his existence. why did he chose man over the angels that followed him unconditionally? yes this word is the key. Unconditional. The god was fed up with all the unconditional love. he rejected it and instead wanted a free entity to love him. Receiving the love of someone free to hate him
appealed to his sensibilities more. he created miseries, deaths accidents so that he can test the love which mortals held for him. He soon grew bored when that love also become unwavering.
Then he created someone that was as powerful as him and wanted that thing to love him...
and you know what this ended into? it ended into the downfall of god. his death!

the point of writing this summary here is just to emphasize that lucky are those who are loved. And if that love is unconditional then that's good too, the least you can do is to appreciate that. what is forbidden is to question it to test it, or it would be the end of you. the end of that relationship.


PS: this was written by me in reaction to is love absurd on Theatre of absurd

Adios

परिणीता

मधुर मिलन के दिव्य स्वपन से जलाई थी जो तूने ज्वाला।
बुझ गयी वो जब देखी पर मनुज हेतु उसके हाथों में वरमाला।
है निष्ठुर प्रेम, त्याग इसे , उठा ले मदिरा।
देख परिणीता तेरी आज बनी है मधुशाला।

leniency- do we deserve it?

It’s one of those morning classes, yup the same morning, the night before of which you were lying drunk in a pool of your own vomit, and you still after a fight with your head and many a failed attempt to screw the top of toothpaste back, manage to turn up for the class at 7:35. But you are thrown out with many an expletives thrown your way, what do you do? Even when you were fuming that you even bothered to take such pains, You mutter an apology, turn back, and go home.
It’s one of those morning classes, yup the same morning, the night before of which you slept in late woke up late had a breakfast, deliberated about going to the class and after a few minutes strolled in the classroom at 8:00. One full hour late! You are allowed in. What do you do? You go in, find a seat in the back, and clap at the every mispronounced word uttered by the hapless professor.
Welcome, sir to IIT.

In the last semester when we were filling the choices for IT breadth I came across the name of a professor (who taught computer software) and numerous anecdotes associated with him. Someone said that he was an AIR 2 of his times; someone told that he is very simple, others claimed that he donates all that he earns to orphanages but whatever the said the consensus was that he is a very good teacher and a great human being. So naturally I was excited to learn from him, and thought people would also have the same attitude. But what I saw in the class was not interest. Student came and went as they wished; they clapped, booed and whistled. Okay this might be condoned but what happened next breached the limits.
Someone started to show his origami prowess by making airplanes from paper and throwing them in the class. It soon turned into a kind of competition. Tear. Fold. Fly. Now one of the planes (I don’t know if it was thrown there or the plane decided to change its trajectory) flew on to the black board and the timing was such that it fell in front of professor as soon as he turned his face towards us. Needless to say he was startled and stepped back. This triggered a peal of laughter amongst the students (with the plane makers laughing raucously). The professor though humiliated didn’t say anything and continued with his teaching. This encouraged them and they started calling him names. Fakir, sentry and some other chosen names. Some even commented on his simplicity.
It shook me. And I remembered word of some philosopher that humans don’t deserve civilization, they are by nature barbaric and hence need to be ruled by force. What could be a better example than what was in front of me? You create chaos in the class because you have a lenient professor who forgives each of your transgressions. But all your guts evaporate once you face someone who doesn’t permit even slightest of jokes.Try flying planes in his class.If you behaved alike in front of both the professor then it would have been commendable. But what you do indicate what idiots you are. And if you are reading it keep in mind that you don’t matter to the professor, that’s why he doesn’t give a shit to your activities in the class. You are not hurting him, you are hurting yourselves. What you are doing is not brave at all. Its the highest form of cowardice.
Adios.

power corrupts.

All persons,events and places in this article are purely fictitious, and any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental
“Arey woh tha na ek , jo fruit shop se juice lekar aata tha or common room me, jhapar maar ke chala jaata tha”(Hey do you remember that guy who used to buy juice from the fruit shop, then enter the common room, slap some guys around and leave). “Yeah I remember, what about him?” “Nothing it was just that these kinds of seniors are a bastard”. “I agree, by hitting someone they just want to assert their power.”
I heard these sentences at the beginning of this year when we were recounting our experiences in the orientation programme. And, it was really a painful subject for me because yours truly was one of the guys at the receiving end of the ‘juice’ guy’s wrath. The incident was still etched on my mind. The anguish was still new, the pain was still fresh. And I still cursed my fear, which forced me not to complain about his overtures. I rued the fact that I was a coward. And I rued the fact that I tried to hide my anguish behind my generosity. “arey yaar main isliye complain nahi kar raha hoon kyunki woh fifth year hai, pass out hone wala hai, saale ka year back lag jaayega.(I am not complaining cause he is a fifth year on the verge of passing out, the bastard will get a year back). I don’t want to ruin his future.”
Time heals most wounds they say, but it was still fresh when our turn to be the organisers of orientation programme arrived. Why the hell don’t you go to watch the events? CG doesn’t matter much, work for your CV, if you just have CG the company will think ki bahut bada maggu hai ( that you are only a swot). You can’t remember such small things and you call yourselves IITians . Did you shave today? Are we fools to tell you to shave every day? These were the oft repeated sentences. And the most ironic was “we say all this because it’s to improve your personality. You don’t know how much we put ourselves to risk just for your improvement.”
Me? I was fully enjoying myself, was setting different gags on the second years, was abrasive even abusive at times. How dare he get my year wrong? How dare he call me juice? How dare someone mix up one of my hundred batch mate’s hometown with another?
Then one day when the proceedings were in full flow, I witnessed something. I saw someone manhandling a junior. While slapping the senior was shouting “Abe teri galti hai(hey it’s your fault). Koi kuch bhi kahega toh karega( you will do anything anyone says). Don’t you have a mind of yours.” And then I saw something else. I saw a look of pure revulsion on the face of the junior. He was utterly disgusted with his tormentor. He was angry, not at his seniors but at himself. His face said many things. It cried with the feeling of being helpless, of being afraid. I saw all this and I saw myself reflected in his face.
I remembered my humiliation. I remembered my pain. I remembered the silent abuses I hurled at the sight of the bastard. I remembered my friend saying “do you know they conducted an experiment. They gave money to a group of people and made some of them prisoners and other wardens. The wardens had to do nothing; they just had to sit around. The prisoners could leave any time but they would have to forego the money. Do you know what happened? The wardens established rule of stick. They were mercilessly beating the ‘prisoners’ just because they were give power over them? So power corrupts”. I remembered me saying “all this is bull shit. Nobody is this sadistic”. And then I remembered all those abuses, all those transgressions made by me on someone’s dignity. I myself became the same thing which I hated for the last year.
Power corrupts. Your slapping me wasn’t your fault. I forgive you mister Sharma. I don’t curse you anymore.
Adios….

Friday the thirteenth

this is the story i submitted to some arbit competition.

“Rapids and gales

Storms and hails

You will have a rotten luck

If you leave your hammock

Cause sailing is nay’

If its thirteenth on a Friday.”

“I don’t know why the hell I cannot forget this stupid rhyme” cursed Jack, going about his morning
routine. “Okay today is Friday the thirteenth but what’s so special about it? Come on it’s just
another day”, were his thoughts on this particular day that plagued him at least once every year.
And it wasn’t as if he didn’t try to let go all his superstitions about this particular day, but they were
so deeply instilled in him by his grandfather – a grey bearded loon of a sailor who lost both his crew
and his ship in some bizarre storm on this day.

The fact that he had an interview (an opportunity of a life time) which had been rescheduled to
this day irked him more. So it was either to go and join a banquet of twelve and die (as the Norse
people would have it, another one of his grandfather’s absurd stories) or sit at home and watch the
nonsensical pop cultural references about the day on the idiot box.

He remembered losing the red bike to rick when he gave away his ticket (the lucky one) to the local
fair. The baseball match, the Indiana Jones visit- all lost to ‘the day’. And how could he forget Natalia
–sweet Natalia whom he asked out for prom and couldn’t attend, all because his gee gee wouldn’t
allow him to venture out. “Jacky boy! You too will lose your ship as I did” was his gramps answer
every time.

“Oh! Screw it I am done with that old geezer, with him and his ship and his bull crap of superstitions.
For all that matter he might have been drunk when he drove his ship into that rock. I am going out to
settle it once and for all” Jack decided, and began dressing up.

“Free breakfast in the cafe (apparently he was the 13th customer entering the cafe), no traffic jams
on the way, a good parking spot. I wish the interview goes this good”.

“Oh! How I breezed through the interview. I aced all the questions and even my guesses hit the
bull’s eye. If I don’t get the job now then I never would”

“Mr. Jack I would be honest with you, we were going to give the job to the guy who came before
you, but somehow my guts say that you will be the best guy for this job. So here is your advance...”

“That old geezer was certainly a fool. I had a wonderful day, the job would have gone to someone
else.” While standing at the cash withdrawal counter Jack didn’t notice the gunman enter the bank,
neither did he see him slip the carbine into position, nor did he hear the staccato burst.

He just felt the bullet that entered his body tearing away the flesh. He remembered the red bike

and the boy crushed under the bus, the accident of that beautiful girl and

“Rapids and gales

Storms and hails....

Cause sailing is nay’

If its thirteenth on a Friday.

”

stone

Perched atop a hill
With all my unmovable will
I stood
Surveying all

I saw them
Lovers
Engulfed in throes of passion
Defined their love
Declared it on my bosom
For all the world to see
I didn’t rejoice
‘Cause I am stone...


I saw them
Lovers
Parting ways
Scratched
Leaving all but the impression of love they engraved
I wasn’t sad
As I am stone...


I saw them
Priests
Passionate priests
Mining
Cutting
Shaping
Sculpting
Inducting me in their revered halls
I wasn’t proud
As I am still a stone...


I saw him
The scourge
Cruel one
Killing
Plundering
Raping
Removed from my majestic pedestal
I wasn’t angry
I still am a stone...


I saw them
People
Frenzied mob
Shouting
Angry over the loss of their deity
Used me to inflict pain on that infant
I didn’t pity over him
It won’t befit me
Cause I am a stone...


Now lying on the ground
I see you
Man
Unaware
Unassuming
Unmoved
By the atrocities around him
Unfeeling
In his cocoon of materialistic comfort
Just like insects
I think
And I am suddenly feeling a multitude of emotions
Anger ,fear ,sadness
It’s not as if I am no longer a stone
But because You are slowly turning into one