Steal this pic

Source

An excerpt

The greater part of my leisure is spent watching movies, and the diverse array on offer are a testament to the creativity of the most fertile hearts and minds. Of late there is one particular line that caught my attention, and I couldn't help thinking over it again and again.

In the movie Chunking Express, by the acclaimed Chinese director Wong Kar Wai, the protagonist He Qiwu (aka cop 223) breaks up with his girlfriend May on 1st April and decides to wait for a month with the anticipation of mending their relationship. So everyday he goes to the store and buys a tin of pineapple with May 1 as the expiry date, which is his birthday. He believes that by the end of that period he will either be successful in getting back together with his girlfriend or the relationship would expire forever. It is at this moment that he poses this profound question

"If memories could be canned, would they also have expiry dates?"

and comes up with an equally optimistic answer.

"If so, I hope they last for centuries."

Although the thought lies on the boundary of absurdity, yet the idea of having our memories canned with a certain expiration date is moving and worth pondering over. The broader question can therefore be deconstructed as - do memories have a finite life-span? If so, do they just die out, fade or burn away; and if not, are they stacked up in a far corner of our mind and never reused (like an ancient book gathering dust in a library), or do they lie dormant only to spring back into life providing an equal measure of pain or pleasure as that of the event stored?

Presumably we have an internal method of selection and then an equally complex system of hierarchical ordering of memories (akin to putting up an expiry date which is further in the future rather than in the proximate and then its sequencing). So in a sense, the ability to recollect past memories might lie at the core of character formation. As is observed in real life, a person with a positive attitude is more likely to recollect an intensely fond memory than a pessimist. It is also true that what we are at present is a result of the cumulative building up of layers of memories - some loathsome and hideous, others cheerful and amusing.

Or is it that the causality runs both ways?

• character leads to selective retention of memories, or/and
• memories retained lead to character building.

the figure and the reverie...

the very act of dreaming manifests the presence of a subconscious state. It is a state of weightless existence. Although am a little uncomfortable with the idea that dreams can be logically deconstructed to find an underlying scheme of thought, i have always been attracted to its incoherent structure. In most instances it has no rhyme or reason. No matter how vehemently we may project our rationality and take pride in our higher ability in finding a causal relationship amongst happenings interspersed with space and time, dreams play the role of exposing the truth behind the facade.

Do we really know who we are? Have we befriended the face behind the face? These questions are eternal and one full life will fall short in finding a convincing answer. But are dreams actually the residual terms of our existence - in the sense that whatever might seem unachievable as a mortal is expressed in our dreams or are they just garbled noises of a fucked up system? Both can be considered as equi-probable.

Inspite of centuries of existence, a civilized society is only a recent phenomenon in the historical time line. Like all social animal we have perfected the art of domestication, of existing but not really being who we are. But lets not forget that we do possess a limbic system that is extremely primitive. Its dormant, no doubt, but not extinct. In dreams get an opportunity to experience an excited state - to find pleasure in pain and pain in pleasure - a violent contradiction, but cannot be dismissed on any account.

Dreams are figments of our imaginations, the ultimate exultation of the free spirit in man. Although i can seldom reconstruct the sequence of my dreams, it most often leaves me in a lingering state of wonder and amazement, and sometimes even delirium - the real and the unreal becomes so hard to distinguish, like different layers of paint on the same canvas. It only shows how helpless we are in the absence of reason.

At the same time there its thrilling too -aaah i wish i could put it down in words, but on second thought i think that it is absolutely unnecessary. We all have our dreams, some recurring, others fleeting, meeting countless people and leading the lives of thousands of unknown entities. Its a rather abstract networking site...isnt it..?

ok guys!!

some cheap thoughts about a person on a rainy day in october.......

pore se ekta bejai chosma
pakh khaoai anguler dogai,
bhabte gelei hath chulkai
chere mathar cantharidin-daoa chul.

gari kineche natun ekdom,
bole, ami "parallel parking" er raja
dui mash jetei diyeche thuke
buke tai boddo tar betha.

sobsamaiye bestotar ki hab-bhab,
sab theke mulloban samay tar
baki sabai to yaarki kore,
murkho r obodh amra sob.

pai jodi khola akasher tole
nishtobdho nirjan kono rate,
kambal jariye bedom marbo
ahamika phelbo muche tar.

paneer rolls, cutlets n samosas..

the greater part of our evenings at MSE were spent wisely on plain converations and planning out exotic excursions alongwith ramdass's 80% water and 20% tea, milk and sugar concoction with some flicked biscuits which people willingly shared. On other days, wen we felt more upto it, a casual stroll across the ranjith road, amidst palatial bungalows, which we conspired of taking over thru some devious plots, we (mostly a group exceeding 4, 3 regulars n the rest variables) would be involuntarily lead to 'snazee' - to the place of paneer rolls, cutlets, samosas, chats n tea of course (this time the proportion of the concoction being reversed for the better).

come 5.30-6.00 pm, and everyone would be looking at each other's faces. No questions were needed to be asked. A quick change of clothes, slip in the floaters n off we went to gratify our palettes. Cutlets was by far the most precious commodity available. I sometimes feel that the owner mischieviously created artficial scarcity by restricting supply....:). There were innumerable days wen we would find the last piece being sold off to some flabby chap who would be on the verge of bursting with excess food. And you could only hopelessly stare, n think wat if i wudnt have combed my hair, maybe i wud have saved a minute n wud have got the cutlet. But i guess its enuf of cutlet speech....

times have changed as they always do. Snazee still remains, although it has been renovated with a fresh coat of white paint and granite flooring.  But is it not that the things become special only wen the people who are really close to u float around? It might not have been so apparent then, but now these are only cherished memories nicely tucked in one's safest place.

in a different time and space....

For those who have lost track of my whereabouts and happen to stumble upon by chance to this space of mine, let me say that i've been working since a month and a half. Anything new always brings with it a lot of expectation, and so was the case with this phase of mine. Well, in fact i've managed to unlearn about 60% of academics and hating the requirememnts of social skills at work. I am still hoping to face the sun.