Perpetually Perplexed

Though I keep repeating the quote "Cogito ergo sum" too frequently, I rarely think. In fact the quote was not told to mean that you are really alive only if you think. That is a different story. I do not want to think. Like so many other people. Because thinking makes me sad, depressed, angry, guilty and all kinds of negative emotions. How often do I think about a past event or a present situation which is not negative? Zero times. Like a cow, I keep mulling over the bad incidence where either I did something wrong, or I was wronged or some one hurt me. So to avoid thinking I take refuge in TV, childish games, eating. If you have read the book "Fountainhead" by Ayn Rand, you remember the protagonist's friend/rival Peter Keating who is hard working but not very talented. Our Roarke says "you have a bottomless pit in your mind. So you crave for others' praise always. And no matter how much praise you get, you crave for more". Some thing to t...

Karma Most popular Sanskrit words in western world. Karma is action or work. It is derived from the root kru kru in verb form is in present tense - lat lakara करोति कुरुतः कुर्वन्ति क्रॉशी कुरुतः कुरुथ करोमि कुर्वः कुमः We do recognize the highlighted words in some shlokas. To be trivial, I do work is अहं कर्मम करोमि But there are many words from this dhatu, kartavya - duty nishkama karma - work without expecting anything karta - doer of the work karmabhumi - place of action antyakarma - last rites, funeral panchakarma - 5 kinds of treatment in Ayurveda And of course the well known shloka from Bhagavadgita कर्मण्येवा अधिकारस्ते माँ फलेषु कदाचन You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are not entitled to the fruits of action. Rhyming with this is another well known word in east and west which is dharma. dharma धर्म has the root word  धृ which means to hold. dharma is our duty, conduct, practice. e.g. I feel there will not be...

No matter how depressed or angry I am the previous day, I would wake with a fresh mind - comparatively, do a little coding now and then. But since last few days, I feel it is futile to get up in the morning too. I feel I am heading towards a big gigantic hell and unable to get a clear picture who is orchestrating the events. And feel I am completely helpless and will have to watch myself boil in the so called kumbhi paaka naraka. So I spend my days staring at TV or visiting flipkart or some such thing. Sad and funny thing is my SOS is heard by others as LOL and they are all laughing their heads off.

I realized that I am becoming a couch potato with rotten tomatoes for head. So to get back into track, downloaded two fictions from the net and decided to read them. One was "The stranger" by Camus and the other was 1984 by George Orwell. The stranger is so depressing. Its opening sentence is "Mother died today". So now my new justification for my non-reading and binge watching of tv or youtube is jio I bring such melancholic books to read. When these have to compete with mindless TV shows, they fail miserably. I need to find humorous but non-trivial authors. But 1984 is different. It is about dystopian times where you are not supposed even your thoughts are policed.

You could see the face of leader everywhere in the town. Below this face were the words written in big letters - Big Brother is watching you. In Winston's room there was a huge metallic screen called telescreen which was of dual purpose. It would show news and entertainment programs. It would also record all your movements. (Like our web cameras which are said to be controlled remotely) He could only reduce the volume of this telescreen to some extent - but it could not be completely turned off (Just like Google play services in my phones - God knows what all services it starts and why does it consume so much band width). So literally some one was watching every one 24X7. And some random numbers appear on this telescreen from time to time. No, no, the last statement is about my television. He would turn his face away from the screen most of the times - even when he was thinking. And if he had to turn his face towards the screen he would put on an optimistic face. In the mo...

In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was the king of Ephyra. He was very wise. Or he thought so. And  was deceitful. Gods were angered by his behavior and decided to punish him. His punishment was were unique. He was to push a very large boulder up a steep hill. Only to watch it coming down on and falling on him. He should repeat this for all eternity. So many of our tasks are like this. Or may be our entire life is absurd like this. We must have angered the Gods in some way. How and when - I am not sure.

Move. I am not referring to the president of a country who is asking all immigrants to move out of the country. I am not even referring to our own people who think that others - which includes minorities, pseudo(!) intellectuals, students and any one else who dare to disagree with their party and its propaganda, should move out of the country. I am referring to simple move statement in android sdk which will move a cursor record to a given position. So I copied and pasted the statement from another activity - which was working fine, and tried to click on a record, expecting it to show the contents of the record. No, instead, it is showing some null pointer exception. I modified the code - that is I corrected the code, but no change. I cleaned the project, thinking some how the new code is not being run. I disabled instant run. I tried running the code on an actual phone. Nothing could take away the null pointer exception. After removing gradle files and re-downloading them fo...

ಓಡಿ ಬಂದು ಅಡಗಿ, ಮುದುಡಿ  ಕುಳಿತು ಕೂಗತೊಡಗಿತು ಮಿಯಾವ್ ಮಿಯಾವ್ ಮಿಯಾವ್ ಏನಾಯಿತು ಬೆಕ್ಕೆ ಯಾಕೆ ಹೆದರಿರುವೆ ನೋಡಲ್ಲಿ ಕ್ರೂರ ನಾಯಿಗಳ ದಂಡ ಬೆನ್ನೆತ್ತಿ ಬಂದು ಕೊಲ್ಲುವವು ನನ್ನ  ಇಲ್ಲಿಲ್ಲ ಇವು ಸಭ್ಯ ನಾಯಿಗಳು ನೀ ಸುಮ್ಮನೆ ಕೂಗಿ ಗಲಾಟೆ ಮಾಡಬೇಡಾ ಇಲ್ಲ ಮನುಜೇ ಇವುಗಳಿಗೆ ಧನ ಮದ ಬಲ ಮದ ತಮಗೆ ಮೇಲಿನ ಬೆಂಬಲವಿದೆಯೆಂಬ ಮದ ದಿಂದ ಕ್ರೌರ್ಯ ಮಿತಿ ಮೀರಿದೆ ನೀ ಸುಮ್ಮನಿರು ಕೂಗಿ ಕೂಗಿ ಸೋತು ಸುಮ್ಮನಾಗುತ್ತಾರೆ ನಾನೆಂದೆ  ನಿನ್ನೆ ನೋಡಿದರೆ ಬೆಕ್ಕು ಅಲ್ಲಾಡದೆ ಬಿದ್ದಿದೆ ನಿರ್ಜೀವಿಯಾಗಿ ಹಂತಕರು  ನಾಯಿಗಳಾ ? ನಾನಾ ?

Watch Truptraj Pandya playing Tabla. 

Have been reading the book "Games people play". Exaggeration. Read few pages on this Saturday. And the book is till haunting me. According to the author Eric Berne, most of us play games with ulterior motives and many times the players are unaware that they are playing. Many pages have diagrams of transactions happening between people and their P-A-C. Parent (super ego), Adult(ego) and Child (Id). One more interesting observation -  every one selects their role in life, as early as childhood  and spends the rest of their lives either protecting their roles or trying to remove any obstacles to these roles.  My conclusion? Do not ever try to look at subconscious. We haven't even understood conscious yet. Will I continue with the books? Depends. On whether I do not find any single interesting or informative (!) channel when I am bored with cyber world and get bored with funny cat videos too. And the next option was pinterest, but thanks to my friends, my days of ...

Look  at this archway in front of Government Museum in Kasturaba Road Bangalore. Look at the kannada words. Is that Kannada? I don't think so? If it is not in Kannada, why is it not in Kannada? PS.  : I dillydallied for two days before deciding to write about this. In these times of turmoil, anything - literally any thing may lead to unrest - of the worst kind. So this may anger our nationalist, sorry, statist people to become zealous and make them shout slogans against outsiders. See we live in these times, where each and every word we speak must weighed upon diligently, making sure we are not going to open any kind of pandora's box.

Don't put your eyes down You're not to blame I know there are stories You can't explain But if I should find you black and blue And aching from crying, I'll wait with you Grow, grow Oh, so you know it all Then it's gone Grow, grow You know I'm here holding on Tying up your loose ends And you're drifting esteem Grow, grow If you never try, you'll never know I've left you a white page by the door There's no need to ask me what it's for I wait by the front step for your return And hear every story of what you've learned Oh, so you know it all Then it's gone Grow, grow You know I'm here holding on Tying up your loose ends And you're drifting esteem Grow, grow If you never try, you'll never know Grow, grow Grow, grow Songwriters ALEXANDER DAVIES, BENJAMIN FRANCIS LEFTWICH, SOPHIE FRANCES COOKE, STEVEN FITZMAURICE Published by Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group T...

This rain is acting like very very mean person - not finding the right adjective which does not hurt the feelings of any one. He watches people looking at him pleadingly, hopefully, threateningly. But he still does not care. He just puts on very very thin clouds - as thin as heroine's saree when she would sing in the rain (when there was rain). And some time in the night he just drops few mercy drizzles and then goes away haughtily. Remember the much repeated quote in motivational category -" if you really want some thing from the bottom of your heart, the entire universe conspires to give that to you. " Some thing like that. But of late, that seems to happen to you only if you are on the right. You know what I mean. wink, wink. Me?  If I want something - or not, entire universe conspires against me. May be I will trick the universe. Tomorrow, I will take my thickest blanket and dry it on the terrace for it to breathe, then I will come down and fake sleep closin...

Just when I was thinking.... Just when I was thinking about the new device with which we can control things with our thoughts - is it iot - Internet of things  ? or something? I am not sure, things got funny. I started wondering now even my thoughts will be hacked my my loving, caring surrounding people - like my land line, like my router, or routers and like my mobile phone and like my postal letters. Being the actual personification of the word paranoia, I am expected to think like that. Am I not? So I will start thinking, it is very stuffy inside this room, let me go and sit in the hall with all the windows open. But then my controlled thoughts will tell me - no, I am telling you, like always, for your own good. You should sit in one corner, without interacting with any one, without seeing anyone. Then when I decide to go to my terrace or to the balcony, my thoughts will scream at me - no, no, no, believe me. It is not good for you. Just believe me and obey me. See what ha...

Rain or no rain. It is spring in Bangalore!!

There is no such thing is a free lunch. It is almost true. Figuratively at least. People give you free something and they will always expect something in return. Like politicians who want your votes. But literally? It may not be so. At least not in our country. There are free lunches available - no return favor expected. Example one: you go to any temple town in south India. (May be in north India too. I don't know) If you go during lunch hour and don't mind standing in the queue, you can eat healthy, hygienic ( and   prasada - religious offering to God) food. Free. No questions asked. Example two: Here I have to take you in a time machine 40- 45 years backwards. In our ancestral villages, if any one went to a house during noon time, he would be offered food. They would consider it a ethically wrong to send person without food during noon time. Remember we are talking about times where transportation was very difficult. Not every one had a car or a two wheeler. They ha...