29-November-2014
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Mehul Sona,
Happy birthday! It has been one full year, when you brought an ecstatic joy into our lives. And it kept growing day by day.
If giving joy to others is a goal in life, you have done just fabulous. I pray you keep on doing this for us, for others, for many more lives as you grow.
I missed the birthday party your mother did for you. Heard you liked the cake very much. But it seemed to be orange cream. In your next, we shall have chocolate cake. I thought of making my own celebration here, so made a little payes.
Lots of kisses and hugs.
baba
Saturday 29 November 2014
Letter to my son - 1
28-October-2014
================
My Mehul baba,
I love you very much. And, right now, these days, far from you, I am missing you a lot.
Many years from now, when you will be grown up, when you have your child, I wish you never have to separate out from them for such long time. I think of this sometimes. That what all I can give you. As you go through your own time, grow up, stand on your feet, start walking, get the joy of learning things, seeing new things, I hope I can be with you and tell you about lot of things. And simply be with you, as much as possible. But please do not mind if I fail to do that sometimes, as adversities might pull me apart from you, and I may fail to resist that drag. I hope you have many good memories, from those many moments we spend together.
I also wish to be able to tell you lot of stories. Nothing special, just stories about day to day life. For example, I would tell you some days the story of this city I am in now. How I came here, lived a while, travelled, worked, roads walked, breathed the air in this place. All through this, now and then, memory of your smiles, cry and touch kept on coming back to me. Some days frequently, some days less frequently. I feel such memories are always there in my subconscious or unconscious, and it keeps surfacing up into consciousness. I wonder how it happens, probably these are triggered by some stimulants. Sometimes a stimulant can be explicit, like seeing another child playing in the courtyard as I walked by her sides. But some other times, it can be so vague that later I can’t even fathom why it happened exactly that moment. Is it something so intangible, like just the a ray of setting sun reflected from a leave caught by my peripheral vision? Is it because it happened a similar way months and days back in another afternoon elsewhere when I was with you? We are never conscious of such things.
However, as I was telling, I feel you are always in me, in my conscious or subconscious.
That has got another interesting angle too. That you, or at least a part of you, is also here with me, isn’t it? Many years from now, it may so happen that you will come to this city. Imagine this, I am now physically here and you are in my mind. Suppose I get a chance to tell you stories about this city someday. And then some day perhaps you will be physically here. May be you will remember the stories then. Is that not a wonderful space-time warp? Perhaps then you will see things, and relate back to what I told you. When you see them through your own eyes, you may find some are actually more amazing than how I could describe them. Some other things might disappoint you, as typically things appear more interesting in your imagination when you are a child.
It is midnight here now. You were having fever when I spoke with your Maa my morning today. I hope you are fine now, feeling better. Be a good boy, and do not ever trouble your Maa.
Love and thousand kisses from me, till I can hold you in my arms again.
Your baba
================
My Mehul baba,
I love you very much. And, right now, these days, far from you, I am missing you a lot.
Many years from now, when you will be grown up, when you have your child, I wish you never have to separate out from them for such long time. I think of this sometimes. That what all I can give you. As you go through your own time, grow up, stand on your feet, start walking, get the joy of learning things, seeing new things, I hope I can be with you and tell you about lot of things. And simply be with you, as much as possible. But please do not mind if I fail to do that sometimes, as adversities might pull me apart from you, and I may fail to resist that drag. I hope you have many good memories, from those many moments we spend together.
I also wish to be able to tell you lot of stories. Nothing special, just stories about day to day life. For example, I would tell you some days the story of this city I am in now. How I came here, lived a while, travelled, worked, roads walked, breathed the air in this place. All through this, now and then, memory of your smiles, cry and touch kept on coming back to me. Some days frequently, some days less frequently. I feel such memories are always there in my subconscious or unconscious, and it keeps surfacing up into consciousness. I wonder how it happens, probably these are triggered by some stimulants. Sometimes a stimulant can be explicit, like seeing another child playing in the courtyard as I walked by her sides. But some other times, it can be so vague that later I can’t even fathom why it happened exactly that moment. Is it something so intangible, like just the a ray of setting sun reflected from a leave caught by my peripheral vision? Is it because it happened a similar way months and days back in another afternoon elsewhere when I was with you? We are never conscious of such things.
However, as I was telling, I feel you are always in me, in my conscious or subconscious.
That has got another interesting angle too. That you, or at least a part of you, is also here with me, isn’t it? Many years from now, it may so happen that you will come to this city. Imagine this, I am now physically here and you are in my mind. Suppose I get a chance to tell you stories about this city someday. And then some day perhaps you will be physically here. May be you will remember the stories then. Is that not a wonderful space-time warp? Perhaps then you will see things, and relate back to what I told you. When you see them through your own eyes, you may find some are actually more amazing than how I could describe them. Some other things might disappoint you, as typically things appear more interesting in your imagination when you are a child.
It is midnight here now. You were having fever when I spoke with your Maa my morning today. I hope you are fine now, feeling better. Be a good boy, and do not ever trouble your Maa.
Love and thousand kisses from me, till I can hold you in my arms again.
Your baba
Saturday 9 February 2013
Inside the abstraction
Which one is more important to you?
For me, it is first the words. Like a movie cannot be made without good story, however good rest of the things is, a good song essentially requires good story in its words.
Now, my wife asked this a while back. With some resistance, I started playing a Qawali. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan has a divine voice which many of my friends find coarse, she find it quite the same way. But she hears with patience, and quietly asked, why do I like this so much? She wanted to understand what really appealed most. Same way, another song which is sung by many maestros, “Woh jo hum mein tum mein qarar tha” also made us on two sides of liking. She apparently loves Farida Khanum singing it, same as few other people I know who have interests in this genre. But my favorite version is the one by Begum Akhtar. I always thought she voiced it best beyond where anyone else could reach yet.
I try to reason it; and as everything abstract and subtle, this also took a while to shape and surface in words.
Tune, in my eyes, is the outside clothing of what is veiled inside, the words. When two people sing the same song, the thing that makes the most difference to me is who is closer to that inner personae. My imagery of Farida Khan singing this song is that a beautiful lady, elegantly dressed in queen red (heard so many times but also saw once on TV),singing a somewhat lighter melodious version. If you are listening with eyes closed, it is not very difficult to imagine an angel singing in a flower garden. On the other hand, Begum Akhtar version is all so simple, not much of instrumental accompaniment, probably just tanpura and some santoor. She voices it with less boldness than her usual, somewhat choked.
Now look at the song. The words are a sea of sorrow. Note the story, I feel it speaks of moments and stories engraved in past, some broken promises, possibilities and impossibilities, something that was there but no longer exists. Something on the other side of a dusty window, which you can not touch and only see for a moment from passing by from this side of reality. Can you just remain so perfect when in so much of grief? One unified into the story will never be so perfect. He or she will slip from the notes. The heart might come to a stop for a micromoment, gasping for breathing. When the poet lamented “Kabhi hum mein tum mein bhi chah thi”, and as Begum Akhtar reaches here, her voice just crackles a thin bit before regaining control. I then feel myself immersed in a genuine sea of sorrow, or is it all just my imagination?
I feel that which is closer to heart is perfect, sometimes simple imperfection is that.
For me, it is first the words. Like a movie cannot be made without good story, however good rest of the things is, a good song essentially requires good story in its words.
Now, my wife asked this a while back. With some resistance, I started playing a Qawali. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan has a divine voice which many of my friends find coarse, she find it quite the same way. But she hears with patience, and quietly asked, why do I like this so much? She wanted to understand what really appealed most. Same way, another song which is sung by many maestros, “Woh jo hum mein tum mein qarar tha” also made us on two sides of liking. She apparently loves Farida Khanum singing it, same as few other people I know who have interests in this genre. But my favorite version is the one by Begum Akhtar. I always thought she voiced it best beyond where anyone else could reach yet.
I try to reason it; and as everything abstract and subtle, this also took a while to shape and surface in words.
Tune, in my eyes, is the outside clothing of what is veiled inside, the words. When two people sing the same song, the thing that makes the most difference to me is who is closer to that inner personae. My imagery of Farida Khan singing this song is that a beautiful lady, elegantly dressed in queen red (heard so many times but also saw once on TV),singing a somewhat lighter melodious version. If you are listening with eyes closed, it is not very difficult to imagine an angel singing in a flower garden. On the other hand, Begum Akhtar version is all so simple, not much of instrumental accompaniment, probably just tanpura and some santoor. She voices it with less boldness than her usual, somewhat choked.
Now look at the song. The words are a sea of sorrow. Note the story, I feel it speaks of moments and stories engraved in past, some broken promises, possibilities and impossibilities, something that was there but no longer exists. Something on the other side of a dusty window, which you can not touch and only see for a moment from passing by from this side of reality. Can you just remain so perfect when in so much of grief? One unified into the story will never be so perfect. He or she will slip from the notes. The heart might come to a stop for a micromoment, gasping for breathing. When the poet lamented “Kabhi hum mein tum mein bhi chah thi”, and as Begum Akhtar reaches here, her voice just crackles a thin bit before regaining control. I then feel myself immersed in a genuine sea of sorrow, or is it all just my imagination?
I feel that which is closer to heart is perfect, sometimes simple imperfection is that.
Sunday 8 April 2012
Being good
In my high school days, followed by throughout the college life, I was quite obsessed with Ghazals and Sufi Qawalis. Only later I realized that when it comes to songs, lyrics and their poetic value is always more appealing to me than the tune itself. In other words (though I am generally opposed to any kind of generalizations), a beautiful poem sung by anybody not having too much of a bad voice like myself would probably be more appealing to me than something gibberish sung by the greatest singers. Instrumental music is, however, different.
But rarely, like in case of Abida Parveen, the divinity of the voice takes same importance as the words themselves; or perhaps it is only that such few voices, in some indescribable way, reveal the true meaning clothed in those words to the deep of our souls.
So When I first heard these lines of Bulleh Shah sung by Abida Parveen, at first it was probably the singer’s voice (which Gulzar elsewhere praised as “Ibaadat ki Awaaz”). But the Punjabi poetry raised a curiosity too, which a few other songs failed to do. It was as if some beauty touched the inner sense, but conscious mind stayed deprived due to language barrier. That time internet was neither as popular as today, nor it was in the reach of my skills. Some of the words made resemblance to my native tongue, giving the whole things a smoky shape. Only after much struggle, I could finally gather meanings of each of the words. It was primarily with help of a Punjabi friend at my college. I never thanked him for this, like I often forgot many a times in other occasions too. Anyway, the words connected together suddenly lit up in their full glory, and remained forever.
Je Rab milda nahteya-dhoteya,
Te Rab milda dadduan machiyan noo;
Je Rab milda jangal phiriyan,
Te Rab milda gaiyaan bachchiyan noo;
Ehh miyan Bulleya, Rab unha-noo milda
Ati dil-eya achiyyan sachhiya noon |
If God could be found by washing and bathing, He would have been found by frog and fishes long ago. If wandering in the woods would have taken to Him, cows and animals would definitely have reached Him. Hey Bulleh, God would only be found by them, who are good and pure at heart.
But rarely, like in case of Abida Parveen, the divinity of the voice takes same importance as the words themselves; or perhaps it is only that such few voices, in some indescribable way, reveal the true meaning clothed in those words to the deep of our souls.
So When I first heard these lines of Bulleh Shah sung by Abida Parveen, at first it was probably the singer’s voice (which Gulzar elsewhere praised as “Ibaadat ki Awaaz”). But the Punjabi poetry raised a curiosity too, which a few other songs failed to do. It was as if some beauty touched the inner sense, but conscious mind stayed deprived due to language barrier. That time internet was neither as popular as today, nor it was in the reach of my skills. Some of the words made resemblance to my native tongue, giving the whole things a smoky shape. Only after much struggle, I could finally gather meanings of each of the words. It was primarily with help of a Punjabi friend at my college. I never thanked him for this, like I often forgot many a times in other occasions too. Anyway, the words connected together suddenly lit up in their full glory, and remained forever.
Je Rab milda nahteya-dhoteya,
Te Rab milda dadduan machiyan noo;
Je Rab milda jangal phiriyan,
Te Rab milda gaiyaan bachchiyan noo;
Ehh miyan Bulleya, Rab unha-noo milda
Ati dil-eya achiyyan sachhiya noon |
If God could be found by washing and bathing, He would have been found by frog and fishes long ago. If wandering in the woods would have taken to Him, cows and animals would definitely have reached Him. Hey Bulleh, God would only be found by them, who are good and pure at heart.
Friday 7 October 2011
Visualization - inside our mind
This note is on that portion of our brain (supposedly, I do not know which portion) which is responsible for our mental visualization of something.
I find myself a very visual person. Most often, in a conversation or left to myself in a thought, I would have a trainload of pictures running through my mind. I am not sure if this is very normal; given a chance I would guess negative and hold it as one reason for overall abnormality people attribute to me :)
I wonder why and how this happens. How part is more astonishing to me, as I enjoy it why is not that important. Especially as the subject becomes more abstract, the association of the words to pictures in your mind takes a more curious bend. It is one thing to have a flash journey through the arteries and veins and blood vessels when you are curiously talking about strangeness of human physiology and its enormous complexity and incomprehensibility, say during a casual conversation over practically everything during a lunch. It is quite the opposite, when immersed within yourself over a bus window, you are vaguely aware of a collage of thousand of things and events taking place in the universe surrounding you, and you suddenly, have flash memory of a few second shot of a movie you saw thousand years back and never remembered explicitly ever since. I never ever get the logic that what correlation of things and state at that moment led me back to that particular scene.
I am sure this happens to all of us, more often for some people less for some. It is strange how we see things. But I think it is stranger how those things gets stored somewhere, and quite unexpectedly, years later get revived through millions of recognized and unrecognized stimulus. We probably would not have otherwise remembered the same thing in our entire life.
That is all. Let me end with the movie scene I recalled above. But having wasted a few minutes of your time which I am thankful for, I must warn you that it is not like the greatest movie scene ever made. I just realized that for no apparent reason, it will stay in my mind possibly for ever.
Rahul Bose in the role of a corporate bigshot who earns a fortune for every hour he gives to his client, but unhappy since he lost his wife in an accident he holds himself responsible for. Kareena Kapoor portrayed a prostitute who earns a meager living. Both meet stuck in heavy rainy night. Initially the lady tried to seduce the only prospect in sight, but soon stopped. As they spend the night through a series of unexpected hazards, a deep friendship forms. Few days later, as Rahul comes back to find her in those dark streets, he spots her from a distance, lighting a cigarette, and a trainload of pictures suddenly rushes through his mind. A wonderfully collaged 10-12 shots each staying a fraction of second. A few incidents spread through his life played back momentarily, ending with a shot of his wife once saying to him - " .. baas, pyar hona chahiye ..."
I find myself a very visual person. Most often, in a conversation or left to myself in a thought, I would have a trainload of pictures running through my mind. I am not sure if this is very normal; given a chance I would guess negative and hold it as one reason for overall abnormality people attribute to me :)
I wonder why and how this happens. How part is more astonishing to me, as I enjoy it why is not that important. Especially as the subject becomes more abstract, the association of the words to pictures in your mind takes a more curious bend. It is one thing to have a flash journey through the arteries and veins and blood vessels when you are curiously talking about strangeness of human physiology and its enormous complexity and incomprehensibility, say during a casual conversation over practically everything during a lunch. It is quite the opposite, when immersed within yourself over a bus window, you are vaguely aware of a collage of thousand of things and events taking place in the universe surrounding you, and you suddenly, have flash memory of a few second shot of a movie you saw thousand years back and never remembered explicitly ever since. I never ever get the logic that what correlation of things and state at that moment led me back to that particular scene.
I am sure this happens to all of us, more often for some people less for some. It is strange how we see things. But I think it is stranger how those things gets stored somewhere, and quite unexpectedly, years later get revived through millions of recognized and unrecognized stimulus. We probably would not have otherwise remembered the same thing in our entire life.
That is all. Let me end with the movie scene I recalled above. But having wasted a few minutes of your time which I am thankful for, I must warn you that it is not like the greatest movie scene ever made. I just realized that for no apparent reason, it will stay in my mind possibly for ever.
Rahul Bose in the role of a corporate bigshot who earns a fortune for every hour he gives to his client, but unhappy since he lost his wife in an accident he holds himself responsible for. Kareena Kapoor portrayed a prostitute who earns a meager living. Both meet stuck in heavy rainy night. Initially the lady tried to seduce the only prospect in sight, but soon stopped. As they spend the night through a series of unexpected hazards, a deep friendship forms. Few days later, as Rahul comes back to find her in those dark streets, he spots her from a distance, lighting a cigarette, and a trainload of pictures suddenly rushes through his mind. A wonderfully collaged 10-12 shots each staying a fraction of second. A few incidents spread through his life played back momentarily, ending with a shot of his wife once saying to him - " .. baas, pyar hona chahiye ..."
Saturday 24 September 2011
Circuit Theory
Oh, to an electrical engineer this will perhaps come very easy.
Have you ever noted that really great people have kind of light glowing from their face? (Not that I meet such people day in and out, this is rather an observation mostly from books and calenders) Is it just illusion? Or can it be something like this?
Say, we have an enormous complex imaginary electrical circuit path inside our body. The moment we learn something new, an infinitesimal path of the circuit wires up. Each new piece of information acquired is like incrementing just another grain of sand in the whole path. For people with a deep thirst for knowledge, the circuit would be better completed compared to someone not willing to learn much (like me). But in the ideal case, finally, one fine moment, as a wise person gathers the final piece of information, the circuit completes, current starts flowing and a glow comes.
But only very few rare human reach that state; Gautama Buddha was one.
Have you ever noted that really great people have kind of light glowing from their face? (Not that I meet such people day in and out, this is rather an observation mostly from books and calenders) Is it just illusion? Or can it be something like this?
Say, we have an enormous complex imaginary electrical circuit path inside our body. The moment we learn something new, an infinitesimal path of the circuit wires up. Each new piece of information acquired is like incrementing just another grain of sand in the whole path. For people with a deep thirst for knowledge, the circuit would be better completed compared to someone not willing to learn much (like me). But in the ideal case, finally, one fine moment, as a wise person gathers the final piece of information, the circuit completes, current starts flowing and a glow comes.
But only very few rare human reach that state; Gautama Buddha was one.
Monday 16 May 2011
Theory of integration constancy
My theory of integration constant says- "Integration of any particular aspect over a significantly long range of the variants tends to be constant".
Trying to give it a mathematical shape:
[Integration(any aspect function)]long range for the variant(s) -> Constant
Example: let us understand this with an example, by taking an real aspect we all understand very well, that is money. Also in terms of most real world case, a key variant is time. So taking money we earn over a long time, say a life span -
Integration (money I am going to earn) over my life-span = Constant
this means if my earning curve is very steep at young age, either it is going to go down substantially when I am old or I am going to die early.
This constant value can of course vary from people to people. For example, at 33, I am quite certain that the value of the above integration result for me over my life span will be significantly insignificant compared to same calculated for Bill Gates. So does having two different values for Bill and me proves it to be wrong? Not so simple perhaps, may be we should really integrate over a larger number of people, to make the range of variant significantly large. In other words, if we are thinking of total money earned by a number of people over all their lifespan, the number of people being very very high (not just you, me and Bill), so even though individual earning figures vary widely, total again may tend to constant.
I wish we could have the earning data for say ten million people over their life-span, then randomly divide them into five or ten sets, and then find the total earnings for each set. That could help us to put the theory at a better judgement. With information systems getting richer and richer across world, I hope someday some clever statiscian or mathematician will be equipped enough with data sufficient for probing and mining and prove (or disapprove) this theory. Alas, till then, for proving such a nice hypothesis, we have to rely only on empirical observations.
Some more examples,
Integration (breaths you take) over 5 years = Constant (in this case lifespan may be too long, as we seem to breath in and out quite frequently)
Integration (joy and sadness) over the world at any moment = Constant; this means if I am happy at this moment right now, that is at the expense of someone else’s momentary tough time.
And so on.. really ...
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