Q and A

Ritwik lived with a lot of questions in his mind. Those questions tormented him and needless to say, torments me too.I could relate effortlessly to the person he was, when in school, the discipline he was supposed to comply with at home. He is one character I wished to be in my ambiance. Not many authors do that. The only other protagonist I wanted to be in my times is Prince Mushkin of 'the Idiot'. I probably didn't want to know other characters of Dostoevsky's because they belonged to an entirely different era. Though I loved the in depth analysis of his... nope I shall dedicate another entire post to him not just three or four lines in passing mention.
When Ritwik died he left me his questions. I couldn't sleep with them. When I was done reading the book, I felt empty, hollow and dumb trying to comprehend things. My mind was frantically trying to sort out things. Before I could get some sleep there were these obtrusive thoughts questioning the need for comprehension, the need for answers. I had just terminated the battle of choice between starting to read another novel and going to bed chewing over the questions I just mentioned.
And as usual, abstraction triumphed over reading, I dropped Ritwik's questions and was pondering over mine. Though there were sparks of illumination jumping into my consideration, lightening up my huge, vacuous room of questions, they were just flickers. I made a mental note to transfigure these sparks into lucid convictions and dozed off with the elation of having experienced mental fatigue, something I yearn for everyday.
Why was I desperate to answer Ritwik's questions?(though I call it desperate, it passed off. I didn't answer them then and shall not answer them henceforth). I wanted to remember the fatigue which was exhilaration to my senses and to my mind. I shall rather remember this exhilaration than the answers to Ritwik's questions. I shall let these questions fade away from my memory. That way I guess Neel Mukherjee is similar to Dostoevsky. I am not comparing their styles. I am only referring to my plight at the end of the their books.
Returning to my original question, why was I searching for answers? Its seems simple. More answers= more connection between neurons= positive augmentation of cognition. Intelligence is the ability to form a labyrinth of events in your brain, but an untangled one. So why is it we try to answer questions sometimes and not often do we try to give up and let it fade adopting stupid reasons such as mine?
Is it a "basic drive to improve cognition" or one to "reduce the memory and put the solved questions and answers and save them in a zipped folder such that the hippocampus is not burdened with too much data"? Is the sense of discomfort that accompanies the acknowledgment of incomplete analysis of something, some kind of negative feedback mechanism in the limbic system, that makes us untangle it soon and reduce the burden on the hippocampus?
I have this urge to end this abruptly and run to some place in joy, but I shall not do it. So eventually what is it? Given my vanity I would say its largely the former( the basic drive to augment cognition). The likelihood of the mind controlling something by known mechanisms(explained by basic human behaviour) is simply more plausible than vague theories on feedback and control. Life's Good.

The look

Seems to me like its been aeons since I wrote something valid and exploratory.

In case, only in case you don't happen to know what 'the look' is, 'the look' is the vision the world(the others) has of you. Now that is incomplete!. Its the vision YOU think the world has of you. I have for long fooled myself that I am not bothered by the look. I was a fool indeed.
Allow me to deviate. People call it COURAGE when the somebody admits his stupidity. I think its despair - desperate honesty. Its just the assumption that his honesty would make him more acceptable that makes a person admit his follies. Man does nothing for the sake of courage or goodness. Its always for a concealed gain. I am thinking about my other confessions in this page. "I was a kid when I was a kid...". Truly an act of disowning 'my foolish self'.I was foolish and that was me and I was a kid erring on the side of logic. So that is about courageous confessions.
So I was this foolish woman who thought she was immune to the look. It was later(two years earlier) that I realised that I was not immune to the look, but thought that the world considered me immune to the look. That gave me a cover under which I subtly changed in response to the look. My immunity was the world's reproach of my immunity itself, which I enjoyed. But two years back I didn't realise it in paragraphs like this. All I knew was 'I am not immune to the look, I wish I were'.
But to be immune would regrettably halt all efficacious changes. You wouldn't make any progress. I wish I were able to elaborate, but I know no more.
Do I sound miserable? Everything sensible I write, is written in times of
misery and hatred that are periods of optimum and unbiased functioning of mind

My placid psyche

I stared at Natasha,
Empathized with Ivanovitch,
Trembled with scarlet,
I was still alone,
Books wouldn't help me deceive myself.

I rejoiced with Tom,
Flirted with Dick,
And argued with harry,
I was still alone in the chat rooms.

Sitting on a bench tonight,
With the crickets around me rubbing their legs,
The owls staring into nothing,
the ground beneath me as dumb as it has been,
I am unruffled.
No,these didn't alleviate my loneliness,
I have begun to love being alone.

uh-oh! Mother?

I was one of those misplaced children,
Who didn't know you as a child,
Who didn't want to know you,
Who never looked out of the window to admire you.
I didn't leave my prep unfinished, while on the terrace,
To ogle you.
I didn't paint you when I was asked to,
I didn't kneel down to pamper you,
I didn't take you in my hands to
Dodge and leave my scent on you.
Pretty ostentatious women whined about you,
I left any place where you were spoken of,
Not because of jealousy,
Not because you aren't worthy.
But somewhere in my mind(Ah! not heart),
I knew the reasons for my deviant attitude,
And now that we are alone,
I'll fondle you,
I'll let you know what I am like,
When you are left uncared for,
When the pretentious beings have left,
to become unpretentious in their dwellings,
You have me and I, you,
For a while, my hands are yours,
My Darling 'Nature',
Wonder why people call you "mother"!

Curse roentgen!

I have been a medical student for the past four years. I didn't know that its better to use the bell of the stethoscope to record blood pressure, that its better to do the entire cardiac examination with the patient's head inclined 30 degrees, that spasticity increases with the speed of the passive movement and the list is endless. All this I found in an age old book, and old journals on medical examination. There's so much a doctor can infer from physical examination.There are lot of new clinical tests a doctor can invent, new signs that are yet to be unraveled. But all he does is listen to the symptoms and scribble a few investigations and treat the patient based on that. The satisfaction you derive by diagnosing something based on clinical examination is indescribable. I diagnosed Broca's aphasia in a patient yesterday. May that will appear trivial to a neurologist. But I jumped up and down for fifteen minutes. You know why I had to be so excited?. Its because I never heard any doctor say "he has a cortical infarct, because he has broca's aphasia" but I have often heard them say "On the CT image, the infarct also seems to involve his cortex , the broca's area, so that explains his slurring of speech". Can you think such a doctor can practice without investigations??. I hate roentgen for his invention. True, investigations today are a boon. The fact that people don't question the relevancy of doing investigations without a complete physical examination is tragic. This strengthens my desire to become a teacher of medicine, 'not professor'. I like teaching not 'professorizing'. So if you go to a doctor next time, demand a complete physical examination. A complete physical examination will take at least 15 minutes for a trivial complaint, provided you aren't malingering. You have the right to demand the relevancy of an investigation. And don't be carried away by 'house'. You can see the whole team investigating all the time!! and yeah, they don't do enough examination. I still love 'house. m.d' for its satire.

Consolidation

I used to be a kid when I was a kid. Though whatever I wrote then is not something I am really proud of , its worth reading(to me). What follows is not that trivial. One of those blogs which still makes sense to me.

If my knowledge is nothing but a bunch of connections that I may afford to forget or retrieve, so are my emotions.. I wonder why emotions describe a person rather than knowledge. Can something describe a person? A person's mind? Is there something called mind?Isn't mind the collective term for all the connections that you possess and are easily accessible?. So what describes you is just connections of your brain? People speak the jargon of anatomy? What is there to like and not like about people? Why do some choose to keep some of their connections(connections of neurons) and tend to forget the rest? why is the pattern of choice distinct to individuals? I have never thought in these lines. Does this mean my remission or regression? I have too many questions to answer. There was this really cool theory running in my connections( I didn't theorize it) for quite a while before six months. Its called learned behavior. People like to retain some connections because they learned a few repetitively and got accustomed to what they were exposed to by virtue of their environmental situations. And because they are comfortable with the accustomed ones they tend to perpetuate it .Isn't this the origin of behavior, personality , character blah blah. That simplifies my doubts and complicates my life. Of course there are other factors which affect the evolution of this process, they in turn being influenced by the environment. So ultimately, is it the environment that determines what everybody is? This is disappointing. But at least it supports the concept of 'cause'.. life's good? I don't know.

Consolidation

I used to be a kid when I was a kid. But whatever I wrote then, though I am not really fond of them, I like to read them and laugh aloud.Whatever is bold is what I wrote while posting this . The first doodle, is the first time I wrote something that is not completely about me. Should be three years back. Forgive the kid for her SMS language.

LIGHTS
i was traveling by bus n ... tats something i enjoy above everything else....bus travel offers me un-interrupted chain of thoughts... n as it is i don think i admire the scenery n stuff...so i suppose one can imagine what I would be doing ....n the scenes were uninteresting, gloomy as usual, n then i saw lights, not vey tiny, but then of sizes tat could b delineated from a distance of 200meteres.. well i enjoyed the lights for an instant.....coz they matched the hues of the sunset. I could have slapped myself for my foolishness... it didn't occur any earlier to me tat if they should b lights, of Wat intensity or of wat voltage they should b to b differentiated in the early phase of sunset!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!...well... i was foolish for a few moments..lost in my own thoughts then... well now back to lights...they weren't lights after all....just plastic bags held by the thorns of weeds in the barren land..not many.. but a considerable number..tat doesn't deserve such a long explanation.......nevertheless...well i noticed the number of bags from then on... n wen i saw fenced lands...it was as though the land was fenced to offer derisory protection from the bags....coz they were clinging to every structure tat offered 'clinging'.....this scene..its not pathetic....its more than tat....it shows how deliberately inconsiderate ppl are...no...this inst a perfunctory act.........being self centered is good....but exploiting others for your own good is severely culpable... n this doesn't apply to plastic bags alone...it applies to everything left like plastic bags.. deliberately n inconsiderately.... b it emotions or worries or old books.....or anything u can think this instant tat is usually left so.....there is so much of awareness bout the misuse of the damned bags.....much more than one can think of...but wats the use?..everybody uses his/her awareness to evade a danger to him alone.. n doesn't stop with tat...ties the danger to somebody's head ....lets ditch this word called awareness...there is hell lot of awareness bout everything be it STD or plastic bags..so wat do we lack???...knowledge??? sense???.....if each one of us were asked to water to put off a massive fire n then given a pen to write bout the experience...more than half of us will write a book on "how to put of fire (effectively-some may add tat tag too)"..even if half of the half who write the book actually fail to succeed in the task..so we don lack knowledge or sense....it makes sense to think tat the half which is not capable of writing the book , is responsible for the havoc....but tats not so....coz disposing plastic bags is not as hard a job as putting off fire(massive actually)......so then y r ppl so boorish???? even if they hav sense????????? we don ...sorry..they don hav a purpose...wen one has a purpose u ll respect others' purpose....u ll know your responsibilities towards the nation..public health....towards neighbors(irrespective of whether they r in good terms or not)...towards loved ones... n above all towards yourself....life's really good


Ah, I cribbed to the best of my abilities and said "life's good".
There was a poetry competition in my college and I was given a few pictures. I had to choose one of them to write a poem on. Amongst the many was a Pulitzer winning photograph which showed a soldier kneeling down, his hands tied at the back, and hundreds of bullets approaching him. I am not good at poem writing. What I wrote was essentially prose in an attempted apparent 'poem' format. Nevertheless, I lost myself when I started writing it. That was just when I had understood the nihilist in me. That shows in what I wrote.


THE DREADED RAPTURE
I am the absurdly normal,
component of mankind,
that has been chosen to live
for a span of nearly a century.
I grew tremendously bored!
bored of the life that I had to live.
As a sensible man I attribute this,
This state of NIHILISM,my throes ,
Not to the society, not to the creator,
Not to anything except myself.
A man like me,
Who has lived all his life thinking,
Endorsing this tormenting nihilism,
Cannot opt to live.
Hence, justified is my decision,
to come here to die painlessly.
Ah! painless death isn't utopia after all.
But now that I am cornered here,
Among these barbarous hounds,
shouldn't I be ecstatic?
All i wanted is to die!!
but what is it now???
My mind sways. am i hallucinating?
I am swaying too,
My nerves, I imagine are red hot.
But my mind is terrifyingly fast.
It is fast , reasoning, visualizing.
I am dumbfounded,
Not from fear, not from grief,
Not from anything one can think of.
This is horrifying, not death,
But this discovery,
the DISCOVERY OF HOPE in me,
I desperately hope that these bullets,
would spare me miraculously.
though this hoe itself is rapturous,
I am horrified to feel it now.
I can devise plans not to escape,
As I see that its impossible,
but to live every second,
If only I were to live,
Until a few moments ago,
All I hoped to was to die,
Call me an imbecile, call me an idiot,
Or whatever befitting,
But I admit, I live this moment,
This one moment with lust for life...

Are you mocking at that blunder? That painless death thing? I didn't realize that I wrote it. All I could harness then were my swirling head and my circumlocutory brain. My other old blogs will be cumulated under the same header "consolidation".