random ramblings

Read a short story by Alice Munro – “Night” ( http://granta.com/night/ ).  Chanced upon it from a tweet from someone.  Name was somehow familiar, searched and found that she was the Nobel Prize winner for literature in 2013.  Read few more of her stories from the New Yorker. I have a mental block when it comes to reading short stories – somehow I don’t like that it finishes too quickly and sometimes abruptly, not fully satisfying. These were good though. It kind of reminded me of why we read fiction – it gives comfort in knowing that there are other people who think similar thoughts, there are lives even in far off places and quite different circumstances, but quite human, like kindred spirits. That is one thing which is closed and sacred – other people’s thoughts. Apart from writers who risk baring it on paper for all the world to see, we have no way of knowing whether we are the only weird ones out there or the rest of world is also quite similar. I was in the p...

Attended a Design Thinking workshop today. One small conversation there was stuck in my mind. Instructor was talking about empathy. He asked someone that suppose the person sitting next to him got injured on the leg, how he would show empathy. I called out a response - “I feel your pain”. Instructor said that is not possible – no one can feel other’s pain. It seems in some BPO firms it has even been instructed not to tell customers that “I understand how you are feeling”, because it is not possible. Not sure of it though.   This reminded me of something I read about Aaron Swartz, inventor of RSS (Real Simple Syndication – format behind web feeds that was game changing), involved in Creative Commons and founder of Reddit, the front page of Internet. Not to bring up the case of yet another tortured genius. But I had read this about him – ““He had a tremendous and in some ways pathological capacity for compassion .” And in another place “Swartz touched so many ...

Finished Bell Jar. I need to further qualify the initial assessment. It felt like a giant wheel – the ride in local fair. Sort of calmly takes you up to the pinnacle and drops you down and you keep falling – with the feeling of heart rising in anticipation of impending fall. The journey through depression, madness and various ways to commit suicide. It is a heart wrenching read – not recommended on a sunny day.. or come to think of it, on rainy day as well. Beautiful writing.. I keep taking notes these days of what I liked since memory is shot.   Tail end of a sweet dream.. New York was bad enough. By nine in the morning the fake, country-wet freshness that somehow seeped in overnight evaporated like the tail end of a sweet dream. Mirage-grey at the bottom of the their granite canyons, the hot streets wavered in the sun, the car tops sizzled and glittered, and the dry, cindery dust blew into my eyes and down my throat.   I felt very still and very emp...

I had bought Sylvia Plath’s (Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Plath) novel, The Bell Jar, almost a year back in one of the numerous book exhibitions in the city. I thought it needed a certain mood to be read or it will probably depress me knowing her story – I was in “see positive, think positive, hear positive” mode for some time. Picked it up as a treat last weekend for finishing the exams better than I thought it would go. After reading first page, it was feeling like how aged wine would probably feel to a connoisseur. So far it has been a very stark perspective of how things look from the other side of the gender divide – hypocritical men and stereotyped expectations. But the writing is from a true master of the craft – to write one sentence like her would be genius. What could she have accomplished if she stayed beyond 30 years?   Sylvia Plath reminds me of another troubled genius, Amy Winehouse, who took her life at age 27 – I had listened to s...

If you could cry Hard cleansing cry that comes in waves Wash away the guilt The pain Expectations, desires Clear away the knots To breath free Thunder down like Niagara Beat out the devil, the madness All the noise All the chaos all the clouds Let it shine again A rain that drums down To drench the kid again Dream those epics And sleep like a baby To be free One that lasts long enough To wash away The wants and the needs To purify And make you honest Restore the innocence That got stolen All the masks, lies  pretenses, fantasies and impulses Clear the web of stories To make a man again Like the rushing river That restores the spring On your feet Song on the lips Smile in your eyes To make you strong Lift the blue haze To face the world again With new resolve In a brand new day Make you truly care And love Those that truly matter ​

When energy / enthusiasm / dopamine level is high, don’t shoot off what comes to top of your mind. It could look silly or naïve. When disappointment literally hurts, hold on again. Otherwise it could look whiny. In both cases realization comes only the next day morning. And “recall message” doesn’t really work. In both cases though the message could be truer to you, since it was raw emotion, just could be too much to handle at receiving end. Maturity comes when you can sleep it off, take the edge off emotions. Then it could get boring too. But that is the balance needed in life.

Inspired from Inception, the movie – Cobb : What is the most resilient parasite? Bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm? An idea. Resilient… highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it’s almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully formed – fully understood – that sticks; right in there somewhere. How to inject an idea – Make it a perfect, beautiful idea, easier to believe. Make it simple, unexpected, clear, credible, emotional, stories – success formula (courtesy: Book: Made to stick) Give the idea more context/detail in which to believe it. Context and repetition is the key. Repeat every day – until the idea takes hold, even without you knowing it fully how deeply, even if you don’t understand it fully yet. From Mal’s point of view. How to self-destruct for an (wrong) idea – Keep thinking about it, don’t let it go. Don’t believe when your own mind says it might be irrational, impossible, illogical, impracti...

Few months back, i was returning from Bangalore after one of the BITS exams. I cannot sleep on bus usually, so this time had taken a sleeper bus. But that also was turning out to be futile. Such sleepless nights are crazy, drifting in and out of consciousness, trying to force start new dream scenarios to invite sleep to take them on and try it out and the dreams become bizarre after some time. Huge headache in the morning is the net result. In this case, one good thing was the music – driver was playing AR Rahman’s Tamil songs – they must have played that entire night. Their playlist had some of the old songs too, long forgotten. I was thinking that it was incredible that AR can fill an entire night of lonely people with great music. For past few weekends though, I was listening to AR again. There is a program hosted by singer Anuradha Sreeram, in one of the FM channels, 3 hours each on Sat and Sunday night. AR has created enough to fill multiple nights with great music. This week...