Cold Escape

He looked back for the first time since he had run away. Made sure that the airlock behind him was shut, an impenetrable barrier  between him and the ship he was now fleeing. He felt surprisingly calm, his heart making the only sound in the cylinder the size of a small closet. His mind was calm now, it had to be, he was going to do something he'd never done before, but it was his only chance.

He checked  the small object in his hands, a tiny thing the size of a pocket watch. He had to make sure that the internal cooling mechanism wasn't damaged, so he removed his glove and felt it in his bare hands. Boy! the cold sent a shiver up his spine, but he felt good about it. His thoughts turned to the present as he realized he had 5 maybe 10 minutes before security found him and chased him down. The next step was to wear the spacesuit,  there always was a spacesuit in airlocks, regulation R138-5 if he remembered  correctly.

Wearing a spacesuit  isn't like wearing any other suit, there is only one large thing to  get into but 20 little things to adjust and make sure are fitted and  working. Unlike evening dresses however the downside is not a fashion  faux pas but certain death, he thought about it and smiled, given what  he was about to do next, risking death was hardly a worry. He tucked the thing in a pocket in the exoskeleton of the spacesuit and said a small prayer; he didn't pray much, at all really but now was not the time to spite the Gods. He steeled his mind as he wore his helmet and  snapped it shut. Whoosh began the sound as he hit the switch to open  the airlock doors.

Poem: Sunrise

The hare left her silent trail
On the grassy bank bare
Hopping across the wind
She floats into the sunset

There will always be a sunset
As I sit watching here
In my hands cold comfort
As I stand rooted in yesterday

And while the sands of tomorrow
Are chiseled rock still
Seeing past the sunset blinds
Binds us to the dark of night

And we fail to see today
The shimmering sunrise

Very Very Special

The recently concluded test between India and Australia at Mohali was a classic. It had great individual performances, enough drama and all three results were possible until the final day. The final minutes had no less melodrama than a Bollywood movie and like such movies, we got a happy ending.

VVS played yet another special knock which he seems to capable of producing on demand against Australia, but this post is not about that. I would scarcely add anything new to the accolades so richly heaped on him and his innings. I am also not going to talk about how Laxman now averages 50 in the second innings of a test match, or how he averages 51 batting down at 6 in the order, or why he has only converted 16 of his 62 50+ scores into hundreds.

What I am going to talk about is how test cricket remains alive, despite it being "old", falling viewership and despite only 4 countries who really play cricket at test standard (India, Australia, SA and England), 5 if you count SL and NZ at their home grounds respectively, 6 if Pakistan turns up.

T20 showcases skills. Big hitting, clever flicks into vacant areas, scampered runs, lots of slower/faster balls, doosras, carrom balls, electric fielding. It fun while it lasts, however like having too many tequila shots I'm afraid for younger players who will wake up with bad hangovers someday when they realize that never really became great students of the game.

Test cricket can often be boring but often it is not, it is however rather subtle and often not amenable to immediate enjoyment. This is where a shout has to go to all those people (like my dad) who took young and clueless guys like me to games and explained all the intricacies, it is truly a priceless gift.

The fact that it’s more than just the skills, but also the mental aspect makes it truly a "test". Test cricket pushes players and viewers alike to their very limit and then some. The notion of a draw, I think is also very important to the essence of test cricket. Most other games demand that there be a winner, but that's a simplification that life does not afford and therefore neither should test cricket. There is something romantic about a hard fought draw that artificially forced tie-breakers do not have. Bowl outs might be fun to watch, but give me a final over 1 wicket to take situation any day.

C.L.R James once famously asked "What do they know of cricket who only cricket know”. I'm quite sure he was referring to test cricket here.

An ode to Water

Three tiny atoms dancing
Forever joined at the hip
All dissolving crystal clear
So much of me is you

You are life, you are death
You are both health and wealth
When you rain down, I find
The world washes its pain away

When you are not there
Lost, I see mirages
Shivering in a dark place
You hide, I embrace you

I've taken you for granted
But you're there even when I cry
All I know that if you leave
The world will say goodbye

This was inspired by the blog action day initiative.
Please visit here to learn more.

Poem: Not You

The sun shines though
The clouds are escaping
You are not here
As I lay thinking

The perfume I smell
Is now wet earth
Damp with morning dew
Everything looks fresh

A faint sound far
A lonely bird chirping
This silence is more than
Talk of matters exciting

Nothing to do today
No one to be but me
Failing to be perfect
For you now I'm free

Poem: I lied

When I said I'm ok
Its only a little scratch
And the bone was showing
I lied

When I smiled and laughed
At the funny movie
And my life was the joke
I lied

When I let you guys pass
And adopted a courteous stance
Though I was late for class
I lied

When I slogged all night
My pet project and pride
Though I never cared for it
I lied

When I raised another toast
And shouted with rare abandon
But my eyes had run dry
I lied

When I smiled back at you
And spoke of things old and new
But my heart still cries inside
I lied

"Liking" Zuckerberg

I saw the movie "Social Network" yesterday. The movie is a semi-real/semi-fictional biopic of Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook and youngest billionaire in the world. The movie held back no punches and showed Mark as this brilliant guy, super programmer who was also fueled by naked ambition and unfettered by any apparent sense of morality.

Unlike some of my friends however, this movie didn't make me "hate" him. Note that this hate is really more of a "dislike" (a feature not on Facebook, at least not yet). I found myself admiring his brilliance, which I guess almost everyone does; found myself respecting his naked ambition, which I guess many of us would do; but quite disturbingly, I found myself almost jealous of this freedom that being amoral gives you.

In the opening scene, (date break up) which in my opinion is the best scene in the movie, his erstwhile girlfriend says to him "Please don't think I'm breaking up with you because you are a nerd, its because you're an a$$hole". My fellow nerds (and geeks) I'd say that there are many good people out there who do not judge us, lets not be d-bags for their sakes.

On similar lines, I wonder if many of us (and nerds especially) feel the reason they haven't made it big like Mark is because they can't be so openly amoral. Maybe amorality is necessary to making it big, one doesn't know, but there are lots of sociopaths out there who are losers even in the economic and power stakes.

In the end its all about being a better you.

Making Friends

Friends, many or few, short or tall, cool or nerdy, but we all have them. Beyond the nuclear family and the significant other, friends are often the closest people to us today. This dialog from the TV show Spaced puts it aptly: "they say the family of the twenty-first century is made up of friends, not relatives".
However most of us never consciously think about how we go about making friends? how does it happen really.

It is pretty much common knowledge that we make friends with people whom we interact often, meaningfully or with purpose and have common interests and values. But given these preconditions, how does friendship form? Any connection between two people would require the initiation of a connection by one party and its subsequent acceptance by the other.

In romantic relationships the roles of initiator-acceptor have hitherto been socially mandated with the man initiating and the woman accepting. With friendships however, there is no clear norm. Do some people tend to go out and make friends? while others tend to accept the friendship of people who want to be their friend?
What does this mean with respect to their personality?

This author realizes that he might be one of the latter, since he doesn't remember having made friends (barring a few friend requests on facebook) and wonders what it all means.

So you think you're wise

I've always thought of wisdom as a stage beyond knowledge. Often ignorance and wisdom are confusing, especially to those who are neither.
We often expect wise people to be a certain way, however most people do not have visible halos, long flowing robes, white beards and/or staffs! Therefore the need for a simple guide to distinguish between ignorant/smart/wise in practical everyday situations. Here are a few I could think of:

programmer writes sloppy code (ignorant)
programmer follows design principles (smart) [duh]
programmer is known to not follow (wise) [beware of appraisal time!]

doesn't care what people think (ignorant)
cares what people think (smart) [sad but true]
knows whose opinion to care about (wise) [the list of whose can often be surprising]

not chivalrous (ignorant)
chivalrous (smart) [indeed!]
willing to not be (wise) [guys don't try this at home (or on dates) :P]

totally ignores the speed limit (ignorant)
always within 5 miles of speed limit (smart) [also might help you avoid tickets]
never the fastest car on the road (wise) [cruising!]

blogs about fart jokes (ignorant)
blogs about interesting things (smart)
makes fart jokes interesting (wise) [here's to you Seth MacFarlane]

May this guide be your key to wisdom (or wisdom teeth removal)

sleepless

never seen the sun shine so
the sky lit up in hospital lights
no place for healing nor fighting
no tears left in my eyes

a middling moon sneaks
the needle feels no pain
as it darkens there is some
faint rumble of rain

drowning in my dreams
I'm afraid to see these
nightmares and cold sweat
I lie awake till dawn

from his bed of dark cloud
the sun gets up hungover
a lone bird chirps in the tree
I get another day to wander

How we write

When we start to write, we start with an idea, a memory or an observation.


Observation is the first pool, it is what we see at the surface. The minute details, textures, sights and sounds that make our descriptions vivid; the complex plots that keep us guessing, all stem from this pool. Not unlike the sun, this is a source of energy that is both immediate and free. At this point, our work has characters, structure and a plot, it might be easy reading. However fiction is not a travelogue or a documentary, we need more, so we tap our next pool.

Memory is formed from observations from days, months or years past. Not unlike how we get fossil fuels, all we see is transformed into something a little different, a single whole instead of isolated sights or sounds; and like petroleum, it is the most portable and powerful fuel that a writer has to keep her engines running.
A story where the characters are enriched by their memories and the plots go beyond the immediate to form well developed arcs are definitely much richer. We have now reached a good read, but the reader is still outside our work, to draw her in, we need to cast a further spell. And so we tap into our final pool.

Ideas are our deepest pool, from this darkness comes all light. Not unlike the interstellar clouds that give birth to new stars, our imagination produces all kinds of ideas, It can help the reader find out about the world that the characters inhabit, make them feel joy and pain, live the dilemmas, or even when your story is really good, identify with them, become them (if only for a little while). Not every idea is a star, some a just red dwarfs and some go supernova on you. The sincere writer knows that imagination running wild will kill the story, just as too much love will kill you, every time.

Wing

Its not a broken wing she says
Yet another of those rainy days
The bright lights are shivering
Its not my lips that are quivering


She looks into her ice cream cup
Its cold but may warm her up
The dishes are all dirty and stale
My dinner is hunger and longing

I tell her that its a full moon
But it doesn't cast a shadow
She turns the lights on
And tells me to follow

Poem: She

She plays with her hair, so many choices
She returns my smile, ignores my glances
Infects me with joy, hope and despair

My life it can never be the same
The walls crash down and
I'm naked in the sun

She yearns for something, someone new
She acts on impulses ,that only she knew
Mirages have never been more real