Note to self - self noted.

Song of choice – The wreckage of my flesh – my dying bride

In view of all complexities, my life fits into a car. The scenario itself is not vividly unimaginable - given my insistence on that less is more. The pack-and-run theory of life is a worthy attribute to the road well traveled. I have seen worse. I do not feel cut-off, I feel like bread, I leave a lot of crumbs behind and sometimes they track you. I try to be the dried, hard kind, the stuff that does not shed, but I guess, the sweetness settles in. Legally, I am enjoying the start of it, but incredible as it is, it always yearns for more.

The reason I start with such is to explain my several days here in new country. The Spanish in itself has started to take a native feel. Languages have all been fun – international ones, i.e., I remember our attempt at French, way back in time and again in graduate school, for some reason, other than the requirement, it faded as fast as it came in. I wondered for long if I would ever find a native speaker to befriend and go the way best known, but it was not to be till now. However, French has taken a back seat to Spanish and not the good Spanish as the Columbians would insist comes from their part of the world outside the great state of Spain in Europe. Puerto Rican Spanish is, according to many, a watered down version, very much like the Tamil of today, so influenced by the British India of the yesteryears.

While, clearly, the journey of Columbus has uncovered a lot for us, the earliest people in the Americas were descendents of a different breed – people too complex to comprehend and preferably left out. The journey, itself, called a discovery is not so much a big aspiration than a personal triumph. Where would the Europeans be without the Americas? That is a question that requires no answer; people would have found it, irrespective. Columbus Day is celebrated in America and Spain for an Italian gentleman who set out to find an alternative route to the India around the Atlantic and landed up in South America. So the world, in summary, is not one of belonging but rather drawn for discovery. So, for me, I will start with the Spanish side and then resolve to learn more.

All that talk was just an explanation of the nature of man and the lady variety to be inquisitive – only limited by the religious and political restriction set up by compatriots who deemed it sufficient to be local. I know that I am very unsettled by restrictions and I know that because I went 2 days on a search to find a Toblerone. The search involved walking in the rain for 2 miles around stores that should have had the otherwise ubiquitous chocolate bar. Unfortunately that was not to be and 2 miles later and rain drenched, I had to wait for my Columbian charm before I found one. The story is an indication of human nature (or just my stupidity), but I did find it. So, happy face again.

Now, back to my life; the world is fairly fascinating. Always move to the bigger cities, you are more likely to find the variety that life otherwise does not offer. People are radically different in different countries and have different philosophies and personalities (but philosophy is our focus). However, what is significantly important is how virtual all this really is. You meet people who have a very different outlook to the portrayal by the biased media – which is true in many countries. The feeling might typically be uncommon in the general public depending on the age classification – as is about the same as the shift in the United States with the retirement of the baby boomer group. The younger generations in most countries from a middle class upbringing tend to understand the geniality of their age group around the world. Education is a presumption of this group – the type that wants to change their status. Keep in mind, that I certainly do not appreciate the literacy growth in India, which, is not my example of the suggested education above. The education growth in India is stimulated by the interest in the rural areas to (indeed) ‘change their status’, but seemingly (to me) is a method to replicate the success of others. Success is vaguely the ability to earn a little more than would the rural work life provide. The fascination has always been partly because of false portrayal from the completely disillusioned film industry with movies that are primarily a waste of time and a display of what a lack of talent can do in a world of magic.

Well, all that said, the world is a lovely place, is deeply rooted with people with remarkably diverse upbringing, cultures and beliefs, and yet they share critical elements that make you recognize the relationship you can share. The concept of limiting the tribe to within its own is long gone and the complexity of life is what defines the world. When they dug up the remains of ancient human beings – way before 1492, the DNA evidence proved remarkable relationship patterns from across the world, Siberia to South America, across oceans, ice sheets, earth and the psychology that individualizes human nature.

Life is always revolutionary in its way; for people to stand around and leech off their pasts, I feel sorry – to recognize that change is inevitable, the collapse is likely and the moment is not too soon, that now is for the living and rest is for the dead, is the only understanding of the human race. This has been too long for me to not honor a person, lina, para usted.

The real pace of life

So the universe unfolds as it should

The charms of the 70s, the hastiness of the 80s and the insanity of an unpredictable 90s; the unpredictability of these insane times, eventually, the turn of the century has not thrown us too far.

I grew up in the 80s, turned a stone in the 90s and analyzed at the turn of the century. While growing, all that interested me was the change of the season, the passage of school and looking back at things, how they changed. That was when you say to your erstwhile neighbor that you did that class once, you did great and you were ranked, known and talked about. We were always talked about. I would not call it privileged, we fought for our attention. I remember my brother raising all hell in the school yards with a kid a little thicker built, the aim being to establish country like a dog would by marking its territory. I would stand by and admire, a few, before taking on some unwilling kid myself – in the cloud of brotherhood, no one left behind.

Inevitably, that did not quite result in the dreams of the yesteryears. We were the unnatural bunch; we spoke too much English for the local community and at times that contributed a sense of awe. The situation was fairly odd when the numbers of north Indians down south was a remarkable trickle in comparison. In the end, I did my best to cope through friends of a feather like the way mom did. She did shove the money and the words into our mouths and send us wandering through the people-packed streets of the suburbs around what was called Roypettah. I remember the several errors we made, and more often, the common thriftiness of the people to swindle the few rupees from a kid’s hand. To not speak the language was a rough barrier, it broke us down and shook us up – what they did not rely on and we used as a tool was perseverance. We took to the streets like fish did to water, though, we were adventurous, risk-takers, explorers and the lot. We were brought up to believe that anything was possible, in more serious terms, that we could create the atmosphere that supported our nature and intent. So mother had the same issues that we had, moving in with her lack of tongue into a community still more tied in that hers was. The experience of a Delhi in the hippy period is an experience lived, or so I gather.

We created opportunities as and when required. That, I believe, was the most significant learning in our developmental stages. In 1989, when we were moving to greener pastures and a new life in modernistic society of evolving Madras, Rajiv Gandhi was struck down on the very day of the intended move. That stirred something. Mom was a firm believer in the natural goodness of people and their intent. That could clearly be seen. To a non-believer, now, in the existence of god, I still partake in realization of the chores that were the stone elephants of the temples, the sacred rice and the holy waters. I dish out the obvious understanding of culture surpassing the claim of religion that has brought us our strength. When dad asked if there was anything that he could have changed that would have made us solely his, I took strong offense. To me, learning, living, growing and being an individual is a variety that is picked up on in due course. The culmination of periods of time that brings questions and answers that we can only relate several years later.

What brought us the attention, back then, was the consistent class ranks that we generated. I believe there is a report card back at my parent’s from the 4^th or 5^th grade that ranked me at one among the 40 other students for every major exam for a period of about 2 years. I am sure my brother carried the same at some point in time. We did that on an almost regular basis. We destined ourselves for bigger things than the limitations of the Indian mind. Our diverse upbringing and many a time, international shook our preliminary take on democratic society. Then there was the time when we were known by name basis with almost everyone on campus – we were the big ones on campus. Everywhere we went we drew a path, I quietly, but steadily let my brother show me the way but I never lost sight of his lust for the horizon. My awakening was fairly late, I bordered more on the home-child, but somewhere in between I noticed that I was letting go of too much. So I stopped and considered, I was more revolutionary than my brother, I took far more risks and was relatively more individualistic. I hated dependency from leaches and too be candid there were lots of those around. People who knew that they had no aim unless told so. We call them, in business, the laggards. They were not dumb people, they were just content people; content with the orthodox, with the status quo and the clichéd.

In any case, towards the end of the 1990s, we analyzed a lot. At Doon for a couple of years we learnt that the world held no peace for the content. Life was taken stirred, shaken and mixed, in big crucibles with a variety of the good and bad. To extract sufficient to belly the mix and sober up the next day was the virtual reality. We survived, we rolled when the hardness of life struck, we ran along on any turf, and we waited for no ceremony. We cared less about pomp and gay and bothered more about the next day. I did rhyme for a long time and realized at graduate school that I was not meant for that either.

So here I am, an individual with incremental choices, a stubborn chin and a following of the past. I let it lie, I shake them no more and I invoke none. The gods do not grumble and I do not let them at it either. We are living in a world of balance and some people are worthless to its true meaning. I never look back, in retrospect on things that could have been. I walk for a reason and do things as they need done. I am not a creature of random appearance, I might do a random act, but it was, at some point in time, an act that had crossed my mind. The sanity in this time has not changed since. With all the knowledge of math and probability, we made codes of games that worked on random - eventually, chaos is defined as well. Clearly, I am for the future and the beauty it holds. I know that everyday is born a complex child, a person of incredible chance and capability – for such is required in the years to come. Every year we deplete on things present and past that knowing such is, not knowing at all.

In the 2000s I realized that I hated material goods, I loved knowledge as Jack would and not the master. I was to understand that trinity of knowledge, technology – history to present and so with business and law. I thirst, still, to do so and from what you know of me, it will someday be. This is now time to move on. I do not live here anymore. I used to proclaim that I would die in Troy, I bury those words now. Work and life takes me on to the shores of the land east, me and the girl that I did seek are looking yonder. I live in the unpredictable insanity of now and I love it. To live life and draw saneness is the best thing to unravel and the old ones are ones that die.

The next phase

A jump on the technology boat!