The Epitaph..

Fresh drops of dew hung provocatively off the blades of grass, reflecting the paleness of the crescent shaped moon which shone upon the desolation that was the Marthvode forest.

A lone man trudged on a winding path through the brambles and bluebell bushes. His rough beard was visible, by the flickering light of a burning torch, as the long locks of his unkempt hair parted to the sway of his stumbling gait. His slate gray eyes could be seen intermittently, eyes of steel, which mirrored only his resolution and not the sorrow and anguish he felt.

The coffin made deep troughs in the soft forest earth as he dragged it with the help of a fraying rope attached to a ring at the top of the lid. He was perspiring badly, rivulets of sweat flowed through his face, burning his eyes as he struggled up the unforgiving slope.

The cottage was visible now. He had made the trip without incident. This part of the forest was home to one of the most feared species of wolves mankind had ever known. They were known as the Mortesci. Their attacks were unparalleled in history for both speed and viciousness. They had a distinct way of attack. They usually come alone to the prey's lair and mauled it. Then they used a distinctive cry to call on the rest of the pack to finish it off. It was thought they considered it a sport to kill as they never consumed meat. The baying of the Mortesci was considered the last thing a man ever heard, as there was no one living who knew how it sounds.

He left the coffin at the foot of the rough wooden stairs leading to the door. Suddenly, he felt a cool draft of air at the back of his neck, a feeling of indescribable terror washed over him. He felt a creeping sense of uneasiness which he could not explain, He was alone here in this wilderness with .. with...

He looked down at the coffin. He could not stop the tears from running down his cold cheeks, his eyes closed involuntarily, only yesterday had he loved her, caressed her, ruffled her hair. Life wasn't fair, God did not exist, there was no greater trauma on earth than what he was going through right now. He threw his head up and cursed the heavens, somewhere, a bloodhound bayed.

The knob felt cold to the touch, he carried the rose wood coffin into the cottage and closed the door. The only light came from the torch he carried. He set it in a corner and looked at the room. There was a wooden table along the wall to his right, a window was set on one wall barred by a moth eaten curtain. He went up to the window, drew aside the curtain and pushed it open. It opened with a creak and a gust of cold wind gushed in extinguishing the torch.

The silence was absolute, the only light was the feeble rays of moonlight clawing through the treetops. His feeling of dread returned and beads of perspiration formed on his forehead. His hands fumbled through his coat pockets for a match. He lit one and through its feeble light, he could see the coffin, as he had left it, at the foot of the door. He reignited the torch and closed the window. Then he carried the coffin to the table by the window placed it gingerly.

Slowly he opened it. He willed himself to look at her one last time. He had to. Their ancestral rituals demanded that before the burial two important sacraments had to be carried out. She was wearing a pale green gown encapsulated by a little white belt at her waist. She looked so serene even in death.

Carefully and with infinite tenderness, he lifted up both her hands and placed them on her waist just above the belt. He was now oblivious to the tears that dropped from his eyes onto the floor. He removed a soft white silk lace from a recess in his coat and delicately tied it around both of her hands so that they will not be separated easily. Next he started the second ritual, he slowly picked up a pinch of dust from the hard wood floor of the cottage and sprinkled it in the right corner of the coffin, near her left foot.

He had first heard the sound when closed the door to the cottage. He did not realize its significance then. He now heard it again. It was a low breathing sound, more like a rush of air through leaves. It was definitely not a human sound, it was unearthly, especially in the silence of the forest where even the smallest of sounds get magnified many times.

He silently walked to the wall that was furtherest to the coffin and took the shot gun that hung there. It was his fathers' gun. It was always kept here and kept loaded. He crept to the door and after a longing look at the coffin that held her, opened the door silently.

A sliver of moonlight fell over his forehead as he looked out cautiously, the forest was dark and silent. That in itself was a dangerous sign. The absence of the sounds of the crickets, moths and bats indicated the presence of a predator in the vicinity. He was torn between the necessity to go outside and the longing to stay with the coffin, protecting her.

He then saw it. The darkness at a point in front of the trees was a shade deeper than the background. The dark shape slinked away into the night probably aware that it was spotted. The forest suddenly came to life all around him, crickets, beetles and bugs started their low toned buzzing.

He again stood in front of the coffin, slowly reaching out to close the lid for the last time, when it attacked. He was shocked at the ferociousness of the aggression. The creature had thrown itself with tremendous force at the only window of the cottage, baring its teeth that made a dent on the wood causing it to splinter in many places. He wondered at the intelligence of the beast as it had the ability to choose the weakest point of the whole cottage. The door was made of sturdy oak and the walls were constructed with many layers of bamboo to withstand the cruel winters. The second charge of the animal broke the window in half. the cold breeze again wafted in through the cottage extinguishing the torch and engulfing the room in darkness for the second time that night.

The beast was inside. He could hear that same unearthly sound, feel it in his bones. He knew the legend of the Mortesci, and the blood chilling stories told of it. He also knew that he had foolishly left his shotgun resting against the wall near the door. In the darkness he was completely at a disadvantage, the Mortesci could see in the dark. He tried to creep towards the door when it rushed at him knocking him over. Suddenly he heard a new sound, a patting sound he never had heard before. The beast turned away from him and went towards the open window. He grabbed for the shotgun at the door in one swift lunge and tried to get into position to fire. But before he could loose a shot he was knocked off his feet by the beast with a speed beyond comprehension. He struck his head against the floor and lost orientation. Then something happened which he did not understand, he had fleeting images of the beast near the window, and again of , trying to charge him, when it paused and writhed in agony, he then blacked out with a final glimpse of it vaulting through the open window and running off into the night.

He staggered out of his stupor after a few moments, he was delirious with pain from a gash to his forehead. If folklore were true, he was the first man to have survived an encounter with the Mortesci. He relit the torch and approached the coffin.

She was lying just as peacefully as before, but her hands were free and the silk lace lay to one side as if it had been sliced through. Also there were a few strands of brown hair under her fingernails. Her face looked serene except for her mouth as teeth were clenched together and a clump of brown hair was visible between them....

Legend has it that the Mortesci were animals that roamed the jungles instilling fear, had long curved claws and furry brown hair....

Marinara sauce, Imacs and Knickerbockers...

The cashier at the 'off the by-lane' Domino's store was apologetic.

" I'm sorry sir, we don't stock tomato ketchups or sauces"

"Oh!, what am I to do now? " (did he really think the damn pizza's were that good to partake of without the magic slathering of tomato ketchup?).

" For an extra 50 cents you get a cup of Marinara dip"

I was dumbfounded/thunderstruck/shocked and so on to varying degree. and wanted to be sure I had heard right.

"Pardon" ( I would have tried "pardone monsieur" in France, "enti" in Paradise Pizza Den, "enna pa solra" at Domino's Chennai, and ... sheesh...why am I digressing so much.. )

The cashier, I think, was someone of a benevolent temperament

"For an extra 50 cents you get a cup of Marinara dip, Sir"

"Uh huh.. see.. look here .. we get only 1 medium size pizza with one topping for 6$? and nothing else???"

"Yes sir, would you be needing the dip as well?"

Now there was a definite glint in his eye, and a sarcastic (a.k.a scary) sneer at his upper lip that I did not want to prolong..

"Of course, Thank you" (If there was one thing I have learnt in the promised land then it is the prompt, almost subliminal utterance of the two magic words : Thank You)

"There will be a wait of about 15 to 20 minutes for your order sir"

The shop was empty, the hot afternoon sun slanted in through the glass paned front wall, and I knew better than to ask why the pizza should take so long to bake.

I drifted to a chair, rested my aching limbs, reclined luxuriously, and nodded off intermittently.

" Hey lets go down to the comp labs" (My, as usual, intense and excited baritone floated out to my group of friends at the place known as sigma sigma something.. )

" Let's " they chorused.

At the UCit lab in Steger or whatever building, we were all staring at the systems..

"hey that one is a plain core 2 duo sys with Vista running on it.. Yuck" one of my friends pouts..

"hey whats that white one??" asks another, pointing...

" Thats an Imac, I think"

" Looks Great" chimes in someone else and all eyes converge onto that white thing..

I, for my part, was charmed by the sleek lines and smart look more than anything else, I hadn't seen one except in photographs, and this was one of the things that looked way better in 3-D than in a Photo.

My stomach just then chose the time and place to remind me of a primal need and dutifully ...

" I'm hungry" I said

The cry was taken up many as well.. and we discussed places we could go eat....

"Subway".... "Pizza Den"... "that catskeller thingy".... " what is the place we get all that unlimited food called?.. market something??"... and so on..

And as one everyone miraculously agreed on pizza den, no idea why...

Anyways we then trooped off to the shop and started to place orders..

" I want a medium sized pizza"

wait haven't I already placed an order for pizza?............................................

I awaken from my torpor to realize that I had dozed off on the chair at Domino's and the proprietor saying something that sounded very much like..

"Your Order is ready, Sir"

I made the preliminary checks to confirm that I wasn't hallucinating and received a flat cardboard carton from him.

"Thank You"

"would you like napkins, sir?"

"yes, please" (What a question!, why don't I wipe my hand on your company logo covered tee?)

"Thank You"

"Have a nice day"

I trudge back home thinking if the whole thing was worth the time and expense, wouldn't it have been far more simple to have stayed back home in my knickerbockers and tossed up a pan of mixed vegetable curry?

I don't know

Maybe I never will.......

That time heals, is an untruth..

Composite blocks of elegant yet sad-looking masses of humanity, drift to and fro in front of the gates of the shamshabad international airport. The gut wrenching pain of separation complements the equally acute sense of impending loneliness. The two concoct a dance of misery and debilitating anguish with consummate skill.

The act of having left a part of myself back in a land that is so very far away plummets me into nadir depths from which there is no comeback.

The compass has shattered, the needle roving without direction. My pupils dilate, my face goes bright, my eyes start to water. I think of red-hot coals, dried, angularly bent willowy trees, sun blackened and rotting. sleep is rarer than gold, nodding-off is a luxury that is beyond reach. The inner chasm runs so deep that the relief of going for a few moments without thought, or thinking about anyone but that epitome in human beauty and ecstacy, is an effort so superhuman, that it destroys me.

Not all words are created equally, with a kiss of dark flavor, and a silky feel, the word desired by the mind will make you disdain the world to pay obeisance to it. Fizzle out, simmer, make haste for the world awaits you. The red carpet rolls out in anticipation. But the aircraft is empty, no one descends, the flash bulbs go off in vain, the wind rustles past an empty tarmac, my dramma tragicomico. Extending into the secunda praticca of my life, the directions go haywire, each contradicting the other, there will be no end, only a glimpse of what may have been...

The lights dim outside the window, the night takes hold, the candles flicker, burn, blackening the walls, slowly with indescribable stillness, the blackness merges into the turquoise of dawn, the candles die out, and the insomniac has waged another fruitless battle on the goliath that is the blessed oblivion of sleep...

"Arancione' vi dentro solaris"

musings through the night.......that time heals, is an untruth...

Total genuflection to reality.....the personal post...

Rejuvenation was never so sweet to the mind than it is now.

Thoughts that were muddled and viscid for so long, start flowing freely in complete harmony.

The sharp line dividing the abstract and the real dissolves into a nether state of acceptance. The relief the mind derives by being liberated from the shackles of pure thought into commonplace, everyday, mundane activities is overwhelming.

Descending to mortal thought processes, the vivid, balmy currents of fresh scent laden air into the innermost recesses of my senses, awakening, even the long dormant, ability to compose lilts that ensnare and enrich every aspect of my life.

My daily routine...

Surrounded by a retinue of people I know, the day stint starts. The very fact that in this strange land, secluded from the idiosyncracies that one is familiar with, I can still connect with such people is in itself flabbergasting.

There is a beautiful Arabian custom that makes eternal friends of those who have together eaten bread and salt under the same roof.

It is an irreversible process. Elaborate thought must be evoked prior to proceeding upon the selected path. One that I can say with some pride to have accomplished correctly.

A detour into normality..

The heaters work, the sleep is sound, the phone rings in its shrill tone that brooks no excused digressions. Groggily, I answer the call, the pitter patter of rain on some roof in the tropics can be heard in the background. The voice on the other end is mellifluous in its modulation and pitch. The memories come flooding back, I suddenly realize that for this particular call I would require myself to be with all my wits about me and not as I actually was.

To minimize loss in generality, I am at my most vulnerable, when I am awakened from a deep sleep, or disturbed when reading a novel. The former is slowly turning into a real liability.

I stop dilly-dalliying and grumble out a 'hello'. The rest is drowned out intentionally, which goes to show for a fact that the conversation would interest readers as much as watching grass grow, or better, watching me get a job in this forsaken hole. Either way, the gist of the conversation is me doodling, and the mellifluous, modulated voice at the other end doing what it does best: speak mellifluously and in a modulated way. However at the end of the so called conversation I doodled some more, the voice modulated some more and so it did end.

Thenceforth, methinks, in a very original manner that my world has forever changed for the better, the colors seem more colorful, the hues more sharply differentiated, the most everyday jobs elevated to interesting endeavors. Adventurism has become the new watchword, and caution, as they say, has gone out the window.

My present happiness equals my past misery.

The coup-de-grace...

                               I was created when the maker gave in to perfection 

                                                                                                     - yours truly

For eons, a puff of atomic dust floated through nothingness, swirling, absorbing, making its tortuous way across wilderness, utterly unaware of the esoteric future in store for it.

Due to a series of mind boggling coincidences that puff of dust was initially grabbed by the gravitational pull of a passing, nebulous looking, mass of dust, rocks and gas. Next it was splashed all around the mass, ripping it apart but still maintaining its integrity. Then the puff of dust miraculously reassembled into a section of the mass which subsequently was flung out into space.

Thus the final resting location of the trillions of molecules of the initial dust cloud was a gravitational orbit some fifteen crore kilometers from the initial mass.

The extremely lucky dust cloud then was elevated to heights beyond reason. If it was an unthinkable coincidence until then, the next few happenings must have lit the flame of extreme invinciblity and self wonderment within the maker himself.

The dust cloud, which until then was just a group of random particles brought together by sheer chance, began to explode into indescribable vibrancy and exhibit free will, that forerunner to all observable experiences, under the most breathtaking of probabilistic occurences. 

This then was all that was required of supernatural intervention. The rest is as we have learnt to say, History. The more recent yet elegant spouting of life all over the earth (our puff of dust) in a cornucopia of colors, sizes and shapes marks a epoch in evolutionary incandescence beginning from the uni to the multi-cellular, from micro to the macro, every single grain of nature, every single whiff of moisture laden air, every single time we wonder about the reason we are afraid of the dark, or why we are drawn to the sweet scent of rain drenched earth, or when a stretch of landscape we drive through makes your heart wrench in esctacy, when we sometimes feel as if the world was created just because God could have you in it thinking just what you are at this moment is a triumph in itself.

To think that all this started due to a quantum disturbance in the very fabric of spacetime sometimes makes me wonder if I have got it the other way around...........  

                                                                                                                        

In extremity, courage becomes routine....

let us go back in time....far far back.( 1076 BC)
Imagine your very distant(in the past i mean) ancestor clutching a clump of grass at a clearing at the center of the then amazon rain forest...
imagine his face contorted in extreme concentration, oblivious to the demonic pitter patter of the torrential downpour all around him, oblivious also to the complete darkness and the bone chilling cold seeping into his body due to the rain.
Imagine him using all his then known and practised skills of hunting knowledge to keep utterly still, and while not a breath escaped him, to plunge with the unerring accuracy, and confidence of a hundred such encounters, onto the now terrified back of the hitherto unsuspecting spotted deer, his hard earned dinner to-be...


let us now fast forward to .....(1034 AD).
this lone man dared out for a quick kill for his hunger...
this man is running hard, gasping for breath, he runs as if his very life depended upon it...( that night perhaps it did... but that life was prolonged by his exertions. no matter what he was to do he would die that night...)
the stars were blinking furiously, egging him on, willing him to run as fast as he could. he ran to get away from it. (it was the only thing he could do... he would never have done it if he knew what was in store for him.)
he actually dared a backward glance, the terrain was ruddy and rugged, patched up with shrubs and prickly bushes. then suddenly in that moment of indescision, in that second of dismal realisation, it was on him.
the man could not even start to comprehend the extreme swiftness of the attack, the first bite of the jaguar tore into the occiput and trapezal muscles, severing the cartoids and crushing vice like onto the bone of mans hand. his legs buckled as his knees gave way. he was now on his back gazing with blurry vision at the now still twinkling stars. It was as if the gods were laughing...
It was then, in the extreme edge of his conciousness, in the very gauntlet of his mind drugged in pain that he saw it. the sky erupted in a huge explosion of light. the rapid outward movement of a ball of fire in the sky produced as much light as the sun did at daytime.. that was the last time the man opened his eyes...
five hundred miles away chinese astronomers of that age recorded the first ever documented supernova in the observable universe.

the russian convoys...( 1943 AD)
Cold men, cold at heart and body, walked drone like to their respective action stations aboard the battle flagship HMS Viking. they were men deprived of sleep. men who tottered on the edge of exhaustion, many actually had gone over the edge, they just did their job with a mechanical efficiency.
The cold was unbearable, the scale reading thirty degrees of frost and the barometer dillidallying with the temperature guage in a dance of death.
It was when this man was standing at the side aisle aft to the bulkheads that the torpedo struck, (the viking was carrying 16000 tons of crude oil on the convoy consisting of 29 ships heading for russia). the rapidity of the strike coupled with the cracking of the pressure hull paralysed the shell shocked man.
He was thrown over the side as the ship cracked apart at the deadcentre, discharging her deadly fl;aming cargo into the sea. this was when he saw the others, men from his own boat in various stages of despair... the luckiest and the fastest to die were the men falling clear of the oil, into the ice cold arctic sea, where the sudden temperature change of about 100 degrees killed instantly.
luck was never his even in death. he already knew the effect of burning oil on the ocean surface, it having a lesser density than water kept the body afloat longer and there was no merciful extinction by drowning. the oil also uses up all the oxygen on the surface so that the combined effect of the deadly burning capability and asphyxation killed with subtle refinements in agony.
the man died a true warrior, in the death throes of pain and utter unspeakable agony, he never let the flames have the satisfaction of touching his tears...

the smoky dawn...( 2006 AD)...
the man was tearing past seven armed persons, trigger ready, he escapes by a hairs breadth. he is tired, he knows that he is grossly outnumbered. he knows that even with his most cunning tactics in field operations he would leave the ruins dead, with a cold bullet through his heart.
all this he knew, but human reason flies out of the window the moment men fight for survival.
the gut instincts kick in, surging the veins with adrenaline, increasing heart beat rate.
suddenly the power goes out and the man (lacking an UPS) slams his hand onto the keyboard raving at the lost chance to kill the cornered counter terrorist in the game CS...
this is life as we know it... now....

the void....( aftermath...)
we have progressed as a civilisation of strong to weak physically and mentally... people then could cope with far more than any present day individual. we have lost the thrill of being in the actual situation, of being in extreme situations where every faculty of our persona is tested to the full.
we live in a lacklusture world. the void we feel whenever we encounter the unknown, leaving us with a primate fear deep inside is reason enough to liven things up a bit.
how many people have done things in their lives with a risk factor more than ten percent?..
how many have broken through the self imposed shackles of modern civilisation to tell the world their would be exploits to serendipity?
how many?...

hope for all, will for some, courage for one.... be the one....

The psycology of pure fear...

let me be reasonable..
let us start a chain of thought. Think of the first thing you would like to do given that there is no one to stop you from doing it. The answer varies from the mediocre to the macabre. But power is something that has the ability to lift the imaginations of the simpleton even. For some the mere idea of power corelates to fiefdom, cruelty, absolute tyranny. Whereas for others it may mean nothing more than a siesta under the sun.
People of varied interests and cultural diversity react differently to an investment of power, FEAR evolves out of absolute power. Fear, unlike power, generates similar reactions in humans
The ability to instill mind numbing fear is the key to chilling efficiency in human relations. Even if the articulations of fear are different, the effect is the same. It starts with a series of biological processes triggered in the brain, speeding through the nerves, it has the potential to reorient, disturb realistic perception, maximise reflex time, paralyse muscle systems.
Fear has the uncanny ability to distort thought processes leading to erroneous reactions. More familiar is the huge mental bruteforce capacity of fear. It has the power to influence and even dictate event processes. It is the ultimate, power punch in the virtual chess game of wills against one another.
Fear is sometimes the last resource of a person to muddle the thoughts of a dangerous and clever opponent. When cleverly instilled, fear can give a false impression of strength and intangible strength. Ninety percent of fear is appearance. If one can create an appearance of the existence of fear, the odds are stacked against the opponent checking up on the credibility of the source, fear creates a mist in the minds of humans.

the art of sincere appreciation....

we live our life in mundane routines, never belligerent, never caustic,never vital...we just donot want to experience the splendours of existence. we react to the challenges of our daily life by shutting out our varied powers of imagination. we always tend to over or under react to any situation.

all this happens because we are never aware of others' reaction to our action.we pretend haplessly as being in control while it becomes painfully( and sometimes humourously) aware to the onlookers that you are striving to make an impression.....it is sometimes childish to say the least.

enter appreciation.....

this trauma can be avoided if we empower ourselves with this long forgotten and fast becoming extinct art of appreciation.....

now it is time for some serious introspection....have we ever appreciated an endeavor of a comrade from the heart. have we been sincere when we have expressed our admiration for a job well done?

the answer in this modern, fast and furious lifestyle is seldom yes.

the elixir of contenment.......

contrary to our mythological beliefs, the elixir for living a contented life is just making the other person feel important and infalliable....

as the saying goes.."everyone of us have a banner hanging from our necks saying- make me feel important"

we live in such a times that it is considered inelegant to appreciate....how many times have we witnessed an act of finesse, an act of bravery, an act of self sacrifice that rivets our imagination? and all we ever did was grin at him or her sheepishly, tonguetied?

we must endeavour to revive this art ....it is possible through conscious determination to give way to those few words which can make the day for another human being......

the road to self discovery...

hi all....this is rajiv.v of mechatronics branch at MGIT hyderabad....below are some of my musings....feel free to comment....

have you ever wondered about that not so little accident so many many years ago which makes you wonder about it now........

yes, i am referring to the recent buzzwords born at the dawn of the new millenium..... quantum theory of life .....

scientists of the old have tried to explain the evolution of themselves and their fellow creatures. the most noticable and compelling of them was charles darwin in his book " the evolution of life forms". darwin explains the evolution of life as he saw it so many years ago, his theory has many startling insights into the train of life.... at the same time, it has many shortcomings. one of the main drawbacks being this- darwin seeks to explain only the evolution of life assuming it to have already been in existence, he does not delve into the vital question of "why?".

Here we try to view life from an outside standpoint, we try to forget for sometime that we are a part of what we are investigating( and what makes us investigate too...). we will actually try to walk the esoteric bridge which connects the hard world of modern physics and our reason to exist as we do.

an ode to human imagination.....

the human mind is one of the most remarkable entities ever known to man....( some of my friends at college donot seem to agree...)
one of the famous quotes in the scientific jargon nowadays is " if the human brain would be simple enough to understand, we would be so simple we wouldnt understand...."

not trying to sound pessimistic i would like to expostulate that at long last man seems to have realised the tremondous complexity in the electric tunnels of the mind... he now seems to have a profound respect for the unknown, while a few years ago there was contempt....

we are left now with the job of understanding the reason for this complexity....how could a mixture of supposedly primitive chemicals be potent enough to segregate into life as we see it now?

the explosion of quantum wilderness.....

in everyday life we have a smooth routine running, so we dont bother about the irregularities down under. it really is a chaotic world in the plunging levels of quantum imaging..(pun intended)....the microcosm is interwoven with huge irregularities....we all know that surfaces are rugged in the microscopic level, but that is not what i am talking about. i am trying to impress on you the fact that if we hope to achieve any semblance of success then we have to look deeper, much deeper ...we must explore the fabric of spacetime near the plancks length.

near the plancks length spacetime becomes an unbelievable mockery of our erstwile concepts of our surroundings...everything gets thrown out the window.we are in a eerie world where we donot seem to find any familiar landmarks, it looks like a quantum circus.

the origin of life.....

the vicinity of the plancks length(about 10 to the power of minus thirty three ....for the less scientifically inclined...) is the place where we must start our odessey to uncover...rather nibble at the reasons for the origin of complex and.......i wouldnt want to bore you by writing everything here....standby for another IP address soon....