Thought crucible

Even as the title itself suggests the intent of the writer in describing the darkness of more than one kind, Joseph Conrad's novella goes beyond portraying the harsh rainforests of Congo or the morbid depths of human psyche or even the tyranny of imperialistic rule. What was most impressive about the book was how Conrad explores and describes situations and experiences in the Heart of Darkness that is Africa. His contemplation on the cannibals' restraint in a certain episode or his narration of the sighting of the wild primeval men and his appreciation of their raw humanity like yours and mine or his facetious comments on high-handed Imperialism or describing Kurtz's 'Intended''s mourning a year later - an entire gamut of human expression is traversed. One of the most striking features of this book is how the author describes the life-like quality of the wilderness and the almost phantasmagorical description of his crew's trip down the Congo river into the ...

Ever since the advent of Wikipedia, it's variants and more importantly the idea of Web 2.5ing, there was always this sub-conscious effort from my side to be relevant in the accumulation of the most obscure of facts about the most obscure of places and people. Not only has my active participation been a rather interesting phenomenon, but the idea of a person who I would never have even imagined that I would meet, hooks up and we end up spending hours fighting virtual Mafia wars, the concept kind of starts getting a little trippy. These phenomena no doubt exhibit characteristics that are so profoundly impacted by time - just like the supposed maturity of a person or the understanding of the world or the more and more compact stuffing of switches and devices in a tenth of a micron square. But this particular aim of 'world knowledge' and a 'single consciousness' no longer begs but commands our attention as more and more rapid progress is being made in all fields concern...

It is with great pain and with little repentence I question beliefs that have become so ingrained in our society and way of thinking today. It is still so shocking to see babies thrown from atop buildings and burnt in bonfires in the name of black magic. But lets just take a step back and analyse what we have called black magic - an attempt to achieve ends my means that have no justification or reasoning, but are based purely on the whims and the divine afflati of old men witnessing mescaline sunsets and perhaps having necrophilistic tendencies. They say that the scriptures that were and are studied with such great veneration is really a description of the held ideas of those days and it is despicable that even today we decide to judge people and ideas based on our ability or even our willingness to shower that same veneration. The concept of God is a fundamentally personal one. It is just as bizarre to think of an old man looking at us from the sky as it is to bank on divine interfer...

Good evening Mr. S.S. Mantha ,Chairman of AICTE, Mr. B.R.Bhat, respected Directors, Deans, our beloved faculty, staff and my adorable friends. We are gathered here on the solemn occasion of valediction after four years of what almost 500 students can vouch for as their best times in their life. From naive, idealistic, sober juveniles, we have transformed into mature, sometimes high-spirited individuals who shall be passing on the baton that has been so regally passed on for the past 5 decades in this Institute. Looking at all the high-flying batches pass out in front of us over the past four years, there was always a sense of trepidation that we might just drop the baton at this critical juncture. Well, it turns out that the army of individuals that are seated here in their best of attire have attained what has been rarely achieved and what will be tough to emulate in the years to come. Be it in landing some of the finest jobs in the market, admits to the finest Technical and Business...

They are right here! Not rinsed in the blinking stardust of a moonless night. Not lurking in an abstuse alcove waiting to take you down. Not drenched in 40-year-old muck in a defunct tap on a deserted building. Not through the ups and downs of an electromagnetic field from the TV and the muck-girl with all that goo, poo and her circular voodoo. Death is just a continuation of life, only unbeknownst to the whole world. You take the same few steps to the bathroom and the same number of strokes will clean the eternally yellow teeth and the same watery coffee at the mess. We just lead life like we always did and 'die' like we always will. The chain is an extended one, being a speck on that circumference that spans by an unimaginagly large radius. So it is freaky to know that when I am alive, the little mind games in the mind are not really games and funny they definitely aren't. Who said that the little nudge that caused the movement of the chains in the stairs at home wasn...

The last 4 days have not been unlike running from a Jungle of outlandish growth and trying to tread on that little line of sanity just above the murky waters of hopeless phonecalls, SMSes and Facebook shag. Needless to stay, cloudy smoke ,courtesy Deshi and gang had me fall into those very murky waters. Gut-spitting retching later, sweat beads and motionless fans conspired yet again and I tripped. Memories of the first trip came back to haunt me and this time, I just let be. It was like Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds! Next day morning involved massive amounts of damage control as things settled down. My visits to the sixth floor didn't stop with others joining in the trip. Moga, Babbar, Mota, Behera and Rahul Babicz tripped balls too! Trips to the deans office and chilling in that heavenly AC was something I got used to for the next couple of days. The photographs and the starched shirts and ironed pants and polished boots and shaven chins joined in the party as the photographs were...

This was just too good to be true. An entire week passing off without the sound of another del-ro-by-del-eks and del-whys . No Loop equations or the equally indigestible node equations. A hundred score less frantic hits on the already fragile Fx100MS. Boy, this was a win-win-win situation - the scheming Durgamba owner being the unlikely victor in this propitious bargain. All that needed to be done was a little sneeze and a couple of coughs from that large repertoire. Had they not come in handy during that awkward moment with her parents in the lift, or during that unbelievably lucky day during DSP endsems, when Squeak questioned me on FIR-filters and all I could muster was a sudden bout of coughing sprinkled with random utterances of 'band-pass' and 'frequencies'? Surely, my performance this time would be worthy of a Swine flu infection suspicion. If Paranoia Pandu ORDERED a week's leave for an innocuous sneeze at the ice-cold laboratory, surely the planned bouts wo...

As the white circulating vapours slid through the long neck and were absorbed in one outlandish gulp, there was a lot to suggest the things to come in the next couple of days. Packing like an absolute amateur, I was up and ready for Hanni's treat followed by a trip to God's own Country at Munnar. The mad bus-ride to the hallowed portals of Taj was not uneventful, the Mr. ponks losing Hanni's bag in the bus, my front seat ride among glowing patches of red, white and yellow. Walking through the fish market, a littoral phantasmagoria of sorts was witnessed. Prawns, Squids and Fish had decided to swim the oesophagi of men and hence their predicament. Landing at the massively grilled iron gates, we were security checked and freed into the grandeur of Taj. Admiring the bibliophilous air and the leather cushions looking scalded in resplendent light, I climbed the stairs to be greeted by lime juice. Devouring it just like I did the incongruent mixture of grass and rat poison, I ent...

Phoolon Ka Taaron Ka As mother Earth spun around n trippy patterns like a speck of dust off a rugged old mat. And in that massive background shot an arrow, our hero. It was for this brother that the little sister spun. They had to live eternity and ithis was the message from the flowers and the stars alike. And as this tale went on, it was deduced that there were two ways out - be the infinity in infinity or go to the boundaries of thought and beat whats beyond - the ultimate Schrodinger's Cat. The former will provide a physically comforting and a psychologically pricking comfort in thought. The latter eggs you on. You realize that rest has been wiped out on that little speck of dust. The milli-speck that is you fights the quite visibly alive Schrodinger's Cat and leaves it to metamorphise into its dead counterpart. And we wait for the next trip. Zindagi Ek Safar Hain There can't be just two or three or for that matter just 11 as that lunatic claims. There have got to be a ...

The humps and the bumps of the road had a telling effect on our opinion of the yogasutras outside our lodge facing the Virupaksha temple. Musty bedsheets and rattled bowels cleansed, we set out on hired bicycles to explore the ancient ruins of the Vijayanagara capital of Hampi. As the cauldron blazed atop our heads, we stood the heat up and entered the temple. Couple of Garbhagriha visits later, we were left having to be awed by the monolith pillars, Yalis and pesading horses. Pachyderm assuagement and minority brownization later, we were exiting the doors to face the sun one more time. Cycling our way uphill, we were to come face to awed-face with the 4.5m huge, monolith Ganesha. Kadlekai Ganesha was uber-massive, so much so that only flashes of selective flesh made the cut to the sensor. Later, a series of Jaina-style Shaiva mandirs were seen along the downward slope. Firangs rubbed sun-lotion on each other's backs as I had my bladder relieved and studied the lintels and toranas ...