What was he* thinking?!?!

Some of the most enjoyable conversations I've had are those which start somewhere, twist, turn, flash, burn and go through winding lanes, across trees, meadows and finally land up in a place that has absolutely nothing to do with how that conversation begun.

At the end of such a conversation I often wonder, "How did we get here?" and then go on to retrace the dialogue back to the original topic of discussion.

Similarly, when I come across a delicacy or a novel idea, I often wonder how this came to be? What was the thought process... chain of thought... spark of imagination. At times it makes sense, for example, Fire. One can imagine the first fire must have been the result of a lightning or a spontaneous forest fire and that gave out heat (a desirable thing for early man). Rubbing hands for warmth is intuitive so someone must have made the connection, did some experimentation an voila FIRE!... but this is an example that makes sense, an origin story one can imagine, but that's not what this post is about. This is about the random things that I am unable to fathom.

Milk - The first person who saw the udder of a cow and went like you know what would be really cool... let me squeeze that and drink whatever comes out ... What was he thinking?!?!?

Sausages - For those who don't know... sausages are basically cheap parts of a pig ground and stuffed into the small intestine of what is usually the same pig. Now while they are really tasty, if you think about it, whoever came up with the idea to push meat down the pigs piping before it goes down yours... What was he thinking?!?!?!?

Cheese (Mature) - I can imagine curdling of milk to get cheese must have been an accidental discovery, but who was the smart Alec who decided that it would be a good idea let this thing spoil to the point where it begins to smell and then eat it... What was he thinking?!?!?!?

Birds nest - I'm not wondering what was a bird thinking when it decided to build itself a nest. I'm talking about using birds nest in deserts and soup. Whoever came up with this idea must have really had something against these birds. He would have thought to himself, "I will show that bird, I'll eat its family, and its eggs and you know what ...for good measure I'll eat up its nest also"...Seriously... What was he thinking?!?!?!?

And then there are the weirder delicacies in the world which I cant even begin to imagine what was going on in the persons head when they came up with the dish. For example century egg or urine brine eggs ... I'm not going to try and explain what these are (feel free to google them (Not Safe For Work)) but seriously... WHAT WAS HE THINKING?!?!?!?!?

If you have had similar thoughts please leave your ideas in the comments.



*For the purpose of this post he= he/she. 

The brain is evolution compatible

The mind they say is huge and we only use around 10% of its full potential in our entire life. How then, at times we feel like our mind is going to blast? How at times we feel like there is too much to handle, how we feel that things are beyond our understanding? Where is the remainder of the 90% of our brain then? Or is it some sort of envelope? Something that has to be over clocked to the extent that it bursts at the seams and then allows us to use say another 20% of brain power??

Or are we just a hardware that is evolution compatible our brain has certain parts that we don’t have the software to run! We have still not developed the codes to do things that our brain will be able to control like for example we will discover wormholes and teleportation will be a reality and a part of the brain will be dedicated to controlling that process. Maybe telekinetic will be another part, maybe we will have USB port and part of our brain will be the 54.7 Ghz processor to run it. The possibilities are infinite maybe wireless communication will happen mentally. Only the future will tell but it’s important that we keep our minds open… never know when the new software comes about and we have a whole new look to life.

1113

25^th November 2010

Kanishk Kakkar

Lions are like Rockstars

I was randomly having a conversation with a friend about animals and how some of them I respect and others I don’t really have a great fondness for. When this thought randomly came up … I don’t respect Lions … lionesses I respect… lions I don’t … they are like Rock Stars they have long hair and don’t really do anything… have a whole female following (think groupies) ....just get a lot of fame and glory for just appearing.

I rest my case

Nostalgic Sunday (Stay In France part III)

Hopefully you have read all the previous posts in this series but in case you haven’t this is where it all started with a flip

Now last Sunday since I was staying in Bordeaux only I decided I would go do some thing totally Sunday like. Now on Friday when I was getting back from work I saw this big board about some international fair in Bordeaux so I googled it and it seemed interesting so I thought it would be a good place to spend a Sunday afternoon, plus the fair ticket came with a all day pass to travel by bus and tram, so even if I did get bored at the fair I could roam around the rest of town. Now in France there is an interesting thing about cigarettes, it can be very annoying at times but everyone smokes, so there are naturally a lot of cigarette shops which the administration has conveniently turned into retail outlets of tickets and passes basically like the mother dairy in Delhi. So I walk to the nearest cigarette shop and buy a ticket for the fair along with which I get a day pass for travel so I board the next bus I see and head to the fair.

If anyone has been to the India international trade fair this one was just like that, only it was a Bordeaux International Trade fair, so they had this one hall that had stalls from all over the world and a few other halls that had French companies with their stalls. I was roaming around the stalls from Africa and was very impressed by some of the wares of the Chinese stall. They had on display all various sorts of knives and daggers including the Samurai Katana which is an extremely interesting weapon. Lingering there for a while I went on to some of the other stalls when I heard some music in the back ground that had me cock my ears and listen with joy.

The music seemed to familiar to be true, and I could not believe that they were actually playing Aaja Nach le, being drawn by the Hindi words I went towards the source of the music to find a stage held by four sari clad girls dancing to the song. The first thing that reminded me of course was Sindhu, and then I thought about it and it had been over a week since I had heard a Hindi song, or spoken to anyone in person in Hindi, and I felt nostalgic about the language. 

Almost as though there was someone listening to my thoughts this voice came from behind me saying ‘aur bhai saab kahan ghum rahe ho?’ a guy from Delhi had also come there to put up a stall. So I waited and chatted with him in Hindi for a while asked him how things were and he told me that business was bad and that no one in this city buys anything, they are all here just to roam around, and when I looked around he was right hardly any one was carrying any bag or evidence that they had been buying something, they were all just roaming around, just like me enjoying a Sunday afternoon. Then I continued to roam around in the vicinity hoping to run into some more people that spoke the language that I did, the dance got over and that was followed by some Egyptian dance. Time and again after that the troop that had done the first dance on the Hindi song kept coming back and dancing on different Hindi numbers, the dance was good for someone dancing on bollywood numbers in France but I was much happier just listening to the Hindi words. While still roaming around I ran into the girls that were the Hindi Dance troop and I just felt like going and speaking to them because they obviously had something to do with India, so I went and congratulated them said the dance was very nice, asked them where they were from, had random small talk for about 45 seconds and then they needed to get back on the stage for another dance so I went on roaming around. Soon the Hindi songs stopped and I shifted to other halls saw some very interesting gadgets that I just could not imagine using back home. After a few hours of roaming through different halls including one that had farm animals apparently in their natural environment, nothing in comparison to what we are used to seeing on Delhi Roads…. Farm animals in the natural environment.

Having spent a few hours walking I decided to get out of the fair and roam a little on the other side of the river. The only glitch with that plan was that I had no idea what was on the other side of the river, none the less, armed with my full day travel pass I got into the tram that was going on the other side of the river, traveled a few stations in until I felt really hungry and spotted a Quick just at the tram station. I got off and entered the burger joint, stared at the menu for a few moments asked the lady at the counter if she could speak English, receiving a negative response I proceeded to point out on the menu what I wanted and within a few moments was served and seated.

Fed and ice creamed I decided to call it a day and head back home. Once I got into the tram I felt this sudden nostalgia for bollywood and Hindi songs in general and then it hit me that I had my phone and handsfree and some songs on it. So I quickly setup the apparatus and was swinging to the tunes of Bollywood.

Now as such that’s all that happened, I listened to music on my way back, but the feeling was very different, and so was the effect. Now till a point I can take a tram or a bus but beyond that I need to walk and that is roughly 5 and a half kilometers from where I stay, so I was walking in the direction of the place of residence snapping my fingers to ‘kisi ki muskurahaton pe ho nisar’ when I thought….if I started singing loudly no one would understand what I’m saying so it really wouldn’t matter, and that’s what I did, I started singing on the top of my voice that song and the next until my phone decided that it was time to take it to the next level. It played ‘masakali’ now we all know that its impossible to not sway to Rehman’s tunes when ‘masakali’ plays. So I was not only singing on the top of my voice I was also swaying to the tunes on the road while cars are passing by at all sorts of speeds. The most interesting was this car had stopped at a signal and I needed to cross that road, now I was a little far away from the crossing and pedestrian signal turned red so I stopped still swaying with a tune on my lips and earphones in my ears and the lady in the car signaled me to keep going even though she had the right of way, I think it was because I was practically dancing while standing there but it could be she was just good natured and normally lets people cross, either way I’d like to believe it was the former. I got back listened to some more Hindi songs for a while changed the songs on my phone and now when I’m walking I’m singing. 

Ummm.... lets see

I was once told that the reason for blogging is to express your thoughts the speak your mind. The question is what if you wish to speak your mind but there are no words ? what if the stream of thought that your mind is is actually not a stream but more like a whole bunch of droplets that are so small and so scattered that getting them together would not only be futile but would wet the whole place? enjoy the dew.

Which came first?

Which came first the chicken or the egg?

it was the egg.

i was there.

i was waiting.

the fried egg, the egg roll, the omelet, even the boiled egg came and i was still waiting for my one plate of chicken momos.

It's always the egg first.

:-(

The divine council of heaven and hell

A while back I was thinking to myself as I do quite often and was wondering how these things work.

Proposition 1: Good people go to heaven and sinners go to hell.

Proposition 2: Heaven is relative concept and everyone has their own hell and heaven.

Going by the two above mentioned propositions now lets take a third fundamental that opposites attract, now say there is a person A who is a very good person[1] and a person B sinner of the highest order[2], supposing A is madly in love with B if A is to go to heaven, A’s heaven cant be complete without B but B must go to hell so how does that work?

I got a couple of interesting responses;

If B is a random person that A is madly in love with for all you know being with A may be Hell for B and therefore there is no problem

If B is not a random person, A loves B and B loves A also, then depending on what B wants more, to be with A or to see A happy in heaven the opposite will happen since B is destined to be in hell.

A third argument that I came across is love trumps sin so lovers will be together.

Now the question: A dies destined to go to heaven, A’s heaven in complete without B, B is alive what will happen?

---

[1] Has to be in heaven

[2] Has to be in hell

Class Contradictions

The last week of every semester is interestingly so different from every other week of every semester that is the week of the exams. It is so very interesting to note the stark contradictions in the way we perceive a class room to be throughout the rest of the semester vis a vis the last day.

Through out the rest of the semester, the place that is also known as a seat is nothing more than a place to rest our backsides on while being able to do what ever we desire to do in class obviously subject to ones own level of interest and attention. However on those 6 fateful days the seat not only brings with it luck both good and bad, the positioning of this seat means so much that at times we even forget that it’s the same seat that spent the last 4 months being weighed down by your backside or that of someone else. We bother about the distance from the window the distance from the fan the distance from the door, and then for some the distance from the other person who has studied for the exam. The seat becomes our world, our domain our little kingdom where you are king the examination your war and your pens and pencils all your knights and bishops.

Similarly the time spent in the classroom during those last 6 days is less than 3 hours everyday compared to the over 6 hours on every other day; it seems like such an eternity, an event, a time that is almost enough to make a person age. The class which forms a major chunk of a normal working day, we get up go to class, come back do whatever there is to do and then go back to class the next morning. During exams every time we visit that classroom it’s a whole new experience, it seems like a totally new battle, a totally different world. Although the time duration between coming out of that room and entering it is slightly over 21 hours it seems like a new feeling all over again, with a new subject, having in the last 21 odd hours unlearnt one and learned another subject being as prepared as the limited time can possibly allow one to be for the new exam on the new day, the class room is to be revisited almost like a six day curse during which the same ritual has to be repeated for 6 days consecutively before the cursed can be free in mind and soul and hostel.

DUALITY POST

This post being the 50th post I'm going to try and make it a post that is a little special, it will talk about two things.

Firstly, the fact that it is the 50th post yay :D and how I never thought I'd actually have a blog in the first place and have 50 posts was not even a dream.

Secondly, I’ll talk about Rock On, the movie the song and the fact that the music of the same is inspired by the music of another Hindi movie.

It was a very long time ago when Voix introduced me to the concept of blogging, initially I thought it was weird, an opening into your own head, your thoughts out on the internet for everyone to see and interpret and analyze you to be someone you may or may not be. I did not blog. Then one fine Sunday, I’m not sure what prompted me I decided that hey what the hell lets post something, that was 49 posts earlier, and a long time ago. Since the time when my blog was open to only a select few readers (which were only 3 of which only 2 ever read it), to allowing everyone to read but only moderated comments were entertained to now un moderated comments I think I can safely say that I’m comfortable with the concept of blogging, and as a lateral shift I think the very fact that my heart jumps with joy every time I receive a comment, shows me that I actually want people to read my thoughts. Well what can I say; my yesterday thinks my today is insane.

The rock on bit, the reason I introduced it in the beginning was to keep you interested in the whole stuff about me blogging and all that. I’ll keep this simple.

Movie: Lakshya

Inspired from: Rock climbing scene back ground music

Ta ta ..tann…..tan tan ….. ta ta .. tann…..

Ps: Thanks Voix

The Meaning of 'Interesting'

I have always maintained that the word interesting is a very interesting word. I have also always wondered what the word actually means, and what is the concept of interest? Well here goes an attempt to answer the questions that I have just conjured.

The proposition:

“Some thing is interesting when you don’t know everything about the specific thing but you do know enough to know that you want to know more”

The explanation:

Things are not interesting when we know nothing about them; say if we were to talk about some weird abstract string theory concept of physics with a student of arts. The guy has never heard about it, he knows nothing it is boring. On the other had, going by the principle laid down if you know everything about something there are no questions and therefore no interest. So in order to be interested in something it is not only important to know a little bit about it but also important to have the want to know much more.

The same thing also applies to people, people are interesting when they are intriguing, and you believe that there is a lot to them than meets the eye. Using the same concept on a much lighter note, if you want someone to be interested in you, you should be interested in them let them know something about you but only enough to want to know more, which is probably why the girls like the bad boys ;-)

Hua Kya hai

Written by a friend phillosopher and guide, Anuj Bhandari. This is a peice of litereature that i totally fell in love with when i heard it the second time. The first time i only understood half the words. 

Guzar jaati hai hazaron ki jindagi 

aapki zulfon ko sulajhte huae dekhne mai.

baith kar roop ki machaanon pe 

sun kahan paate ho 

un guzarti hui fariyadon ko.

door se baith ke dekhti ho

apne aashikon ke janazon ko

aur poochti ho ki .... hua kya hai?

ujad gae maekhane saakhi ke intazar mai

aur toote huae pyalon ko dekh ke 

poochti ho ki ...... hua kya hai ?

Jaala diye hamne apne aarmanon ki tasveeron ko

aur bujhte hui aag to dekh ke 

poochti ho ki ..... hua kya hai?

raat bhar aati ho tasavur mai

aur doondhlai hui aakon ko dekh ke savare 

poochti ho ki .... hua kya hai?

sanjidgi aa gai hai ab to muskurahat mai bhi 

aur hamari khamoshi ko sun ke 

poochti ho ki ... hua kya hai?

tum poochti thi tou haale dil bayan karne ki 

Himmat si jut ti thi

Ab to sara zamana poochta hai ki .. Hua Kya hai?

detae hai jawab tumhare in nadan sawalon ka

Karte hai mohobat, dil ki gehriyon se zaada

agar shak hai to lelo intihan hamari chahaton ka

magar bas ab na poochna ki ... hua kya hai?

Anuj Bhandari 

New Age

The way things are looking we are almost here

Tom and Jerry: The other side of the story

Since we were little kids we have been shown Tom and Jerry, the sweet, funny, cute four legged, four fingered cartoon characters of Tom the cat and Jerry the mouse. Tom runs after Jerry, the battle commences and the battle is won by jerry. As kids we are all very happy and rejoice as though good won over evil once again, till the next time the Lion roars and Tom and Jerry starts again.

Now as such I'm not at all a cat person and the people who know me even a little will be able to vouch for this statement any given day or night. However what I wish to show you is the other perspective, the perspective that is not shown to us, the perspective of the employee that does everything wrong every time, or the Tom perspective.

What we see is a cat chasing a mouse, well that is what cats are supposed to do, ask an Egyptian and he will tell you how from time in memorial that is what cats have been doing and that is what everyone wants cats to do. So Tom is not the villain here he is actually the unsuccesfull valiant that keeps fighting for what is his duty. Now in every episode, a number of times Tom runs after Jerry tries to catch him, Jerry doges him for a while and then gets caught once in a while and then escapes again, during which Tom is subject to such intense forms of pain like heavy weights to bowling balls to electric currents to the unimaginable. Yet Tom has never given up, he gets up strightens him self up, at times by blowing his thumb to recover from the injuries that the road roller gave him, and continues his never ending persuit for Jerry the Merry. I think every now and then while watching Tom and Jerry we must spare a thought for the warrior in the cat and as they say a little appriciation can go a long way.