a fine day

the day was fine,
the sun  shined
i got up the bed,
like a song sublime.

i looked at the river
flow.
i remembered
how she went
not waiting for me,
yet staying with me.

i felt the breeze.
memories.
her arms
around me.
and how I took
the oxygen
from her kiss
as if 
I could not live
without it.

now
I'm breathless.

I open my eyes.
i see
the river
flow by.

the day was fine,
the sun shined.

The Graduate

(to my niece Aadya on her kinder graduation, june 2012)


Hey kinder graduate,
Come lets celebrate!

Hopscotch, sing a song, play, rock n roll,
Merry go round girl you're a doll.

Eat some biscuits, chocolates delicious,
To one & all yes yes you're most precious.

Go bend your body see upside down, Ho!
Colourful smile is the wide wide rainbow.

Life is a surprise let's put it to test.
Climb up the tree free bird has built a nest

We'll sit chatter chatter plenty of matter,
They say in Hindi for tomato 'tamattarrrrr'.

Ha ha ha. 
Click. Click. 
Caught your laugh in a photograph.
Now let's see the ships sail n dock @ the Cochin wharf.

And roam round around until the sundown.
After dark we'll see the stars and you can change your gown.

Hey tender graduate, one thing I sure bet.
With your magic 'Jee-boom-baa' you're teachers pet.

Redemption of a Rapist?

When? When will I realize,
Girl and the man is one and the same?
When to me will this strike,
She's not an object of any game?

When will I face it,
my enemy lust?
Why can't I see
It burns me to a pathetic dust?

When will I understand,
Form is a transient mirage?
When will I visualize,
It's flesh, bones, blood and trash?

When to me will occur the fact,
Body and Shit is the very same food?
Why then is it so hard for me
To make an effort and change for good?

When will I feel this in my heart,
I crushed her dream into a drop of tear?
When will I sow a tender gaze,
To see in her face a Smile flower.

When? When indeed will I awake?
That day she'll walk fearlessly again.
It's time to draw my sword and fight.
To wage this war within why the hell am I afraid!?

I pray I realize and save the Grace,
She's the goddess who carries this Human Race!

The Connect

(When we started a what's app group of friends from 11th & 12th)

After 18 Long Years, a flame's poof

We meet again under this what's app roof

On different paths we eagerly started 

Here we're, feeling we never parted!? Touchwood.

How this Connect? Now with the Muses I wonder

To the freedom we take in this forum I surrender

Born of something and everything deeper

Than just knowing and bowing simply to the other

Before we met at school for first

In the register our names were set

Wow! Did you glimpse that beautiful Connect

We can call it destiny and fairly reflect

We took our seats eyeing each other

To meet everyone yonder it was pleasure

Slowly, naturally we acquainted further

Then it happened! I felt 'together' :)

I lived my life in your breaths exhale

From the same pond of air we did inhale

Mozart I heard, in our harmonic heart beat

Mine slipped to 180 bpm, in that excitement heat

We moved singular at the school bell ting

Bonded in a line we were ready to sing

Ha ha! Haa ha! We giggled the song

Shhh! Stop it guys, else they will hit the gong

Same lessons and sounds we heard

Someone started counting the sheep herd

What I mean to say is we merged

As we dissolved like sugar in that knowledge curd

Teachers filled the blackboard , wiped it clean

With the left over chalks we played unseen

In the urinals our urine linked like streams 

We even shared our fantasy dreams

Oh we were merry like Tom & Jerry

Jolly we set sail in this Senior School ferry

All is well we tell but sometimes unwell

We held on to each other and kicked some fear to hell

A year and another we shared our hunger lunch

Jokingly sometimes we tried to pinch and punch

Voila! The magic happened! Can you tell me what?!

1,2,3 Now you loose! We have become a family at heart.

One more thing I've left to say, before I go away

I may break my rhyme and verse, let me simply say

Long after we all parted, I went

back to the school

Not a person but one was there

sitting in a stool

Kind enough he was to let me

inside so cool

He knew I grew up in that school

and I was no fool

I went to our class up front,

empty and silent

I sat in one seat and then every seat,

where you all sat for long

And from my heart I wished all best of the luck

All the best and the rest

I sat there for some more time,

With a joyous heart I parted

From the street I looked again

At the school where we all chatted

After 18 Long Years, a flame's poof

We chat again under this what's app roof

Suddenly Urania got up,

I quickly held her hand.

What's the rush I asked,

I asked her what's up?

She smiled at me and told me this

Let me share it here, listen

Look up the night sky, do you see

Trillions of dots twinkling together

There like how the Orion Dots Connect

This group has got a Universal Touch

Writing Away

I write
To tell myself,
I am still
Sane,
Carry on.

I write
To sift
My thoughts,
The worthy ones
From the
Ugly lot.

I write
To scuba dive
into Memories, and
Swim with it
Like a fish
In a
Dream.

I write,
when
Truth
And Fiction
Blends
Into a
Single malt.

I write,
It consoles
my self,
To know that
few good
Exists
Within.

I write,
It shows me
Beauty is
Wider
Than what
Is
seen.

I write
In the mood for
It,
And in an
iPad
It looks good
To me.

I write,
It reflects
Myself,
Now
Whatever Thing
That might be.
Hmmm.

I write
Of course
to just have
Some fun,
When my
Thoughts
Like
Fallen leaves
Take flight
In the
Imagination breeze.

Ship of Theseus

I had once seen the film The Ship of Theseus (2013). The film starts by quoting the Theseus' Paradox.

I quote Wikipedia here...

"The ship of Theseus, also known as Theseus' paradox, is a thought experiment that raises the question of whether an object that has had all of its components replaced remains fundamentally the same object. The paradox is most notably recorded by Plutarch in Life of Theseus from the late first century. Plutarch asked whether a ship that had been restored by replacing every single wooden part remained the same ship."

That said, the film was interesting and definitely worth a repeat watch, but this is not a review of the film. What fascinated me was the celebration of this thought experiment for centuries by different thinkers in different ways when I felt the whole question was questionable fundamentally.

At this point it would be interesting to read the material in Wikipedia @ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus.

Let me quote the question again...

Is a ship that had been restored by replacing every single part the same ship?

The primary reason this question survives is because one assumes for granted the existence of something called a Ship. If there is no Ship at all in the first place, then the question whether it is the Same Ship will cease to have any existence in the plane of reason. To clarify, I don't object to existence of the name of an object with regard to its form and function but I dismiss the idea that the object has distinct existence as an Entity.

Is there a Ship? Let me investigate.

Suppose that there are many materials lying around. There is nothing NEW when we SEE the materials lying around. I pick up the materials lying around, arrange and align them in a particular way. Still, Absolutely speaking, there is nothing NEW because the materials just changed their Relative Positions in the Universe. To put it simply, what was THERE is now HERE. But what happens Relatively in the MIND?

When the materials come together in such a way that it creates a New FORM, there occurs a NEW SENSE OF WHOLE. When this happens the Mind bestows a SINGULARITY on the Assumed Whole. The Sense of Whole and the feeling of Singularity is so intense that the Mind imposes a Ghost Entity to the Form. This illusion of Entity becomes a spell when the Form starts to function together, be it a Ship or a Painting. The Entity gains authenticity with the help of language when the Form is labeled, say a SHIP.  All the materials assembled together will be considered to be a part of something that really never existed before or for that matter does not exist even after it has come together. Take for example the statement - This Nut is part of This Ship. Notice that the language has made the Nut a part of an Imaginary Whole called the Ship.

We forget that Name is just for communication and convenience. We don't realize that what is said or what is seen are few bits of material that have been juxtaposed together intelligently. We fail to acknowledge that there never was and there never is any NEW ENTITY. It just SEEMS so. The assembly is formed into a Singularity, an Entity, in the Mind.

THE ENTITY OF THE SHIP IS JUST A PROJECTION OF THE MIND. That, I feel, reasonably dismisses the Theseus Paradox fundamentally.

Just to extend the analysis, we may not feel like asking this question if just a small bit of wood was changed in the Ship. That is because the mind does not perceive any substantial change.

THIS IS TRUE FOR EACH AND EVERYTHING AROUND US. EVERY THING IS JUST A COMPOUND. BUT WHAT ABOUT US?

Let me sail rougher waters in the Ship of Theseus. Coming back to the film, The Ship of Theseus, which asks (in my own words) - IS a PERSON who has been restored by TRANSPLANTING CERTAIN ORGANS donated by another person, THE SAME PERSON?

I will smile, apply the same analysis, arrive at the same conclusion and rest in peace. But then, the process being biological and intricate aspects like consciousness and mind involved, I better buckle up. Add to the complexity the fact that we operate with an extreme Sense of Singularity called the 'I'.

I will steer the ship to favorable winds to arrive at a different FACT.

Suppose Mr X loses his hand in an accident. Poor Mr X. Though he has lost his hand, his 'I' or let me say from now on, his Sense of 'I', is Complete and Whole. That is undeniable. Mr X, when he was stepping out of the hospital after recovery, gets hit by a speeding ambulance. In that accident he loses his other hand and both his legs. Luckily he survives. But his shoulder bone had to be replaced with steel. Just look at Mr X without hands or legs and bones of steel. But still his SENSE OF 'I' is COMPLETE and WHOLE. When he regained his consciousness he sees himself in the mirror only to be astonished and frightened. He has a severe heart attack and a stroke which leads to a sudden kidney failure. One of his kidney is removed and luckily he gets a donor for a new heart. Mr X is a very lucky guy (or unlucky?). He is now a Man without hands or legs, has steel instead of bones, does not have a kidney, and has a heart which was never his. But STILL HIS SENSE OF 'I' IS COMPLETE AND WHOLE.

We can observe this in ourselves on an everyday basis without having to undergo anything gruesome. We loose hair, teeth, skin, nails etc, but still our Sense of 'I' does not change.

Let me stop torturing Mr X and get to the point. This leads me to the obvious FACT that the SENSE OF 'I' is independent of the BODY. In other words I AM NOT THE BODY. Yes I accept that we don't know of an 'I' independent of the body. The organism needs certain minimum basic organs to function together for consciousness and mind to subsist. Just like a ship needs certain minimum parts for it to function and look a ship. One can argue then that those minimum organs is a part of the 'I'. Please watch Mr X again. A human being definitely needs a heart, but not necessarily the same heart. So the 'I' is independent of THAT organ.

What ever the FORM that one SEES is FACTUALLY NOT THE 'I'.

Let me extend the analysis a little. Sorry Mr X.

As he was about to try and get back to life, his wife abandoned him and he suffered another stroke. His brain had to be operated. But due to an error the doctors made, Mr X lost his memory. Now to himself he may be a stranger, but note that his SENSE OF 'I' is intact! This 'I' is even independent of MEMORY.


Well the Ship has arrived somewhere and right now I wouldn't go and ask Mr X if he is the same person. But I would definitely ask myself whence does this 'I' arise. How does this 'I' arise. What is this 'I'.