An attempt at description

He was the most regarded professor in our department. He was regarded as a genius by ignorant people or those seeing him for the first time, or by like minded people. By the rest, he was indulged and humoured because they had no choice. Most of the times the intelligent people tried to steer clear of him, but sometimes they would get caught, and would curse their fate for days afterwards. In a moment of thoughtlessness I ended being one of those unfortunate few, and I had to bear the repurcussions for a long time. But that is another story, for another time.
In appearance, he was like a bull frog. I'm not much acquainted with the species, but there is one particular type which swells its cheeks with air like two balloons to let out a croaking sound in the mating season, and this is what he resembled the most. His cheeks looked inflated with air and yet curiously soft. I suppose you would be exceedingly pleased at the smoothness and softness of his cheeks had you happened to touch them. However, I would not advocate it. Some people are known to have a marked repugnance against having the dignity of their cheeks being intruded upon. His nose was small and delicate, like the protruding lips of a pleased frog. Apart from his face, the rest of his anatomy was modelled faithfully along similar lines. I have never seen him squat, but I have no doubt that if he did the resemblance would be complete. I have often imagined him in such a pose, covered throughout in dark green varnish, and have been satisfied with the verisimilitude of my vision. But being of a serious and thoughtful disposition, I have immediately chid myself for my flippant and childish thoughts.
In short, he was bulky. He was also short. His figure was well rounded, devoid of any sharp edges. He was clean shaven and his spectacles were round. And rounding up all this were his movements, quick and jerky, like the spasmodic jerks of the frog that is supposed to have kicked out when Luigi Galvani discovered galvanism in the late eighteenth century. When he (I mean the professor) discoursed to the class in front of a blackboard, it looked as if a homeless mouse had trespassed into his warm clothes, and whenever he would feel a particularly vicious pattering in some part of his anatomy, he would give it a dainty jerk, and the mouse on its part would go tumbling into other unexplored regions.

However, unfazed by the capers of the supposed mouse, he would carry on with his discourse to the students, and in front of their very eyes, would pry deep into the chest in which Nature's secrets were hid, and bring them to light and set them down upon the blackboard in an immaculate and loving hand. In the front two rows the students would wonder and nod with satisfaction as secret after secret lay exposed and understood, slowly emerging from the Darkness of Ignorance into the Light of Knowledge, and they would all stare open mouthed as Nature revealed herself in her full glory and majesty. The others; those not sitting in the front two rows, would also be open mouthed, but a closer scrutiny would reveal the inertness of their bodies, and their insensibility to all external stimuli. In front of their very weary eyes, the darkness was profound indeed and only the bell heralding the end of the class could have dispelled it.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I was pleased with the way my description of the professor was shaping up when I heard someone call my name.

‘What are you doing Bhaskar?’ asked the professor.

I was brought back to reality with a start. I hastily covered my notebook and tried to look alert. It wouldn’t do to let the professor see what I had just written; no, that would have been the end of me. He wouldn’t have been amused to see what I had actually written; though I do hope that you, gentle reader, have been vastly entertained. He was looking at me and his voice was suspicious. He was probably unused to see me take down such copious notes. And of course the fact that I was writing without listening to his lecture had added to the suspicion. I looked at him innocently and said,

‘Sir?’

‘What are you writing?’

‘Sir I’m taking down notes.’

‘Let me see,’ he said, and made his way to my seat.

My heart jumped to my mouth but my friend Kamat, sitting to my left, managed to slip his notebook into my hands unobserved and I deftly handed over mine to him. The professor came and looked into ‘my’ notes, and went away impressed. We secretly exchanged our notebooks once again and I heaved a sigh of relief. That was a narrow scrape. After this nasty shock I couldn’t go back to my notebook, so I tried to pay attention to what the professor was saying; a very difficult job, but not without its rewards, as it turned out.

‘So,’ said the professor, giving a twist to his wrist which seemed to propagate to his shoulder and give his belly a spasmodic jerk at the same time, ‘Which is more fundamental? A law or a principle?’

‘A law,’ someone hazarded.

‘Why is it more fundamental?’

No one answered.

‘Why do we call Newton’s laws as laws and not principles? Or why do we talk about the principle of conservation of energy and not the law of conservation of energy?’

Still no one answered.

‘What is homogeneity of space?’

Someone jumped up. ‘Sir it means that all points in space are identical.’

‘So if I take this point and this point,’ said the professor, indicating the two points with his fists, ‘are these two points the same?’

Probably he wanted to ask if homogeneity of space was a law or a principle, but he couldn’t resist making this dig at the student.

‘What is isotropy of space?’

‘Sir it means that all directions in space are equivalent.’

‘If I am standing in the middle of a football field, are all directions equivalent? I can move in all directions? That means I can fly upwards. So can I fly upwards?’

‘No sir.’

‘So what prevents me?’

‘Sir gravity.’

‘In which direction does it act?’

‘Sir downwards.’

‘So is space isotropic?’

There was no answer. Having sufficiently confounded them, he proceeded.

‘Isotrpy of space is just a convenient concept. So why is it a convenient concept?’

Seeing no answer forthcoming he continued:

‘It is a convenient concept because we don’t want the experiment to depend on the direction in which it is performed. Without it, two people doing the same experiment but facing different directions will get different results. So we need isotropy of space. What is homogeneity of space?’

No one dared to answer this time. Seeing the field all clear for himself, he went on to enlighten the awe-struck students.

‘Homogeneity of space does not mean that all points in space are identical. What does it tell you? It simply tells you that the experiment should not depend on the origin of the coordinate system that you have chosen. Otherwise with different origins you will get different results. What is homogeneity of time?’

Having grown sufficiently used to the concept of homogeneity, one student hazarded:

‘Sir it means that the experiment does not depend on the origin of time.’

‘Suppose I perform an experiment today, and I do it again tomorrow, will I get the same result?’

‘Yes sir.’

‘Suppose I throw this chalk,’ he said, letting it drop, ‘and measure the time it takes to fall to the ground. Suppose I repeat the experiment tomorrow, and there is a storm, and the chalk flies off with the wind. So will it take the same time to fall?’

There was pin drop silence in the class.

‘So is homogeneity of time violated? What happens to homogeneity of time?’

No one felt equal to it. He expounded the apparent contradiction:

‘Just like isotropy of space, homogeneity of time is simply a convenient concept. You invoke then because you do not want your experiment to depend on when you started it, or where you performed it. Any deviation you observe will be attributed to some other forces. The laws of physics are formulated in such a way that the principles are unchanged. That is why principles are more fundamental (than laws).

'What about isotropy of time? Is forward in time the same as backward in time?

‘Suppose I drop this chalk to the ground. Does time move backwards? Does the chalk come back in my hands?’

‘No sir.’

‘So what prevents time from moving backwards?’

‘Sir the second law of thermodynamics.’

‘What does the second law of thermodynamics tell you?’

‘It says that the entropy of the universe keeps on increasing.’

‘What is entropy?’

By this time it had become too much for me and I was awakened by a violent shaking of my shoulder. It was my friend Kamat trying to wake me up at the end of the class. We went to the canteen to have a cup of coffee. I must mention that we were not students attending the course, but trainees trying to see how the course was taught, as next year we had to teach the course as part of our Teaching Assistantship. We were senior research students and every research student was assigned some such duty.

‘So how did you find the class?’ asked Kamat.

‘Oh it was eventful. You saved the day for me. Thanks.’

‘I know. You’d have been in deep sh*t. Just show me what you were writing.’

I gave him my notebook and he started chuckling as he went through it.

‘Ha ha! This is real good. It really is like Professor Lahiri! His spasmodic jerks! Why does he do it I wonder.’ Said Kamat, trying to mimic the professor’s movements.

‘The way his head shakes reminds me of a doll with a moving head. Have you seen how it oscillates? It’s just like Professor Lahiri!’

‘But apparently he’s very well read. Wonder where he got all that information from…laws, principles, what not! At least I’ve never seen it in any book.’

‘Yes…and his English…impeccable! He really looks like one those big shot high energy physicists in CERN you see on Discovery Channel!’

‘He’s also very witty. Sarcastic, rather.’

‘Absolutely. Did you notice how he made fun of the kids with his jibes?’

‘Poor kids! They’re studying all this for the first time and that’s how he treats them!’

‘I did a project with him once.’ I said after a pause.

‘Really? What was it like?’

‘Phew!’ I sighed. ‘I don’t want to go through that again.’

‘Why what happened?’

‘Well, he’d never be in his office at the time we’d appoint to meet up, and I’d wait outside his office for hours. But that was a very minor thing. That was nothing.’

‘Then what was it?’

‘There was some problem regarding my presentation. Mine was slotted at eight in the morning. It was to be the first. Somehow I was not informed of it and he e-mailed the rest of the students just before midnight. He had been out of station for about two weeks before that; probably busy with some conference or the other. Anyway, I was told by someone in the evening before Lahiri had mailed them that the presentation was to start at ten the next morning. Of course I missed it.’

‘What happened then?’

‘Well, I sent him an e-mail telling him that I had missed the presentation as he had not informed me. I wrote something like, “Dear sir, it seems you inadvertently forgot to inform me about my presentation in today’s schedule, due to which I unfortunately missed it. Could you kindly arrange an alternative slot for the same?” Pat comes his reply, “Dear Bhaskar, since it was decided long back that your presentation was to be at eight, I did not feel the need to inform you. Since grading has to be done on the basis of the presentation, and you have missed yours, I have to give you an F. Best regards, Dinanath Lahiri.” ’

‘No way! What happened then? Did he really give you an F?’

‘Obviously he had forgotten to e-mail me and was trying to cover up his tracks. My name wasn’t in the mailing list as I was attending the classes as part of a different course. It’s true he’d told me that mine was to be the first presentation; at eight in the morning. But that was at the beginning of the course, about three months back. And I had a ticket reserved for Delhi that afternoon in Shatabdi Express! I thought after the presentation I’d be on my way home, staring at the meadows and the fields through the window of my air-conditioned coach!’

‘But what happened then? Did he really give you an F?’

‘Well, it took a lot of pleading. I went to his office with my report and the slides, and it took all my efforts, but finally he agreed. He took a look at my slides and let me off. But the experience was a nasty one.’

‘I’m sure it was,’ said Kamat, with an incredulous shake of the head. ‘I wouldn’t want to go through that. What was it about?’

‘What? The project?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, it was supposedly on General Relativity, but I ended up studying weird things like the ether drag and Michelson-Morley experiment in detail. There was also something called the Trouton and Noble experiment. Apparently designed to detect ether drag. I don’t remember a thing now.’

‘Not surprising. He really screwed up things for you.’

‘You bet. And his e-mail was pretty smug: best regards indeed! The jerk!’

‘Ssssh! He's coming,’ cautioned Kamat.

It was indeed Professor Lahiri. He was accompanied by Professor Mitra of our department. I was hoping they wouldn’t notice us and was looking in another direction to avoid direct eye contact. But they saw us all the same and made their way towards us. This always happens. The ones you want to avoid make a bee-line for you and the ones you want to have sex with don't even notice you.

‘Here they are,’ said Professor Lahiri. They took a couple of chairs lying nearby and sat with us. I saw Professor Mitra’s eyes linger on the figure of a young girl some distance away.

‘So how are you finding the class?’ asked Professor Mitra.

‘Yes sir, very interesting.’ I said.

‘He was taking down very good notes,’ said Professor Lahiri.

I wondered if he was being sarcastic.

‘Who? Bhaskar?’

‘Yes. I took a look at them. They’re even better than mine. ’

‘Really? I must take a look at them some day. He did very well in my course also.’

‘Which course was that?’

‘It was an elective course. Critical Phenomena and Phase Transitions.’

Again I tried to detect the note of sarcasm, but could arrive at no definite conclusions. As long as they didn’t actually ask for my notebook I was happy with anything. I was carrying the damn thing in my hands as I didn’t have any bag to put it in.

‘Bhaskar, since you are enjoying the course so much, I want you to take the tutorial when I start with relativity.’

‘Sure,’ I said. There was nothing else I could say on the spur of the moment.

‘I want you to teach them ether drag and the Michelson-Morley experiment. Also the Trouton and Noble experiment. Since you’ve already done a project it will be very easy for you.’

‘Sure,’ I said. I was feeling a little dazed.

‘What project?’ asked Professor Mitra.

‘He did a reading project with me on relativity. I was also teaching a relativity course to the M.Sc students and he attended all my classes and had his presentation along with them. He wrote a very good report. Very nice slides.’

I wondered if he had forgotten what had actually happened. They kept talking about some thing or the other and Kamat and I kept nodding our heads in assent. There was a colloquium at five in the evening. Not that I was interested, but I’m mentioning it as it has a bearing on what follows. For the benefit of my kind reader, I have just checked with my Oxford English Dictionary, and it informs me that the word is derived from the Latin word colloquy; signifying the act of speaking. There was a colloquium in the department at five, which meant that some scientist or the other would be talking about his latest research findings to a group of other scientists and professors. On my part I studiously avoided them as usually I could find something better to occupy my time.

After a while Professor Mitra, smoking his cigarette and taking the last sip from his tea cup, said:

‘re baba! So many things to do! I have to go to the colosseum (sic) at five.’ He had the air of one who has a hundred responsibilities on his hand, and being of a very responsible nature he cannot even think of shirking them.

‘What! Where do you want to go?’ asked Lahiri.

‘Colosseum. I have to go to the colosseum at five.’

Lahiri still feigned deafness.

‘I’m sorry I couldn’t get you. Where do you want to go?’ he said, darting a sly look across the table at the two of us.

‘What’s happening to your ears baba! I said I want to go to the colosseum.’

Kamat’s eyes and mine met for a fleeting instant and we had to immediately look away to avoid arousing Professor Mitra’s suspicions.

The two of them stayed on for about five more minutes. After they left Kamat and I burst out laughing. After a while however we became serious.

‘What was that about the tutorial?’ asked Kamat. ‘Saying that your project was very good and all that?’

‘I know! Damn liar! He knew very well how it had gone for me.’

‘I’m sure he remembers, and he’s still screwing you! He was laughing all the way inside.’

‘And did you see the smirk when he asked Mitra about the “Colosseum”? Good slides indeed!’ I said hotly.

‘You know, he reminds me of Lady Macbeth. The serpent beneath the smiling flower.’

‘But good Lord! This is crazy! Whoever studies ether these days? And the Michelson-Morley experiment is the one thing I can’t stand in Relativity! Add to it the Trouton and Noble stuff! I’m done for!’

‘Relax! There’s still a month left before he starts teaching relativity.’

‘Maybe, but man! It’s been so long and yet I have to bear the consequences of doing a project with him.’

‘Ha ha! That’s what you’ve written in your notes, haven’t you? It’s funny how things prophecy themselves.’

After a while Kamat said,

‘And did you see Professor Mitra? The way he was leering at that girl?’

‘I did. Dunno why he needs to establish his virility at this age.’

‘Perhaps he’s trying to emulate Feynman.’

‘But Feynman was also a physicist!’

‘Ha ha ha! That’s true.’

‘Perhaps he’ll write his autobiography some day: “Surely You’re Joking Mr. Mitra!” ’

‘No no no! Better still, Lahiri will write his biography: “Surely You’re Joking about the Colosseum!” ’

‘You know, I was tempted to ask him, “You’re going to the Colosseum? But isn’t it in Rome?” ’

‘Ha ha! And I wouldn’t be surprised if Lahiri told Mitra, “Oh Mitra! Glad to see you escaped unhurt from the Colosseum!” ’

‘And the icing on the cake would be if Mitra were to say, “Now why should I get hurt? As if there are lions in the Colosseum!” ’

We finally tired of these imaginary scenes, and looked about here and there. The girl Professor Mitra had been staring at was still there, standing some distance away. Kamat looked at her and said,

‘She’s cute.’

He added as an afterthought,

‘She also has nice eyes.’

‘True.’

‘Damn! She’s going!’

‘Too bad. We must go too.’

‘Let us. Who’s paying the money?’

‘You pay. You still owe me some.’

‘Okay,’ he said, and off we went.

(For the last few days these brackets contained the message 'To be continued...' Now it seems like it has been concluded, though of course one can never be sure...life throws up new experiences everyday!)

Joseph Conrad

Reading Joseph Conrad is a pleasure. Sometimes it is a pain when it appears too tedious or improbable. But some stories, like Karain, or An Outpost of Progress, or Amy Foster, are gems. Outpost of progress deals with the degeneration of two Europeans in an ivory trading post in Africa. Karain is about betrayal. Amy Foster is again about betrayal.

In An Outpost of Progress, the debilitating effects of isolation gnawing away the insides of two people far away from home in a strange land is examined. The moral dissolution of two perfectly well meaning men who look upon each like school friends, collapsing into loathing and distrust, whose mutual hatred eventually finishes off one of them and the subsequent guilt claims the other, is the main theme. And in the background of this is the charater of Henry Price, the native on the trading post, who stands by like the simple underlying theme of a complicated orchestra. He offers contrast and depth. He acts as a canvas on which the events are painted and the story unfolds, with his deceptively simple method of skulking silently as the solution to every problem, trusting to the indifference of man and the lure of a commonly acceptable solution, and, so to speak, personifies the darkness developing in the minds of the two men. But there is a modicum of redemption for the murderer: he feels contrite enough to kill himself.

Karain, as I said, talks about betrayal. It is set in the east. It is about a native who betrays his bosom friend; in fact kills him, for the sake of an illusion which has him under its sway. It is the mysterious illusion of love. And finally the illusion, for which he has killed his close friend, lets him down; it betrays him. He sees that it was as intangible as a shadow. He has killed his friend for nothing. After this he is haunted by the ghost of his treachery, which is exorcised in a rather droll way by his European friends.

Amy Foster is about the utter isolation of a castaway from a ship wreck, shunned and reviled by all but a plain looking, kind hearted girl, and who is fated to remain forever alone and to die alone, misunderstood and forsaken, deserted in death even by the girl whom he loves, but who loves him no longer, her mind poisoned by the constant slander she hears said of him.

The descriptions are vivid and breathtaking. Conrad has a knack of using a word or a phrase in the unlikeliest of contexts and yet convey the precise shade of meaning which no other word could have done. The psychological insights are, well, insightful. Perhaps the only drawback, which I'm afraid is reflected in this post, is that the sentences at times tend to be long and cumbersome, interrupted by countless commas, which make them extremely irritating. Probably the last sentence just illustrates what I mean! But I'm sure it's not as bad as Conrad.

Also, the narrative techniques sometimes appear contrived and don't quite ring true. And so is the occasional tendency to digress and indulge in fits of descriptions.

But all said and done, I'm grateful for having discovered Conrad. It's a very satisfying experience to read his works. Let's see how much I can imbibe from him.

At the Restaurant

Once a friend of mine was sitting on the verandah on a rainy day, doodling away. I asked him what he was drawing, and he showed me. It was very clumsily executed and I could not understand what it was about. He explained: It was a sketch of his hands holding the paper and the pen in his hands, and the sketch on the paper itself....

“I was working as the manager of a restaurant in a small city. Business was good, as we hardly had any competition. Within the limited means accessible to us, we tried to make it as posh as possible. The lighting was warm and mellow. The furniture, though not elaborate, was simple and comfortable. The air coolers inside and the tinted glasses were a welcome respite from the cruel heat outside. It used to be pretty crowded in the evenings and at dinner time. But in the summers it used to be deserted in the daytime. The workers and the waiters would be lazing around inside, and I would be sitting at the counter, adding up the totals or attending the occasional phone call or flipping through the magazines. It was on one such day, with the temperature outside soaring like never before, when it seemed like all the people and animals outside had buried themselves underground to escape from the heat, that a young man made an entry into the restaurant. He was shabby in appearance, though his clothes did not indicate anything in the nature of poverty. He evidently did not care very much for his personal appearance. He was sweating, and the peculiar torpidity and slowness that marked his movements gave me the impression that he had just woken from sleep. His bespectacled eyes were bleary, and his long hair, I should say locks, were unkemptly swept back, as if he had swept his fingers through them countless times. His pock marked face was red and bloated, as if he was trying to drive away the sluggish feeling by repeatedly rubbing his eyes and face. He walked inside with slow groggy steps. He walked in a straight line from the door, neither looking to the left or right, and made his way to a table and chair that lay directly in his path. It was in front of me and slightly to the right. Generally when the place is so empty, the customers take their time to decide on a convenient place to sit. They look about here and there, weigh the pros and cons, and sit at a place which offers the perfect combination of light, ventilation and coziness. He did none of these things. He looked about here and there uncertainly, darting quick glances, and sat down, as if he wanted to call someone without attracting attention. I sent for the waiter and told him in an imperious tone to attend to the customer. I always do this, as it makes the customer feel important. Though he tried to look nonchalant, I could see that he was grateful at having succeeded in his objective- that of not attracting too much attention and still being attended to. The waiter hurried across to him with the menu, and after running his eyes through it, he placed his order. It was a cold coffee and an ice cream. The waiter left, and he sat there waiting for its arrival, with his elbow upon the table, and his cheek resting on his palm, gazing abstractedly into the distance, sometimes looking at the carpet, or the trees outside the window. After a while the abstract look left his eyes and he started looking a little uncomfortable. He started looking in the direction of the closed kitchen door, or sometimes in my direction, but without actually looking at me. I took it that he was getting impatient. I yelled at the waiter to hurry up, to go and look if it was ready, sir is getting impatient, etc. of course, I knew that it would be some time before it came, so I resumed the occupation of observing him. He looked more restless now, and was fidgeting, looking in my direction more and more often. Finally he got up and approached my desk and asked hesitatingly,
“Excuse me, do you have a piece of blank paper?”
“What for ?” I asked.
“I have to write something.”
“Will this do?” I asked, taking off a leaf from a sheaf of papers that lay on the table. It was rectangular, about the size of a postcard, and felt it would be too small to serve his purpose. But he jumped at it and thanked me warmly and went back to his table. He sat down, simultaneously feeling in his pant pockets, and immediately an expression of dismay and suppressed frustration clouded his face. For a moment he looked helpless, and he looked again once or twice in my direction, then finally, making up his mind, he got up and approached my desk.
“May I borrow a pen, if you please?” he asked with an apologetic smile.

“Sure,” I said, and handed him one lying on the table. He thanked me again and went back. He sat down, and thinking for a minute or two, he slowly began writing. He began tentatively, but gathered speed as he went along, till finally he totally immersed himself in it, and became oblivious to the surroundings. Sometimes he paused and looked about him thoughtfully, then resumed with redoubled vigor. I don’t know what he was writing. Perhaps he was drafting an important letter, perhaps he was planning out something. By this time the coffee had arrived, of which he occasionally partook of a small sip. After a while I began to feel curious as to what he had been writing. But it was not in my fate to know it. After he finished the coffee and ice cream, he paid his bill, pocketed the piece of paper, returned my pen and left.”
I don’t know how the rest of the manuscript ran. After paying the bill, he had crumpled the piece of paper, thrown it into the dust bin, and left.

Solar Eclipse

Right now I'm sitting in my dad's office. Being a physicist he's stuck posters to the wall on various things: Bose-Einstein condensation, telemetry images by satellites, photographs of various solar eclipses that have occured and star charts. One of these caught my attention. It was a poster on the solar eclipse that occured on 24th October 1995 in India. I was in class nine at the time, and in my childish and naive enthusiasm for science I had made a pin hole camera to observe the sun and we'd gone to Nim ka Thana in Rajasthan, one of the places lying in the belt of totality. Scientists from other countries had come with sophisticated equipment and telescopes and I felt embarrassed with my puny little piddling toy. Still, I observed through it, if only for the sake of the effort and trouble I'd been at to make it. So that was how I spent 24th October 1995. Little did I know as I was looking at the sun with my crude instrument, that seven years later I would run into someone who was celebrating her birthday on that very day, when the sun was being eclipsed by the moon.

Talking about eclipses, there was another one I'd visited, I do not remember exactly when, perhaps it was in my B.Sc days, but it was in Bhuj, Gujarat, this time. This was another lovely experience. Set in the Saurashtra region, the place is arid as a desert. Dry winds deposited quintals of sand in our hair, as scientists battled with their equipment. I was with a friend, and we were having the time of our lives. He was, rather is, a Gujarati, and we were talking about pretty lewd and interesting things. We were some distance away from my dad, who was with a Questar telescope, with filters and a rotating platform to counter the earth's rotation; pretty slick. I do not exactly remember if we could watch the eclipse, I think the clouds had played spoil sport.

My dad's back from the bank, and I gotta go. I must not let him see this. But the place we were staying at was like an old royal Gujarati palace; perhaps it was. And strangely enough it was one of those places which one thinks one has seen earlier in a dream.

I am so weak. It takes the utmost of my willpower to resist temptation. It is so difficult for me to be in contact with myself. Most of the time I want to be in a daze, too terrified of facing myself, or finding it too much of a drudge. I was this attention seeking guy some time back, which was why I started this blogging stuff and all, so I could floor people with my writing prowess and focus attention on myself. But it was bad. I ended up all awry and had to find my footing again. Haven't found it yet, though I feel I might sometime. It's very difficult, and I do not know what it entails. I wanted to be a rock star at one point in my life. I thought it would make me and keep me happy. Somewhere I knew I was deluding myself, but I ignored that tiny voice and passed my time dreaming thus foolishly. I realise the sort of happiness I aimed for was based on hearsay, and that it was more an escape from my reality; not the immediate physical reality but the reality of myself. Often I've tried to observe myself and I've split myself into two parts: the observer and the observed. The observer would try to impartially observe the other self, but it's difficult to be impartial when the two parts are constantly fusing together and separating, and sometimes have ended up destroying each other. How long can the eyes keep on staring at themselves when they are going blind? However this has happened just once, when I came back from the brink. There is always a defence mechanism. I've ended up losing a close friend. I'm estranged. Whenever I go home I find it difficult to talk with my folks. I find it difficult to connect with people; I've never been close to anyone and I guess I can never be close to anyone. My love has always crumbled away except for once when it was more of madness and based on a vision than on reality. And I wish I could call out in the emptiness at those voices that once talked with me. But I've lost them all and I have no regrets. They went away because they had to, and there was no point in making them stay. They'd only have been distorted if I'd tried to hold them in my hands. But hark! do you hear? someone's calling me!