A Kid with a Flying Broom

Seven months in New Delhi, seven months away from parents, seven months of fun and joy. Then I returned “home”. All the fun ended. Or did it?

Sister fighting over the possession of the TV remote, mom yelling at me to tidy up the living room, dad shouting at me for… well actually, I don’t know why dad’s shouting at me. He’s been at it for the past 22 years. Still haven’t figured out why. I was their first child. Guess that’s got something to do with it. At least that’s my best bet. Ah! Home sweet home. Was totally worth leaving the independence of my own room in Delhi with no time limits, no sleep limits and no booze limits. Who wants all that when I can have my family yelling at me?

No I don’t miss New Delhi at all!

(I am learning to be sarcastic and learning to understand sarcasm. I have always struggled with it and I have friends who will vouch for it. So when I got confused by that above statement while reading my own post, I thought it would be best to clarify it right up front. I am being sarcastic (Not here. In that statement above. Of course I miss dilli! (Am I allowed to put brackets within brackets?)))

Anyway, in the last two months at dilli, I met these amazing friends. We had a blast at Nainital for three days and continued it all at observations (night sky… yes we are all astronomers… we wish), restaurants, bars and cafes. Those were two really great months and the highlight of my stay at dilli.

Nikhil thanks…

Jiya. This is the girl who read “Chester thanks” in the acknowledgement section of a Linkin Park album cover and thought that the lead singer’s second name is Thanks. Oh yeah, she rarely speaks but when she does, you wont forget the words of wisdom for a long time to come. Loves books and reads like crazy. She is a sweet, quiet and a sharp girl who is very picky and choosy about friends. I’m glad I made the cut. Loves monkeys indiscriminately though (Do not connect the previous two lines). Another thing she’s really picky and choosy about are her drinks. Give her a bar menu and wait for Christmas. But between all this, she was my best friend in New Delhi. We used to chat for hours almost every single night, aimlessly and blissfully. Loved those moments. Jiya, my stay would have been hopelessly dull with you.

Shubham. Begins every phone conversation with “Wassup!” and spikes his hair probably as a defense mechanism. Is a awesome drinking buddy and has plenty of observation experience to arm a telescope. I still remember the night we located and observed some 25 deep sky objects in a few hours. Proud owner of the kambal (internal joke) and a fellow Carlsberg hater. Brilliant associate on the TubeSat Project where he will launch a high altitude balloon soon. He was the source of booze on most observations and would correctly interpret my “I wont drink this time” every single time. Drinking on an overnight will never be the same without you mate.

Ruhi. Words are going to be inadequate here. She is the bestest thingest I’ve knownest. A genuine and really sweet girl, she is caring, supporting and thoughtful. A little confused and lost and really really dark… in a good way. An extrovert that anyone will love having around. Loves vodka and spreadsheets (!!??!!). The MS Excel type of spreadsheets. Works on them all day apparently. Was a pleasure chatting with her during office hours keeping work aside for a while (sometimes a really long while) much to the dislike and jealousy of “someone”. I hope “he” never reads this. Gave me a wonderful gift while parting, for which she was willing to make me travel for an hour and fifteen minutes to a meet that would last 2 minutes. Of course it eventually lasted over an hour. Ruhi, counting the days till I see you next.

So that was a brief insight into my friends in New Delhi and I have missed a few the most notable of whom would be Vikrant, a few fellow amateur astronomers and a few friends from office. Maybe they will get a personal thank you or I might add to this sometime later.

I know after all this, the smart ones among you are wondering that the title doesn’t make sense. I know. It has no relation to the post what so ever. It was just a really sad prank. Anyway, congratulations on getting this far. Now get back to work

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PS: My family is not nearly as bad and my friends not nearly as good. Well maybe my friends are. Actually they are much much better. Love you all.

Of Love and Expectations

“I do believe in love, love that betters and completes both the people involved, and not the love that fools either or both.”

- Apoorva Maheshwari

That is probably the best and simplest description, if not definition, of love I have come across. Most aspects of the human life are a trade. A modern day barter system. You get something in exchange for something. Love is no exception. I consider love not as a magical spell open to the whims of mysticism but a trade between two persons on an emotional level. A trade of ideals and of principles. It is logical and rational and definitely not blind. When I love someone, it is because I adore and respect certain qualities in that person and I know that the person feels the same for me. There is a sharing of ideals and principles. Both persons learn and understand themselves, each other and the world a little better. Each person becoming the fuel for the other to keep moving and living. A pillar of support whenever things get rough and a source of belief when the other questions his ability.

This love is not just restricted to the most intimate of relationships. Its true of love between friends as well. The degree of admiration and mutual connection determines the level of love and closeness of relationship. Of course you will never get a clone and in fact it is definitely not desirable that the person you love, your friend, be exactly like you. Every person has a few shortcomings and these need to be filled to some extent by those that he loves and those that love him. A mutual exchange. A human photocopy will not do.

Then comes an aspect that is a source of huge misunderstandings. That of expectations. Without doubt, this is the biggest cause of friction in most relationships. A source that gives rise to pain and illusions. In any relationship, expectations are prevalent. But there is a need to weigh them on a scale of rationality. Both the people involved in a relationship are individuals. Both have freedom of choice and are free to adopt and follow their own philosophy. Both have free will. Both will act or behave according to the philosophy they follow. So to expect someone to do something will inherently imply a constraint on his freedom unless he was planning to do the same regardless of the expectation.

Let me try to demonstrate the above statement with an example. I will take an inanimate object on purpose because it will behave independently, ideally and according to the laws that govern it. It will be independent of whims.

If I drop a cricket ball from the top of a building and “expect” it to fly instead of drop down I am restraining its natural behavior, its freedom. The ball will of course not let me restrain its freedom. It will drop down and I will feel hurt since my expectations were not met. But had I expected the ball to drop down, and then let it go, the ball would have met my expectations. Not because it cared for me, but simply because it would have done that regardless of my expectation. That’s the difference between irrationality and rationality.

You cannot escape irrational expectations without getting hurt, and rational expectations are really not necessary at all. They would be met regardless. You cannot pre-suppose a victim. You cannot expect someone to give up on their free will to achieve yours.

Thus in a relationship, there is effectively no place for expectations. Anyone expecting anything off you, if being irrational, is bound to get hurt if you do not sacrifice. On the other hand if you do sacrifice to meet their expectations, you will be hurt. There is no middle ground here. Never consent to irrationality. Make your stance clear. Do not expect the irrational and do not try to meet irrational expectations.

Rational people will always say that you always meet their expectations. That is not because you did anything special to meet them. You would have done those things, taken those actions regardless of their expectations. But since your ideals were similar, they benefited from it. Irrational people will always expect sacrifices and will always be hurt because you “failed” them. Do not succumb to or even encourage such behavior. Most people might be a combination of rationality and irrationality. Make sure that your association with them stays as far as their rationality remains.

You will not get hurt. No one can hurt you without your consent. Don’t expect people to be perfect, but select the aspects you want to associate yourself with.

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“This is a response to Apoorva Maheshwari’s post Too close for comfort on Vagabond’s Ramble.”

The Week I Fell in Love With Two Girls

Often some small things leave a big impact on your life. Something in the moment that hits a cord and lingers in your heart and mind for a long time after that. Its like a memory but a little mysterious. Like a lost thought trying to figure out where to settle in your mind and keeps floating in the search of a destination. In search of an understanding or perhaps just an acknowledgment. It teases and troubles you but above all it fascinates you. It gives you resounding proof that you exist not just as an object but as a living being. It may be a song that appeals to you, a movie that becomes your all time best, a journey engraved in your mind or a that special glance engraved in your heart. It is these moments of magic that makes life an incredible gift. I got two such gifts this week. I have never been in love, not this kind. But this week, I fell in love with two stunning girls.

The first girl I fell for is this amazing writer. I met her once almost a month back when she had come for an overnight sky observation with me. She was in my domain there and all we managed were a few formal exchanges. This week I came across her writing. It was her blog that I read but I cannot get myself to call it that. The word is a huge understatement to what I read and if ever something has the power to fill all senses and engulf the mind, I believe this was it. I associate two attributes to writing. The content structuring which is the creation of the mind and the communication which is the pursuit of perfection of the language used. The former is a mark of the human being the latter a mark of what he can achieve. Both being strongly responsible for the result that comes out. What I read had them both. Superior clarity and amazing coherency.

So did I fall in love with the girl or her writing? I fell in love with the girl. I fell in love with the mind that had the ability to say without fear what it had to say. The heart that was big enough to not be a hindrance to the mind and the human that was capable enough to make another truly happy, without self sacrifice. The writing was simply the means. And every time I will read a good piece of work, I will remember her.

If the only thing I take out of dilli is your writing, the past seven months were totally worth it.

But I got more. Today I fell in love with another girl. I have known her for almost the entire duration of my stay in New Delhi but with every passing day I kept getting glimpses into her life that seemed so carefree and simple. She is one girl who is not caught up with problems and will chase butterflies if given an opportunity. Today she got me pasta Now this seemingly trivial incident is actually so strongly connected to the past seven months that it will be impossible for me to explain the whole scene. But we had a discussion a few days back where there was a passing reference to pasta. I have to really stretch my memory to remember that I said I loved pasta. It was a passing remark, supposed to be said and never again recalled. But she did. She remembered, and she cooked and got some for me today. This ability to stay in touch with the real life is what I simply adore. Its seems so hard to do for most people and yet some, actually very few, pull it off so effortlessly. It is this quality that made me fall in love with another girl within a week!

Seems incredible that I spent my life searching, hoping and believing that life exists on this planet and one week gave me two overwhelming proofs. I have never fallen in love before and don’t care if I ever do again. Of course it will be incredible if I meet more people like these two girls.

The two of you have made my life. I thank you.

True Loneliness…

Spent the last seven days in a small town called Nuh about 80 km from New Delhi. I was there for overnight sky observations and was really hoping that the sky would cooperate this time after throwing a few cloud packed nights the previous month. Sure enough I got some really good nights and had a good time with all the school students who would join me in the evening and give me company through the night. This group of students would leave in the morning, just before sunrise and thats when a new world would begin.

All away from the city, alone in a small town with just the basic amenities at hand (and the luxury of my laptop to top it off) an incredible state of mind would set in. Have to admit it took me a couple of days to adjust to the stay-up-all-night-sleep-in-the-day routine, but the third day onwards I enjoyed a life many rarely get to experience. Eventually I realized not many would actually want to experience something like this, but then again I have always been a misfit, haven’t I?

Its a bohemian feeling. Lost in the middle of nowhere, no attachments, no worries no connections to anything or anyone. I remember a quote by Einstein where he mentioned that he never belonged to any country, place, person or relation. This is what he must have experienced. Its a joyful solitude and a comfortable loneliness.

As I lay hearing the sounds of chirping birds, as I stared out at the sight of the Aravali Hills covering three sides into the distance and letting the Sun enter this world from the fourth, as I felt the cool morning breeze with the smell of dew all around, it was a high I would rarely get from anything in the city. I could stay lost in that moment, frozen in time forever, without a care in the world. A life serenely peaceful where I would let my body rest and the mind work under no worries, no tensions and no strings attached.

Staying there I experienced the age of innocence and true loneliness. Loneliness that the word originally must have been devised to describe. Not a negative state of mind or a depressing stage in life as the urban population has turned it into, but a joyful bliss with a feeling of complete freedom and detachment. A state devoid of worries and problems. Just a serene calm and undiluted joy.

It was a completely individual experience where I owed nothing to anyone and no one expected anything of me. I was simply me. That was true loneliness, a lost attribute and a forgotten ideal. That was the real lost reality.

What Was and What Could have Been…

It starts about a week before 29th and my frantic campaign for Earth hour is about a week old. In a few days I have managed to rope in over 55 people who have pledged their support to Earth Hour and a massive chunk of it has come from Ruhi terrorizing people over the so-easy-to-reach-out-medium, a.k.a the internet. I am really looking forward to the 29th and for some odd reason fantasizing that my 55 person outreach will result in a complete blackout of New Delhi and I will be somewhere at Central Park witnessing the day I played John Galt.

This pretty little bubble is burst when my office (SPACE) calls and says I have to go for an overnight observation with school kids to a far far away land, commonly called as a dark site by optimistic astronomers on one day of the week. Yes, 29th March 2008! As I cry to myself, “can things get any worse?”, a mail pops in my inbox. Apparently things can always get worse. AAAD has just declared an observation on the 29th for the purpose of describing deep sky objects. This is something I had been looking forward to since Nainital and will now have to miss.

What can be the probability of three events synchronizing themselves at the same time? The eternal skeptic is now seriously wondering if God exists. This seems nothing short of divine mischief. So after many rounds of bending rules, persuading people and evil thinking I manage to shift my SPACE observation with kids over to someone else, move the AAAD observation venue to match with my office observation venue and execute the Earth Hour plan at the observation site with all those school kids instead of the ignorant New Delhi citizens (the grapes are sour).

Another week of planning and campaigning and it is 29th March. Earth Hour 2008. The day begins well with a chat on a few radio channels about Earth Hour. So I’m thinking, cool a few more people know about this now. Late afternoon, I am all set to leave for Nuh, which is the far far away land in question. I am getting calls and messages from the angels that my friends are, each generously wanting to pick me up. So as flattered as I am, I still haven’t figured out how I eventually got picked two hours late. When Shubham at the helm of things and a steering in hand eventually got to the highway, we were at Nuh in no time with a large AAAD group waiting for us.

The plan was simple… on paper. We (Shubham, Ruhi, Jiya, Apoorva and I) take a look at the AAAD observation site, come back to a school where the SPACE students are put up for their observations, execute the Earth Hour plan, and join the AAAD group soon after. It turns out, God does exist and he does not like my plan. The AAAD observation site turned out to be this half an hour ride on a terrible, terrible piece of road. So as Shubham drove, frustrated as hell, avoiding overfilled tractors and meteoric potholes, his car had a few wounds to show. Anyway, one hour of agonizing drive later, we were at the SPACE school where the kids were waiting for me to take charge.

So a last minute scramble for candles and it was 8 pm. As the lights went out and the school plunged into darkness, a glow started rising on the ground as the candles started being lit. Twenty minutes of the meeting and the kids were overjoyed to be part of a global movement. Earth Hour 2008 was turning out to be better than I had expected. As Ruhi stepped up to take a few pics (the ones you see in this blog) the little angels had turned into an army of charging devils with torches in their hands. So much for the “awww” comments.

With the end of Earth Hour, our minds were back at the AAAD observations. Didn’t want to miss the fun of observing once again through the mighty beesinchi/usb. But that didn’t happen either. With the responsibility of packing food for the AAAD group, we were stuck in the school till all the kids finished their dinner first. Then Mr Malik, the Chairman of that school insisted we have dinner with him and started discussing “things” which will be left out of this blog for reasons that will be left out as well. Worth mentioning is one incident, when Mr Malik propped by the desire to show us the true dark sky, called up the electricity board and got them to switch off the lights of the entire town! Whoa! Now thats a first.

Two hours late, and as we are about to leave, we have been blessed with yet-another-flat-tyre. We have made this a regular feature of our observations with the count being three out of three so far. Shubham is steaming and as we eventually reach the AAAD site, we are welcomed by a surprising view. The beesinchi/usb is vacant. Everyone is just siting, doing nothing. Turns out, the sky conditions are bad and no observations are possible. Agggghh!!

Shubham and I eventually reach out for a can of soda that had seemed to be fermented due to the intense Delhi heat! Wonder how that happened? Anyway, we didn’t have much choice and had to drink it without complains. The girls joined in with some fruit juice (and Jiya with some cough syrup) and thats pretty much how the observations went.

A view of a blinking satellite/space debris seemed to be the highlight of the night with everyone waiting for it to blink occasionally. Every time it blinked, there were shouts of “hua” (Hindi for “happened” for those who might be less privileged). That was the name of that object since then - Hua.

It was a night of if-only and would-have-beens. As we returned the next morning, we had learnt nothing more but had proved the existence of the law of averages. Fingers crossed for the next round.