Inception and some dreams!

I happened to watch Inception last Thursday. Though I had heard that it is a wonderful film, I was not sure about it. But my opinion was to change....
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As you know (and for those who don't know) Inception is basically a film about dreams. I'm not going into the details of the film, I urge all who haven't seen it, to watch it, and those who have may find what I;m going to tell, interesting.

    I'm a constant dreamer and that's why the film appealed a lot to me, in fact, forgive my pride that I could understand perfectly well what was going on in the film even though I was watching it for the first time. Reason: I dream such weired dreams! :) After watching the film, I started appreciating my mental capacity of dreaming (well I used to do that earlier also ;) ). I can dream about anything, anything, and I don't know anybody else have dreamt so weirdly in their lives.
I'll tell about some of my weird dreams in this post.
For example,
1) I dreamt about a glass escalator fully made of glass stairs, in a shopping mall in Dubai, when I was in 6th std.
2) I once dreamt a Hrithik Roshan movie, and that seemed to be almost an hour, but I read later somewhere, that actually it was only for a few minutes.
3) One thing I'm scared of in real life, and dare not attempt is going into the sea. But in my dreams, I see myself going into the sea; once I dreamt that, I was in a shack filled with knee deep sea water, and the water was full f violet colored flowers, and I had some others for company, then I went far away from the land, and the sea parted its way to form an island with walls of water around it. I was scared, but somehow I managed to do the adventure.
4) Once I dreamt that I ws going to Bangalore, and the place where I went was a sea coast, a mansion was there, everything was made of clean glass, with a blue swimming pool in the centre and spiral staircases on the side walls, if I stood on the terrace, I could see the crystal blue sea, and I was washed in the waves when I went to the shore, again it was scary for me, but I felt warm and happy.

These are some of my recent dreams.I had a very scary dream, which I can never forget, for it happened on the eve of Maths- paper 2 public exam in 10th std.
 I was walking through a street with beautiful shops displaying beautiful articles, I saw a red high heeled shoes, I went to pick it up and suddenly saw a large grey spider in a web, not the usual kind of web , but the ones they weave thickly while nesting. I was so scared that I woke up with a loud cry.

I usually don't have much of nightmares, but my dreams always happen in the twighlight background, either it is twighlight or it is night. I can't recollect a dream where I have seen a morning in my dream. I usually dream about tigers, and lions, one of my crazy dreams had 3 tiger cubs and a lion cub come to the place where we lived (we = my classmates; the place was our flat in Mumbai, but ofcourse, its geometry and location were different) and how people were scared and running and we ourselves were trying to escape from them, by trying to lock our bedroom door, only to find that these cubs had hidden under our cots!

 I've even gone to the Himalayas in my dream, but I think that that dream was sort of some thriller, were somebody was trying to run from a savage villain and something. I don't remember the details now.

  But the most recurring dreams in my life feature nowhere other than my home. It is related to me, it is related to my home. One, theme, which has been recurring since my grandmother's death is about her. Soon after she died, I once dreamt that her dead body was preserved in the house, but I was had the impression that she was merely sleeping. That kind of dream didn't occur again. Instead I started having dreams in which she was alive. I've dreamt her lots of times after that, that she's alive, in my home as usual, making food, or talking to me, or roaming around the house, I was always with her. In the dream, she was always alive, that it would seem to be real to me. After waking up, I would not be able distinguish
which was real which was dream. Same thing used happen when I was in Mumbai. I hadn't gone home for 9 months at a stretch and used to dream that I had gone home, I was in our TV room, talking to father and mother, checking my books, etc etc. Everything was vivid in those dreams, that they seemed real again. Only after waking up did I use to realise that I was still in Mumbai. The funny thing is, those dreams never happen when I'm at home. When I came to Chennai, I had a reverse dream. I dreamt that I was in Mumbai, I even visited places which I had never been to, in that dream. :)

 There are many many many such dreams, I once dreamt that I had gone to a cliff, for fishing with three children from a balamasika (and ofcourse everything was either orange or green) on the way, we saw a shattered old temple and went inside to see a fire in there. The temple was situated on a steep slope. On the way back, we saw another temple, shattered as the previous one. In that dream I dreamt one of my friends had come to visit my home, during onam. I was on the state border, one side was city and the other was a village where onam festival was going on. There was water and mangrove trees on hte border, and I was watching the whole scene from behind the magrove trees.
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This is all I'll write for now, because if I go on, there won't be any ending. My dream world is so vast that, it is more interesting than my real world. It was only in my dream that I understood that I can connect differentiation with family tree.
I'm the first derivative of my parents and the second derivative of my grand parents! :)

THE THREE LEGGED DOG

I tried to restrain myself from writing this without knowing the details perfectly. But I can't help writing......
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The dusk was becoming more and more red. The wind from the sea got stronger and stronger. The dog lay on the facade facing the sea. The sea was not near, yet, the view from the facade was wonderful. "How many times have I laid here and watched the same sight?" The don't couldn't count. It has been a long time since it was living there with its friends, White and Cream. And this dog? It was the three legged one. Different from the other two by the lack of a leg. It had no right front leg. "How has life changed over the past years? The same old nap during the day time, roaming around the campus with friends in the evening(except for the new structures which were built recently), night walks, sea...". But the only difference was that it had lost a leg. In an accident. It was an afternoon, when the dog was sleeping unaware of the things happening around. Suddenly a bus came around the corner and... What it could remember was severe pain. The bus had passed over its leg. The driver had not seen the sleeping dog. Days of severe pain passed by, with the hurt leg. It howled when the pain peaked. Passers by used to pity at it. But nobody did anything, until one day, somebody took the dog to the hospital and got its hurt leg amputed and treated. "I can never forget his smell"; the dog remembered gratefully.
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The sun was setting. The girl who saw the unusal sight of the three legged dog watching the sunset sith all its heart couldn't help telling this story.

Addiction

Addiction. It is strangling me.
Addiction. It is ruining me.
Addiction. I can't get rid of.
Addiction. The inevitable truth.

"GOOD-HEART"

My "good-heart" what should I tell you?
You are not so good at heart as you used to be.
I don't know what terrible thing had happened,
That our hearts were broken; no you broke my heart.
Whatever I do, you measure me in the scales of
Standards you've built for yourself.
"There used to be a great something between us";
Now it is broken; in vain I try to join it getting hurt everytime by you.
Why my "good-heart" have you become "hard-heart";
That you call my heart fake and shameless,
To love you even after the hard times you've given me?
Oh "good-heart"! I don't want to prove myself before you,
For anything; I hope against hope that you will stand in my shoes
And understand my heart.

Emptiness

My source of creativity has dried up,

Emptiness prevails the head and the heart,

I roam around with no particular goal.

Why has life become so boring all of a sudden?

Like a barren land, it has become hopeless.

I don't know what I do and what I think,

Days pass by, just like that.

I wonder why I'm here with no purpose!

I try to do something, but get attenuated,

Its getting my nerves, but I don't feel tensed;

Instead I feel tired and empty.

I want to run away from everything.

I don't like the world the way it watches me.

I don't like the way some think about me.

I want to say, "I don't give a damn!";

But I can't...

I seem to have lost myself, my consciousness, everything,

Where are those things which I want to keep going?

Where are my aim and purpose;my

Dreams,aspirations and realities? 

Opinions

There are some people who can never agree with you.
Those very discouraging ones who don't have a positive
Opinion about anything in this whole world.
Who cares about them? They are the most stupid people around,
Devoid of fun and substance in life.

Social networking

Societies they make in the virtual world,
To find long lost friends and acquintances,
'Connecting' people through the satellite.
Everyone is in the limelight, heroic in profiles.
Facebook, Orkut, Twitter,Buzz, whatever you call it,
This is networking of the current age.
 Who sees sunlight, moon and stars in night?
They 'see' one another in lcd screens...
They talk in forums,communities and blogs,
This is called social networking, I say..
Revolutionary technology internet is,
That I 'chat' with my friend sitting beside me...
Where is society, nature and friends?
Hey they exist in cyberspace.
This is social networking I cite.

Dowry and some thoughts.

WHEN I was a child, I used to hear a lot about dowry. I think it is the first thing,I as a child, understood about the difficulties a woman has to face in her life. In films I saw the incidents where a woman was murdered in what seems to be an accident blasting the kerosene stove (and the kerosene stove used to remind me about dowry for a long time), mother-in-law ( the cliched villain in every marriage!) torturing the daughter-in-law, and so on. I never knew that other members of the in law family can also torture the girl. So for the childhood knowledge. As I grew up, I felt that women were becoming more free and less tortured. With passing years, I understood that my notion was completely wrong. But that is the main issue, of which dowry is a part of. Atleast I wasn't hearing or reading many of the dowry related incidents. But the reports about almost three incidents, (mainly two incidents within a span of roughly one month) have made the writing of this post inevitable.
      The first incident is in which a girl jumped out of the window of the kitchen while a serious discussion (argument) was going on between her parents and in laws about settling the dowry related issue. Her sister in law is said to have been present in the kitchen while the incident took place.
     The second issue is in today's paper. A husband adopting all kinds of low level tricks on his wife to make her bring more and more dowry.Like putting hair remover in hair conditioner, detergent in the atta for roti and making her to eat it, trying to suffocate her, pouring water on the bed while she is asleep and so on. Torture started right after marrriage, though he is said to have displayed love and affection before it (obviously, otherwise how was he going to get dowry?)

 These are two issues. As per cited in wikipedia: " According to Indian police, every year it receives over 2,500 reports of bride-burning."
And I got form a website that in every hour atleast 4 women die because of dowry related issues.I'm not going to tell the statisctics and all that, even one dowry death or torture is nasty enough.My question is, why do they continue, or why do they occur even in this 21st century, where people are supposed to have advanced more in terms of education? (Well in a world where even education itself has become a business, it doesn't matter whether the torturers are educated or not.)

         Let me ask one thing, why do people need dowry? Do the "well educated, handsome,eligible, "desirable (especially)", precious" bachelors think that marriage is a short cut to money making and comfort.

   "I have the right to get free money only because I am a "man". It doesn't matter whom I marry, she should be a treasure box. With the money she brings home, I can live comfortably my whole life. Her parents? Phoo, a bunch of foolish old nutters, who ought to pay me the money I demand because I'm her "husband" and the dominating "king" of my marriage. Actually I'm doing them a favouor by marrying their good for nothing daughter. I should have been married to some, slim, sexy, rich beauty, but look what I got. I need compensation. I need payment for taking this burden called your daughter!"

                     And, unfortunately our parents think that the daughter is of course a burden! A daughter who is above 25  years of age is undesirable, for she is a going to rot "item" in the marriage market, she is forced to marry within 25 years of age in the name of producing healthy offsprings and for her own health ; but better put it this way, it means, a girl who is above 25 is like a more than ripe vegetable, people enjoy tender vegetables, so to ensure that you are loved and cared, you have to get married when you can charm somebody with your body! And it doesn't matter, what amount the groom asks ( giving and taking dowry is illegal, but it appears in the form of gifts to daughters, kilograms of gold ornaments, car, property and so on), the parents are willing to give any amount he demands only because it is shameful to have an unmarried daughter above 25 years of age! It doesn't matter whether the groom is able to feed her or not, or if he is able to earn on his own. Think, why would a person demand money from the girls side, if he can earn well? It is an indirect indication of the fact that he is basically inefficient and has not really come of age or understood anything about being a real "man". Such boys are shameless fellows who nurture the secret wish to enjoy life without working hard on their own, and damned be his relatives who never teach him to be a good person.

    The business doesn't end there. Suppose there is a son and daughter in the family. The family will either conduct the daughter's marriage early giving a huge amount of dowry, and demand the same amount ( but usually more ) as dowry for their son! Balanced equation. But, in a family with unequal number of sons and daughters, what will happen? Think for yourselves. Think about a family with daughters only and which is not basically rich. Is it surprising why people kill girl children? ( So it can be basically put that inefficient and greedy people are responsible for all atrocities against women; greedy for money, greedy for body, greedy for dominance). And if the son goes for a love marriage, out of community, Dhimm! (Ellam theernnu) Everything is over. "Since she is out of community and has lured my son, she should pay the penalty to stay with him,in the form of money ( otherwise dowry ) or I'll treat her like slave." (Read the story of Radhika in 'One night at the call centre.')

          But leave the in laws for a while, the main villain is the husband. If he can't protect and respect his wife, why did he marry her at all? Does he think that marriage is a foolproof way to gain money, a sexual relation, and an easy way to find an unpaid servant for the household where he can treat his "wife" like anything? So girls, if you find that you are being tortured or if you even get a wave of a torture taking shape in your family life, better divorce as soon as possible. Some say, the matter can be settled in the court and can return to the marriage. But what if they are laying a trap planning to revenge on you pretending to repent? Your own life (jeevan) is more important than a stupid husband, and a family life. There is no need to tolerate a good for nothing fellow and some stupid people related to him.

            
       I forgot to mention a point here.There are some parents who try to "buy" a husband for their daughters. Like they'll choose the groom from a family which is financially lower than them, obviously hoping that they can control their son-in-law merely by the power of their money. Mind it, you are adding a crime to the society.Money should not be the main basis of a family life. Sati, Savitri ideas need cooperative and loving husbands also.

    Girls please note this, never agree to marry a person who asks for dowry inorder to marry. You are not a burden. You should be aware of your own power. A society will become extinct without women. So you are not good for nothing fellows. Infact women are much much more complicated than men, in build and all other aspects.

 Boys please don't degrade yourselves by doing stupid things to your wife or the girl whom you want to marry. If you love your mother well you will understand. Will you tolerate it if somebody tortures your mother the way you torture your wife?

   One word to the greedy people who care for money and money only. You are basically  human, and when you die, you are not going to take all these with you. And if you can't resist being that much greedy, why don't you fix the marriage of your son with "The Reserve Bank of India"?

The frustrations of a blogger.

The blogger wanted to speak to the world.
About life, about beauty, about love.
But nobody was there to listen.
Everybody was so deeply immersed
In his/her own world,that they chose,
To avoid the blogger.
The blogger continued writing, hoping one day somebody
Would listen.
But the world was full of narcissts, including the blogger... :)

The bare footed shabby workers who drank tea from the porceline cup in the modern eatery appeared to laugh loudly at the pride of the modern world.

The Air Conditioner

The AC dragon wakes up occasionally from its sleep and breaths its "cold fire" out, sending a shiver through the spine. 

A "FUNDAMENTAL" LOVE STORY

ALL MATTER MADE UP OF QUARKS AND LEPTONS;

ME, U , THE KEYBOARD, THE MONITOR...... ALL......

WHAT QUARKS AND LEPTONS DO, WE DO...

WHAT THEY DON'T DO WE DON'T DO!!!

QUARKS AND LEPTONS 'LIVE'

THEY, 'GROW UP', 'GO TO SCHOOL',

'WRITE EXAMS', 'FEEL HAPPINESS AND SORROW',

OH! 'QUARKS AND LEPTONS' FORGOT TO WRITE ABT 'GAUGE BOSONS'!

THE FUNDAMENTAL CARRIERS OF FORCE BETWEEN QUARKS AND LEPTONS!

"QUARKS AND LEPTONS" FELL IN LOVE WITH ANOTHER "QUARKS AND LEPTONS";

BUT THERE WASN'T ENOUGH NUMBER OF GAUGE BOSONS TO MEDIATE THEIR LOVE.

THE "QUARKS AND LEPTONS" LEFT THE "QUARKS AND LEPTONS"

BUT THEIR LOVE WAS SO "STRONG" THAT ,

THE LOVE ONLY GOT STRONGER WITH DISTANCE. 

THE CITY

The city buzzes around me;
Fast and furious, towards an unknown destiny;
I see a butcher's table, beside a blood covered wall,
A small meat shop on the roadside, it goes past my view.
Mansions and sky scrapers, symbols of luxury;
Men, women and children sleeping on pavements;
Contrasting colours they are.
I see men taking bath in a small bucket of water;
Women cooking food in front of their tents,
And children playing shuttle on the road.
And the starless night sky looms above me,
With a single moon in it.
My bus awaits its destination,
Caught up in the maze of a traffic block,
With deafening horns from nearby vehicles.
I too await my return to my home.
To sleep and wake up the next morning
Again to the daily routines demanded,
By the fast and furious city.

Heart and the soul

I saw the soul which eroded from you,

Wandering helplessly.

I let it reside in my heart for a while.

Then you found it and demanded it back.

I returned your soul which was in my heart,

Undamaged, and went my way happily.

But I felt something missing from me.

It was my heart.....

THE SEA

After many days I saw the se full,
It was high tide, with strong,
But pleasant winds, which made
The waves dance, in glee.
They rose in the shining evening sun,
Who cast a dazzling glow on the sea,
Playfully they rose, gracefully,
Reached the shore and broke with all force
Against the rocks on the shore.
I watched and watched, and felt it inside me.
Yes I was seeing her in a new light,
The almighty sea, whom I was afraid of,
Now as the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
And understood, that she's just like me. :)

Some thoughts about my human life.

Well I don't know exactly where to begin. So if this post seems to be uncorrelated at any point of time, pls forgive me.
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The events that have been happening in my life for the past few days have made me write this post. I'm extremely annoyed and am feeling uncomfortable. When I seek solace, all can obtain is some advise, regarding life and all. That has made me rethink about my life in general. There was a very old question which used to fascinate me.
"Why am I in this universe? Why am I born on this earth?What is my place in this universe? Is it for a reason?If so, what?"
Life is a bit complicated, not as simple as we think. I'm not talking about the emotional things regarding humans only. everything seems to be trivial to us, because we are omitting the fact that, there are other species on earth other than humans. We have (passively) taken for granted our being human,without question. I wonder what I would have been, had I not been a human being. What would have I been? A bird? A worm? A cat? A tree? Or soil? What would have I heard had I been a bird? How would have I experienced smells had I been a dog? How would have it felt to fly without any burden? And how scary would have it been if some human hunted u and killed you? (Not that humans don't kill humans.) Thanks, at least I'm a human. Then I'm the member of a highly privilaged species, a species, which believes that it is the most wonderful creature that has ever come to existence. Again I feel frustration of being a human and at the same time happy about it. Happy because I can read Harry Potter, eat chocolate and learn physics (this is the only reason why I love being a human). But then I don't know how it feels to be another organism. But the fact that humans though highly developed, are causing mass destruction of the earth is frustrating.

And the emotional parts too. I don't know whether other organisms have as much emotion as humans, but human emotion is celebrated, of course the reason being, us belonging to the human race. When the so called relations give frustrations, sometimes we will consider not being a human atleast once. I'm bound by the karma, as described in texts written by humans, for humans, to the world including humans. (Trust me, your world will become boring if you see only humans in it.) And humans judge me, who is a human, and place me in a position designed by humans in a society by humans! Oh! God! [Even the Gods of humans are human shaped ones. Why don't humans worship Gods having other forms? If birds have a God, would it be a Bird God?] It seems to be a never ending loop and I want to get out of it. I want to shun my body and get out of it forever, but it worries me a little, since my "ahankaram" asks me the question "What will happen to me after my death?" I'm willing to die, as far as my conscious mind survives.In other words, if the information processing going on in me survives, I can die happily, since my ahankaram survives. Fear of death is only your pride's fear that it will be destroyed. [This is a new theory I've found out.] What wouldn't I do if my super powered mind gets out of my body without being hurt. I can travel the whole universe without the constraints of my body, go into the core of the sun, go to galaxies, to the centre of a black hole and roam around everywhere in the universe. It is a very exciting prospect. I wonder what happens to the mind when one dies. Mind may be the total outcome of some electrical signals inside you, but what about the information stored in it? Where does it go?Is information not conserved? You live through photos and videos and audio recorded during your lifetime, even after your body dies. Let me rule out silly ghost stories and other stupid stuff. KamalHasan once said "Death is like the full stop to a sentence. Without it, life has no meaning." Stories speak about afterlives, rebirth, many lives; you become different organisms in different lives. In a sense that's true, for everything is made up as a combination of the available resources and they are recycled throughout. You never know, what atom you have got inside you. It is probable that you have got the same electron which was present in an ancient dinosour. :)
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That's all for now, since my human body is telling me that it needs some good sleep. It is in an unknown yet, a world assumed to be well known,on behalf of my being human.

PS:My being human, has given me an opportunity to use the device called computer and type out this post in a human language called English!

A banyan tree

There was a banyan tree on a street in a big city. It stood on the roadside,with its branches spread all around it, and with its roots hanging like an old witch's long hair. During day time it stood there watching the heavy traffic on the road and the busy crowd passing beneath its shadows,while the lovely wind would ruffle its leaves and they would acknowledge the wind by nodding happily. Some tired person would take a minute's rest or two, but then he/she too would hurry and disappear in the masses. At night it slept, beside a sodium vapour lamp, with its leaves quiet, with the gentle wind passing soothingly through its branches. The late night traffic would sometimes wake it from its peaceful sleep, and then the tree would wonder at the passengers.

There were two girls, who used to pass by that road, late at night, after their work, in a bus. They used to look at the banyan tree which stood in the shadows of the enormous building behind it and would say, "It looks like a witch!". They would look at it every day and admire it, for it was one of the sights which made them happy along their boring journey back home. The banyan tree had also noticed its friends, and would wait for them every night before it slept. It never spoke to them, but would nod gently with its leaves at its friends; those friends whose dreams and aspirations would bloom and wander along with the wind, in the starry night.