Long Time, no Blog

Hi people... I'm back. I know, I know, it's been a really long time... so long some of you must have thought I'd given up blogging or else died. Happily, neither of these alarming scenarios was in the vicinity of the truth. This is a lot more mundane- due to an intense attack of relaxophilia, I have been extremely reluctant to begin the lengthy process involved in typing 'www.blogspot.com' and then navigating all the way to the page I am at now, just to type a few lines out in this textbox, especially since most of this is too boring to read anyway.

In simple terms, I was lazy.

I suppose I should probably apologize to my loyal readership. No- wait a minute- I don't have a loyal readership (sigh!). In any case, considering that this blog is meant to be maintained by me alone, I see no good reason to apologize. So, I'm sorry, but I am not apologizing. No, sorry, I don't have to apologize for not apologizing either. Dammit. Take it that this blog contains no apologies whatsoever.

Now, to business. The thing that woke me out of blog-ibernation was the poem "Mending Wall" by Robert Frost. For those fans of literature, who want to read the entire poem before they have a look at my penny'orth of pennings, here's the link: http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/frost-mending.html
(I provide it here on the condition that I have your word I'll return to this page once you're done. I grant you Frost may be wiser than I am, but I did put some effort into this post, and am not going to be sidetracked, not even by old Bob.)

For those among you who are not particularly inclined to Frost's brand of poetry (which, let's face it, can be frosty at times) or are too impatient to go all the way to the website of the University of Pennsylvania to read poetry (my friend "of the" family of Something, name changed to protect his privacy, springs to mind), here's a synopsis: basically, Bobby doesn't like walls. He feels they're unnatural and thinks there's something out there that wants them down. He puts this thought to his neighbor, who disagrees. This latter gentleman feels that walls actually promote neighborliness. This causes Frost to put him down as some relic of the stone age. The long and short of this is that Robert Frost dislikes walls.

I got a contrary opinion to this some little time ago, from another piece of literature. Okay, a novel- literature is actually stretching things a little far. This is called "The Life of Pi". Now, I never did see how the novel turned out, for which I have my comrade of left-handed virtues to thank. The refused to lend it to me. However, I was reading a section of it, in which the author criticizes the critics of zoos. His argument fundamentally states that a zoo-cage is essentially a "house" to an animal. And they will apparently defend their zoo territory just as fiercely as they would natural territory. As long as their enclosure fulfills all their needs, animals in a zoo will be happiest there, despite all the noise made about "freedom in the wild."

This, I must admit, was a bit of an eye-opener to me, a self- professed animal-lover who was much against zoos. I used to buy into the freedom theory too. Be that as it may, though, the point made sense. After all, how would one of us feel if we were suddenly thrown out of our homes, and told that it was for our freedom? And let's face it, despite all the "higher thinking" rhetoric, we are first and last animals. So perhaps what's good for the goose is good for the gander. (And again, I will not apologize for the cliche, keeping in mind my resolve not to say sorry during this post.)

Which brings me back to walls. Let's look at this thing in reverse perspective. If an animal can at some level think of walls as marking their natural territory, it stands to reason that we should, too, subconsciously, do something like that. Perhaps, to us too, the wall is a reflection of our natural desire to possess a territory. It might explain a lot- why the first thing most people do when they buy some property, is put a fence up around it. A kind of territorial marking. (At least, thank heavens, we don't resort to the most common means of doing this in the wild. Saves us some bad smells at least.)

And it would mean that, for once Robert Frost got it wrong. Walls aren't unnatural, quite the contrary. For those who will say that he referred to metaphorical walls, inter-personal barriers to borrow a phrase from communication classes, I would reply that sometimes that, too comes into the category of territorial boundaries. In other words, each person needs his space, and an infringement of this amounts to trespassing. It's the fence in the mind that should never be vaulted.

So much for psychology, and the history of walls. Perhaps each one of these observations has been wrong. But in the end, it boils down to this- be willing to give everyone the space they demand to grow in and develop in. A tolerance toward everyone's ideas, a freedom for everyone to live in the territory they have marked (hopefully by slightly sophisticated methods!) - are critical for the progress of the human mind. Any infringement on this inalienable right of the individual is tantamount to trespassing.

And trespassers will be prosecuted.

Of Detours, Moral Values and Carbon Particles

During these holidays, I've been roaming a lot in Chennai city. As it turned out, about 30-40 km a day by bus and/or auto. Some experiences will last: like the words of the auto driver who took me home one day. I walk up to him and ask in Tamil (arguably) for the fare home. The reply I got was (again, arguably) in English, much to my surprise. Apparently he was a Mallu with a knowledge of Tamil, English, Hindi, Gujarati and Marathi, mostly picked up from customers. I sounded suitably impressed, whereupon, of course, he started and maintained a steady monologue about his life. "See saar, I yam faorty saevan yeears old, but my life foolly cleen. No smoke, no drink, no f***. I never smoked," he clarified,possibly of the opinion that I was a dimwit, " I never drank, and... ". "OK, OK, I get the point!", I replied, rather hastily. He then proceeded to give me a moral science lecture for the rest of the informative, if rather tedious, journey home.

Another autoride which I will remember, for a totally different reason, happened just a day or two ago. Now this time my pilot was less gregarious, but, somehow mistaking me for a visitor to his glorious city, decided to show me around the city a bit. So off we went, down some rather gloomy looking streets (loosely speaking. More accurately, they were small mud patches which happened to lie between two dilapidated buildings.) Not much of an advertisement for Chennai, I must say, and I told him so. "You never said which route to take, sir", he said. I plead guilty, but in my defense, I always thought it was understood that one would take the most direct route. Apparently now they take the scenic one.

Traveling by buses, in the meantime has taught me 2 things. One, Hang On For Dear Life or Someone'll Push You Out. This particular lesson is best learned when you need to stand for an hour and a half in a jam packed bus in a jam of another kind. (If I didn't make it clear enough, I meant traffic actually). I've traveled in city buses before, but not for such long periods of time. Now, I actually enjoyed it, but try telling that to my feet.

The second thing: the claims of environmentalists that older diesel engines produce lots of particulate carbon are very, very justified. This carbon divides itself into roughly 4 parts: the first part sits in the hair, the second part launches an attack on the eyes, the 3rd squadron launches small cruise missiles into the nasal cavity and the last part decides it is a health food and attempts to settle itself in the depths of the digestive system, getting there via the mouth. Needless to say it requires a little salt and pepper to be palatable.

I think I better become a global warming activist...

By First Post Tomorrow

Strange and senseless is life, said the poet (OK, so the poet never said anything of the kind, but he might have done...). True enough. Here I am writing a blog, and a couple of months back I thought I'd never do anything remotely of the kind. For one thing I'm too lazy to maintain a blog, it's just too much work.

So what brought on this sudden change, you ask? Oh, you don't ask. Good, because I have no idea why in God's name I'm suddenly afflicted with writing fever. Some sort of virus, I believe. In any case, here is the first post in all its possibly tedious entirety. I'm going to send it off , and hope it finds you safe and sound.

Incidentally, I'm not even sure what purpose this is supposed to serve. There are technology blogs, fanatical blogs, scientific blogs and artistic blogs... but these are just the idle ramblings of someone who's sitting at 7:50 P.M. and feeling rather bored. Still, apparently, it's nice to have a blog, so here it is. And now I've no idea how to fill it.

Oh, wait a minute. I could keep blabbering like this for another few pages! Now, there's an idea! But hang on... did I hear a thousand agonized screams of protest? Right ho, then, as Bertie Wooster might have said, I'll stop... I'll take this post, put it in an envelope and stick a few stamps on it, and off it goes to the main page. It'll go out by first post tomorrow...