at the tellers' dispense....

i do it rarely...friends do it sometimes...and there are others i have met
who do it all the time..... they exaggerate while they gossip.... as if-  what happened was not good enough to relate...
their stories bother me sometimes... specially when they were wild and reality and imagination have been weaved in so intricately, so well that it is difficult to know one from the other.... it bothers me then...
it bothers me when their stories crossed all lines, deny all logical reasoning... nevertheless they do it all the time and it bothers me sometimes....

but recently i read a passage, that i quote, which justified all such idle talk...
and now i have begun to relish their stories and at times i feel had it not been for them, life might have been so boring.....

"From complete invention, Cosimo, I believe, had arrived, by successive approximations, at an almost entirely truthful account of the facts. He told this two or three times; then finding the his audience never tired of listening to the story and new listeners always coming and asking for details, he found himself making new additions, amplifying, exaggerating, introducing new characters and episodes, so that the tale got quite distorted and became even more of an invention than it had been at first."  

~ extract from Baron in the Trees, 

                        Italo Calvino. 


[image found via google search]

In the eyes of the beholder......

A consequence of Einstein's theory of relativity says that two events, simultaneous for one observer, may not be simultaneous for another observer if the observers are in relative motion. An over-simplified non-precise understanding of the aforementioned statement simply amounts to saying that the way we see things depend on the frame we perceive it from relative to our motion. Ever since its evolution, this idea has brought a revolution in our perception of the way of the world and we are still building on our understanding of the far reaching consequences of this theory. In this regard there was a talk in our institute today. and while was attending a strange idea struck me..... 


      what if ?????

WHAT IF ......    I was told one day that the hypothesis of relative motion in the theory of special relativity was redundant, 
                that is,  each person corresponds to a different frame of reference... irrespective of their relative motion  and ...  

"   if I were to see me through your eyes 

 and hear me through your ears

 i would look different, sound different, 

be a totally different me !! "

     In such a world would i still recognize myself or would i be a stranger to myself ?

It is said that  apparently Van Gogh's style of painting  was not merely a style ....     it was the way he saw the things around.......

eerie isn't it ???

[image: Vincent van Gogh - Shoes, by google search]

No matter how much we despise them....

no fairy-tale, no comic series, no movie would ever be as exciting ..................

... had those villainous characters not been there to over-glorify our super-heroes  .........   

But frankly, have you ever come across anyone who is really dark ??
Dark in thoughts, dark in words, dark in character...... someone whose whole life is smeared with cold dark deeds........

Aren't  the villains as much a figment of our imaginations as are the super-heroes ?? Yet we tend to believe that villains exists more commonly and  are constantly on the look out for the villains in our lives. the people around us who might have wandered into the dark zone.... THE DARK SIDE as they call it  !

But  can someone consciously be so.... oooo   evil  !!

Momentary evil thoughts-- I understand... after all no one is all forgiving and all merciful and a desire for revenge might just cross your mind or greed might just possess you for a while...... but can there be anyone who is constantly contriving against you, conspiring against you.. , trying to make your world a living hell ??

Yet with relative ease we are often able to spot the villains in almost in every chapter of our lives....  probably because we wish our lives were more dramatic and ourselves more glorified .... and perhaps deep down we believe that within us lies a super--hero waiting to be challenged by this villain....  our villian.....

But come on we are no comic characters, no super-heroes...  we are real people.... 

.... and he who erred and wandered thither
                        is as much a human as you and me...... 

                                he is no villain either......

[image by google search]

Can't wait to hear from you....

Emails and mobiles are relatively new phenomenons for me and though I am used to the former , I am not particularly fond of the latter.  So when I moved to Chennai few months back I had decided to be archaic and not take a mobile connection. But a week back I succumbed  and I am already repenting... Having a connection makes me want to receive a call ... at least on Sundays. but people are busy you see..... and hence a nagging restlessness... the cause of my repentance...

At seventeen, when I left home, the only regular mode of connecting to my family and friends was through letters... Landlines were certainly there, but the cost of each call  was high.. so people more often than not exchanged letters... Hand-written-letters, enfolding long personal accounts which bore a lot more than the short-sos-type-telephonic conversations could encompass. They were so lovely, so personal, so endearing... I loved writing them and was always  thrilled when I received one  !! I would read and re-read them and enjoy each reading as if it was the first time....  Letters from my mother, my grandma and a dear friend were the ones I used to wait for the most.  While friends have shifted to emailing, ma and grandma have replaced their letters by calls.... but I miss the personal touch, I miss going to the post-office to buy the postcards and the stamps, i miss taking that extra effort to remain connected and mostly I miss the waiting.... the long waiting  at the end of which a reward was ensured.... the reward of a letter in my letter box  every Friday .... oh!  the GOOD  old Fridays !!


Emailing is different ! It is not as charming... With emails, you expect an instantaneous reply ..... and  check back your  inbox every few seconds...                                       now the waits are  short and the rewards are small........................

                                             and with reluctance I am learning to budge...

[image by google search]