Aditya Kumar Singh Pawar, the friend, the enemy, the lover, the competitor, the companion, the doctor, or the agony uncle?? All of those could be used to describe this boy, yet none of them is a complete description.

I was just so moved by what he wrote on his blog, that I was forced to make this entry. Here's for you to read:

manish kushwaha..

friendship has a meaning now, n perhaps this person has a lot to do with it for me.he was and is an intelligent person, several times i took him for granted.he told me there are few 'friends' only n what i used to reply, 'see i want everybody to like me,i know that u like me so i take u for granted now n want others as frnds to have the fun',he was a persn evry boy n gilrl used to share their infatuations with,he was intelligent,had answer to evry feeling n perhaps people loved crying their pains out in front of him.perhaps still now many of his friends do so.he's a trap for me.i hated him for 'a tight slap' n perhaps few other things,he was a martinet, i was a freewheeler, he hated abuses and slangs,i couldn't do without them.still we were friends at one point of time,i don't know why.there may b one reason,perhaps at that time he was the listener of my 'infatuation' feelings, n i needed to tell.but,anyhow i developed a love for this person (thus i say i still can't differentiate love frm frndshp).the time he envied me i tried to do everything opposite n he retaliated too.but i was hurt everyday,cudn't bear it anymore,so i said i want the companionship back,rather i begged.perhaps that's why i still beg to save relations,i have a towering ego,but that really falls at last in most cases.that's my weaknesss,'m proud of it now.

Thanks Ado!

About the seventh time I was watching Rang De Basanti last night. Accompanying me was Rikusha (name changed) and this was her first go at the movie.

Even as the drama unfolded frame by frame, yet again I was grasped by those over-powering waves of emotions. From previous experience I had known there will be points in the movie that will throw me off my feet. This time I tried a trick. I wanted to precisely observe where in the screenplay the film hits me the most. Despite this emotional and willing-to-get-carried-away heart the head wanted to play a spy and pop its head up at all those moments the eyes go moist, make notes, and then quietly slip into the ambush again.

Here're are the notes of the head.

1) Aslam is being made to stand through the hateful tirade of the older generation. Oops! No, not the generation really- his brother is also party. They are arguing over his inappropriate choice of heathen friends!! He complains of suffocation; my heart cringes. When will we let human love take over religious hatred? And quickly the frames shift to sepia, Ashfaq joins a group of men, Azad inclusive, that is planning to loot government money at Kakori. Azad suggests that Bismil will have the details of the plan and Ashfaq wants to know where Bismil is. Sue hasn't even cast him till now and Pandey, the bajrangi, offers to play the role much to the disgust of Sonia.

The tension is building within me. No, this bajrangi, this misplaced enthusiast who rates cultural hegemony over personal freedom, cannot be a part of Sue's film. All these hate-mongers should be kept out. And then.....

Sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamare......... baaju-e-katil mein hai. Call it cultural bias again, call it anything you will, call it the effect of these breathtakingly inspiring lines, they just send a shiver down my spine and I quickly remembered the first time I had seen the movie on January 26, 2007, and how the first stream of tears had rolled down my eyes. This time it didn't happen, but it has happened more than once in the past, for sure. I think I am getting desensitised.

2) Next, I get slightly perturbed when Sue rues her decision to have "come to a place where people are looking for an excuse to kill each other...." Then are those tumultuous moments when she throws stuff around her room. My eyes look for that lamp in her room, that shakes for a while and then slowly comes to a rest. A smile runs on my face. Meanwhile, she finds her grandpa's diary and that calms her a bit, followed by the soothing effect of DJ!!

3) "Lukka chhuppi bahut hui" has so many such tender moments that the entire song just keeps me in a trance somehow.

.....

and the rest... sorry... I think the bit after that was so sapping I will have to write about it the next time.

The last note: I can't figure out why, but these words from Ayn Rand's preface of The Fountainhead are now ringing in my head

It does not matter that only a few in each generation will grasp and achieve the full reality of man’s proper stature--and that the rest will betray it. It is those few that move the world and give life its meaning--and it is those few that I have always sought to address. The rest are no concern of mine; it is not me or The Fountainhead that they will betray: it is their own souls.

Anshul, my saviour, you did it again! Thank you for that one hour of conversation yesterday evening that really helped me. I am not sure how long the effect will last, but at least for the moment I am fine. :)

I must declare a "war on weight" if I wish to live with a healthy heart beyond the 30's. With that aim in the head, I got up lazily at about 6:10 and got ready for the first jogging day. I covered the distance up to the University Parks (UP) in power walk and jog intercepting each other. Then started jogging, and to be honest, I would still describe that jogging as intercepted and shamefully naive. My only excuse is, this is my first attempt :) I could complete one round of the UP in 20 minutes and then walked back to the college.

Then, I worked out the distance of the path I took, thanks to Google Maps. It turned out to be 2.2 km. Anshul suggests that should have been covered in 11 minutes. And my response was "Give me a month."

Lab felt good after the break. Matt's witticisms were a welcome change. People liked my gifts from India. Gloria sounded overwhelmed looking at the pencil pot.

I had dry eyes working before the computer screen for the entire day. Left lab at about 7 and then tried sleeping for about an hour on return to college, to little success.

Have now had my food, keyed in a half-hearted day entry, and hoping to trying to sleep again.

-Manish

"HAPPY FRIENDSHIP DAY TO U!!!" read a post in my scrapbook and I instantaneously replied to it as if for the sake of protocol. Then, I thought about it.

Oh, it's Friendship's Day, is it? Wow. Just wait, but what's there to be happy about in it? Do I remember any of my previous friendship's days? Not really. Still, did it ever mean anything? May be it did. I rummaged through the crude selection of old greeting cards I have just brought from India and pulled out this one card I had a laugh about only last week when I had first re-discovered it and had then called up the sender and laughed.

The handwriting went "Please stay around because we all need to have a mutual support system. Thanks for being around. But this doesn't mean that your overdoses have been forgiven." I hadn't understood anything of what this message may have then meant, nor could the friend recall. We had just laughed. Now, I investigated and looked up the date "1 August 2004." I think I now know what the card had meant- the sequence of events that had then been unfolding and the context of that text. Yet, that is a part of my life some of which I normally don't want to think about. So, I tossed the card back into that bag and got on..., well almost! And after the toss my mind went scanning through the memories of the day- we had gone to Noida and spent good time there, had good food, shook our heads in some sort of disbelief and looked at Varun's paintings, and then as if to cut the day short I had got up and said- "It's time to leave, we had decided we would leave by 4." The hostess had been unimpressed, my company also reluctant to leave, but when I insisted I would like to leave even if unaccompanied, my words were heeded to. And then we came back in that DTC bus, while he was falling to the sides in slumber, and his back was also aching thanks to a previous friendly assault. So much for memories, I thought and turned to Kafka.

Kafka's still beyond my reach. I have a habit of reading authors and forming patterns about their style and then taking some kind of pleasure in rough predictions of what they might come up with in the next few sentences. Kafka has been above that until now. He's been unpredictable, actually abrupt, as if with "no pattern" whatsoever. I will wait to see how this proceeds.

Lastly, my last wisdom tooth, yes the 32nd, is giving me some trouble. I am intermittently struggling to handle the pain, but it is sometimes a good deterrent to the head transforming into a devil's workshop.

I have returned from Agra this morning, and the Taj Mahal refuses to fade away from the head. Before I had seen it most friends had suggested that I would find it over hyped. I would probably have done so had their opinions not mellowed my expectations!

The day began with reaching Agra late by about two hours. After making a quick trip to the Buland Darwaza in Fatehpur Sikri, we finally arrived.

I caught the first glimpse of the large dome and the spire atop it immediately after I crossed the security checkpoint. But as I entered the large red gate (don't know if that has a special name), the white wonder at a distance just didn't let me take my eyes off. Step by step, I advanced through the gate and realised the overwhelming nature of the masterpiece. The head juggled through my limited vocabulary and came up with the right adjective- "The Taj is just so imposing," I said to myself!

Some quick clicks of the camera and we inched further with the many many tourists already devouring the beauty and grandeur. The gardens were splendid, the walk relieving, yet every step towards the Taj was intimidating me. I paused, and interrogated. I realised my fear was that of losing my first impressions as I got closer: maybe I will loathe the yellow tinge that reportedly has grabbed the marble, or maybe my proximity to the structure will make it impossible to appreciate the breathtakingly precise (compared to the scale and the time of its built) symmetry that the Taj owns.

As I finally set my foot on the marble stairs, and the sole touched the perfectly smooth surface, I told myself there's more to appreciate. We didn't just barge in at the first opportunity, but instead, took a round of the Taj- went to its backside and enjoyed the view across the river, not to mention the cool breeze that welcomed us smiling. And then, we entered the monument- went in a circle- tried to peek in though the marble cut mesh work, with little success. And even before we realised it, we were out of it. Clearly then, the insides were disappointing; especially the fact that everything had been barricaded- no rooms to visit, no tombstones to rave about!

It was time to take another walk around the Taj as if we were party to some unsigned merry-go-round pact! It was then that my mom whispered, "Aah, and there are the modern day Shah and Noor!" Even before I turned my head, I knew I disapproved of her comment- my repartee could easily have been "how does it matter to you?" but I chose to keep quiet just this while and turned around to look. This young couple- possibly "just married" or "in love" (from what I could read about their socio-economic background, the former would be my better guess) - were writing up their memories. The guy was reclined with his head on her lap and she was running her fingers through his hair- alongside, they were also muttering sweet nothings to each other convinced that an invisible acoustic contraption had them well sealed off from the heap of people huddled not far away from them. I didn't want to appear overtly interested and having registered the above, I turned away in a fraction of a second. We went around the Taj and then chose to rest in the gardens.

My mom thanked the heavens. After all, it could have been scorchingly sunny or slipperingly rainy- yet it was just the right overcast not willing to yield a drop. That meant disaster for the photographer, but joy for those like me already in love with the place. Conversations with mom swerved from one irrelevant topic to another- until she hit the note that I suspect she had been planning to for a while.

"Manish, when do you plan to move on? Isn't it time you find stability in life?" she said.

"I have moved on and I am stable. What makes you think it is the contrary?" I retorted.

"No, I meant, when do you plan to settle down? Everyone around you has moved on. Why do you have to live in the past?"

"Listen Ma, I will not force myself into a relationship just because I fear growing old, or just because you want it. In my last relationship, we had discovered each other. There was no goal that we were working towards, yet we just found each other and it became special by the day- until it started waning away."

"But they've moved on; don't you think you should as well."

"May be I should. But I don't believe in moving on for the heck of it. I may not have anything to do with them, nor do I want to. They're clearly not the person I had been with. The change had been phenomenal either in their personality or mine, or both ours! I may not have them around anymore, but nobody can take their memories away. Those are special to me and securely locked up. Every now and then I recreate them for myself and make them live longer."

"I respect that. But, as I say, you would have to move on. I come from a generation that found their love after marriage."

"I don't have anything against you for that. But, you cannot impose the rules of your generation on mine. We are a generation that believes in expressing our feelings- not curtailing them for the fear of social mores. In fact, to debate between the behaviour of your generation and mine leads only to conflict- and I have already suffered because of that. It was the mores of your generation that kept me tied down for so long while they were expressing their love uninhibited- it took me too long to get out of it. And by the time I did it and that too with little confidence, they had already moved on."

"Manish, at your age it is easier to think that life can be so fulfilling with friends. As you grow older, you will realise the need for a closer companion."

"I cannot refute that point of yours; you have experience to back it. Yet, all I can say is, until such time arrives when I would be willing to settle for the heck of it, I would want discover people naturally! I would want to be around friends, and discover love by accident. I may be entirely wrong in forcing myself to fit the prototype my last relationship has created. Yet, I believe at this time that there's no other way."

"Let me ask you then, do you have any belief that just because you last felt for a guy, you may only be compatible with another guy."

"Ma, to be honest, I do not think so. If I look at myself all through the years, I think that may not be true. But I must confess that social conditioning can be a subconscious deterrent to even a die-hard revolutionary. Thankfully, it didn't deter me last time, and also thankfully my belief in the idea of flexible sexualities is still firm. I think I have to honest with myself, which means that if I do feel for someone, boy or girl, I would be willing to respond. I do not want to barricade my feelings."

"It is quite disturbing for me. But, do ask yourself. What can you call a relationship of that kind? All that can be said is that these two guys are living together. What else?"

"You are right. In our country, that is all that could be said. Yet, it doesn't bother me. Anyway, I have little faith in the institution of marriage. I would rather stay with my live-in partner, even if a girl, all my life than ornament the relationship with the socio-legal tags."

"You clearly have jumped a generation in your thought. Do you realise that I may have expectations from you?"

"Yes Ma, I do. But I would rate any expectations that you have of my personal life as unreasonable! My personal life is mine. Period."

"I can't say much then, but I am glad you seem to know what you are talking unlike about two years ago."

"Sure Ma, two years is a long time."

I would be lying outright if I say that the above conversation took place as is recorded. That is NOT the case. It was not that crisp Reader's Digest style. It was interrupted by random observations, skew comments, a cold drink, some snacks, some lazy rambling and also a bit of heat in the argument. Yet, I think this is a reasonable summary. While we were sitting there working our minds and hearts, there were also other interesting observations to make.

We saw a couple who went up to a white woman and requested her, in their impaired English, to please hold their child and have a photograph taken with him. The lady obliged. And I imploded with laughter. My mom said, "As if her touch will turn the boy white!!" My mom is quite good at these politically-incorrect comments, but all I can do to help her is to interrupt her. Yet, I thought to myself what would be on the couple's mind. Was it really some Midas touch they were hoping for. My political correctness came to the fore again, this time reprimanding me for the choice of my thoughts. "Why a Midas touch? Do you think a white skin is more valuable than a coloured one, just like the gold is than iron?" "No. But, by the way, what makes you think gold is more valuable than iron, aren't they both metals in their own right?" I complained.

Only then I saw this little girl who had probably by a freak accident of a fortuitous reception from a leaking cable TV network caught glimpses of some set-in-the-yore English movie. She would go up to one foreigner after another and forward her hand for a shake. When they would respond, she would immediately take the opportunity to kiss them on the hand and then run away in delight. That brought a smile to my face and also my mom's. So much for our colonial hangover, I thought!

And then I spotted this group of children (boys, to be more precise) playing in the parks. They were mostly all in the 8-14 age group. And then I spotted another- this was another group of guys dressed in white kurta-pyjamahs with the round cap that is used during a namaaz. They were unmistakably Muslim children. But why were they playing separately? Were the two groups deliberately avoiding each other? Or was one of them just an alien group of children? Was this a difference of religion, or just the socioeconomics? Or were there Muslim children embedded in the other group as well, whose parents had not chosen to display their religious identities in their clothing. I tried comparing the two groups, they were behaving similarly- running after each other, somersaulting in the grass, whispering in each others' ears, playing with the ball, and breaking into spontaneous running competitions and then pulling each others' clothes to get ahead. I did it for a while and then thought to myself- who says these children are different? If only we let them be equals.

At the monument of love, I thus basked in the sunshine of my own beliefs, convictions, and love. And as the sun started to set at the horizon, we gathered our belongings and made a move.

I have finally shed the garb of agnosticism. I am a proclaimed "atheist" now.

Yesterday, my journey through "The God Delusion" ended. Or, possibly, "ended" is the wrong word. This book has inspired me to begin more journeys- of which I am quite inclined to read "Counterfeit World by Daniel F Galouye." (This book supposedly represents an idea close to what I have discussed through a night with Mudit in the past- and I really cherished that idea as original then. We had called it "The Program". Silly boys we!!)

To all those who automatically are deriving too many conclusions from my being an atheist, let me clarify my own stand. I am only a non-believer (or atheist) in as much as god means: "something or someone who has created the world, supplies the world, oversees the world, judges us by our deeds and rewards or punishes us according to them." It is such a god that I do not agree with. For all those of you who believe in god as a force, an inspiration, that prods you to do good- to your fellow humans, animals and the environment- I would stand by you even if you called that inspiration as simply "moral inspiration/ responsibility."

However, if you want me to believe that such men as Jesus or Ram or Allah walked the earth and did all that has been attributed to them by the so-called-holy books, I would like to excuse myself. If you would ask me to bow before the pictures/ idols of these entities, I would like to excuse myself. If you would want me to disapprove of the Danish cartoons, the Hindu goddess's nude paintings by Hussain or those by Chandramohan- I would like to excuse myself.

Dawkins does raise my conscious and frees me from the idea of a supernatural controlling power. In this respect he empowers me further. He reassures me that the good I want to do will happen and no religion can stop me from it- I know I am better than those religious zealots 'cos I will not kill a person just because they don't agree with me.

Dawkins also empowers me because he stresses the idea of truth, and idea that has already been aggrandized by Gandhi, and rightfully so! I have sacrificed to truth myself- and with every sacrifice I have grown stronger. "TRUTH" is such a double edged sword- a word that empowers as well as cripples you. It empowers you because it gives a consistency to your reasoning. It gives you a reason to believe something or refuse to believe it. Yet, it cripples because it makes you incapable of being a die-hard believer of anything. Your beliefs are constantly under scrutiny and the day any of your beliefs is proved wrong/untruthful, you must give it up. Your beliefs cannot be permanent in an ever-changing world.

At a point Dawkins criticizes the self-obsession of humans. We tend to make too much of ourselves. We forget that we are only ONE of the many thousand species on the planet- and if at all there would be a god they would probably not care about humans and their lives any more than they would care about an ants!! Also, we stupidly think that our constricted world view is absolute- we can seen only in a small range of the electromagnetic spectrum, we can only hear in a small range of the sound frequencies, only feel a certain grain of texture, and so on.... There are far more colours in the world than we can see, far more sounds around us than we can hear and far more patterns than we can ever appreciate. We must be absolutely foolish to think our world is the ONLY world.

How one thing leads to another and the other to yet another until they all get confused and are lost- is not an uncommon observation. Yet, how a continuum of thoughts can weave a web and trap you by their collective might is! This day is special in this regard.


What started off as a reading of Dawkins' The God Delusion has shown me enough though the day- and yet more may be in store for those last thoughts in the bed just before I catch sleep. The lack of empirical evidence for the existence of god had not been an obvious reason for its (I had dropped the 'h(H)is' longer ago) dismissal, until I saw the book's preface.

At the moment, I don't care about the details- I know the motif they'll all fall into- I can alredy see them all. I know he (Dawkins) will convincingly shed all the hoax about the 'evidence' confirming its existence; will show the religious books their rightful carbon-date-of-birth and prove the anomaly between when they were really penned down (by some freak force/s) and when they claim to belong to. He will also be convincing about how the religious experiences of people can be explained by psychology and science. Yet, what I do not know is how he will make most of those who do not believe in religion but are unwilling to call themselves atheists- taking guise in terms like 'naturalist', 'agnostic'- come out. How does he hope to
kick off the Atheist Pride Movement (after the Gay PM) when the world is permeate with the gigantic and omnipotent structures of religion.

When I spoke to Jazzy (name changed) about it, he said- he can't possibly go very far with this. Yes, he can't. Yet, I now have an exceeding urge to bump into him- possibly in the OU parks and tell him- to his skeptical surprise- how much I have thought about this so often but never articulated it as well as he does. How I always knew there is a way- and how despite the knowledge of the word, I did not know I have been an atheist for very long!!

I must appreciate him for his courage though- and congratulate him for the day when he will be hailed as one of the most potent fathers of atheism- or possibly of Dawkinism.

Dawkinism and its discussion with Smita (name changed) was just too good. Yet, her enquiry was extremely confusing.

Her question was tricky "Manish, be it political thought, religion, sexuality and everything else- why are you always against the mainstream?"

I was not surprised by the question. Yet, I was confounded by what the correct answer could be? I chose to play Vikram Seth- "That's how I am. I leave it to the sociologists and the psychologists to find out what the reason could be."

"I am a sociologist and I am looking for one. You tell me what you think it can be. That will help my hypothesis."

I didn't know- but I knew she was right somehow. I tried arguing that I have conditioned myself into NOT following the instinct and only the rationale- this was systematically struck down. It became intense and finally too confusing. She persisted "Why are all the anti-mainstream
ideas together in this one person. Why?"

I blabbered a lot of intellectual sounding (yet innately stupid) arguments and even as was voicing them realised they will deserve the thrashing they are about to get. And just then I paused in introspection and fumbled upon what was the most fundamental instinct.

"I think it is because of two reasons- First, my strong belief in the need for two balancing opposites; and, second, my strong belief that if there has to be a change in my world, I will have to be the instrument. I think that sums it."

This convinced her- as well as it had convinced me a few nanoseconds ago.