I wrote this article long back... I don't even remember when I wrote it. At the moment, the Ananya effect is taking its toll. Whatever I type, I feel it is a cliche in the making. Hence I am taking a break from writing.

Life goes on.

Please read the following theory...

The George Carlin Theory:

“The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it?

A Death.

What’s that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you’re too young, you get a gold watch and you go to work. You work forty years until you’re young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities. You become a little baby, you go back into the womb, spend your last nine months floating. . .and you finish off as an orgasm.”

George Carlin

This particular mail forwarded to me by a cousin of mine, made me think a little about how the world will be in that case! The most interesting part is.. How to identify your children! Once you are out of the death bed and into an old age home.. you get a visitor.. a stranger of course because memory cannot be reversed even though the life cycle is reversed and he says you are his father. ( It is quite a debatable topic how the stranger knows who his father is... but then thinking too much about this will only cause cerebral hemorrhage I guess.)

So you have two options here. Believe him or don’t believe him. How can you believe him? Perhaps you need to do a DNA test to find out whether he really is your kid or not. Otherwise, mind you.. You can never be sure until he goes back to your wife’s womb.. (Pardon! Pardon! ) and then also neither of you can be sure about who is the father of the baby because “adultery” if any is committed nine months “later”. (Remember.. we are in a reverse cycle.. )

Ah.. This brings us to another complicated problem.. Who the hell is your wife?? You can never be sure. No DNA or whatever test can tell you who your wife is. Suppose she will come out from the death bed only a couple of years later... You don’t know whether your wife is living at that time.. She may be there.. or she may come to this world a couple of years later or twenty years later. You may not have a wife at all.

Since you don’t know anything about this world because your starting point now is your deathbed, you need to learn everything from scratch. ABC, 123.. Everything. And then you meet your son/daughter.. after some years your wife... then you go to a company as a Vice President.. You keep learning new things.. By the time you are 21 (Reverse cycle.. ) you know everything about practical world. Now it is time for some studies. By the time you enter the most difficult degree to complete.. i.e.. LKG.. you are about to burst with an overdose of knowledge.

Well a further discussion of this topic on practical grounds results in exactly a similar life cycle as the life cycle of a normal human being. Instead of coming into this world as a eight pound bouncing baby.. you come to this world as a hundred and fifty pound adult. Instead of meeting your mother.. You meet your son/daughter. Instead of dating first.. you love your partner first.. start sharing everything with her.. move through the difficult times and then when all your problems are taken care of.. when you are young.. you know each other so perfectly well by that time.. you begin dating .. and you enjoy it like anything.

Instead of going to school you go to a company. Let us simply rename school as work and work as school. It is the same thing.

So, What George Carlin says is basically the same kind of life but with revolutionary changes in the way human relationships are started/ended. Other than that, it is the same old stinking life.. and as soon as the new charm wears out, another George Carlin comes up with a new idea... of beginning life from the orgasm.. and ending it on the death bed.

A vicious circle there???

She smiles

He smiles.

Ice has been broken.

He proposes.

She accepts.

Destiny has been written.

They marry each other’s worries as well as virtues.

She sulks

He frowns

Reality has sunk in.

She cries

He consoles

Everything’s forgotten.

They laugh

They cry

They fight

They dance

Together… Always Together

They have been one.

One happy family.

They fight

They hate each other briefly

They reconcile

They love each other

The big picture

Still is rosy.

The rest are just incidents.

Ananya would love to be here.

He placed the notebook on a 30KW motor and started climbing up. The cooling towers rose up to thirty feet in front of him. It was the best place in the factory on a humid Monday evening. Everyone who had some business in that area took a leisurely walk through the corridor that went right into the middle of the tower. Water sprinkling everywhere, the interior of the tower was a sight to watch.

Ananya would love to be here.

He knew the management would never let Ananya come anywhere near the Cooling Tower or the Prilling Tower or the Baggage Area.. Girls were not allowed on the factory floor. They were confined to the administration.

She detested her job and envied him. He detested his job and loved her.

There were Ammonia fumes everywhere. For the first couple of weeks, it got on to his nerves. However as days went by he grew accustomed to such smells. Working in a Chemical factory, though as an electrical engineer, was not easy.

He reached the top of the cooling tower CL-1. The roof was in a mess. No housekeeping here. The giant motors were all humming their signature tune. He went to each and every motor, looked at them, listened to them and felt them – A routine LLF test. (Look Listen Feel)

Ananya would love to be here.

Since his college days, he had developed an admiration for his bubbly classmate who unfortunately was confined to the air-conditioned interiors of the IT department of the factory – located comfortably near the Far East corner of the plant.

In the final year of their course, they had been assigned the same project – Digital Computer Simulation of 3 Phase Induction Motor. She loathed it. She fought tooth and nail with the professor and got it changed to some Impedance relay project. He did not even remember the title of their project work because most of the work was done by Ananya. He tried at times to help her but she brushed him off. It was her project. She would do it. He could be in the vicinity and stare at the project or at her as long as he wanted but he could not lay his hands on the project.

He checked the engine parameters of the motor and made a mental note that he should ask the technician to get an RPM reading. It was an unwritten rule in the plant that Engineers would not carry the toolkit. It was the technician’s job to take measurements. He had a similar view. He was pretty lousy with the tools. He could never take a proper tachometer reading without breaking the meter shaft.

Ananya on the other hand loved doing such things with a remarkable finesse. She wanted to be an Electrical engineer. When a famous software company wanted to offer her a campus placement she politely declined saying that Ohm’s Law was much more interesting to her than Pressman’s Software Engineering principles.

Ananya would love to be here.

Their relationship had never been clearly defined. No one knew where it was heading. He suspected that the second most important factor which influenced her decision of joining this chemical concern was that he was also offered a job here. The first should be the Buchholz Relay.

She fought with him. She argued with him. She shouted at him. But she was with him almost all the time. They shared a remarkable chemistry. They were the thickest of friends one second and the bitterest of enemies the very next.

He flunked the very first campus interview. She dumped it. He was selected by this chemical factory. She accepted it. It was a rude shock to her when the HR Manager told her on the very first day of induction that she’d be required to work with the IT department of the plant whereas her friend would be in charge of the maintenance of electrical subsystems.

She tried to reason with the HR manager that the very reason why she chose this job over a plush software job was being compromised.

Helen of Troy grunted as if it were protesting the rule.

The multi megawatt motor sitting right next to the cooling tower was nicknamed The Helen of Troy simply because of her sheer size. The factory was located in a remote corner of Andhra Pradesh. The employees knew nothing about the Helen of Troy until a Brad Pitt version of it was released in the town – dubbed in Telugu.

Ananya hated the movie. She drew comparisons with an old movie of the same story. She did not like Brad Pitt.

Ananya would love to be here.

She loved those big machines. She had an uncanny knack of talking to the machines. The machines listened to her. When she ordered, the machines obliged. They shared a relationship perplexing to the three dimensional world. Perhaps they worked in a higher dimension.

She wanted to be in the field; touch the Buchholz Relay and say hi to the rattlesnakes coiling the huge power transformers. However the management did not think so. She raised a hue and cry over the issue. She vociferously protested the gender bias.

But it wasn’t gender discrimination. It was more of a safety regulation. Field work in the factory was too taxing for the women employees. So they were mostly given office work, whereas the supposedly tough men were made in charge of running the plant.

He leaned on the motor and looked around.

From there, the plant presented a fabulous picture. It was dusk. The lights were blazing. West was crimson red. The color combination was mind-boggling. He inspected the auxiliary motors quickly and walked to the ladder.

The ammonia fumes were a little intense now. He knew something was wrong. The plant was actually operating at a little over 25% of its capacity because one of the two prilling towers had to be shut down after a lightening strike. The conductor did its job properly. However there was some jump discharge from the cable to the nearest electrical system. A surge traveled through the control systems.

They shut it down indefinitely. Prilling would commence only after a thorough check of the control systems.

So there was no reason why so much of Ammonia was in the air.

He went to the nearest phone booth and dialed Operations.

A sleepy voice answered the phone. They apparently had an Ammonia leak. They were working on it. No ETC at the moment.

He checked his watch. He had exactly half an hour to log the LLF report and reach the canteen for the 7 o’clock snack break.

He typed everything including the increase in Ammonia levels though he knew it was not needed.

The weather was enthralling. The energy was almost visible. The plant had its own personality. Many held the opinion that the plant was living. Though the pay was less, the excitement of climbing a two storey tall Transformer to inspect the Buchholz Relay was the USP of that job.

Ananya would love to be here.

He walked briskly to the canteen. His favorite corner was unoccupied. As he slowly munched his sandwich, he saw the entire plant coming into the cafeteria.

Ananya would love to be here.

He stared at his opposite chair.

Ananya would love to be here.

She loved Latte with Brownies. If the coffee-break was long enough, she would finish all the brownies available there.

He looked at the entrance.

Ananya would love to be here.

He stared at the empty chair.

Ananya would love to be here.

He was slowly losing it. Ananya would love to be there on the factory floor… She would love to be on the top of the transformer inspecting the Buchholz Relay. She would love to get drenched in the cooling tower. She would love to eat brownies.

And he would love to stare at her. He would love to get admonished by her. He would love to be just with her… in this canteen.

Ananya would love to be here.

The sandwich tasted bitter. He placed it on the table and took out his hand kerchief. Ananya hated tears. At times he would cry when things were not going right but she would scold him whenever she saw his moist eyes. She never let him cry. According to her tears didn’t serve any purpose.

He wiped a tear off his eye. She wouldn’t like to see it. She wouldn’t see it.

Ananya would love to be here.

He broke down at once. Tears were flowing freely. Someone was shouting, “Venu, are you alright?”.

Ananya would love to be here… in this plant… on the floor… in this world…amongst us…

Ananya would love to be here.

May her soul rest in peace.

“Happy Birthday Weirdo” She gives me a rose.

I nod and mumble a feeble Thank You.

“Are you alright?” she asks me.

I nod again. Yes I am alright. Never been better.

But she doesn’t let it go. She asks me again, “Don’t bluff. What’s eating you?”

I remain silent. As a matter of fact, there’s nothing eating me.

“You are never this silent Nirmal. Share with me, please?”

I sigh. Nitya is impossible sometimes. You can probably get rid of an Amway agent but you can’t shrug off Nitya if she is determined.

“Nothing much,” I say, “You know, I’ve completed 29 years. 30^th year has entered my life. With it, the so-called middle age. It’s a bit odd that I have reached the last twenty so soon. I don’t want to leave the twenties. I want to be twenty something always.”

Nitya looks straight into my eyes. “You know what Nirmal? When you say all those things, you look like a cute adorable kid to me… and those hazel eyes of yours – I could just drown in them!”

I suppress a sense of pride. My hazel eyes have indeed been relished by many a young girl.

Nitya is staring at them making me uncomfortable. “What are you doing Nitya?” I ask her.

“Just reading your eyes,” She replies.

I smile. “But I have other things to do.”

Nitya shakes her head. “This is much better than thinking about your last twenty.”

Blushed, I return to the laptop.

“Nirmal, you know what? Middle age doesn’t start until you are thirty five. You have five more years.”

I nod.

“That is your mental age I am talking about not your physical age.”

I nod again.

“Unlike physical age, mental age is something you can control.”

“Really? Tell me about it” I close my laptop and turn to her. “I thought there are a hundred thousand external factors that influence the mental age of a person.”

She waves her hand, “that INFLUENCE the mental age of a person. What if you don’t let your mental age to be influenced?”

“Shut it off?” I ask her.

“Yeah! Just detach it from the external world.”

“And?”

“And what? You’ll remain a young man forever” Nitya is excited.

I look out from the window. The sun is warm. There is a gentle breeze.

“Perhaps we should continue this conversation on a cold rainy day. It’s a beautiful day outside. We should hit the road.” I suggest.

“That sounds reasonable” She agrees.

So we hit the road. I forget my entering the thirties.

Life goes on.

How can anyone prove the authenticity of a scripture?

Say, scripture S1 has some verses, which talk about a certain phenomenon. Person P1 makes some assertions based on this scripture. Person P2 challenges his assertions saying scripture S1 is not authentic.

P1 then asks for a proof. P2 provides him with a couple of books or websites where there is a quad erat demonstrandum argument, which pushes S1 into the list of cooked up scriptures. P1 then questions the authenticity of those couple of books or websites. (Let us call these, C1)

P2 has to provide a valid argument which certifies that whatever is written in C1 is correct. The focus is now on P2 who finds himself in the same shoes as P1.

Is there an end to this process?

There is no absolute truth. There is just the lack of it. You cannot certify the authenticity if you start questioning the facts specified in the aides. For instance, I write a book today named, “The Fallacies in Silappadikaram” and provide an argument which is rich in “facts”. If you believe my version, you have to discard Silappadikaram. If you believe in Silappadikaram you have trash mine.

But how do you arrive at this decision? You have to explore Silappadikaram yourself and validate the points specified in that. For this you need an authentic version of the age old history. The history book you refer may be wrong.

Basically my point is that you cannot certify the absolute authenticity of any work. This is not mathematical to provide a proof beyond doubt. You have to start on a firm ground… believe in its firmness and build your castle. It all boils down to believing something without questioning at some point.

HareKrsna disciples might want to use the term “perfect teachers”. What the perfect teacher says has to be believed. Otherwise, there is no end to the arguments. One will never be able to move on.

Personally I would like to believe the scriptures. Someone else may argue that the C1 is authentic. That someone else will never be able to prove his stance. And I will never be able to prove mine.

A few days ago, we were discussing about the history of Tirupati temple. There is an argument that until the fifteenth century the temple had been a Shakthi shrine. But Silappadikaram written in 7 – 9 AD mentions “vada venkatam” (Means North Venkateswara.. literally.) It should be referring to Tirupati temple because there is no account of any other Venkatam temple in the northern side of Tamizh region.

I wrote this just to exemplify the situation. You have to believe something to disprove something else. And I can always question that belief.

When I was in the fifth year of my rather shaky sixteen years of education, I learnt a golden rule. No matter what you do, you are always gonna be the last.

Be it a class exam or a Kabaddi match, I always lost the battle. I was the kid with the least number of accomplishments. I was the only guy to fail in a mathematics test in our class. Our section came last in the Soccer tournament. Our school was the only one to be disqualified from the school level Cricket championship because we could not beat St. Xavier’s after they restricted us to the all time low score of 24.

“I” was the key. Just a year ago, my school was hailed as one of the promising teams. Now, it was down the drains. What changed? “I” was in the team this time.

“I know Dad, it is because of me. Anything connected to me … anything I am part of is bound to lose.”

“Son, you lack self confidence.”

“No dad! It is not self-confidence. It is my confidence of everything MINE.”

The pattern was consistent. I lost. My school lost. My town was defeated. My state came last in

a) Ranji Trophy

b) Duleep Trophy

c) Per capita income

d) IT development

e) Industrial development

But it topped the population charts. I guess I was not alone in this universe.

And lo! It was my country, which was defaced beyond recognition by every damn Tom Dick and Harry cricket team in the world.

“In the best interests of my society, I think I should die.”

“Don’t be foolish. It is not because of you.”

“OK. So how do you explain this “I” Factor?”

“Do you know the Murphy’s Laws?”

So I went to the nearest bookstore and bought the three-volume set of Murphy’s Laws. The first page had just one poem.

If I traveled to the end of the rainbow

As damn fortune did intend

Murphy would be there to tell me

My pot’s at the other end.

So true. I flipped the pages. And there my dear reader, I found a great statement printed in black letters on a yellow paper…

“If anything can go wrong, it will.”

Somewhere in the fine print, it was written – “Murphy’s Laws are applicable only to those who read it.” And the next statement was – “You are the only person reading them you fool!”

All right. So Murphy is right. Hence I am wrong. Thus my enemy is right. And I know he also reads Murphy’s laws. Then why is it happening only to me? Is it the “I” factor?

I had led a very confused life for quite sometime after reading these Murphy’s laws. Then I saw the movie “Pi” which effectively answered all my questions.

It is the 216 phenomenon Goddamnit.

Suppose I go to the mind reader who looks straight into my eyes and says “Forty Nine”, I am bound to see 49 wherever I go. I come out of the psychic and find two San Francisco rookie players wearing the 49Ers T’s. I am amazed. Then I catch my bus whose number is incidentally 49. I casually look out and the house number catches my attention: 4949, Sneath Lane.

Oh… Everywhere it is 49. The psychic was God!

The secret behind this curious phenomenon, called The 216 Phenomenon, is basically the selective observation skills of human beings. Since I am thinking about the number 49, I pay attention to it every time I come across it. Otherwise I just ignore it. It may not be 49. It can be 154 or 98 for that matter.

The bulb then glows.

I am focusing only on the failures of the “I” team. The successes of it are conveniently ignored. India is a bad Cricket team. That is what stays in my mind. The fact that Geet Sethi, Viswanathan Anand and Sania Mirza also belong to India, escapes my selective memory. My school lost the basketball tournament. But my school guys aced the management entrance examination. I did not remember that.

At the end of the day, what matters is however something very different. A can of beer. Instead of reading this junk, get some beer and enjoy life.