The Dreaming Tree

The little sparrows play in the muddy puddle,
My stupid hair is in a bloody muddle,
The pages take too long to load,
Leaving me tired and bored,
For I find more joy than getting into bed with three,
In the art of penning shitty poetry.

As it often happens, my mood shifts from one level of randomness to another. And considering its love for entropy, the degree of randomness rarely decreases. Make that never.

The Wet Socks Study

In the Spring of 2007, Dr. Vocksman Joure, a Franco-German scientist at The Max Planck Institute of Scientific Research was washing his socks. It then struck him, that in this process his socks were obviously moistened, or as the layman would say, we. But in spite of his dedicated efforts they refused to stink. Dr. Joure was puzzled as whenever his socks were 'moistened' by the rain, they smelled like 5 day old cow dung after the beetles had their eggs hatching and larvae growing.

Being the brave scientist he is, he decided to venture into this unchartered territory armed with nothing but his razor sharp Swiss army knife, and what he liked to call intellect. Later he would regret his folly and blame it on his naive ego.

Anyway, Joure waited. Waited for summer to come. And all this time his mind was focused. Every morning he thought about his stinky socks and how his research would change the world.
And soon the rains were here. The rains. They were here.

His beacons of joy were lit, the flame of his research desire let loose its forked tongue and gasped for more scientific air. Oh! How they smouldered in his heart, his soul and mind were one. He saw nothing but the socks, he smelt nothing but the smell of wet socks and he felt nothing but euphoria and adrenaline of inching towards one of the greatest scientific marvels of the 21st century. He wept as his mind envisaged heroic welcomes and people thronging every city he entered.

Three hours later Dr. Vocksman Joure passed away due to a heart attack. Apparently emotional exhaustion was the cause.

Note: In his honour, the Wet Sock Study was officially suspended. This intriguing subject will never be dealt with again by any scientist in the world, and anyone who dares to defy this rule will be struck by the Vocksman Joure curse. This horrible curse causes socks to stink even after they are washed. Let us pay homage to this great man. Whatever little we know of, about this great smelly mystery is all because of him.

Its been a long time, oh faithful reader who hath stumbled upon my blog (for the first time most probably).

On my recent trip to NITK, Surathkal I learnt quite a few things. But the biggest realization came out of the blue, or , well, black of outer space.
The beach next to which the college is so comfortably parked is a a 5 minute walk from the main gate. A walk that leads through eerie residential colonies, where all Hitchcock's of inspiration lives. On an innocent journey through this very road, our group found themselves in the middle of a blackout. The Karnataka power grid had seemed quite consistent in its inconsistencies and as in the previous occasions the probability that there would be light was, at best, negative.

So what do we do on a moonless night stuck in the middle of nowhere in complete darkness? I looked up at the heavens only to realise why god had created load scheduling and power cuts. It was alive with a million stars twinkling for our attention, another chance to play join the shiny dots and conjure constellations. And then it all came back, like the swat kats were bored of the past master and sent him to me.

I recalled how I once told a debate judge I wanted to be an astronaut. How I watched every moon documentary there is. How my first chemistry lab absolutely fascinated me. How my first physics lab's staff had to throw me out to make sure I did not camp through the night there. How I hated (and still hate) biology. How I wanted to study science and engines and trains and machines and generators and motors and circuits all my life.

Now languishing where I languish I wonder all those ambitons have faded away. Its as if they have been smothered. By an educational system that laughs when you are shocked by 440 V machines. That would trip you rather than warn you to look before you leap. A system where positive means lack of negative.

And most of all by an individual who wishes he was forewarned, who wishes he could sit in an armchair and learn all he wants to without having balding professors with crooked noses and twisted minds glaring down and monitoring every move as if his pupils were sick animals in a rundown zoo.

And here's the KO, an educational system that justifies all of the above and adds a prickly reminder, but no answer, to every question raised. And before you leave the room this cynical system will remind you its core value, change implies rebellion, and rebellion deserves death.