The Undiscovered -- Or the Long Forgotten

The Undiscovered -- Or the Long Forgotten

A Story by

Sandeep Palakkal

Once upon a time, or rather, some years back, there lived a young man in the middle of a big city in India. In those days, in the depth of his heart, he used to feel that he was one of those educated young men who were, perhaps, doomed to live in a rather congested, dirty Indian metro, far away from home and where some alien language was spoken in the everyday life. Of course, his bulk five figure salary helped him lead an easy life in a nice apartment, with all comforts which almost all of his nighbours could not even dream of! He lived in a fully furnished apartment, in the corner of a street, which otherwise was as good as a slum. Perhaps, he was bored of everything outside and, most of all, of his own life. I don’t know; I can’t judge him anymore.

For the past four years, he had been living there, and had developed some damn, monotonous routine. Routines are good, you know? They say, it helped people like Einstein to concentrate on their work; perhaps, they are correct. But his routine only made him more of a damn fool. There was nothing interesting to think of in life, other than the usual daily cool stuff. But only until a day something had happened in his life. Something apparently trifling, but which changed something in him. Which caused his mind to be active again.

Well, it was a hot morning, as usual in that part of the earth. And he was on his way to office, on one of his new bikes -- he owned three bikes and one car at the time, for that matter. And, as usual in every morning, he bumped into the same old coffee shop for breakfast. He had not made this shop his permanent place for breakfast because it had very good ambience, or because the people over there behaved well, or because he had just developed some kind of affection with the place and the people who worked there. It was simply because it was almost the only shop which provided some hygienic food, though they charged him more than necessary. After all, this was the case with every shop in a metro! As the usual confusion of what to eat -- dosa or idly or puri with masala -- started threatening the stability of his mind, he noticed a startling new face on the other side of the bill counter, where usually an old boorish fellow used to sit. Perhaps, he had been too much conditioned and adjusted to his life, his mind could not take this change quite immediately. He was confused while making his order, almost forgot to get his balance back, and was so embarrassed to talk to her, the owner of this new face. While he was eating, he knew something had changed in him. Only, he could not explain it in words -- he just could not explain.

His confusion stayed only for one day, and second day onwards, he started observing her, in fact, without his own knowledge. Somehow, she aroused a lot of enthusiasm in him. Enthusiasm -- maybe, the sign of a healthy mind. She was just twenty-two or twenty-three years old, yet not very attractive, and had nothing in common with those girls who were working with him in the office, who his friends and, as he would admit not without some doubt, he, found very sexy, and who, he and his friends thought, made their life in the office exotic. On the contrary, she was less attractive, or perhaps, completely unattractive; his friends might even say ugly? She used to wear some old fashioned churidar, a pair of black coloured earrings, a pair of plastic bangle of some dark color, one on her each arm, and a pair of thin slippers; she showed no taste of fashion whatsoever in her dressing or appearance, and if she still had some sense of fashion, it was from some ancient times and bland; and it seemed to him that she never bothered to say something or make a point about her personality through her appearance. Besides, she was so thin and fragile that she would evoke pity in anyone who looked at her.

Yet, since the beginning, he felt there was something in her, which lay beyond her outward appearance. Was it the liveliness she was able to render into her otherwise silly gestures? Was it those simple and naive expressions that she continuously bore in her face? Or, was it the calm composure she always possessed in all her movements? He could never tell. But I am convinced that for him it was a joy watching her, without her knowledge, sitting in a corner of the shop, with a hot cup of coffee on his table. Sitting like that he used to feel that he was a child again, life was again worth living, and happiness was nothing remote or nonexistent. What is the meaning of life, dear friend? Or, rather, what was life worth living for? If not for the simple happiness one feels for no reason! That simple happiness one feels when waking up to a warm, sunny morning, with songs of the birds in the background! The same happiness one feels after taking a short walk through some old country side! Happiness one feels when watching the sun falling slowly into the sea! Where had it gone? When had it disappeared from his life? Why had he not known? Perhaps, it was the same simple happiness that her presence had aroused in him. I could never tell till lately.

I had chanced to meet him on one of my long train journeys a few years ago, as he happened to be seated opposite to me. He looked like a very happy man, looking enthusiastically through the window, as though he could not miss any scene outside. At some point of time, somehow, we started talking, and it was then that he told me this story of his life. He told his story with such intense passion and poise that even I felt very elated. From his long conversation, I was convinced that what he felt towards that young girl was not the least stained by those carnal desire a man would feel towards a girl. Rather, he was just inspired by her presence. I remember asking myself the question: Can mere appearance of a simple girl cause so much of change in one person? I never believed him, but only until lately.

As years move forward, we forget even our own happy memories, and so had I long forgotten that chap and his story. But to my surprise, and for no apparent reason that I could think of, his story came back into my mind, not when I was awake, but during my sleep as a revealing dream. Perhaps, it was the early hours of the morning, and I was still sleeping under my blanket, when I started dreaming of an unknown land. I am sure that I had never been there before in my life. I saw myself walking on a deserted road, looking for something. Finally, I could find a lonely coffee shop, which, I felt, had long been waiting for me. I entered into it with some strange feelings, hoping to have a cup of coffee, and I saw at once a thin, dark skinned girl sitting across a table, wearing a green churidar. Somehow, it occurred to me that I must get the bill first from her, and walked straight towards her. I was aware that there was no one else in the shop, and I kept wondering what kind of a place it was. First, I asked her what time it was. She did not understand. She was confused, and rather, was scared -- I could read it in her face. Her face reflected her mind so transparently that it glowed with momentary confusion and doubt. I had never seen such a glowing face before in my life, and it was refreshingly new and beautiful. I woke up at this moment in my bed, and the last word was stuck deep in my mind. I deliriously repeated the word many times before I was fully awake and became conscious of myself

“Beautiful! Beautiful! Beautiful!”

Alas! The fellow I met in the train was wondering what had attracted him to that unattractive girl. But I know the answer. I know the answer. It was her beauty! Her beauty!

I do not know where that chap lives. I do not know his address. But if he reads this piece of work that I have written for him, let him know this.

It is beauty, my friend, which lies beyond attractiveness, which is the source of simple happiness in life. And while attractiveness is open for any fool to see, beauty has to be discovered!

Sandeep Palakkal,

Chennai,

Aug 11, 2011.

Advertisement -- Notebook of a Signal Processing Engineer

Palakkal Times

My time is limited. I am already exhausted in life. I have a mountain of frustrations in my mind. Yet, I can't help writing more, again, "to feel the inexorable pleasure of writing".  I have started another blog on signal processing, more on my professional front. I had started some time before, but only now I published something relevant. You can access my blog at http://sandeeppalakkal.wordpress.com/

Thanks for your support,
sandeep Palakkal

Advt.
26th July, 2011

On Buddha's Problem, from a Contemporary Perspective

Once upon a time I was so fascinated by teachings of Buddha. I often say that I am a frustrated nihilist. I became a nihilist against my will, when I lost my belief in everything in life, all values propagated by the society, and every moral teachings. Yes, I have gone through a time like that. It was in those days I read so much, seeking a foundation of thoughts and values for me. Buddhism was the one of the most important teaching that grabbed my attention and admiration. Here, I would like to talk a little bit of Buddhism and ponder over it, for no particular reason. All the opinions expressed below are personal, and I claim no scholarly value for them. Before beginning, I would like to complete the story of my nihilism by saying that I could never be satisfied by any set of values or teachings. The more I read, the more I sought, the bigger a nihilist I became. Was it my fault? Incapacity to believe -- Is this my fault? Finally, I was bored of my own nihilism. I could no longer bear it. One day, I realized that my nihilism itself had started to become frustrating. Ever since, I considered myself "a frustrated nihilist". And ever since I became free of the need "to seek a foundation of values and thoughts for me". Probably, ever since, I started "to live", freely, without conceptions.

Now, coming back to Buddha's teachings, I would liketo  look at the heart of the problem Buddha tried to analyze. There is a whole story and speculations surrounding Buddha. However, my objective is not to tell or re-tell those stories but actually to look at Buddha's problem and try to understand it from my time and perspective. Understanding Buddha's problem from his own time is an impossible task for me, and can possibly be done only by specialists in Buddhism and its history.

Probably, I have to begin by asking what is the objective or meaning of human life, though I consider it as the most absurd question in heaven and earth to ask (I have not seen hell; therefore, I leave the possibility of asking this question there). Distancing myself from all the available scriptures and previous knowledge, I begin by looking at a more functional level -- the level at which life actually unfolds. I would like to look at how everyone lives in the world. From an animal's perspective, life is all about eating and breeding. When it does not eat or breed, it either takes rest or just play around aimlessly with its fellow animals. These statements about animals may be incomplete, but I am comfortable in handling incompleteness. I rather continue to look at humans who differ from animals in their superior intelligence. In the case of humans, the first two points I said about animals are valid, with a slight modification in the second -- eating and mating (more often for pleasure than for breeding). Regarding the third aspect, the modern humans have almost forgotten to play around with their pals. Except the children, they are "settled" and spend most of their leisure time "resting" in front of television. Apart from these, their other leisure activities or entertainments in general are transitory and have no particular objective. So, let us try to learn from the modern humans what their objective is by looking at how they spend most of their time. Majority of the time is dedicated to "some" job, which they are not particularly interested in but do solely for earning money (a more decent way of putting it is "to make a living") and for the joy of upholding it as a status symbol (In a charming voice she introduced herself, "Well, I work as a ******".). Of course, I am mistaken if I oversimplify the objective of job or work in the modern human life as money-making and attaining an identity. More than that modern humans work so that they can secure the future, marry off their girls decently, meet urgent situations like sickness etc. (Does it again it boil down to money?) I think that we can safely say that the objective of modern life is to lead a safe, comfortable life without much troubles. Money is considered as the means by which these objectives can be achieved. Since humans have not evolved enough, they quite often forget this and pursue money-making as their sole objective. (When one tries to achieve this in little time, one tries to do things like "3G scam", and, if unlucky, ends up in the Tihar jail.) There are exceptions, though. There are people who are more lazy and do not even try to lead safe and comfortable life. They just booze and kill each other in the street. On the other extreme, there are people who work for more (they say) noble objectives like fame, service of the poor, building up own nation, etc. There are more selfish people who aspire to become a movie director, actor, television anchorman, painter, novelist, model, engineer, etc. There are other fools who aspire for academic excellence, like obtaining a Ph.D. from a well-known institute, or for achieving technical competence, like struggling to be an excellent engineer!

Having understood more or less the meaning and objective of modern life, I would like to look at the next aspect in this realm, which comes for sure but uninvited. Summarizing the above paragraph, the objective of life is mostly to "achieve" something. This "something" changes for person to person, country to country (maybe), and time to time. But a major difficulty is "to achieve something permanently". This seems to be (I say "seems to be" because I am still skeptic -- my weakness) impossible. To understand this impossibility, I must have to ask another stupid, age old question: "who am I?". However, because I cannot surpass my own skepticism, I am rather tempted to ask "what am I?". Again, without resorting to all the metaphysical stories written in the sacred text books, I would say, "I am my body, my thoughts, my feelings, my knowledge, my surroundings, my family, my education, my fantasies and so on". Put in one sentence, "I am a bunch of abstract and material elements, which are impermanent and, by and large, irreconcilable". The irreconcilability of the elements which constitute the "I" is an interesting topic for further discussion. But I am interested in the other "fact": the impermanence of every element that makes up "I"! This means that whatever I think, whatever I do, whatever I plan (no matter how diligently I plan), my life and my action and "I" are impermanent. However well I live, however devoted I am towards my life, however noble my pursuits are, I am not permanent... my power will slowly decay and, finally, one day, I have to die. I will be gone, my time will be gone, my work will be gone, my family will be gone, and my world will be gone. This impermanence causes an unsolvable uneasiness in every human being. Knowledge of this very fact makes one to be aware of the futility of everything one strongly attaches oneself to. This weakness of oneself causes eternal suffering -- "dukkha". Is there any solution? Is there any possibilities of salvation? How can I end my suffering? This is the heart of Buddha's teachings.

I admired Buddhism mostly because the way Buddha arrived at his problem, which he considered as the only problem on earth worth solving! While other ancient thoughts start with the solution (faith and salvation), Buddha starts with the problem! And for Buddha, every other metaphysical questions were only sub-problems or no-problems.

Paradox -- yet another one

Yet another paradox in my life (popular among Ph.D. students, but jut repeating here):

In my research, I am searching for at least a single problem to solve; 

In life I have only problems, which I don't know how to solve.

END

Beyond words

'Perfume -- The Story of a Murderer' is a very good movie, though I would not say that it is an exceptional one. It is the story of a man who had a talent for sensing odour, and the extent of his talent goes beyond the usual human possibilities. For example, he knows the smell of iron, frogs, wood, water, and almost anything around his world. Besides, to sense the smell of something, he does not have to go near it; he can sense it from a distance. Even his sexual attraction towards a girl is manifested through his desire for her body odour, which she loses immediately after she dies. At some point of the movie, he realizes that his body does not have any smell of its own. For him, he is the only person in the world 'who' (or rather, 'what') does not possess a smell of his (its) own. Later, he falls into an obsessive struggle to extract the smells of beautiful women, and own those smells for himself. How? That is the story of this film.

In fact, I have no intention in talking about this movie itself. I am more interested in something else. The above character learns to speak lately in his childhood. Up to the age of ten or twelve, he is unable to convey anything through words. He senses the world through odour. And for him, anything around him is distinguished by its odour. When he finally learns to speak, he realizes that words were quite incapable of expressing the reality around him, what he has seen and felt. He could not find equivalent words for many things in the world as he knew it. It is this point I am interested in.

We all see things around us and feel many things inside our minds. And we identify almost all things within and outside us by words. Probably, man has been able to make his distinguishable mark on earth (or is he/she?) because of words. Thoughts originates as words (or do they?). Without words, no thoughts, no discoveries, no stories, no science, no news, no advertisements, and no "culture". But how do we learn words? Someone teaches us! We understand the world around us through the words someone has taught us! How strange! How mistaken we possibly could be about things around us! Shouldn't we learn words through nature? Why are we not taught like that? What if we are confused between things in the world because we identify them with wrong words? Do we have words for everything around us? At least for every feelings we have? What if we think that we are sad when we actually feel a mix of sadness and happiness? This happens to me many times! What are the words we use for our feelings? Anger, happiness, sadness, melancholy, jealousy, lust, serenity, and what else? Do we have feelings which do not have equivalent names? When I say I am angry, is there only one kind of anger? What if I can have many types of anger but I wrongly identify all of them as just "anger"? Have I really understood what anger is? (If you think I am writing some nonsense and I have gone nuts, you might as well be wondering "does he really understand what he is writing"?)

Buddha said "truth is beyond words" and what one needs is not indoctrination, which is merely knowledge of a few words, but a "transmission outside doctrine, with no dependence on words". Saramago has shown us what a person who can see sees in a world, where everyone is blind. Modern science says we have evolved in order to survive the hardships that we come across in the world. What if we have evolved in such a way that we cannot see what we must not understand? Put together, man is limited, imperfect, and blind in some sense.

Today, someone was wondering if he could realize an ideal lowpass filter (for non-techies, tuning of your radio in a perfect sense, without any extra interference). And by discussion, I could make him see why he could not! The trade-off between time and frequency characteristics, the uncertain principle and the practical non-realizability of infinity! But even then, we can cleanly listen to our radios, watch T.V. and talk to our friends over mobile phones! All these situations need filters. He said "Signal processing is great! Our technology is great!". I replied him "It is the opposite. We are imperfect. Even with imperfect technology, we can do many things that we are doing. We cannot sense any imperfection introduced by technology in radio music, T.V. shows, or mobile conversations. This is because, I repeat, we are limited and we need only limited technology". Will you agree with me? Without technology, we cannot see the infra-red radiation. When we see it by the help of technology, we feel that the technology is excellent. On the contrary, we cannot perceive the imperfection of the technology because whatever imperfections our technology suffers from are all due to the imperfection possessed by us!

Starting from a movie, I have gone to technology. I do not know what is happening to me. Probably, I have really gone insane! Nonetheless, I still dare to wonder what is beyond words?.

Becoming human!

Finally, after a short gap, I watched an excellent movie two days back. I watched it on DVD, along with my wife, and throughout the movie, she kept wondering "how somebody could conceive such different ideas!". Of course, unlike me, she had never got an opportunity to go beyond the usual Hollywood/Bollywood/Malayalam/Tamil shit! But, now, gradually she is ....

The Movie

The movie that grabbed our whole attention for two hours is "The Terminal". It is directed by Steven Spielberg. And Tom Hanks plays the protagonist Viktor Navorski. Tom Hanks has been one of my favourite actors -- how can I ever forget his class performance in Cast Away, The Road to Perdition, Philadelphia and Forrest Gump!

Well! To summarize the movie, Viktor visits New York for some purpose (that's less important, I think) and he belongs to a fictitious East European country, called Krakozhia. By the time he reached the New York airport terminal, civil war erupts back in his country and the government is overthrown. The United States has not recognized the new government and has cancelled all visa given to the citizens belonging to Krakozhia. Consequently, Viktor cannot enter America. Thus he happens to be "a person with no country", and is simply "unacceptable" to America. He cannot fly back to his country until the war is over. He is forced to live in the airport terminal, his passport being confiscated by the authorities. He is left with no money, no place to stay, and no work. On top of it, he knows very little English!

What I have described is the beginning, probably spanning the first twenty minutes, of the movie. The rest of the movie is about his struggles to survive in the terminal. I interpret the story as the struggle of a lonely man, thrown into a completely strange and, above all, indifferent world. His only objective is his survival. He has no identity, no society, no affiliations and associations, and no friends. Have you ever thought what a man would do in such circumstances? Viktor never resorts to anything immoral, but keeps his dignity as a human being throughout. Naturally, the initial concern must be food, and in the modern society, this means money. He discovers several opportunities in the terminal to earn money (watch the movie -- I don't want to kill your pleasure of anticipations). Later, his efforts are to identify and get himself identified with his surroundings. That is to say, to learn the language, to communicate with others, to make relationships, and so on. He has to begin everything from the scratch, like a new-born child! He has to learn how to become a human being. Fortunately, Viktor is admirably creative in overcoming all the difficulties.

Surely, this movie is something I am not going to forget in my life. My wife enjoyed it very much though it was pretty different from her usual taste!

Pirates 4

I watched the "Pirates of the Carribean 4" with a lot of enthusiasm. Well! Jonny Depp as Jack Sparrow ("there should be a captain somewhere in there" :)) was excellent, but the role of Angelica demanded very less from Penelope Cruz. However, the scenes in which both come together were very nice. The film had nothing special which could exploit the 3D vision! Except for a few scenes, the movie experience was merely 2D.

But we relished the coolness which the air-conditioners provided at INOX in this hot summer in Chennai :)

Beware of mangoes ripened by calcium carbide!

The Creator -- A Poem

The Creator
--------------------

Does God exist,
The one who created the world?
I don't know! But I know:
India won the world cup cricket.
All the prophecies of media came true.
And the media create the world!

--Sandeep Palakkal
April 5, 2011.
Chennai.

A Poem -- My Writings

My Writings
--------------------

Thou thinketh:
I entered the family life
Hence banished from the normalcy of my life
And there would be no more of my writings.

But I say unto thee:
Normalcy had never existed in my life
And my writings yearn for infinity,
No matter the world does not exist!


--Sandeep Palakkal
April 5, 2011.
Chennai.