Time Is But A Stubborn Illusion

You arrive
Time is peace
Pretty, pretty, pretty; the world seems so
Colors explode in the corner of consciousness
I fear if I touch they will explode into million suns
So this is what it feels like to love
For times like this, God created us

You leave
Time is chaos
Pain, pain, pain; the world feels so
My phantom heart bleeds your name
And I will again drown in your absence
So this is what it feels like to die
For times like this, we invented God

A Primer to Scales of Measurement*

 Nominal Scale (Identification)

1) A female teacher died during poll duty due to Corona (allegedly)

Gender: Female; Occupation: Teacher; Cause of death: Corona(allegedly)

2) A Muslim Auto-rickshaw driver converts his auto-rickshaw into a makeshift ambulance

Religion: Islam; Occupation: Driver, Cause of action: Humanity (hopefully)

Does death identify Gender, Occupation and Religion?

How someone measures humanity; in empty words of leaders or a common man’s action?

Ordinal Scale (Identification + Order)

1) India ranks now at position 2 in corona cases

2) In World Press Freedom Index (WPFI), India ranks at 142

              Don’t look only at number, look at what is being measured

              Sometimes being in the top three hurts so much

Interval Scale (Identification + Order + Difference)

1) Channel ‘A’ shows celebrity vacations, cricket and exit polls and has a TRP rating of 130

2) Channel ‘B’ shows death toll, the plight of migratory mammals and has a TRP rating of 70

Let us applaud ourselves for our absolute apathy

And enjoy our luxury while half of the nation hitch and hike between death and poverty

Ratio Scale (Identification + Order + Difference + Universally accepted starting point)

1) 211,835+ deaths due to corona till date

2) Oxygen Level follow below eighty, a person gasps for breath, while Oxygen cylinders wait to delivered after our leaders’ debate

            I guess when they rewrite history in few years about our greatest fight against the crisis

They might be able to change the scale of death and show the numbers dead in negative

 

*for death and its aftermath

Funambulist

An Acrobat moves on a rope
Like a century-old art hung in a somber museum
Life is a question of proportion; pay attention

Inside her head, thoughts form in unknown alphabets
Like shipwrecked hearts dive into azure evenings
or stones were thrown into a silent lake

Summer lightning
A sad breeze passing through Asoka trees
Sentiments balance on the golden silence of wings

You who ache for the calmness of a second
And yet hurry off on a rope for a change
Remember

Those words are only true, which do not insist on meaning.

Post No 4,07,00,00,001 on the Internet: Nature’s curve may not be exponential and other odd thoughts

As I write this article and made a search with keyword COVID 19, the search engine retrieved 4,07,00,00,000 article in 0.43 seconds. Why not another one?

Few of my odd thoughts are as follows


Thought 1: Nature’s curve may not be exponential

When nature starts to dance to the music of death, the curves it shows may not be exponential but in the current situation the articles/forwarded messages related to the topic are taking an exponential form. I do not have enough knowledge to explain why network-based epidemic modeling is a better approach than exponential modeling with R0. (The future reviewers/editors of my articles will be so proud that I am using the technical jargons of which I do not have any clue) However, those of you have any clue, let me direct you play a simple game based on the same theory. https://vax.herokuapp.com/game


Thought 3: Survival of the fittest. Don’t make it survival of the “shittiest”


In the unprecedented time we live in, I remember the scene from heath ledger’s iconic performance in Joker and the words he uttered “When the chips are down, these... these civilized people, they'll eat each other.”. I understand the act of panicking helped our so-called uncivilized ancestors to run away from wild animal attacks, angry spouses but in today’s world when we call ourselves civilized we should have minimum decency not to hoard essential supplies.


Thought 5: Remember those who helped us in our bitter times when the time gets better


Most of us will survive this and maybe in a few months, we will go back again to our old tantrums of hating Mondays, blaming system failure everywhere with our perfect hindsight biases. But I hope we will remember those frontline workers, doctors, nurses, the workers in essential services and all those common men and women who stand guard in this uncommon time.


Thought 7: A Certified Introvert’s Guide to survive lockdown
Most of the cities across the world are in lockdown and governments are taking necessary steps to ensure that people stay at home. A plethora of advice on creating new hobbies, learning new skills floating around in proportion to the growth of the virus.


My advice is to try to sit still for a few minutes’ a day without the constant chatter of the mind. I guarantee you, if you do it for 21 days, if nothing else happens at least you will be older by 21 days.


As of me, paraphrasing the dialogue from the movie “Seventh Seal”; "I will carry the memory of these times between my hands as if it were a bowl filled to the brim with fresh milk. I will be grateful for the near and dear ones in whose prayers I take a position as per Heisenberg uncertainty principle."


In case you liked this article, do read my other imaginary article on “How to play Sudoku with imaginary numbers”

Wildflowers not Roses

Next time show me a wildflower near a stream
Roses in a vase do not sing the same song as me
No more I want to go to viewpoints and
stand in line to take pictures in front of monuments
I am happy to sit across a old railway station and watch passing trains

Never ever I want to go to water parks
Let me go back to river in my village to collect my paper boats back
No longer I want to dance in a concert in a daze
I am happy under a moonlit night in your assuring embrace

And in case I do not pick up phone or call often
May be I have gone back to write postcards and believe waiting is fun

Last song of the Season

This last evening, as the season ends

And the sunrays retreat from the sky

I think of the grapes who are dreaming to become wine someday

When the clouds pass by the window of your room

And as you look beyond, everything seems to pause for a moment

I think of the sharp arrow of time which pierces our hearts every now and then

Tomorrow when morning sun arrives

And we realize everything is same but yet different

I think of the life counseling ‘spider’ gave to ‘suicidal fly’

The whalebone which I wear on my neck dreams of the blue ocean

The tiger claw charm on my wrist digs deep to quench its thirst

My memory of you is my privilege and my peace

“There are thousand places we won’t visit

Many things we will not know

A lot of faces we won’t see

Myriad emotions we won’t show

We have one life, an infinitesimal fraction of time

To understand whole eternity

Amongst zillion possibilities, we have only one story to follow

Never knowing how it unfolds”

Thoughtful Grenade

For once in a while, I want to be a thoughtful grenade
Rather than distributing shrapnel around, want to deal with your smiles
For once in a while, I want to make the promises which I can keep
Once in life, not to torn your heart into pieces when my time comes to leave

I want to be the thoughtful grenade,
Upon my chance arrival in your arms, I will sing a lullaby till you sleep
Then I shall roll down from your sleeves and then jump into the ground
And start walking away silently not creating any clamour around

Just for once, I want to save you rather than destroying.
And to become harbinger of hope and not cause ruins of your peace
And if possible can explain to you, before I leave,
Love is just entropy-wrapped reality