dei sridhara!!...ennamo poda

Have you ever had an original idea? Yes?...Good. Then you would surely have enjoyed the feeling of floating on air, looking down at fellow mortals who just do not have it in them to be as original and enlightened as you. You almost feel that you are a Buddha.(Oh well I am already a Buddha, for a different reason though). Let me tell you, the feeling that stumbling upon an original idea gives, is better than sex, trust me. Er...well you can't trust me on that currently, but you do get the picture...Good. But then what happens if you find that your "original" idea also happened to be an original idea of some guy who got at it even before you were born? Sunk...yes...Deflated.... yes....and no I am not giving an analogy for that.

I happen to have a large number of such "original" ideas, which by some underhand scheme these blokes (who go around in the guise of scientists and philosophers) manage to pinch when they feel like it. And employing some type of classified technology they travel back in time to a period of their choice, secure in the knowledge that, that technology is beyond me currently. Some of them like Mahavira even went back a more than a couple of thousand years to ensure that I don't end up following him there. History claims that he was one of the earliest to speak about ecological footprints. He advised each one of us to live a life like a bird leaving no trail behind. And how many know that I arrived at the same conclusion, a mere 2500 years later. None......I tell you it is just not fair.

I spend years ignoring my school and college curriculum, locking myself in a room, developing a theory of equality of all being, doing away with the idea of relative value of beings which is an extremely anthropocentric view and developed my theory of the existence of a form of socialism in nature. And what happens? Some fellows led by Arne Naess propound the basic tenets of Deep Ecology and carry away all the fame. And what is the advantage they had over me? A small matter of 40 years.

Having given up trying to claim rights to Deep Ecology, I next concentrated on developing my pet misanthropic theory of man being a biological error who multiplies and destroys like a virus and is nothing but a pest in the grander scheme of things. Now who asked Mr Ernst Mayr to propound the same thing (in fact Mayr used the same words "biological error") a few decades before me. Thanks to Chomsky and Hugo Chavez, people think that Mr Mayr was the only man who happened to have this train of thought, even as I continue to fret and fume over my fate of having born a few decades late. With the regularity with which this sort of thing is happening, I won't be surprised if there is a conspiracy involved. There seems to a pretty concerted effort by some superior powers to not give me my due share of credit to some of the most profound theories that mankind has known.

But then one can never keep a good man down. Offlate I have stopped fretting about such issues and have instead adopted a different tactic. If no one else praises you, praise yourself. If you can't fight them, join them. Such Shiva Kherasque maxims meant that I have stopped grudging these folk and instead started claiming membership to their elite circle. And I insist on feeling good about all my original discoveries, even if some one else thought about it before me. So these days you would find me doing only the Janakraj thing after making any profound discovery. "dei sridhara eppadida ippadi ellam....eppadi unnala ippadiellam mudiyudhu...ennamo poda...."

"The Summer Lightning"

Here goes a poem I wrote ages back on ahem...Summer. I have never made any claims to any degree of timings in my posts. After all my blog is either about the past and/or about the future and nothing about the present.

Splotch!! Splotch!!!!
The ink spread across,
As sweat spattered on to the paper.

I had given up by then,
Writing is no fun,
when sweat flows more profusely than ideas.

“Damn the summer”, I cursed,
Breaking the pen into half.
For all the serious effort to write on my part,
the blighted summer still had the last laugh.

As I sat fretting and fuming aloud,
Someone called out my name.
Startled at the sound, I turned around to see,
A little kid standing upright.
Written all over the face, the unabashed glee,
Was the naked dual of me, all chirpy and bright.

"Shucks, you are in bad shape sonny
My God, you can’t be that old surely?
In case you do not recognise me,
You are the future of yours truly.”
Bantered, this part of me, from the past.

Wounded by the mocking words, I retorted
"It is this wretched summer so sweltering
The whole place is hot and scorching,
Humidity factor too, you must add,
to know why I look so haggard.
In the morning I started to write,
And throughout I had to fight.
I am sweating at every pore,
And my mind has long gone sore.
Blame it on this blighted summer,
God I ache for the cold winter”.

My past gave me a weird look
plus a smile befitting a crook.
And in a tone very patronizing, spoke,

“You are a loser my man, just as all men.
The summer is as hot as always
But you have changed.
Remember the time when you loved summer?
When summer meant holidays and cricket,
When the heat did not bother you,
You played all day long in the sun.
What did the heat do to you then?
Do you remember the time,
When you used to play barefoot in the ground?
Was the summer hot then?”


"You have grown stronger in the body with age.
But you have lost the plot on the way.
Summer is the ultimate test of adaptability.
It is the test of your ability to coexist.
The test is won when we unite with nature,
And not when we hide from it.
Flow like air and not block like a wall.
Is not just a lesson in martial arts for you.
It is the first law of survival too.
Surprising it is, that man,
Manages to forget this basic rule,
He knew untutored, as a child”.

“Look at that mighty creature Hanuman.
A monkey, yet still so human.
Remember his attempt to grab the sun,
Was it all a child’s attempt at fun?
No my friend.
Wishing to pay his salutations to the Lord of light,
That mighty kid made a giant leap and flew.
But struck down he was in mid flight,
By the adults, who had lost the plot just like you.”

“Next time, you complain about the sizzling heat,
Remember the time you were a kid.
United you were then with the nature
And heat was never a summer feature”


PS: Though the tone of the poem suggests otherwise, I do not belong to that "cocksure" group which does not accept that the earth is warming up.