Some Poems

My first natural instinct as it darkens is to look at the heavens and sight the Moon in the star spangled night and wonder at the flowing brightness of the Milky Way. Whether it is the mellow crescent moon in the night after a hot sultry day or a full moon set overhead on a cool winter night (warming your body up in front of a bonfire). What a soothing effect the moon has on our heart!

I will present a few poems from my collection (Pareidolia)

PAREIDOLIA

I can see you in the crystals of my granite floor
On the floral motif over the vase
On the walls where the paint has scaled
On the quilt that dons my bed
On the leaves of the hydrophytes that wave
On the moirés of sand on the beach I walk
I can see you in the illuminated dark clouds
In the backdrop of a deep azure night sky
In millions, all alone even as I close my eyes
Ubiquitously just everywhere

Now I am happy
I can see the glow behind the palms
From where you will rise
Behind those serrated mountains

SALVE

In the jostle of a crowd dismay
And the din of a mind astray
Chaos of a pile of work
I need to see the storm blow by

As I wait for the revved up engines to move
Scurrying to go everywhere
I see you through the windshield
Half of you hanging
A cup of grey bowl
Over a bright blue sterile sky

Who said the sun can cover you
Now I feel a balm
Like in all those blossom nights
And hope to finish all by myself

TELL ME

Your crescent hangs beyond trees and buildings
What do you watch?
Husbands lying with wives
Her soap has taken a new turn
Or the boy not studying
His computer has taken over him
Young mothers singing your lullabies
The pressure cooker whistling for a release

As night turns dark do the lovers love the same way
They used to?
I wonder through all your crescents
If over the years the switch you have seen
Has made you remorse
Or are you still happy!
Tell me?

Mind and Body Lag

I drove 800kms in two days (almost seven hours on both occasions) and was wondering over my mental state. I was not alone and my wife kept on reading the sign boards and the name of the hotels and which village we passed by and discussed where we could lunch or have tea. Back home my head was numb and my activities lethargic to say the least. I began thinking whether it was similar to a Jet Lag.

I often travel long distance in trains and my condition is not so different.

We travel a lot these days. It could be for business or for pleasure. We could be travelling by an aircraft or in a train or wading through waters in deep sea on a cruise liner. We all suffer from this syndrome in some way or the other and suffer bouts of drowsiness, indigestion, nausea or vertigo.

International flights across time zones in different directions lead to jet lag. This can cause circadian dysrythmia or desynchronosis which is disturbance of the internal body clock. I have often found travelling in a train from the eastern part of India to the western disturbing my mindset and although the sunrises and sunsets may differ by about 45 minutes the continuous heaves and rattling below could leave the traveller shattered. It could take more than a day to come to your original state. This could even be the reason when you are resting in a ship with your eyes closed or only concentrating on the interiors of the ship and the oscillations of the ship could cause all the discordance with equilibrium.

Eating a healthy food and keeping yourself aware of the travel could obviously help you. Light food, fruits and soups could have control over your bowels and conducting light exercise like sitting on the edge rotating your neck, stretching yourself often in airport lounges, railway platforms and liner decks. We must never forget to keep taking deep breaths at comfortable intervals even if you are driving and also indulge in some hip and trunk exercises and contract your bellies often. Some snoozes will also help you a lot. Quite relaxing music can help.

Hormone melatonin could help you if you are travelling across time zones. Some doctors may prescribe sleeping tablet for a couple of days to recuperate. Across the counter drugs like Stugeron or Promethazine could help but it is always good to take doctors advise.

Books in Kilograms

Stationery, Grocery, Vegetables and fruits, Shoes, electronic goods are sold differently. Stationery is sold in numbers or dozens or pairs (all in close relationship with numbers), Grocery in weight, Vegetables in weight and fruits in numbers and dozens. Shoes are sold in pairs and electronic goods in numbers. All these goods are consumer usable, food to eat or shoes to wear or a television to entertain. There are standards of weights and measure that a country approves and others like a dozen or pair can be known out of common sense.

I am trying to disembark on something that appeared in a newspaper advertisement which sprang out from my heart a cry that will reach all those connoisseurs who line up books neatly in their bookshelves in the studio. All those aficionado who climb stairs of libraries and wade through innumerable books standing between rows and long rows of cabinets. The books that have history, the books that have science, that have mystery and those longings lovers may have celebrated and that rocket technology that may have taken man to the moon or mars.

How could anybody think of selling books in kilograms! Textbooks, novels, porn, history, science cannot be weighed on the same scale. There would be a day when a painting could be sold in kilogram, when a pashmina would be sold by weight!!

Aha..

Space Exploration..Benefits

Some people thoughtlessly keep asking the purpose of space exploration and the billions of dollars spent by NASA, ESA, ISRO, Russian, Chinese and Japanese space agencies. Besides what we would gain if man finds an organism on Mars and if SETI can find out the possibility of planets with habitation some of the minor benefits are mentioned below......these are tips of the iceberg examples.

*Worms on ISS offer clues to keep astronauts healthy on space trips and offer solution to osteoporosis patients on earth
*How did the robotic missions opportunity or spirit and now Curiosity collect samples on Mars. Their robotic arms stretched, bent at their elbows and then sank onto the Martian regolith and drilled and scooped samples back. This technology is being used to carry out accurate brain surgeries where our hands and arms are flexible and inaccurate and risky.

*ISS as ‘global observation and diagnostic centre’. ISS monitors weather, earthquakes, tsunamis and keeps minute eyes on movement of traffic on land and sea. It thus is capable of giving advanced warning signs and clear pictures of coral reefs and offers sharp images.

*As many as 1.7 million students questioned on the ISS about its technology and purpose. This is something not taught in curricula and the question raised show positive inclinations and curiosity about things happening not only on earth but also in space thus proving to be a great educational drive indeed.

*LED light used to grow plants in space is used to cure bone pain and arthritis. Infrared ear thermometers, artificial limbs are other applications. Grooving on concrete surfaces to avoid skidding, rubber stronger than steel to be used in parachutes to land on Mars are some more examples.

Psasms in Time

I saw a documentary that showed the history of the earth and life itself. It was beautifully chronicled and more serenely illustrated. However it was based mostly on evidences buried in the sediments of rocks buried in slivers of time and in the open caves of carves sliced to reveal history of the jingles of time thought to have gone by. It covered 13.7 billion years of the birth of our cosmos and the evolution of over 4 billion years of earth. The earth was first a globe of molten lava. Then over millions of years it froze into a crust of ice. And then in another stage of millions of years grew warm and again went through a period of an ice age. In between several creatures made their presence on the planet under the sea and over the dry arid plains and over time moss grew on the rocks which yielded to make way for all the foliage and plant life.

All through the movie I had a critical corner of the brain telling me the far flung imaginations of one’s mind and the extreme vision of your brain to back something that goes back to trace the trails of time.

The Hindu philosophy believes that the world is a figment of imagination and everything is ‘Maya’ an illusion. Some daring observers from the west too have imagined this entire set up being played to some pre-recorded tape.

How do you wipe these blotches and clear your mind and arrive at an analogy that cancels the hypothesis and makes life a more realistic place to stay in.

What will strike you through all this is we had been thinking only about the past. As I write this the present moment has eloped into the past. Only what remains is the future! But isn’t it a fantasy. Things bring us to the evident future of the near and far cosmos that could show its true colours over a period of the coming time. Secrets of the present are embedded in the past and they will be revealed by the future. Mars today is what earth was a billion years before and its crust and atmosphere are undergoing the same changes as earth went through could also be observed on a planet in deep space by the Kepler telescope in the near future or by more sophisticated telescopes that are being thought to be placed beyond the earth’s atmosphere. More of the hypothesis could be proved right or wrong as we experience the shape of proof to come from the study of astronomy and astrophysics. Some evidence has already come (like formation of metals and minerals in the interstellar clouds and the stage of various stars in the star formation) forth and more will follow as time progresses and then we will be able to link what happened 10000 years before and a million and a billion and be able to connect our past with the present and the future in a better way.

We are at the cusp of better understanding of the cosmos.

Infinitesimally Small

We can see 93 billion light years into the Cosmos and that is our Observable Universe. In trying to see the ultimate we focus on matters available through the telescope and see its infinitesimal nature. Rather than the telescope having to see the far fringes of that space it is the magnanimity of its heart to peruse to see beyond. It is a way of opening up new vista of knowledge and trying to unfold the ultimate truth.

There is a very famous series of pictures in which the Earth and its size is shown first. Then it is compared to some bigger object in the solar system viz Jupiter and then to the Sun and you go on with bigger and bigger objects in the sky. Gradually the Earth size reduces and you cannot see it with naked eye and then vanishes and objects keep increasing in size forever

All this Makes your mind have a bigger conception of life and takes you beyond the ordinary and makes you feel infinitesimally small- an iota in the cosmic set up.

Conserving Nature

Rohinton Mistry having visited Mumbai after a long time has said in an interview that he was happy to see kites flying on the Mumbai skyline following a thermal but was sorry he could not see many sparrows in the house. Many a friends from far off places have complained that the sparrows are a threatened species and were less found these days than in the recent past of 20yrs.

The reason being the interception of waves by communication towers hung all over the country and the breeding of these tiny birds thus severely affected. The other reason could be the closed apartments in metros and these tiny tots have no place to sleep.

In the large houses with high ceilings these birds in households were usual with their cyclical hopping on floor picking insects intermittently with their beaks being a common site. Their flybys from outside veranda and windows with hay punched between their beaks and their fluttering around holes and perches to make those innocuous nests. Their eggs spoiling down and babies craning their necks out of those nests was a part and parcel of any house. They were with you and you were with them. Probably this is how culture is lost and ethos vanish in these small closed houses called apartments or flats. We lose resilience and perseverance and have no time for such old lingering.

My daughter-in-law has hung two lantern sized cylindrical glass bird feeders with proper rests in our terraced garden as well as a ply board nest (for off seasons stay) and fills up these cylinders, which has small holes on all sides, with bajra. Flocks of sparrows visit the cylinders, cling to the rests all through the day and feed themselves by poking their beaks into those holes. We need to conserve nature.

Time Travel

We were travelling at a breakneck speed on the modern expressway and the other side of the road was not much in view due to the large width of the central verge. The three+ highway was a master construction and the better vehicles zipped past from either flank in the mellow sunlight guarded by thickets that roared past in the din of thick abrasion of the wheels on the concrete road which created a monotonous grind in the mind as you focussed deep on the lanes. Unknowingly there came a time when most of the vehicles in view were travelling at the same speed and it felt as if we were travelling either to eternity or to know where.

Suddenly I recalled time travel in a tunnel on a superhighway. Travel at 100...200....400 kmph and get sucked into the tunnel and end up on the other side light years in space and gradually decelerate to 400...200....100 and arrive at the other end. Simple and sweet for an interplanetary exodus of a few light years! Just like you were visiting a friend on a sunday evening to a suburb through a subway. You would also recall watching Hindu mythological TV series in which Gods disappear from Swarg ( Literally heaven -but let us just call this a planet) and appearing on Prithvi (Earth- another planet).

Simply nerve shattering!

Growing Lettuce on Mars

How is plant life possible? Photosynthesis is the conversion of light into chemical energy that has carbohydrates. This conversion happens through proteins that have a green pigment called chlorophyll the reason for the green fauna on earth. On Mars there is an atmosphere with sufficient sunlight enough carbon dioxide (96%) and traces of oxygen, methane (very life supporting) and water that makes one believe growing plants possible but without the green pigment. This will conclude that plants may not have the conventional green leaves but surely they can be grown.

Small glass shield terrariums have been planned to be used on the moon to grow plants. By carrying a miniature greenhouse cold frame with proper installations like heating, cooling, lighting etc students involved in project works plan to grow lettuce on Mars.

Amazing!