A Beautiful Mind

Read these two things in a forward:

This weekend I went for a handicrafts exhibition. It was after a long time that I had been to something like this. It wasn’t grand but it definitely reminded me of my trip to ‘Dilli Haat’ with my one of my cousins. ‘Dilli Haat’ is a great place for art lovers, which is on exhibition cum sale for handicrafts all the year round in New Delhi. The trip was also a memorable one: looking at crafts from different places of India, eating variety of food from different states, freaking out in general. This also reminds me of my maiden visit to ‘Chandni Chowk’ during the same trip to Delhi. ‘Chandni Chowk’ is one of the busiest and the oldest market in Delhi. Someone had told us that it’s a great place to shop for dress material for salwar suits. Now everyone knows about the fascination of girls towards shopping, so we landed up there. I really don’t remember which suits I purchased there, but I do remember the fun we had while moving around the narrow streets, to keep track from where we came in and which way to go to move out. The elders had told us not to go there as all streets appear to be quite similar and there were chances to get lost as I was quite young at that time. But nobody could stop me & my adventurous cousin. So more than shopping it was a like a challenge to go to the market, shop and come back safely.

I remember how we used to recite loudly in recess in school ‘Seven Ages’ by Shakespeare…“All the world’s a stage and all men & women are mere actors.” Life has always been great as a kid. As we grow up, we keep walking across crossing various ages; we try to follow someone or try to achieve something. Sometimes it is like walking alone on the sea-shore following someone’s footprints…following someone who will never turn back and wait for us. We are so busy walking following those footprints that we never realize that in the sand just next to our footprints, there is one more footprint…footprint of someone who is trying to walk with us, who is ready to wait for us, who is trying to synchronize the pace of walk with that of ours. We are just walking on and on, neglecting all those who are or can be ours, always trying to reach to what is or was never ours. In this walk along the sea-shore, we sometimes stop-by and make castles with sand. Castles that we hope will never be swayed away by the waves.

As I read across the post, it appears to me like something starting with description about Delhi, then flowing away to childhood and slowly moving to present. I have written things which hardly make sense superficially, but you will find it someway or the other close to you if even you have done things you were denied to do because you were a kid, loitered around in streets just for fun, or if now someone likes you madly but you don’t pay any attention to that affectionate look and just keep running behind someone you liked in the past. You will find it is closer to you if while reading this post you are thinking about that someone who kept mailing you regularly even when you didn’t had time or intention to reply and has not mailed you for long, or you are thinking about some friend with whom you just liked strolling around or standing at that the corner of the street or in the corridors of the college…..


Life is like having a cup of tea.
You sit by the side of the window, lift the cup and take a careless sip,
Only to realize, somebody forgot to put the sugar.
Too lazy to go for it you somehow struggle through the sugarless cup.
Until you discover undissolved sugar crystal sitting at the bottom...

multi-tasking
Originally uploaded by mind_abeautiful.

Everyone around in office seems to be in the romantic mood & wishing each other happy V-Day ( as if its Happy New Year, a generic wish for all). Anyway, it’s fun.
Poetry can cause you to pause and think about life….. Never thought a geek could be romantic? Think again……

Last night I was going across some trivia on the net. Reading some of them was absolute fun.
One was,
“The Mona Lisa has no eyebrows.”
I googled and look what I found http://www.socialstudiesforkids.com/funfacts/monalisa.htm

Other was,
“Do you know Cats have no ability to taste sweet things?”

Following is the mix of what I read in series of web-pages with reference to second:

The tongue is covered with sensors called taste buds. Taste buds release nerve impulses to the brain when molecules of certain types make contact with them. The human tongue is capable of detecting four different types of flavor: sweet, sour, salty and bitter. (In contrast, some animals cannot taste these four. Cats, for example, cannot taste anything sweet.) Everything you taste, from chocolate cake to garlic bread, is a combination of these four flavors in varying proportions.
Mao Tse-Tung said, "All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience." This means that if we don't sense it ourself, it doesn't exist. Thus there are no black cats in coal cellars, no germs or bacteria, no moons around Mars, and no one we haven't met exists. There are very few people who would believe any of the above. Nonetheless, there is a problem. If we haven't sensed it, how could we possibly know about germs, bacteria, Martian moons and other people? The answer is: extrasomatic inputs.
These extrasomatic senses provide indirect impressions in three different ways: mechanical, associative and vicarious.
Mechanical is using some machines like microscope, telescope. It is not so interesting to know about. :-(
Associative sense is that which comes from association with others. These indirect impressions start coming in at birth and continue all our life. Association with other people provides us with language, attitudes about life, other people; in short, everything that allows us to function in any particular society.
Associative impressions often have the effect of direct impressions, becoming a part of our thinking without consciousness.
Some examples which I found were questions like: Can you remember learning your native language? Can you remember studying a foreign language? The former came through associative impression, the latter through vicarious (Includes printed material such as books and newspapers, films, video and audio tapes, and radio and television.).
Direct impression is like programming which starts from our childhood.
A school of thought says,
________
“The basis of programming is culture and upbringing. Your basic instructions on how to regard the world first come from your family. From birth your mother, father, and siblings consciously or unconsciously tell you what everything around you means in their terms. If they are deeply religious, you will be told that being deeply religious is the way to be. If they are bigots, they will tell you that their prejudices are the correct way to regard other people. They often do not tell you this in words but in their behavior and attitudes which you pick up and, since that is your model of behavior, imitate.
Most people accept such programming unquestioningly since Mother and Father say "that's it". What you receive are your family's a priori assumptions, which they received from their families, etc., until they arrive at you.”
________
Naturally, alterations appear in the programming. If they didn't, humans would still be in caves, eating what doesn't try or at least doesn't succeed in eating them first. People are capable of altering their own programming, although the "if it was good enough for grandma, it's good enough for me" attitude still exists in many.

Life is different everyday. I remember the day I started writing this web-log I wrote something titled ‘life is beautiful’. Is it really? At office I have seen many people with physical disabilities, but I am not at all surprised by the fact that they are sometimes better than the co-workers. The other day I saw a healthy man without his arms begging at roadside. Now, begging is one thing I simply can’t tolerate except when the person is in a state that he/she is disabled and too old to make a living (I know it is easy to say than to follow that he/she should earn on their own instead of begging but then it is difficult, not impossible). The very first thought which to my mind that morning was of ‘Forrest Gump’.

Every time I watch the movie, it fascinates me more. The man who runs extremely fast, is in army, plays ping-pong excellently, fishes shrimps, and believes in miracles. It is really touching to see closely the life of a mentally challenged man. Tom Hanks is simply awesome in the movie. It is about a loving son, a great friend, a faithful lover, a caring father but above all an innocent human being. It makes you laugh, it makes you cry. It touches life so intimately. The moment when he says to his girl friend “…Will you be my wife…I will be a good husband…and… I know what love is, but I know you won’t marry me because I am not smart…” brings tears to the eyes. It makes you think that what is more important in life- a loving life partner or a beautiful or smart life partner??(More on it some other time) And, the scene actually worth watching is when he gets to know that he has got a son. The very first question he asks is – ‘Is he smart’? The emotion & reaction expressed by him simply can’t be described in words. It is a movie I have watched so many times that it is by-hearted now and I can go on and on while writing about, so, I think I should better shut up for the time being.