Man, am I in the mood for giving into requests today ….

Kyla and Aishwarya asked me if I could list some of the gaalis that I have heard women give to lecherous males in the crowded trains of Bombay. I can think of three right now:

1. Macchi-waali on the bridge. Some fool thought that he could cop a feel since she was carrying the basket. He forgot the tongue. For better effect, this is said in Marathi.

“Tuzha lav*yat ghaat ghaaleen.” (translation: I will put a knot in your dick).

The guy knew she meant it and figured it is better to say sorry and escape.

2. Woman getting off the train. Imagine the crowd. Push and shove.

“Arre haath kya lagata hai. Har aurat ko apna Maa samjha hai?” (Translation: why the f*** are you touching me? You think every woman is your mother?) (okay the f*** was not really said but creates a nice effect, no?)

3. The third was an unusual preemptive strike on the macchiwaali’s part. She is on the platform waiting for the train with her basket full of fish. This guy looks at the basket and then at the woman. She doesn’t like it. Pulls a macchi out of the basket and asks the guy in Marathi -

“ghaalu kai re …… gaan*eet?” (translation: should I shove it up your a**?)

Maybe she was just playing but then again when she asked, it sounded like she meant it.

I love Bombay.

Palmer Eldritch: “God promises Eternal life. I can do better; I can deliver it”

Supposedly, I told SK that I would summarize my thoughts on the Philip K. Dick book: Three stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. So here it is.

The word stigmata means mark associated with a particular incident generally disgraceful. In this book, I thought the old definition would fit well. Stigmata are the marks on Christ’s body after the Crucifixion. For people more familiar with Hindi movies - the tattoo that Vijay (Amitabh Bachchan) has on his left forearm in the movie Deewar would be considered a stigmata. Though in his case, it was the disgraceful incident of his father that he had to bear.

The book deals with what we call as reality and also God. Now now … lets not get carried away with the usual organized religion definitions of God. Think of the definitions from the Gita, Upanishads, Buddhism, Taoism. Very nicely summarized as: The Tao that can be thought of or spoken about is not the real Tao.

Palmer Eldritch is a guy who travels to Pluto and comes back with a new drug called Chew-Z. This drug is meant to replace the existing drug called Can-D. The latter is mainly used by the people who are sent to Mars and they use this drug to temporarily escape from dull life. Competition. The person who runs Can-D wants to have Chew-Z banned. While Can-D is a temporary ‘fix’, Chew-Z is better in that, it lets people live a life that they would like to have in their dream world. The details in the book - pre-cogs and such - are classic PKD, so won’t bore anyone with those.

Now, here’s where the story gets beautiful. Palmer Eldritch inserts himself into these dreams. He is characterized by the so-called three stigmata: a robotic right hand, artificial eyes and steel teeth. Eldritch is now capable of living in other people. It seems that once people come out of their drug-induced dreams a part of Eldritch is now in them. No escape.

The reason why Eldrich would be God or obtained some kind of God-like properties from Pluto is hinted in a few sentences. I have listed a couple:

1. “He had great power. He could overcome death”.

2. (Spoken about Eldritch) “He really exists, really is there. Although not like we’ve thought and not like we’ve experienced him up to now.

He can’t help us very much. Some maybe. But he stands with empty, open hands; he understands, he wants to help. He tries, but …. it’s just not that simple. Don’t ask me why. Maybe even he doesn’t know. Maybe it puzzles him too. Even after all the time he’s had to mull over it”.

Clearly, PKD is thinking/questioning two things: reality and god.

Here’s what I think. I like the definition of reality as described in the Upanishads or the Matrix. Maya - the source of all illusion. Yawn.  God is an abstract idea that humans have created. Now here’s a strange conundrum I just realized. In the Gita, Mr. Krishna Yadav tells Mr. Arjun Pandu says that we should treat and think about everything the same. The stone and the block of gold. Wouldn’t that mean that the word God and the corresponding concept is just another step in attaining Moksha? Therefore should be rejected at the appropriate time in the appropriate life?

Okay, I just stepped into something that I haven’t really thought about. Better to stay away. Thats the thing about PKD books. Makes you think about reality and all that.

Mind wandering into thinking about these things. Will stop writing about PKD now. Not much of a summary but it is what it is.

Before I sign off, I am currently reading the short stories of Saadat Hassan Manto. Urdu writer from Independence/Partition days. Recommended by my sister. Loving what I have read so far.

Have been reading one of my favorite authors: Philip K. Dick. The book is - The three stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. I am still working my way through the book. I have read a few of his books but this is the first one I am reading, wherein he gets into religion and such. Like almost all other PKD’s works, this one also involves the use of drugs.

In classic PKD fashion, he questions reality - a reality that we all perceive around us. It reminded me of the arguments presented by Morpheus, Oracle, the Architect, and of course by the Merovingian. The simulacrum, the hyperreal as Jean Baudrillard tried to describe it once. My initial reading of the Upanishads gave me the feeling that those early philosophers were working on the same thing.

Back to PKD. In the book, he describes a psychotic/ hallucinogenic drug called Chew-Z which evidently lets a person to live his/her life again and again as he or she wishes. So far, the caveat has been that the guy who sells the drug, Palmer Eldritch, seems to be in control of everyone’s so-called reality.

Anybody who has listened to Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb or Echoes on repeat play when one is suitably drugged or drunk will understand this loss in perceiving the real and the gain in perceiving the real.

Late night work last night. Woke up late this morning. 6.30, I think. Oh well.

Made calls in the morning. Felt like a fool an hour later. Felt like a kid who is given a wonderful kayak and who instead of paddling out into the ocean and enjoying the sunset, bitches about how the colors of the sunset are not the right hue. Oh well.

This story of my lack of understanding could have been a short story with morals in the Amar Chitra Katha. I wished life was like the ‘Connect-the-dots’ pictures. Unfortunately, unlike those pictures, life’s pictures do not have numbers to make the task easier.  Oh well.

Sat the day in front of TV watching Lord of the Rings. Such a moving story. Should read the book sometime. Oh well.

In the lab now, trying to work. Maybe I will head down to the Scripps Pier and watch the sunset. Say thanks for the wonderful people in my life. Since the mood is a bit low, I will also mope that SK is not in my arms when I watching the sun go over to the other side of the planet. (Take that Copernicus!)  Oh well.

I wanted to do so many things today. Well …. mainly run programs to try and figure out why my protein structure will not refine. The day and the work is going too slow and I am getting pissed at myself.

I have stayed away from the blog for a long time too. Anyhow. I got a couple of requests: gaalis for surviving in Bombay. I will most certainly do so …… soon. Haha.  Kulti for now.

No no I am not ignoring this space. I had to go to Bombay for a week and have been catching up with work ever since I got back.

This weekend should give me some time to start writing again.

Okay just to tick people off - Yes, I still think it is Bombay Central and not Mumbai Central. Haha.

Growing up in India invariably meant visiting relatives during the summer vacations. For me it was either heading to Delhi (North India), Kerala (South India) or sometimes Baroda (West). Now, since we live in the Central suburbs, I was (and still am) fascinated by the western suburbs. Going to Delhi or Baroda was always special. Cool relatives. Also, it meant taking a train from Bombay Central.

What a station! I felt, as a kid, that all trains in India left from and arrived there. It felt that big. It was like Bombay VT. The tracks ended there! The trains couldn’t go any further. The same thing for the long distance trains from Bombay Central.

When I started my Masters at TN Medical College (Nair Hospital), it meant getting off at Central. I was genuinely excited. When one is walking on the bridge, you could see the long-distance trains. The bridge itself is a great place for people watching.

Good times. Good times.

PS. Next post will be on the Da Vinci days in Corvallis.

The past few days have been alternating between really busy days or absolutely lazy days. At times I am amazed by how much I can get done in a day or how I can avoid work altogether. Anyhow, my sugar and caffeine levels are dropping and I will be stepping out to get a cup of tea in a few minutes.

Staring out of the window for a bit and ….. wait …. XY just walked over to my desk here. Well she is the German technician who works in the lab and she asked me just now not to give out her name or initials. Super cool gal who is fun to work with.

Alright back to the post.

I miss:

1. Messing with new arrivals in Bombay especially when it comes to the local trains (cruel, if you haven’t done it. Not so when you have. It is fun ….. really).

2. Home-brewed beer courtesy of Rick in Oregon.

3. Playing with Nathan.

4. DG’s drunken desh bhakti. A friend who slept with the Indian flag on New Year’s eve.

5. Saying hindi gaali’s to people when I am getting out of a crowded train at Dadar. Some stupid f …. fool will hold on to the bar and refuse to get off in Dadar during peak hours. Such people rightly get slapped by everyone.

6. Conductors who never have change for you but will empty their pockets out for the babe in the bus.

7. Special cutting chai at the GK naka near SIES. (Word of advice: Never eat GK’s samosas. I have seen how they are made and its not a wonder even the cockroaches won’t eat it)

8. SP’s inability to breathe when she is laughing. She ends up combining the laughing and breathing resulting in high-pitched noises).

9. The utter respect the macchi-waalis command over regular people.

10. The gaalis that macchi-waalis give. I have seen the worst people blush over the utter crass nature of these gaalis. (These gaalis will be shared, if requested).

11. Trekking in Maharashra.

12. Being the only person who can understand what AB is saying. Now his wife (SN) can understand him too.

13. Aai’s idlis, vegetable upma and vague Tamil sayings (I think she makes them up. Hahahaha)

14. Dad’s burnt cabbage subji. We never eat it but I still miss the burnt smell which is a clear indication that he is in the kitchen and not Amma.

15. RI trying ridiculously to look cool with kids 10 years younger to him. They will call you Uncle, if you hang around kids too much.

16. Biking my way to Nilesh’s place.

Alright time for a walk and tea. Kulti.

(Translation: … too lazy to do it right now. Maybe later).

Hmm …. I thought I would somehow sidestep some of the questions I posed, by hand-waving. Didn’t work. So Tor, my good friend, asked me to answer the question I asked earlier.

Here is what she asked: “so, my question for you is: why the need for rational when you are talking about interactions with people?”

Irrationality, like laziness, is a default for me. Like everybody else, I am start imagining a lot of things when I am interacting with people. Its only when I am working, reading, writing, listening to music that I attain some focus. Music is the unusual one in the list. It is the only one that I can internalize in a short time. Coltrane.

On one hand, I think about my interactions with people and invariably have to start sifting through my thoughts just so I can try and make sense of anything.

On the other hand, I have been given a lot of second chances by people I thought would have given up their faith and hope in me. Gratitude.

Therefore, if I am rational or at least when I try to be, then it helps me understand the reasons behind the good and bad things people say or do.  Understanding has the power to drive out most of the negative thoughts. This, of course, has the added advantage of having more time to think about work.

My second post of the day. Have a presentation to give on Wednesday, so all the more reason to procrastinate.

A few people have made favorable comments about my blog over the past couple of weeks. In turn, I should thank the person whose blog I read at some point and decided that I too should write.

Thanks, Kyla.