Idyllic Thoughts

Perhaps the real and the hyper-real are inextricable components of the same merry-go-round. As a modern scientist put it: "Reality is what we take to be true. What we take to be true is what we believe. What we believe is based upon our percepts. What we perceive depends on what we look for. What we look for depends on what we perceive. What we perceive determines what we believe. What we believe determines what we take to be true. What we take to be true is our reality." --Jug Suraiya in the Times of India. No comments from my side. But is it?

"You can get caught in the day-to-day grind. It's like never lifting your head up to look ahead a year, a month, or even a week. It takes all your energy to get through each day. You become short-sighted." I read this paragraph in a book today. I had not thought of it like this in a long time; of losing ourselves in trying to make a living; in trying to make us a future, we lose our future. Just sit for a while and think of your dreams in your childhood about your life ahead. And what you have become now. I suppose not many people would say "Yes, I am doing what I wanted to do in my childhood." And even those who did realise their dreams, may be a disappointed lot as their dreams do not match the reality, of the grinding daily struggle. I, for one, dreamt of becoming a sleuth (inspired by Nancy Drew & Hardy Boys novels), joining military, becoming a great scientist and getting Nobel Prize for my groundbreaking invention which would help the world (I had even...

When in Jog, I heard two ghost stories as can be heard in most Ghat regions. A place called Mavinagundi at the start of the Ghat. And a spot of many accidents and deaths. And, of course, said to be the haunt of many ghosts. A car driver who feared travelling the route at nights, had to go on that road one day at night. After some time, he saw a woman waving for lift. He stopped, fearing. She climbed behind him. After some time, he turned back only to see a headless body sitting behind him. In his fear, he drove very fast without looking back, reached home, stopped the car and ran inside only coming out the next day with fever.The car driver's friend, who also came on that route alone one night, started hearing conversations from the back seat of his car. Some times the talk was muffled, some times louder. He too drove his car in a frenzy without once looking back and reached home only to wake up the next morning with fever. The locals don't travel that route alone at night, ...

Last week I had been to a wilderness famous for its beauty, Jog. It is an entirely different world, with its silence as if trying to hush us up with a secret, distinct in its never-ending, closed forests, which makes us, city denizens, fearful of what may lay beyond. The forests close in on you, yet make you feel free of everything you possess in this world, feel like not caring to lose for whatever you held dear earlier and live there forever. They beckoned me and I wanted to stay there, in a hut with no mobiles, no messages, no TV, not even a radio and no contact with the outside world. How beautiful it is to live calmly. And then it happened... I came back to city, the ever-present jungle of sound and opinions.