This is not a Scarecrow

Three years and running

Three years of PhD over. How many more to come?

It's like being in the middle of the ocean on a scrawny little boat. Plus, the boat is leaking and the compass is not working (Though, to be fair, someone did warn me that the compass was a bit rusty). There are occasional storms and the like, but most of the times it's just unbearably sunny.

Sometimes big ships pass by. At other times there are the aeroplanes.

On some days I wonder if I'm rowing around in circles. Who can tell?

On the positive side, I love the starry night and the blue of the sky and sea. Was it just to see this sight that I came so far from the shore? Perhaps.

A Sign

Here is a sign.

Make what you will of it.
Take what you will.

I shall pretend as if
nothing was ever said;
and you, have never heard
nor read nor seen nor smelt.

With this I give meaning
to a blank page, a yellow wall;
With this I breathe life into
my wings and fly tall.

With this I add colour to
a glass of water bland;
With this I create of the
water another land.

The world will roll on, nothing
has changed. Yet we know
that something has changed.
There was no fire, yet it burns.

Said, unsaid; between the eyes,
passed in glances; like a sigh.
You may have heard it, it was
not the wind: it was a sign.

Spammer Spammer

Spammer spammer full of grace;
Why you keep posting comments
in my place? Thanks for the kudos
And the funny worded praise,
but I know you are a robot, a code
that runs like a rat in a maze.
Spammer spammer full of grace!
If you do it again in my space,
I'll throw a a spanner in your face.

Dedicated to the spam comments on my last few articles.

Chairman Mao's Little Mistake

Sometime in the late 1950s, the Sparrow Campaign took place in China. It was part of a larger effort called The Four Pests Campaign (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign) to eliminate four pests: rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows. Sparrows were to be killed because they ate some of the grain from the fields, reducing the overall throughput.

 

And what happened?Locusts and other insects, whose population was kept in control by the sparrows, suddenly had a boom in numbers. Down they went with agriculture. Famine, starvation, and a complete mess followed.

Not understanding the interrelationships between things is not a mistake of Mao Zedong alone; all of us do it all the time. What prevents us from thinking a bit deeper, from understanding things from different angles, and in detail? I have no idea. IISc has taught me that no amount of education can instil this quality in you(if we assume that what happens in these places is indeed education; that in itself is debatable).

Scratching

I just wanted to scratch
And leave a mark;
But now I am depressed
Thinking of transience, mortality
and the like. Words can kill
I knew, but did not believe.

Picture Victure

  

Sometimes I just want to fly

Away from the clouds, into the sky;

Fall free and cold and naked....

There is something about grayscale pictures, I always think of them as being slightly cold to the touch, just as I imagine the moon is: made of something soft, cold and white.

 

A little picture of Kathakali, that deadly ( but not so dead) piece of feudal art, where men are of  five different types, but women of just one. And of course, all enacted by middle aged men of varying degrees of plumpness.

 

Yet somehow the colours of the art form still turn me on, make me want to draw in paper and on walls. Above is depicted a call to war ( പോരിനു വിളി in Malayalam)by a villainous ചുവന്ന താടി (a.k.a red beard) character.