Protocol on emotions

Not long ago, man standardized happiness.

He wrote protocols to make us understand each other.

I only wish he wrote protocols to know how we made each other feel.

On way to Niagara

After reading this post some of you might accuse me of exposing people’s life or could choose to sue me for the popular invasion of privacy. I don’t do that, nor does it interest me. People do that themselves. After all strangers could be anyone and anything.

I like travelling for all its reasons. Meeting new people, new food, new attractions, and spending money. Tourism is way more of a choice now. You probably cannot afford to (love) travelling when a 500 ml water bottle is sold for 2 dollars and 75 cents at a vending machine, at a place that has world’s most voluminous falls. Unaware of this fact, I decided to travel to Niagara falls, the most sought after place in the world. The day began at 4 AM, when I took a bus via St. Catharine, a place known for beautiful vineyards.

As with last time, I encountered an American-raised Indian beside me. The bus was almost full, and I was left with no choice but the seat next to her. I never knew that this blog entry was in store.

Yet another " Canada Day" ?

It is 3 PM here. I am sitting in my deserted cafeteria on this 1st of July. While, whole of Canada celebrates the “Canada Day”, it is just another day for me. I watch CSI:Miami on one screen while type this post on other. I don’t know what this post is about, or where it is heading..It is a mere escape from work, from boredom, from life itself perhaps. As Maugham said, we write because we have not because we want to.

It is bright and sunny outside. The Cafe is cold. Am still thinking what can I write about, though having a lot say..A guy from other lab came to get a juice from the vending machine. We exchanged the usual hey’s.

 

“Are you watching a movie?”

“I have a movie streamed, and would mostly write a blog entry”

“A what?

“A blog entry..”

“oh! why do you write? Do you have readers?”

“Few”

“How many?”

“5-6 consistent ones, other random”

“You should write a book and make money”

“Not at all..”

“Why not?”

“I am not all that good. It is only a hobby”

“What, making money?”

“Nope….”

“It does not need to be good, you just make money from it. Else, writing is useless..” And he left, to finish his thesis, probably. He is a second year.

I always knew life is pragmatism and rationalism here. Life works with practical steps. I simply had a glimpse of it today.

So, what you think ? Should everything you do be monetarily lucrative ?

I love life in its irrationality. That is beauty of it.

Craziest game of cricket

My recent following of television series is The Last One Standing, Discovery’s reality show on how six athletes take up the challenge of playing tribal sports in remote tribal areas of earth, on their terms. I am loving it. So far, from what I have followed, athletes have been to South America, Zulu, Mongolia, Mexico, Nagaland and South Pacific. I loved the venture of the last one since the challenge was cricket, a game with which I can claim to recognize a bit, though I surely don’t know how to use a bat.

The game of cricket was the craziest and most funniest I have ever seen. They dance on the fall of wickets and this dance is a pride. And one has to learn it to play this game of cricket. There is an octopus dance on catch out, some other kinda dance for run outs, other for clean bowled… and there are songs too accompained with it.

You absolutely have to see this tribal game of cricket before ninja brings it down.

Beware of Pity: Stefan Zweig

After hunting for this book for almost half a decade, Bryan Prince ordered it for me. I took it for whatever price he said, since I knew that it was invaluable. I read the introduction, where the author meets a narrator of the book in a pub. The heroic lieutenant will soon be narrating his story about how “courage is often nothing but inverse of weakness”. He tells that in the battlefield the courage is found in herd but not in an individual. The courage of herd arises from the fear of being left behind, fear of opposing the mass. They did not escape from the war, rather they escaped into it since they were afraid of being drawn into poverty. The war, an invitation to death, was an escape from visible mortality.

The author, starts as:

“There are two kinds of pity:

One, the weak and sentimental kind, which is no more than a heart’s impatience to be rid as quickly as possible of the painful emotion aroused at the sight of another’s unhappiness, that pity which is not compassion, but only an instinctive desire to fortify one’s own soul against the sufferings of another; and the other, the only kind that counts, the unsentimental but the creative kind, which knows what it is about and is determined to hold out, in patience and forbearance, to the very limit of its strength and beyond.”

The book is about the lieutenant in his young and handsome days, when he asks for a woman to dance. Only, to know she was lame. With a desire to overcome his guilt, he invites the woman for lunch, giving her the hope….and then the flood of emotions.

I have an inkling that I am going to love this one. I will try to keep up writing as I keep on reading.