Cold blooded suicide is the strongest reply to the devil that they call God.

Freewill Part I

All that we are left to play with is nothing but virtual freewill. It is free since we can choose and it is virtual since we think we can. But do we really have a choice here other than to choose? Are we not forced to choose; for if we do not, we cease to exist. Are we not forced to think every single second of our lives except during sleep and coma? Perhaps we might be deluded to think that we have the power to choose by something we are utterly unaware of.

We are somewhat conscious about our own existence, instincts, desires and feelings; however, a wise man may advice that we should not allow ourselves to be needlessly haughty by being convinced of our wisdom about all that there can be. Plethora of unknown metaphysical and physiological elements in our minds as one might choose to call them. Isn't it possible that we might be completely unconscious about one of those elements which is controlling us from within? An element which is letting us think that we do have freewill? An element which have been deceiving the mind of men for ages? We are able to, sometimes if not always, control our primordial instincts since we know of their existence. But how can we control the unknown if we know not its form? And if we can not control it, how can we say we have freewill? I suppose, the greater our ignorance, the feebler is our freewill. And our ignorance, I am convinced, is mighty great!

When a lion kills a cub of a lioness in order to necessitate her to mate with him, does he even have faintest of a choice other than killing the cub? Is he even aware of his instincts to mate? Where and how does our freewill, regardless of its mirage like attributes, merge with the border of our ever compelling but somehow subdued instincts? Where do we exactly start being human beings?

 

These questions, disregarding their logical validity and sanity, where do they come from? Is it that underlying unknown entity at play? I am not sure, all this might just be plain bullshit and after all we may just be a bunch of chemicals. This acceptance of sheer ignorance of everything and the consequent submission to incomprehensible fate are intensely suffocating and emotionally strangling. In silence of the night, an uneasy feeling creeps into my mind from the darkness. I feel like a fly stuck in a spiderweb which tries to untangle the unknown sticky stuff out of its wings for that ultimate freedom. But it ends up getting more and more entangled. And eventually dies; hopelessly, helplessly. Without the answers.

I must admit these days I'm heavily influenced by Spinoza and my thesis topic of Hardware Assisted Embedded Virtualization. Spinoza igniting the match and my topic pouring technical oil into the fire. The connection between Spinoza's ideas and this post is understandable but how my technical thesis is helping these thoughts is quite undecipherable to me. Nevertheless I sense some similarities between hardware abstraction in virtualization and abstraction of thoughts from raw feelings, desires and instincts in human mind. How a hypervisor fools the virtual machines into believing that they are the only ones controlling the hardware is fascinating and so the possibility of that unknown layer in our psyche came into being. I am sure after a month, I'm gonna come back to this post and look at this outright absurdity and hope that the fly gets free. 

What choice do I have anyway other than to hope. 
And there is only one thing which can free us. I can bet my life on it.
It's death, my friend!

The Lord

Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul,
Ash nazg thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.

Far away from the hustling life of the big cities, I was in a bus, on my way to some small remote village in Konkan. I was sitting by an open window in the last row of that nearly vacant bus, watching trees pass by in speed. The blurred view of the young green leaves going past in a split second was pleasant. It had just started getting dimmer outside. Sweet warm light rays of the orange setting sun were intermittently piercing through the trees, ballooning the pupils in my brown irises for a moment. Outside there was a slight scent of wet soil in the wind. It was rushing in through the window to me, bringing stories of the past, as if it was excited to meet a long lost friend after so much of patient waiting. Felt like it had just showered.

and then I thought of him.

I remember. His funeral. I was there. Sitting on a rock at a distance, looking down blankly at the earth between my feet. I could feel the bleak warmth of the fire hitting in waves on me. It was fierce, ruthlessly taking the last remains of his body buried beneath the burning pyre to nowhere. The air was solemn, and was filled with a dark void of dejection.

He was around twenty years older than me. A man with a kind heart. The ways in which he used to make the people around him burst in laughter, the ways in which he used to magically spark his surroundings, it is just unexplainable. He carried that little world full of enchanting happiness with him and being a part of that world was a pure joy in itself. I thought of him as the last guy I knew who could get hit by the misery of life. But lately I hadn't seen much of him, I was getting past my teenage years with all the thoughts and questions. Now I can imagine the inner crisis he must had been through that he silently succumbed to it. Don't know who is to blame. Is it the society or was it him? One evening, I heard he was in coma with no turning back. That had to happen. I visited the hospital in hesitation before they decided to cut off those tubes. He was lying on that white bed in white clothes; motionless. I stood there for a minute in confusion and in silence, looking through the glass window, knowing that it was the last time. What else could I have done to wave the final goodbye?

I don't believe in the afterlife and the other improbable things. I wish I did. If somehow it does exist, I would love to see him there. I would love to ask him how he has been doing all these years. I would love to hear his heartfelt laughter, I almost hear it now in my mind. Wont ask him if it was a deliberately planned inaction which led to his death, they say it was a slow suicide. Wont even ask him why. Will just make him do those antics he used to do to make us laugh when we were kids. Just once.

and the bus started to loose its speed gradually as the village was getting closer. After smoothly taking turns after turns in the low light of the fallen dusk, the engine went silent, vibrations ceased and the bus stopped; but I couldn't.

पारवा

भिंत खचली कलथून खांब गेला

जुनी पडकी उद्ध्वस्त धर्मशाला

तिच्या कौलारी बसुनि पारवा तो

खिन्न नीरस एकांतगीत गातो

सूर्य मध्यान्ही उभा राहे

घार मंडळ त्याभवती घालताहे

पक्षी पानांच्या शांत सावल्यांत

सुखे साखरझोपेत पेंगतात.

तुला नाही परि हौस उडायाची

गोड हिरव्या झुबक्यात दडायाची

उष्ण झळ्या बाहेर तापतात

गीतनिद्रा तव आंत अखंडित

चित्त किंवा तव कोवळ्या विखारे

दुखतेखुपते का सांग सांग बा रे

तुला काही जगतात नको मान

गोड गावे मग भान हे कुठून

झोप सौख्यानंदात मानवाची

पुरी क्षणही कोठून टिकायाची

दुःखनिद्रे निद्रिस्त बुध्दराज

करूणगीते घुमवीत जगी आज.

दुःखनिद्रा ती आज तुला लागे

तुझे जगही निद्रिस्त तुझ्या संगे

फिरे माझ्या जगतात उष्ण वारे

तुला त्याचे भानही नसे बा रे.

- बालकवी

I don't exactly remember when and in which class this poem was part of a syllabus for Marathi but surprisingly despite of its eclipsed mood, it brings out the most cherished memories of those years. During that age I am sure I wasn't capable to understand this dark, scorching piece of poetry, perhaps I never had time to understand it when our heads were buried in trying to 'impress' the newcomer girl in the class, experimenting with the wonders of our newly discovered physical features and talking about it the next day in school during lunchbreak, planning and playing cricket after the school, figuring out new methodologies on how to surreptitiously sneak out of those samosa, lassi and chinese stalls without having to pay. Now it seems, it wasn't that much about the money, indeed it was something about the high! that sweet high of successful sneak-out! The most amazing young kids you had around yourself during those times, they might not remain the same now in their grown up physical bodies just like that innocent little boy in yourself is lost somewhere in the process of growing up and sometimes unknowingly you might not feel that much of a connection with them now, alas. 

Anyway, coming back to the poem. It's a strange time of my life that I came across this poem once again after all the years[I love saying this phrase like an old man covered with white beard, sitting by the bay, talking about his younger days!]. Here is an unpolished and loose translation of this beautiful composition. How badly I want you to know what it means, how badly my friend.

the wall is damaged and the pillar, collapsed
the old ruined shattered monastery
on the roof of which that bird is sitting
and singing a mournful lonely song

the sun is shining fiercely in the noon
up in the air, a black kite is flying in circles around it
and in the calm shadows of leaves
other birds are enjoying a peaceful siesta

but you don't fancy flying high
neither these cozy green shrubs
a torrid wind is blowing outside
and deep inside, this ceaseless trance of aria

please, please, please, tell me, where the hurt is
you don't want any recognition in the world
so where does such a sweet song comes from?

blissful sleep of the human
how will it last even for a split second?
melancholic morose sleeping Buddha
echoing songs of dejection round and round

that dejection, that gloom, hits you today
your world, drowned in sorrows with you
an arid, scorching wind is storming my life
and how oblivious my friend, you are about it.

- Balkavi (Tryambak Bapuji Thombre)

Well, the fourth stanza has only three lines translated. Couldn't translate the context in which the first is penned down. but anyway, I hope I didn't damage the sheer beauty of it while trying to translate. This is a precious feeling, rediscovering what went missing years ago.