Luminous Infinitus

   How does it feel to be woken up at 5.50 AM in the morning, that too on a Saturday and asked to get ready in 10 minutes to go to Lake Tahoe – a skiing resort ? Like a dream ! The day went like a breeze. I’d seen cable car and skiing only in movies. There I was .. traveling in a cable car and feeling like being a bond movie, skiing (and falling, though I found skiing to be easier than ice-skating) and feeling like being Levin in Anna Karenina… Before we knew, it was time to return and only thing that remained was feeling of having spent a great day.

Just on the day when I made a curry in a hurry , forgot to put salt, worse, forgot to taste it, I got it to office and got to have lunch with a bunch of folks who believed in this ‘give-it-to-everyone, eat-from-everyone’ principle. A la potluck. Thank God I had the sense to taste it before offering. Once I realized it, I was in a catch 22 situation. How could I take theirs if I can’t offer ? But how could I stick out like a sore thumb without taking anything? Giving or not giving is equal embarrassment. Big deal! Took a bit of K’s pongal, N’s chatney, V’s idly. I didn’t offer mine. They didn’t ask. Did they feel offended? What the hell ! sach bolne se kya nuksaan? Me - “I’m becoming worse at cooking day-by-day. Forgot to put salt.” N - “So you were good before?” Me - “No. bad to worse” N – “Oh! It is 0(zero) to – (minus) whatever. haha” Everyone laughed. S – “Time for you to get married” Me – “What if she doesn’t know?” Laughter again. Now I wonder. Were they laughing at me? Here is a

“Bhoogolathinte spandanam Mathematics aanu.”(Mathematics in the pulse of earth) – The gruff voice of the one-n-only inimitable Thilakan still rings in my ears. In ‘Sphadikam’, it is told in a sarcastic way as though to tell us that the father’s insistence on son learning Math wrecked his(the son’s, I mean) life.(wrecked? Umm.. for all you know, there might be folks who want to emulate aadu thoma!) Why math all of a sudden? Had done a project which dealt with encryption a couple of months back and got hooked on to cryptography. Got around reading some books too. Nothing heavy. Some light yet stimulating reads. “In Code – A mathematical Journey” by Sarah Flannery “The code book” by Simon Singh.. More about them later.. N was telling about how interesting he found “Gödel, Escher, Bach” to be. Read the first chapter. Too good. Yet another must read. Back to cryptography, it is strange.. how one gets interested in some subject. How something catches one’s fancy for no reason. I got into it

I spent a whole day with out it .. without the most important thing that adorned my face for so many years(well ! not so many.. just 5!) – my specs. Such a thing had to happen. Especially since I’m prone to falling into this very-absent-minded-utterly-oblivious-to-surrounding state. I searched everywhere. Inside the Fridge, inside my bag, inside the microwave, on the TV, under the table, below the cot, in the toilet.. I must’ve kept it somewhere. I’ve kept things in strange places before. It is a strange feeling – to be without specs for a day. To feel the wind on the eyes , to look at the mirror and see a different person, to be able to touch one’s face without obstructions, to be able to not feel the presence of something on one’s head, to have the feeling of sudden freedom. But what is freedom at the cost of pain ? a severe ache on the left side of my head in my case.

I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death. This is from a book named ‘All I really need to know I learned in kindergarten’. D was so ecstatic about it on the phone that I ordered the book online as soon as I got a chance. If not anything, I was enchanted by the name. It took 2 weeks to get shipped to me though. Got it today .Smiled and laughed all the way to the end while reading it.