Luminous Infinitus

S called. Before he started speaking, I knew what he’d say. Let’s meet up and study something. Yeah ! it’s been over a month since 2nd semester started and we hadn’t even looked into the books list. EC1 was a couple of weeks ahead. It was time. He was in Stanford meeting up with some friend. He wanted to catch up with me in the library after lunch. S - “Library le meet pannalam. Books list eduthuko. We’ll find them there and also plan for studying for this sem. ” Me – “Wokay. I have some work in the bank. Athu mudichittu, I’ll leave to library.” As planned, we met in the library but couldn’t find the books. They’d all been taken. After talking about textbooks for a while, the conversation just slipped into movies and songs. Me - “Have you heard this song ‘Ragasiyamanadu kaadal’ ? A gem of a song. I was listening to top 10 on raaga yesterday and came upon this .. Quite accidentally” S - “Haven’t heard of it. New song ? Which movie ?” “Kodambakkam” “k. Have you listened to ‘New york nag...

He was standing near the sun. There was brightness everywhere, almost blinding him. He could see the rays going away – far away to distant lands, giving light, feeding happiness. But he couldn’t stand there for long. Some strong force was pulling him away. He clenched his teeth, tightened his muscles, held his fists in a tight grip, He tried .. to hold on for longer. It broke. But he wasn’t ready to give away, not yet. He leapt, stretched his hand and grasped a light ray. In a moment he wasn’t himself. As the luminous shaft shot ahead with break neck speed, his vision became blurred, he ceased to think. When he opened his eyes, he was far away. He was still riding on the light ray. But there was no sun, no planets in the vicinity. It was mostly dark. At a distance he could see specks of light from stars, light years away. He could feel that he wasn’t traveling as fast as he was in the beginning. Was the ray weakening ? A dread swept through him. What would happen ? Would the light die ...

Some days you get up slowly .. sit or sometimes sit n sleep on the bed for sometime .. wait for thoughts to gather, slowly come into terms with the world – as though you need time to gradually transition from one world to completely different one – as though you just came out of water and you’re gasping for breath. Yet, Some other days you get up with a jerk – immediately springing into action – as though the very reason that you got up was to do that . It’s as though you’ve been awake all along but had just closed your eyes temporarily.. Today was one of those ‘some other’ days. It was a holiday but I just got up and immediately wanted to check out ‘the destruction of Sennacherib’. I wanted to read the Biblical passage which mentioned this incident. This out-of-ordinary behavior was because just yesterday I started with this book named "Familiar Poems, Annotated" by Asimov. For starters, Isaac Asimov was a master science fiction writer, the most famous in his time and the b...

Amir Aczel’s "Fermat’s Last Theorem" begins with this amazing quote by Andrew Wiles. Yes ! he is the one .. the mathematician who solved the most famous unsolvable problem in the history of Mathematics . Over a span of 3 centuries, thousands of brilliant and hardworking men and women were at it.. and in the quest had discovered so many ground-breaking theories ..even new branches of Maths! I was just dumbfounded the moment I read it - at the sheer truth behind it. Here it goes .. "Perhaps I could best describe my experience of doing mathematics in terms of entering a dark mansion. You go into the first room and it's dark, completely dark. You stumble around, bumping into the furniture. Gradually, you learn where each piece of furniture is. And finally, after six months or so, you find the light switch and turn it on. Suddenly, it's all illuminated and you can see exactly where you were. Then you enter the next room . . . " Exactly !! I think this applies ...

Though sleeping, reading and watching movies were the only major things that I did during this weekend, what I really wanted to do was to go to a beach, write something, put it into a bottle and throw it into the sea. Yeah ! Yes ! just like that ! Much as I'd like to think that someone'll pick it up and read and mail and .. Nothing..

Gosh ! I jus came to know that A’d changed from specs to lenses. When ? Now I got it ! I met him last week.. that too after a gap of a year ! he asked if I noticed any change in him. I get into this confused-i-wanna-chicken-out kind of state when someone asks me this ! I think I’d said “haha .. you look exactly the same. You don’t eat much. Do you ? I guess I too haven’t changed much.” (A might’ve been thinking – ‘bummer! I’ve gotten rid my specs and you don’t even notice the difference ! grr !!’) This’s been a problem which, for a long time I never knew ! Some friend wears a new dress or gets a new get-up and I never notice. The fact of the matter is, this hurts people…sometimes. Once I thought I’d fix it … had told myself “watch it ! from today .. I’m gonna get more interested in the ‘appearance’” The very next day I caught P coming to office. Me – “hey P, you look different ! you’ve started wearing specs, haven’t you ? Cool ! I must say you now look your true intellectual self.” ...

St.George’s festival. Theophilus thirumeni (formerly MC Cherian achen) went over St. George’s life – the same story that had been told to me many times as a kid – more so because I had this paranoic fear of snakes. I’ve had moments in which I missed stamping on a snake or a snake bite by sheer luck ! If you said there was just one in a million chance to see a snake in the city of Bangalore.. yes.. may be.. but there is that one in a million.. We had a photo of him, St.George – an old, almost faded, small but framed one, in which the brave hero stands face to face with the dragon with a spear in his hand on a white horse . He is staring into the dragon’s eyes and the open mouthed dragon is lunging towards him. The dragon isn’t afraid and he isn’t even a bit scared ! Takes me back to the times when we used to go to kerala during summer vacations. Everything seemed to happen right during that time. Mango’s came at that time. It rained at that time. And this perunal too. It was one time w...