Updates - 08/18/2012 - Attempted Crime and Grey Hairs

There are 135 more days left in 2012. Today Roanoke Island celebrates Virginia Dare's birthday, and Australia celebrates Vietnam Veterans' day. None of these affect my life.
I discovered a solitary grey hair on my upper torso, a promise of many more to come, and a harbinger of old, shriveled, wrinkled skin and teeth in a cup of water. For the first time in my life I was happy that I was short and fat with need for no maintenance.
I cannot for my life understand the concept of attempted crime. A person convicted of attempted murder gets a reasonably short jail sentence with hope of parole; a person convicted of murder get life in prison or death by execution. Isn't that backwards? Attempted murder is simply a murder that didn't succeed. The perpetrator failed to accomplish what he set out to do. It is not as if halfway through his murdering process he had a pang of conscience, and dropped his weapon and walked away. So why is he being rewarded for failure? I think attempted crime should carry a harsher sentence than a successful one; a sentence for the actual crime plus an extra sentence for failing. After all, if you study 16 hours a day and fail in your test, you don't get an A+ for attempting to pass; you get an F for failing. Shouldn't the same argument apply here?
Everything is getting harder and tougher. Getting a job, keeping a job, making ends meet, playing competitive sports, everything. I had set my eyes on becoming a writer someday, and publishing a novel to make some extra bucks. Just one novel, because somewhere someone had said that there is one good story inside every human being. Today I realized that this is not going to work. I might have one good story inside me. But that is not enough to become a published author any more. The bar has been raised three-fold. Now, to be a published author, you not only have to have a story, you should be able to stretch that to extend three books. If you cannot write a trilogy, no agent is going to touch you.
I keep hearing about the first world and the third world? What happened to the second world? Did the people who formulated these concepts not know about the existence of silver? I have a set of problems which don't qualify as first world problems or third world problems. I cannot tweet about them because the second world doesn't exist. I blame these people for my low Klout score.
And lastly, I heard a nursery rhyme that was just wrong. One of the lines in the rhyme was – ‘This little pig ate roast beef, this little pig had none’.

What happened last night?

Last night I went to a party, one of the best parties I have attended in a long time. It was a sort of high-school reunion. I was surprised at all the people who had showed up. Some of them I hadn't spoken to in ages. It was amazing. I remember thinking that it is funny how things happen. We had yearned for such a gathering for years now, and planned in vain umpteen times. And suddenly, almost with minimal planning, it just happened. Like it was destined to be, at that place, at that time.

I must have been mostly in disbelief because less that twenty-four hours have gone by and it still seems like a dream. I am already starting to forget a lot of details about the material aspects of the party. I can barely remember what food was served, how the hall was decorated, what kind of lights were there. These are things that I would usually remember in vivid detail for years from the parties that I am occasionally coerced into attending for myriad social-economical reasons. I cannot even remember the details of how the event was planned and how so any people were able to attend. Friends from different parts of the globe were there. There were people from England, people from India, people from different states of the country. It was such a pleasure to be among them and relive our teenage years, to remember the awkwardness of growing up, the perils of examinations and grades, the angst and the joyous moments. Everyone seemed to be talking nineteen to the dozen, and not a single face had a frown. What I vividly remember is the chirpy atmosphere, the bright and shiny dresses, and a haze of bright albeit soothing yellow light that had seemed to engulf me all the time. I had felt relaxed, blessed and almost in a trance. It was almost like I was in heaven. Maybe I was. I also distinctly remember the conversations, and above all, the uninhibited and amazing comfort level and chemistry between the people present. For some time, I had no longer been a fat, grumpy 37 year old man conflicted between responsibilities and unaccomplished ambitions. I had been fifteen, naive, and still under the impression that great things were about to happen to me. 

But, like all good things, the party had to end. I have no recollection of the drive back home, or what I was thinking during that drive. I do remember that I was remorseful and despondent when I got back home. My wife and my two kids were already asleep. It has been unusually hot the last few days, and my wife had left all the windows open, instead of turning on the air-conditioner. We both like that. We prefer the cool, fragrant night air over the air-conditioner. My little daughter, taking advantage of my absence, has sneaked into our bed, leaving me two choices - the couch in the living room, or the floor. I chose the latter. I like sleeping on the floor. My body, spoiled by the softness of the mattress, sometimes relishes an opportunity to sleep on a hard surface that does not make any false claims - like remembering my posture, adjusting to my tossing and turning, nurturing my backbone, etc. However, I was too sad to sleep alone. I was craving for human company. I took my pillow and lay down on the floor in my son's room, near his bunk bed where he lay fast asleep, tired out by his field trip and the oppressive heat. But sleep evaded me. 

I lay there, eyes closed, reflecting on the events of the evening, and trying to relive the happiness. Suddenly there was a flutter in the window. My view of the window was partially obstructed by my son's study table, but I could distinctly smell a strange perfume, and could see what seemed like the raven tresses of a woman - long, brilliant black and shiny hair. I did not dare to move. I pretended to be asleep. In fact, I was so stunned by what was going on that I did not even dare to open my eyes, lest the flutter of my eyelids would cause the intruder to react drastically. I lay there pondering about a few things. Firstly, even though I could sense movement and smell a perfume, I had not been able to see a face or any other body parts. Everything seemed to be covered by that mesmerizing enormity of long, black, shiny hair. The second and equally disturbing thought in my mind was that I was in no position to get to my phone without moving across the floor to the wall charger. The third thing that crossed my mind was how much cooler and breezier the room suddenly felt. I attributed this to the fact that the intruder had removed the window net, thereby causing the mild night breeze to have easier access into the room.

I was trying to assimilate these thoughts and figure out what my next move would be when there were two cold, sickly white hands pressing on my neck, and an enormous pressure on the side of my head. I could not understand that pressure - the weight was almost like someone was sitting on my head, but I could not feel anything material touching me. And then I heard the voice, a hoarse eerie whisper of a very angry woman. It sent a chill down my spine and suddenly I felt like I was inside a refrigerator. I could not move. Whatever held me was only holding my head and neck. I still could not see anything other than the shiny, black hair. And the bony hands. But my entire body was frozen and immobile. I could not decipher what she was saying - not a single word made any sense to me. It was like a slow intonation of mambo-jumbo. But the pressure on my head was beginning to increase. I felt like something was getting sucked out from inside my head - the pressure and the feeling was like putting your hand on the nozzle of a suction pump. I felt intense pain and slowly spreading numbness - first my eyes, then my ears, then my body. 

That is when I decided that I had to scream for help. I was not in a position to help myself. But my tongue was already affected by the paralysis spreading across my body. My words came out slurred and barely intelligible. I seemed to be reciting a Sanskrit prayer that I had learned as a kid and never chanted in at least two decades, ever since I had decided that God does not exist and being an atheist is very cool. Then I stopped doing that and started calling my wife. I was surprised and confused at the words that came out of my mouth - I was screaming - 'I am having a bad dream. But I cannot come out of it. Come and shake me hard so that I wake up. Please, wake me up. Make the dream go away.' And I was worrying that if she could not hear me and do what I was asking her to, I will be consumed by this sinister apparition sitting on my head and will never wake up. My wife came over and shook me hard, I woke up, and everything was back to normal again. The window had not been tampered with, It was still sultry and hot. 'You were dreaming. It is all right. Go back to sleep.' - she said in her soft, sleepy voice, and before I could say or do anything else, she was gone. I didn't even see her properly, everything happened so fast. But soon I could her deep breathing from the bedroom. I fiddled with my phone till the pounding of my heart and throbbing of my head stopped. Then I went back to sleep again, and slept dreamless for the rest of the night.

This morning I woke up and remembered last night's drama. There had been no party. There had been no ghosts. It had just been a dream. Well, had it? I don't know. It had felt extremely real. They say dreams are black-and-white. But why do I remember the bright, green dress one of the girls at the party was wearing? And the bright, yellow light that had engulfed me? And why does my neck hurt so much? And why do I have scratches on my neck? Did I have a itch and scratched myself too hard in my sleep? But then I looked at my fingers and realized - I have never been able to rid myself of the bad habit of chewing nails. My fingers are gnawed to the quick. I am simply too scared to ask my wife if she woke me up from a dream last night. I won't know what to do if she said no.

From Twitter to Ice Ice Baby

I lost a precious two hours of my life,without even realizing it. My total recollection of that period, on coming back to reality was - I had gone to twitter to check my timeline, and now I am on youtube watching a ridiculous video with hideous lyrics called 'Ice Ice Baby'. My cellphone said that two hours had gone by. Now I know that as long as I am conscious, drug-free and sane, I would never have anything to do with 'Ice Ice baby'. So how did this happen?


1. I started on twitter. I checked my twitter timeline, and read a news tweet about 2 members of the state assembly of a prominent Indian state - Karnataka - allegedly photographed watching porn on a smartphone while the assembly was in session.
2. I visited the Times Of India website by expanding the link on the tweet and read the news item - the assemblymen explained that they were trying to figure out what a rave party is. My brain immediately wondered why.
3. So I googled 'Karnataka rave party'.
4. I went to another Indian news website from the search results and learned about how a state sponsored international music festival - Spring Zouk Island Festival 2012 - had veered into becoming an XXX-rated episode of Miami Grind. I also watched a censored version of a news sting video from that rave party that was creating havoc in Karnataka politics.
5. I then searched youtube to see if I could find the uncensored video, just out of curiosity, seriously, and was surprised to not find any.
6. That done, I went back to twitter to read the next tweet, which was a link about staff and readers of the A.V. Club picking their favorite comedy bits by stand-up comedy legends. So obviously I went to that link.
7. I watched embedded youtube videos of Louis C.K talking to Conan O'Brien, George Carlin doing his 'baseball or football' routine, and Bill Hicks talking about drugs, quite fondly I might add. Also mentioned in the link was Richard Pryor's imitation of white people. But there was no video.
8. So now I had to go back to youtube to find Richard Pryor's imitation of white people, and didn't find it. However, I found and watched a couple of other Richard Pryor videos - saving white people from the Titanic, and Richard Pryor as the president.
9. I was lured into watching a related youtube video about Eddie Murphy talking about the first Black President, and from there on to Eddie Murphy doing his Michael Jackson impression, his James Brown impression, and his Elvis Presley impression.
10. Not liking Eddie Murphy's Elvis too much, I went to a related video of Jim Carrey imitating Elvis, then Jim Carrey imitating Seinfeld in the ghetto, and finally Jim Carrey imitating Vanilla Ice.
11. I couldn't remember the real name for Vanilla Ice, so I went via google onto wikipedia to refresh my memory of Robert Matthew Van Winkle and the article mentioned his signature dance move - the Ice.
12. Curious now about what 'the Ice' might be, I had to go back to youtube to watch 'Ice Ice Baby', and when Van Winkle said 'Ice Ice baby' for the umpteenth time, that's when I realized that I had lost a good two hours, learned nothing, and was now watching absolute drivel called 'Ice Ice Baby'.


I would still like to thank Vanilla Ice for saying uncorrelated nonsensical gibberish like 'brand new invention' and 'collaborate and listen' because that brought me back to my senses. If that had not happened, it would have been MC Hammer next, and from there who knows where I would have gone and how much time I would have further wasted.

Rising up Bright and Early: Why did I +1 a Google Plus post?

The brain is akin to, if not the same as, a sophisticated multi-threaded, multi-processed learning-based neural network. So like any software system, it does several computations in response to an input and produces an output. Most of the time, we just don't ponder about all the computations the brain must have performed in response to a stimulus. However, once in a while, when a response from our brain is challenged or questioned, we are compelled to sit back and look at the application logs for our brain in order to understand how it produced that particular output. This process is called introspection, and can sometimes the intricacies of how your brain works can amaze you.

This morning I +1ed a post that read "Must wake up bright and early tmr. Must report to jury duty. :(". I obviously did not stop to think why my brain asked me to +1 it. I just did it. And that would have the end of story, had the author of the post not commented, "Why did +Somo Banerjee +1 ? Lol".  And so I had to go back and figure out why my brain prompted me to +1 this post. Here I present to you a summarized analysis of what went on in my brain (in a matter of mere milliseconds) to spur that reaction.

Firstly, to my brain, a +1 or a Facebook Like means that the last piece of information received from the optical nerves has triggered an emotion (a smile, a frown, a raised eyebrow, elation, disapproval, origin of a long series of thought computations, etc., etc.) but the emotion was either not strong enough or not well-defined enough to stimulate a verbal response.

Coming back to the post, 

1. The first thing that my brain identified was that fact that the author was not accustomed to and was not looking forward to rising early, hence the emoticon. 

2. Secondly, it figured out that the commonly used phrase 'bright and early' is not valid without making a few dubious assumptions. On top of that, these assumptions are subject to significant changes depending on person and geographical location. As an example, consider my case. I wake up, if my Blackberry doesn't run out of battery, at 4:45 AM. That is 'early' to me. It is far from ‘bright’ at that time, even during the summer months. At best, there is enough light outside to see 20 feet, and at worst, it is still night. By the time it is bright, it is definitely not early for me anymore. 

And if one were to argue that 'bright' indicated a state of mind rather than a measure of available illumination, then the phrase becomes even more murky and subjective. It is not easy to be 'bright' when you have to get out of bed at an ungodly hour of day, especially if you are not used to it. Moreover, 'brightness' might depend on the reason for waking up early. Rising up early to attend a funeral (or in this case jury duty) is almost certain not going to induce 'brightness' of mind. On the other hand, rising up early to meet your brand-new girlfriend at a scenic vista point for breakfast or rising up early to test your brand-new Corvette on the empty freeways can definitely brighten you up.

3. That brings me to the last, and most striking part of the post that caused my brain to determine that this post was +1 worthy. I have heard of people rising up early for a myriad of reasons. Some do it out of habit, some due to lack of time, some to wind up unfinished business, some to start the day early so that there would be enough time to finish up a particularly time-consuming task at hand, to read for exams, to answer a call of nature, to go to the morgue as part of probation requirements, etc etc. But never before have I heard of anyone rising up early to attend jury duty. Jury duty being the cause of an early morning wake-up call was not something I had come up against before. 

That, and only that caused my brain to deduce that this post was +1 worthy. It is as simple as that. And everything you read before that, and either nodded in agreement with, or raised your eyebrows in disapproval to, or scratched your head in confusion to, was just a figment of my imagination, and had nothing to do with how my brain works. 

In fact, I don't even know, nor have any inkling of how it works. 

Nor am I smart enough or interested enough to figure that out. 

Nor am I even going to try.

Have a bright day, whether or not you rose early to read this article.