It is like the game at which you excelled,
Broke all records, found all those mines
In 30 seconds flat. Ready to go again.
All set to win every game, ready to outshine,
Our counter-strategies always in vain,
As cold logic got you there, your luck held.
But life my dear, is not a computer game,
Just like relationships don’t run in binary.
Something you never could fathom.
As you went on believing her in a hurry
Discarding their complaints as random,
Scoring points and passing around blame.
Now there’s no turning back, no amends
possible. Each loved one is on the brink,
teetering at the point of no return.
While you watch, incredulous, and think
of numerical equations to soothe the burn
of seared souls and blazing fences you can’t mend.
Now the logic of ifs and thens leads to walls
of stony silences or acrimony. Tread light
my dear, to find your way out of this minefield,
there’s much to lose to the darkest of nights.
Where no one is prepared to give or yield
Or help you gauge whence duty calls.
Monday, October 10, 2005
Saturday, October 8, 2005
Generalization
When it comes to generalizations I suppose someone will tell me soon enough not to knock it until I try it.
I have observed the writings of two people who have recently left their homeland for higher studies abroad. They are bloggers and aspiring writers and have been recording unusual events in their blogs. Reading them makes me think how important this generalization function really is to the brain. It seems to be the very first response, the first defense. It is like the strange and funny though entirely lovable robot - Johnny V - in the movie Short Circuit. In the big city or any new environs, he actively scans his surroundings saying, "Input, Input!" My two friends are doing it too. Observing, recording and processing so many new events, new sights, new linguistic nuances, culture, behavior that has the potential of creating utter chaos in the brain. In comes generalization. Now they can consolidate reams of new data in fewer categories and attribute certain traits and patterns of behavior to each category. Voila! They've built sorting bins in their brains. Now they have some rudimentary means of coping with the deluge of sensory perception.
So far so good, it is just a coping mechanism. So you think Americans are not good at Math or Sciences, you think they are rude, you think they are shallow and superficial, helps you tailor your own behavior toward them. You think the country is all form and no substance...a dangerous one. Maybe it works for you now to think that. Things are fine at this initial sorting bin stage but when these bins morph into really tall and fortified walls as time goes by we have ourselves people with unshakeably dogmatic views on how a certain group of people will behave. They start extending the analysis to how an entire country or race or people with a certain ethnology will behave. That is when the real danger kicks in.
My resistance to the idea of generalization stems from a realization of this danger. When I encountered a new culture for the first time I wasn't generalizing at all, I must have been born with a gene that was averse to such a defense mechanism. But I was coming across many people who were trying to force me down one particular hatch or the other. There were people who really believed that Indians loved to burn new brides whose parents had failed to arrange for dowry, they believed that infanticide of the girl child was a widespread phenomenon. The odd uneducated American also questioned me about snake charmers on the street and felt that all Indians, male or female wore turbans on their head. My hackles were always raised in defense of all things Indian. "Ah you're from India, to which tribe do you belong?" or "When you go to pick up your Mom on the airport will she have a humongous turban on her head?" or "What do Indians have against beef?" or "Why are they so clannish?" or "My doctor is Indian. How come all Indians are doctors?" or "Mr Patel runs the local Dunkin Donuts or 7-11, told me he's from Delhi, do you know him?"
This could have led me to generalize that all Americans are adept at asking the dumbest questions possible but I chose to believe that this wasn't the case. There are enough Americans out there who know better and have educated and informed opinions about India and Indians. In fact, your Indianness doesn't trigger any automatic value judgments about you.
So if I could, I would love to caution these two people to keep this instinct in check. America isn't all form and no substance just as India isn't a country where dowryless brides are regularly burnt. Just reading the inscribed words of Thomas Jefferson at Jefferson Memorial, Washington DC could have sent home just the opposite message of how substantial a country America really is.
I have observed the writings of two people who have recently left their homeland for higher studies abroad. They are bloggers and aspiring writers and have been recording unusual events in their blogs. Reading them makes me think how important this generalization function really is to the brain. It seems to be the very first response, the first defense. It is like the strange and funny though entirely lovable robot - Johnny V - in the movie Short Circuit. In the big city or any new environs, he actively scans his surroundings saying, "Input, Input!" My two friends are doing it too. Observing, recording and processing so many new events, new sights, new linguistic nuances, culture, behavior that has the potential of creating utter chaos in the brain. In comes generalization. Now they can consolidate reams of new data in fewer categories and attribute certain traits and patterns of behavior to each category. Voila! They've built sorting bins in their brains. Now they have some rudimentary means of coping with the deluge of sensory perception.
So far so good, it is just a coping mechanism. So you think Americans are not good at Math or Sciences, you think they are rude, you think they are shallow and superficial, helps you tailor your own behavior toward them. You think the country is all form and no substance...a dangerous one. Maybe it works for you now to think that. Things are fine at this initial sorting bin stage but when these bins morph into really tall and fortified walls as time goes by we have ourselves people with unshakeably dogmatic views on how a certain group of people will behave. They start extending the analysis to how an entire country or race or people with a certain ethnology will behave. That is when the real danger kicks in.
My resistance to the idea of generalization stems from a realization of this danger. When I encountered a new culture for the first time I wasn't generalizing at all, I must have been born with a gene that was averse to such a defense mechanism. But I was coming across many people who were trying to force me down one particular hatch or the other. There were people who really believed that Indians loved to burn new brides whose parents had failed to arrange for dowry, they believed that infanticide of the girl child was a widespread phenomenon. The odd uneducated American also questioned me about snake charmers on the street and felt that all Indians, male or female wore turbans on their head. My hackles were always raised in defense of all things Indian. "Ah you're from India, to which tribe do you belong?" or "When you go to pick up your Mom on the airport will she have a humongous turban on her head?" or "What do Indians have against beef?" or "Why are they so clannish?" or "My doctor is Indian. How come all Indians are doctors?" or "Mr Patel runs the local Dunkin Donuts or 7-11, told me he's from Delhi, do you know him?"
This could have led me to generalize that all Americans are adept at asking the dumbest questions possible but I chose to believe that this wasn't the case. There are enough Americans out there who know better and have educated and informed opinions about India and Indians. In fact, your Indianness doesn't trigger any automatic value judgments about you.
So if I could, I would love to caution these two people to keep this instinct in check. America isn't all form and no substance just as India isn't a country where dowryless brides are regularly burnt. Just reading the inscribed words of Thomas Jefferson at Jefferson Memorial, Washington DC could have sent home just the opposite message of how substantial a country America really is.
Friday, October 7, 2005
Vanilla Days
I have been reading what people like to write, for a little over a year now. It was exciting in the beginning. I have always loved snooping, always loved to bury myself in someone's old diary, reading their deepest, darkest secrets, reading about what made them tick, their quirks and their motivations. But juicy diaries were hard to come by. And then I discovered blogging. I felt like I died and went to heaven when I discovered the "Next Blog" button. So many juicy tidbits and delicious morsels of humanity all around me. Every perspective seemed new.
That was then and this is now. I have now discovered that not only are most blogs most uninteresting, filled with bad poetry and worse prose but that the "Next Blog" button can easily bring some exotic computer viruses your way.
There really are no unique perspectives anywhere, somehow each human aspect merges and fuses into one common consciousness. It is almost as if we were cyborgs. We are one.
The only things people write about is being in love, being out of love, how love hurts, how lack of love hurts, how one-sided it is, how full of longing we are, how obsessed we are, how surprised we are that someone else is so obsessed with another, who did what to whom, how one is never understood. It all runs into the same theme. It is like the color black - the color that absorbs all the other colors of the spectrum or perhaps it is like the color white, the color that reflects all the other colors in the spectrum, a matter of perspective...yes, which is never unique. Uniqueness lasts only as long as one hasn't previously been exposed to something. It is like the sandy/beige color of my Dad's Fiat in India. When we bought it we all thought, "Wow! What a unique color! We've never seen that color before!" Then as we drove on the streets of Delhi, we realized that every other car on the road was of the same color.
I read several blogs today. P's blog was the same as always full of what he considered a witty, pithy turn of phrase. Another P's blog was full of heartache again - a personal relationship causing such angst, such tears and such predictability in her significant other's reaction to her words and her tears. Then I read D's blog, again more of the same "I-am-up-here-and-the-rest-of-you-are-jerks". A's blog was full of bad poetry and J's blog was full of affirmations and lines that could have come from a Chicken Soup for the Soul book. Most of these blogs were very popular. Each post generating 50 or so comments and each comment was as inane as the post itself. They would start with "Ah.." and say something like *sigh* or *shudder* based on how the post moved them. *Sigh*
So where do I find the next mystery? What is the next thing that will make me say, "Wow!" I keep waiting for the next such thing with bated breath. Hope springs eternal in the promise of each new day, each sunrise. But it is quelled again with the setting sun. There is very little variation in the routine of each day. It's a flatline with not the tiniest blip in sight.
Well, there really isn't anything better to keep me entertained, the palate tickled. So I'll keep savoring the vanilla, if only to reassure myself that I can still taste.
That was then and this is now. I have now discovered that not only are most blogs most uninteresting, filled with bad poetry and worse prose but that the "Next Blog" button can easily bring some exotic computer viruses your way.
There really are no unique perspectives anywhere, somehow each human aspect merges and fuses into one common consciousness. It is almost as if we were cyborgs. We are one.
The only things people write about is being in love, being out of love, how love hurts, how lack of love hurts, how one-sided it is, how full of longing we are, how obsessed we are, how surprised we are that someone else is so obsessed with another, who did what to whom, how one is never understood. It all runs into the same theme. It is like the color black - the color that absorbs all the other colors of the spectrum or perhaps it is like the color white, the color that reflects all the other colors in the spectrum, a matter of perspective...yes, which is never unique. Uniqueness lasts only as long as one hasn't previously been exposed to something. It is like the sandy/beige color of my Dad's Fiat in India. When we bought it we all thought, "Wow! What a unique color! We've never seen that color before!" Then as we drove on the streets of Delhi, we realized that every other car on the road was of the same color.
I read several blogs today. P's blog was the same as always full of what he considered a witty, pithy turn of phrase. Another P's blog was full of heartache again - a personal relationship causing such angst, such tears and such predictability in her significant other's reaction to her words and her tears. Then I read D's blog, again more of the same "I-am-up-here-and-the-rest-of-you-are-jerks". A's blog was full of bad poetry and J's blog was full of affirmations and lines that could have come from a Chicken Soup for the Soul book. Most of these blogs were very popular. Each post generating 50 or so comments and each comment was as inane as the post itself. They would start with "Ah.." and say something like *sigh* or *shudder* based on how the post moved them. *Sigh*
So where do I find the next mystery? What is the next thing that will make me say, "Wow!" I keep waiting for the next such thing with bated breath. Hope springs eternal in the promise of each new day, each sunrise. But it is quelled again with the setting sun. There is very little variation in the routine of each day. It's a flatline with not the tiniest blip in sight.
Well, there really isn't anything better to keep me entertained, the palate tickled. So I'll keep savoring the vanilla, if only to reassure myself that I can still taste.
Tuesday, October 4, 2005
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