India Habitat Centre

 Visited India Habitat Centre to deliver a signed copy of Jug Suraiya's book to my dad's old friend Nikhil. There was some Unani fair going on, where entry to outsiders was strictly not allowed, at least that's what the board said. I had a chance to look through the stalls, just some old bored people trying to sell herbs and stuff. 

I just saw some Dyal Singh College kids being college kids, and missed my days at SIES. Went past a Tibetan museum that I would like to revisit again. There were also some posh school kids at the Air Force School, and saw a bunch of drivers sleeping in their cars with AC on full blast. Really, such a waste of fossil fuel all around. 

And probably, taxpayer money. 

Anyway, after handing over the book, as I was coming out, I saw this glorious bird screeching on a lamp post. I do not know if it is an eagle or a kite. Anyway, I took a photo, and this Nepali guy lazing around in a patch of grass (Delhi has a lot of patches of grass where people just lie down), smiled at me knowingly, as if something mundane in his surroundings was elevated by my appreciation of it. I smiled back, and came home. 

The Plumbing Goblin

The Goblin in the pipes does not have a mind of his own. He is a spectral mirror, taking over the cerebellum and the auditory cortex when you are not in absolute, conscious control of them. The Goblin in the pipes is an agent of bedlam, chaos theory in action, transforming the random gurglings of water running down the pipes into a subliminal babble. You can hear him just after you begin to sleep, and just before you gain consciousness, muttering in gobbledygook, urging to the surface forgotten fears and unimagined anxieties. 

The Goblin in the pipes is just noise, not quite white, not quite brown. Deep and literally guttural, it is as if the pipe itself is trying to speak through the language of water, but cannot form the words and sentences or guide them with considered thoughts. These gaps are filled in by random neurons firing between the brains, partial recognitions of phenomes and phrases. Between the water and the neurons, emerges the Goblin in the pipes. 

It is the fear of the unknown, the struggle of filling the gaps of comprehension, that provides a trigger and a platform for the paranoia, suspicion and dread to express itself. The Goblin feats on the suppressed psyche, seeding fright and amplifying agony. The Goblin sits nervously laughing, while you thrash around in your sleep, unsure of what is gripping you or whispering you ideas from beyond the dark void. 

PS, I tried to go for round two, but it didn't happen, simply hovered somewhere between consciousness and sleep. So I decided to wake up and write this down. 

Dream Diary garbage rainbow edition

I was flying in this one. 

It started as small hops and jumps, and I flew straight from Thane to somewhere east of Powai, but not Andheri. Then I decide to head back, and jump into this place right around Bhandup, where there is a big festival going on for Krishna. There are a bunch of youth hanging from ropes from a giant pole that everyone swings around. It is known as a giant stride, but this giant stride was really giant, like as tall as a building. 

(I have never seen or used this thing before, although I had come across it, I had forgotten about it. I am pretty sure my brain invented it on its own)

This giant stride does not have single ropes, but pairs of ropes with a swing between them. It also has a ring on top, like the cycle or monkey stride. Only with a lot many more jagmag ropes. 

All the people using the youth are dressed up like they are playing dandiya. One of the girls tells me by name "Aditya, you are not invited to this party". I don't respond, but leave, I use the swing to launch me back into the sky. While yeeting, I wonder where I know her from, and try to place someone who lives in the area, but do not come up with anything. 

I am flying towards Nahur, when out to the west, I see this huge bank of really black, dark clouds rolling in. On the ground, I can see large pools of black liquid also beginning to submerge the lower floors of the city. It is more like oil than water, or maybe sewage. In any case, it is black and shiny. I get really scared, and fly into one of those terraces of a building that are generally inaccessible. Just as I do, someone, I cannot see the person, closes the iron door and walks away. I then look westwards, waiting for the bank of clouds to hit me. I am a bit worried about how to get home later, as I have not taken my phone or wallet with me. But right now, there are muuuch bigger things to worry about, such as staying alive. 

The world goes dark. It is raining, heavily. Small flecks of black rain, full of soot and pollution. It stinks, and leaves behind some black particles with every drop. The entire city is flooded up to the first three storeys. Buildings start falling down and collapsing. Mine does too. I jump out and start flying just as it does, and I see an older couple struggling too. 

I levitate them, while I myself fly into the terrace of another building. There are buildings collapsing all around. Then, the one we are in collapses as well. I tell the guy, "Don't worry, I got you." I fly while falling with the building, and making sure no one is hurt by levitating them. Couple runs away, without a word of thank you. 

I make another hop, and things are clearing! The whole thing is over suddenly, there are just pools of water on the ground and garbage deposited everywhere. I land at a field where people are burning piles of garbage. The burning garbage piles have circular rainbows around them! Similar to glories, but much more defined. Out in the background, there is a huuuge rainbow across the city. It is so beautiful that I wake up. 

This is so accurate! Only time Paint 3D has disappointed me, had to use Photoshop.

Then I start thinking about how podcasts are the best form of entertainment as it leaves you to do something with your hands and eyes while still consuming the content. It is the only form of entertainment that does that I think... like of course, that and radio plays lol.  And music. 

I was tempted to just go back to sleep, but I am glad that I saved this one. 

Dream Diary Bangalore House Edition

At the early part of the dream, I am in some big building, the bottom of which is a public restroom. I go there to dispose off garbage, but my garbage bin itself gets stolen instead of being emptied by a machine and returned. I keep looking for it, but cannot find it, in this big public toilet that is basically like a subway station. 

(IDK why I keep dreaming of transport facilities with large public toilets, maybe I am confusing the two in my head)

Anyway, there are lot of people coming in, lots of rioting and shouting, and it seems the place is being invaded in large swarms. There are so many poor people coming in (they seem to be climate refugees) Then there are some breakout bands, that are walking with linked arms and in groups and one of them catches me and tells me come with me. We link hands, and we push through the surging crowd, and get outside. On the way, we trample over or push aside people, and we are really going against the flow, but we manage to do it by sticking together. 

Then end up at Bangalore house with a whole bunch of people. It seems to be like a safe house where a lot of people are jumping in. I have this big bag that I am trying to protect with lots of expensive gadgets. 

It's in ruins, the back side of the house has acquired some new junk. There is a metro car shed right behind the house. There are electronics and equipment scatterred all around. Within the house, there is some religious ceremony going on. 

We go in and sit, and we start watching an action movie. The movie is being played with a projector in the middle of a hall, with people sitting on both sides. There is a chase sequence, some biker guys zoom in from the left and go towards the right. I go to the side room, where all the bags have been kept in the abandoned bathroom, which looks like the remains of the homa. At this time, there is on the news that riots have broken out and that a curfew has been imposed, and large gatherings are not allowed outside. More people stream into the house. 

Then I look to the left and see this massive mob of monkeys coming. I run back outside and tell everyone that there is a massive mob of monkeys coming. Some men and boys head out with sticks and other instruments to hit the monkeys. Those who chose to do it are all wearing those old slippers with only a soles and a knob, dhotis and the sacred threads. Some of the older men are wearing banyans. All of them have tikas. 

After a while there is news on the radio that the riots have been contained, but the curfew measures are harder, and that a whole ton of arrests have been made, with people being carted off in over 100 police vans. 

But the monkey problem is escalating, and I feel like I need a smoke. 

Then I deliver a dialogue straight out a movie, like a hero, "Give me a laathi for the kothi".  A bunch of ladies in sarees unanimously tell me, "take one!" while pointing me to a room full of the weapons of the defeated. I see a whole bunch of bows and arrows strewn around, some sticks, and a very big, curved pole. Some of the weapons have blades or clubs on them, and I ask the ladies what it is about. One of them says, "apparently there is a panther around" I pick the pole and head out to thwack the monkeys. The arrows are blunted, they look like this one I have hanging at the side of my wall:

But the front of the house is pandemonium, it is also crowded with people, using the house as a safehouse. One drunk man tries to steal some cigarettes and is thwacked away, which is straight from a scene of Gol Mal. I have a packet on me, but need a lighter, which I manage to flick. 

There are snails, squirrels, mynahs, peacocks, bulbuls, crows, pigeons, sparrows, chameleons and a whole bunch of other urban creatures. One creature is struggling upside down, and I set it right, and it turns out to be a softshell tortoise. Again, I try to take photos with my phone, but unfortunately, I cannot capture the  images, or switch between cameras, which is when I realise it is a dream, but I let it happen without going lucid. I simply explain to myslef the camera is buggy and switch to that theory instead of this is a dream. 

(This is something apparently you can do, continue dreaming and convince yourself it is real, even after realising that it is a dream) 

I leave the turtle alone and go to get rid of the monkey problem. After walking towards the back of the house, I come across some guy who is letting people borrow a lighter, so I head back, return the stolen lighter, for which I am thanked, and then come back to the guy and light my cigarette, then head to the back of the house. On the way, I pass a few rooms that have partially caved in, are caked with ash, and have furniture strewn around. 

At this point we hear the announcement that there has been a shoot at sight order given to anyone breaking the curfew. 

At the back of the house are two abandoned trucks full of electronics. There are weeds and overgrown plants everywhere, and right above are two crisscrossing metro lines. The surroundings are tightly packed with buildings, but this is a little patch of green. Except on the west side, which is a sprawling green landscape of rolling hills, but not clean hills. They are covered in thick vegetation, making it impossible to traverse through them. 

This is when the dream looks really picturesque and cinematic.There are some people smoking, smoking up, and doing their own things, scattered about. I go to one end, and see some people venturing out beyond the walls of the house. A metro rake comes in and parks itself at the carshed, and the guy gets out and leaves. I suspect that the metro authority has been dumping garbage in my house. 

There is a girl standing on some abandoned vehicle just outside the complex, looking up at the metro rakes running overhead. I say "this looks so post apocaltospitgpsid" (I cannot pronounce it), and she responds, "that's right, it looks very post apocalyptic". There are hues of blue and purple in the sky, layers of low lying clouds that the skytrains are passing through, and junk strewn all around the wasteland. 

I then go about appreciating the tech used in the metro carshed, when Im hit to the side of the next by three darts. There is some other androgynous person, let's call them Y, who initially starts as female, but turns into male by the end of the movie. They have elfin features and smirk a lot, and shot me with the arrows. I ask if it is poison, and she says no, and that she expected me to divert it because of all the talks of electrodynamism (exact word used in the dream, I know it isn't one). 

(This is perhaps a reference to a scene from the climax of Adam, which I watched a few days ago)

I respond with a "you witches!" which I think is very smart (In the dream) and we all head back towards the back of the house, where I bump into another person, let us just call her X (not a real person). X hugs me and we talk in low soft voices, catching up, she says "you have become better", IDK if she means physically or mentally, but in the dream I sense that we have not met for 10 years or so. She is the girlfriend of Y. Y takes out a tablet that looks like an old Sony Mavica camera like the one Akshaye Khanna uses in Taal, merged with the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, and takes a series of photographs. 

Tarzaning

 Maybe there was some special argot of the teenagers emerged in the late 1970s where they combined with "-ing" to make hinglish present participles, or Hrishikesh Mukherjee was incentivizing words decades before Joss Whedon came up with buffyspeak. Either way, it is kickass, and is one of the things Im going to start incorporating in my daily vocabulary. 

If you are soching what im bhoking about, you should be dekhing Gol Mal. It was years ahead of its time. And really good nataking. 

Like the most common one is banaoing, but why don't we use more in our vocab? 

Then there is the song, "Ek Din Sapne Me Dekha Sapna"... that right there is the concept of Inception, in song form! The genius of Hrishikesh Mukherjee is clearly far ahead of Christopher Nola, at least temporally, and I sound like one of those cultists gushing about Gunda on a seedy forum, but so be it. 

Rita Coolidge. Bread. George Baker Selection (Paloma Blanca). Asha Puthli. 

I really like Ram Prasad Sharma though. He really is Purshottam, or perfect man. He is in tune with sports and music and pop culture, and equally is well versed in Kabir. Hats off to this dude, he is not like Urmila, studying history and forgetting it. Literally translating to reading history and forgetting it. Practically translating to "byhearting" history and translating it. 

Then I really like the chase sequences in old Bombay! Even in Don they were epic. It is so awesome to see havildars in shorts! hahahaha. Till a few years ago, you could still see those in Bangalore. 

Keshto Mukherjee just had to enact pulling a chillum in the middle of struggling to Patta Kat Loonga. Epic. They don't drink water, they don't drink alcohol, they drink something else. HAha. Kya joke maring. This movie is definitely utsahing smoking weed. 

The bestest thing was when the photographer with the Rolleiflex says smile, and smiles himself!  

They couldn't or didn't want to write around the fact that in the end it was Ram and Urmila that ended up together. If it was released today, I'm sure there would be a #boycottgolmal trending on twitter, but not going to go too much into that :D

There are a few things I didn't like though. It is the subtext. 

First of all the movie suggests that in order to completely please the father in law, and the wife you need to be have a split personality! That threat of marry me or suicide... I don't know where it was coming from. It was like a Schrodinger's threat, you never know if it was legit till it happens (it does not!), but that is a horrible question to ask, only when one is too involved in a movie that clearly should not have used such an unnecessary story trajectory for the pure purpose of entertainment. Pure-ish, I really think they were trying to tell a story here, and not just for the sake of entertainment, but for reaching out to a youthful community and validating some of their beliefs and thoughts. It is a window into how my parent's generation was when they were kids. 

People often ask who is the villain in Gol Mal, and it is such a clean movie without any bad actors. The thing is, there is a demonisation of tradition going on, as if the timeless wisdom of the ancients is somehow at odds with the new discoveries. This sets up an unnecessary conflict, between an ageing civilization and a developing one. It forges a narrative, a world view, that we have to let go of the inertia of culture to embrace whatever it is that the lack of one affords us. This is a dangerous path, and if anything, we are seeing a return to roots all around the world, a primal call to find a way connect with who we truly are, and how our brains work. In fact, I really think this is the exact path that has resulted in many backward looking societies emerging around the world today. We may taking to paleo diets, neo shamanism and yoga, but underlying all of that is still a struggle to get back at... I really like the opportunity of using this phrase... the heart of what was lost. 

And that, was a glorious moustache. 

Daal baati choorma mama bada soorma

IDK what that means, but someone said it and I found it funny. I find a lot of things that someone says funny. 

Anyway, was headed to an interview, and I was thinking about something, and I have been thinking of late that I do not have much original thought, it is just a gestalt of what I have read or watched, easy formed opinions that I just have attached myself to, waiting to recycle them again in a social setting. 

But then, at times, I really can think! And I do not know where those thoughts come from. 

So I was headed to the interview and was thinking... fear is such a beautiful thing, if you embrace and explore it, it is so stunning where it came from. The fear of being devoured by a wild beast, or a poisonous serpent or falling off heights, cannot possibly be something that is passed on culturally through learning or experiences, these are too deeply embedded in the human psyche. Similarly, it cannot be a survival mechanic evolved from the creatures that survived! How it would have evolved is, randomly, some organisms were scared of some things, and those that were scared managed to survive! Then the trait was inherited and passed on over millions of generations. 

Now... this points to some capacity of imagination or anticipation of really primitive organisms, our ancestors, at the genetic level. It is not a reaction to some actual threat, it is just a perception of the threat. As Darwin puts it in The expression of the emotions in man and animals, "I put my face close to the thick glass plate in front of the puff-adder in the Zoological Gardens, with the firm determination of not starting back if the snake struck at me; but as soon as the blow was struck, my resolution went for nothing, and I jumped a yard or two backwards with astonishing rapidity. My will and reason were powerless against the imagination of a danger that had never been experienced." 

He goes on to add, "The violence of the start seems to depend partly on the vividness of the imagination, and partly on the condition, either habitual or temporary, of the nervous system. He who will attend to the starting of a horse, when tired and fresh, will perceive how perfect is the graduation from a mere glance to some unexpected object, with a momentary doubt whether it is dangerous, to a jump so rapid and violent, that the animal probably could not voluntarily whirl around in so rapidly a manner."

Now we know more about neuroscience, and can understand parts of the brain where the fear response is encoded, partially in the cerebellum. The networks that form the pathways for fear signals are actively being investigated for the development of new anxiety reducing drugs. 

To think, that the same process has repeated itself in all creatures, from dogs, to horses to humans, as well as some shared heritage with our common ancestors is really incredible. I then went on to wonder what dogs and snails dream of, and tried to reach into some domain of consciousness that was simultaneously both ancestral and primitive, with my imagination conjuring up visions of small rat-like creatures scurrying about in the shadows of dinosaurs. 

Somewhere, deep down, we may still retain the vestiges of a genetic aberration that made these rodents fearful of reptiles. I just wish that humans were gifted with sufficient cognition to explore the recesses of their brains as easily as reading a book. 

Dream Diary Grindr scroll edition

So I wake up to some guy yelling my name. I do not know him. I go to the back of my house where there is no window in meatspace, but there is one in the dream. I look out and see that it is raining heavily, and the water levels are rising, and all the people in the building are having a discussion about it through their balconies and windows. I am not wearing any clothes. The upwindow neighbor lowers some clothes for me with a rope, saying grab it, in case yours got wet. 

I cannot find my own clothes, but there is some shirt. Now I have just heard this guy's voice, and there is a bell. I head out, there is a man sitting on a LaZBoy in the living room, and the door is open. Outside people from the building are rushing up and down. Some imposter neighbor uncle dude asks me if the clothes were comfortable and I say I don't need it, and hand it back to him. He then runs down the stairs, when another real neighbor guy goes up and asks about the clothes. I ask him if he, the real neighbor, was the one who gave them to me. Real neighbor guy says yes. I tell him, but I just gave it to some other imposter uncle dude. Real neighbor guy says, it's okay, I know who that imposter uncle dude is. 

I go back inside, still needing to find my pants. That is when I realise, it is not my house at all. LaZBoy man says "You have enjoyed my hospitality long enough, now you need to leave." I say I will just go back inside to the bedroom, grab my clothes and leave. Now I am really worried about how I got here. I cannot remember the night before. The guy tells me, "you have to be more careful about your behavior with women." 

I go into the bedroom, looking for my pants and finally find it. As I am wearing it, a couple walks in. The woman is laughing at me. The man takes out a scroll from Grindr. It is some kind of a valued customer token. He starts reading out from it. I panic and wake up. 

So some recurring themes here, one is waking up in a new place, and another is losing clothes. There was no cake.