SAAPAN - The Insider Story

NOTE: This will make sense only to people who are either from POLY or who have lived with SAPAN or know about 101-27.

This is about a friend of mine, who left for California to begin his own tryst with destiny. He is a changed man nowadays,changed in a lot of ways from the one I met first in the fall of 2003. Then he was this thin, wide-eyed, "innocent" desi fob, but not now. He is a changed man indeed. Gone are the days when he was like me or some of my roomies, cracking jokes, taunting others with his inimitable style and of course had everybit of the care-free attitude about studies one gets as soon as the first midterms are over and one realizes that only the place of study has changed(US) and not himself. But now he wants to find meaning in life, order in chaos, light in darkness, melody in the cacaphonous world around him. If you are still not able to appreciate what i am driving at consider this, he even tries to find "sense" in 101-27.

He left to California last weekend, leaving behind a bunch of guys in 101-27, who owe every bit of their unquestionable knowledge of human anatomy (he doesn't discriminate between male and female form) to him. He was such a dedicated teacher in human anatomy that he used to bring up some part of the human body, some of them really vital for survival of humans as a species, in almost every conversation of ours, be it cricket or cooking or studies or something as mundane as weather. He had such a deep understanding of biology, that he used to explain topics as varied as aero-dynamics to engineering drawing to plain physics to even literature using biology, anatomy especially. I myself used to wonder what such a brilliant mind as this with such a bent for biology doing at POLY. I could only envision the presentations he has given over time in INDIA and in POLY for GRADCENTER and i can sense the sudden euphoria (the eureka feeling) people in audience would have got with every intricate detail explained away with HUMAN ANATOMY. Some say Mathematics is the universal language. I used believe it blindly until i met this soul. He is also the one who showed us the joy in calling someone a fatherless child. I used to be very very apprehensive of the word, even a kinda phobia initially, because of societal conditioning, until i met him and moved into 8425, the first stop for almost everyone in POLY during our times. Just like MORPHEUS (MATRIX), he showed me how to free my mind and call anyone any name. Now there is a whole crop of us (the ZION if you will) waiting to unleash the joy upon others by calling them a fatherless child. Anyways, he became a little reclusive of late, and when SUNIL tried to impress him with some of Biology lessons learnt from him he was reprimanded and admonished for even trying to bring up something remotely related to human anatomy. We wondered what on earth has made this soul to revile something that used to be the source of knowledge and joy and which held the key to all the answers in this universe.......It was only a few weeks later that things began to unravel in front of our eyes.

Anyone who has lived with him, or for that matter know him a little would know his love for cooking. This was the guy who used to cook for many persons, multiple dishes in 8425, before the kitchen there was renovated (few know the true condition of the kitchen it used to be). He even invites people (ALEX will know) to cook along with him to come up with exotic dishes that would make anyone to salivate. He is such a brave soul that he used to say that he just saw a mouse run over the stove casually and start cooking as if nothing happened. But recently i heard him say he was against cooking at our kitchen because it is unhygienic. I was confounded to the core, for only the previous night i saw him making a good meal for himself in the kitchen. As usual, the simple mind of ours couldn't fathom what was happening in our kitchen. I was all the more confused because i was in the kitchen cooking at that time.

Everyone in POLY knows how well the POLY BROADCASTING SERVICE(PBS) works. Seconds after you think of doing something, everyone and anyone in POLY knows about it. Thats how efficient and professional the PBS works. But, how many of them know that it was founded single-handedly under the able leadership of our guy. He used to dorn multiple roles, apart from the founder, he used to be the president, Public relations officer, recruiter etc., until PBS had enough people to manage itself (it took like a couple of semesters for a critical mass of desi students to build up). As one of the intial members in PBS i can only attest to the sincerity and commitment he had for this new service. However, one day he said something which made me think i was hallucinating. This is what i heard, and even now i am not able to believe it happened. He came to me and said, "Dude, do you know what I realized?" I as usual gave blank look, for i was sure if it had taken so long for this GUY to realize, it would take a few lives for me to understand. He went on, "Dude we should speak some sense. I realized we should stop talking non-sense." A lot things raced through my mind. The sleepless nights we spent creating an establishment like PBS, the hard work put in by so many people only to be forsaken by the founder himself. And that too in a place like 101-27, the temple of GOSSIP and that which represents all that stands for non-sense. It was heresy. And the founder himself committing blasphemy. My eyes welled up. My anger knew no bounds, and all the biological words he had taught me came to my mouth in an instant, only i couldn't utter even a single one. Thinking i was understanding what he was saying he went on and on...........

GOOD LUCK WITH YOUR JOB DUDE....It was fun living with you.

C Karthikeyan

Musings of an idle Mind

Now that the elections are over, here are some of the thoughts i have had over the past few days. I have not tried to analyze any of these thoughts, but merely seeked to walk through these lines of thought just like a traveller who knows the destination knows not the path he is going to take. I tried hard to find a conclusion, my logical mind trying hard to reason with some of the facts that was staring right into my face, only to find myself standing with more questions than i started with. Never did i realize that there are occasions when the mind tends to lose the forest for the trees. I was running behind the minute details, instead of looking at the bigger picture. When i realized i was just chasing my own tail, i convinced myself i should stop analyzing and just record my thoughts, for there might be someone with a deeper insight and a clearer mind who with the detachment of a Tibetan Monk can reason it for me. It is with this idea that i am recording this. Please don't think i was thinking about some profound idea, chanced upon when walking through the miles and miles of unmarked cerebral territory, which in my case has been a like a ghost town, long abandoned with few houses of thought, which from the outside sometimes gives a look of a haunted house where I myself find it hard to venture into. But i am confident that one day I would find my treasure trove in this country of mine.

I will just give one thread of my thought, for not all my thoughts are correlated. What do we all think of as success in life? It might differ from person to person, but only in shades just like the color of skin, but basically it will all boil down to financial independence, a safe and fulfilling life and in some cases fame. We all base our career decisions and look twenty or thirty years down the line based on our experiences which if it has any value, in most cases, is merely nostalgic. We all want to settle down with a big house (sea facing preferably), a few cars (luxury models will make them that much more special) and a good dose of travelling to break the monotony. But how many of us pass to think that all this is based on one big assumption? And that item has been a reason for concern for almost a century. Just as with any of Nature's gift, instead of finding reasons to celebrate over it, we humans have come up with every reason to fight over it. Every instrument, however benign has been turned into a weapon, which only a human mind with its own ingenuity and perversity can do it. If there was ever a natural resource which has been more of a bane than a boon for the people, it is this. CRUDE OIL is one which every country in this world craves to get as cheaply as possible and as much as possible.

Civilization as we know it is fundamentally dependent on this. And there are reports informing us that we have already peaked in the production of OIL and it can only go down. How many of us think a little more deeply when we say we are running out OIL? Car pooling, a higher use of public transportation, alternate source of enery like SOLAR, WIND etc., come to our mind, just because we think of OIL as a source of energy (for transportation and power generation). But how many of us realize that there is more to Petroleum than just that. Right from the plastics, to pesticides, to fertilizers, to synthetic clothes, to most other things that we take for granted are by products of refining CRUDE OIL. With over 6 Billion humans in the world, will there be enough food produced in this world to support this population (without enough pesticides and fertilizers)? Even if enough food is produced, can they be transported to every part of the world at a cost that is affordable? Are the governments around the world working even thinking on these longterm aspect? How can we expect the politicians to think long term when we ourselves cannot think about anything other than our immediate needs, typically material and about creature comforts? I tried hard to see if we as a people would be able to overcome this big transition which might come during our own lifetime and as i said earlier, i ended up with more questions than when i started.

I will record more of this in my next post.

C Karthikeyan