THE WOMAN WHO READ KAFKA

She loved Kafka; she loved what he wrote decades ago.

She read not from Kafka, ‘Love like you’ve never been hurt before’, but she wrote like Kafka, ‘Hurt is essential to be in love, love is essential not to be hurt, and death the supreme of love and hurt.’

She loved every man who came in her life like crazy, and went they were gone; she blew a bubble with a straw under the sea and burst the happiness of all.

She had many men in her life; she loved them like no woman could. She cooked for them, and when they ate, they puked, and when they puked the whale came out, she killed every whale, so they hated her.

When she reached a marriageable age, she did not invest her time and energy in wooing man. While other women were busy polishing their hooks, she kept herself busy learning how castration was an insult to human existence.

She was not the whore of the street or a saint in white. She was like the statue standing in the middle of nowhere, where the couples split and the loner begged. She was light, so she was not a marble statue.

She ate the apple on a sunny day, grapes on a rainy day, and strawberry on a cold day, but she knew that tomato was a fruit and not a vegetable, so ate the tomato on a windy day.

And when she was 80 to 90, she joined the army of penguins. She wore a purple coat, the dress code was white and black, she breached the rule. The penguins had to dig a pool for her, and threw her in it, freezing she died.

 And her life's prologue ran as,

‘People call me Crazy, but that’s not my name. I knew a dog by the name Crazy, he saved a drowning child. The child grew into a fine gentleman, and married the Queen, the Queen was thankful to Crazy, and though dead, honoured him with a Knighthood (posthumous). Crazy was a hero, and I am called Crazy, but I am yet to save somebody or anybody, so don’t honour me with such powerful gracious names.’

*Kafka’s representation of women is often debated. Nevertheless, she read him, her world turned like his writings.

BEATING YOU IN YOUR OWN GAME

       (Individual’s name, country’s name, nationality have been avoided for the sake of privacy)

In the post-Facebook era, where ‘privacy’ has a new meaning, we have seen how hook-ups and break-ups have become banal. Social networking sites do helps in decoding the moves of a cheater, but love usually happens off-line. And here is a story that took place way back in the 1960s the era marked by the birth of various countercultures. Actually, this story was narrated to me by a friend of mine. Here, I am sharing it with a hope that it will warm your heart too. I have taken the liberty to edit a bit, but the plot remains the same. You see I am someone who does not like happy endings; nevertheless, I am romantic at heart.

Once there was a man who made a promise to remain a confirmed bachelor throughout his life. But when the pressure grew from his family and his friends to get him hitched, he being a clever man put forward a condition, the condition was- any woman who could spend two months with him in his deserted cabin which was located in one of the cold mountains of the neighbouring country could be his wife. It seems no woman or man who was drawn to luxury could stay there for more than two weeks. Every woman who confessed their love for him was brought to that cabin, but ultimately could leave him within two weeks, for they did not want to stay away from the so-called ‘civilisation’, disconnected and isolated.  He told his parents, ‘When they say, I love travelling and seeing new places, I didn’t know they mean shopping and sightseeing, more like a tourist, less like a traveller.’

Then there came a lady who took up the challenge without even knowing she was under on. His weeks in the diary were marked like this:

Week 1: She is doing great.

Week 2: Doesn’t matter, all women survive for two weeks

Week 3: She is tough.

Week 4: Is she for real? She seems to be enjoying here.

Week 5: She is doing fine, looks like she is here for a long haul.

Week 6: What if she wins the challenge?

Week 7: I want to shit in my pants…she is winning…my bachelorhood.

Week 8: Oh! She won.

On the last day of their stay, she woke him up. He got up with a smile considering she was quitting 12 hours ahead of the victory time, but the following lines made him realise that she was the ultimate one. She said, ‘I think we need to go to the town and get some supplies for the coming month.’

Apparently, she loved solitude more than him, she was better trekker than him, she loved mountains more than him, someone who loved nature more than him and she was more adjustable than him. After their marriage, she travelled the world reporting news as she was a war correspondent, as for him, he divided his time between babysitting and work.

P.S: I pray you too will find someone who will beat you in your own game not because you are the player and she/he is the coach, but because he/she plays better than you. We are no talking about ego anyway.

                         

BREAKING THE LIMBS OF SCIENCE

Scientific achievements can make a country proud and heavier proud when it is first of its kind and heaviest proud if the ‘enemy’ country does not have the capability to make even a replica of it.  Technology my boy, the nationalistic herald, some guy in messy hair builds it, some guy with heavy pocket controls it. I am neither a scientist nor a technocrat so why should I be serious? Let me bring humour and some stale flowery words to look like a complete idiot in front of the people who have the birthright to be a pretentious a** licking genius, a real burden to the intellectual world.

Science as a phrase when in love

There are many phrases which you might think are missing, but these are some classic ones to let you know that I am making a point here.

Baby, I can steal the stars for you: The fact is no one can display such feat; stars are made of hydrogen and helium, so until and unless you are an actor with a pathetic sense of movie selection you cannot, else you will be burned in the worse form imaginable. By the way, the sun is the nearest star, are you really planning to steal it? So, it is just a phrase to imply, the lover can do the most impossible of things for his/her loved one.

Baby, I froze when you look at me: This is some kind of X-Men talent show. Having someone like him/her can be very beneficial in the age of global warming. But do you know, once frozen means you are dead, which means you will not be able to compliment your baby’s skill of giving someone hypothermia? So, it is just a phrase to imply, you are so fond of your lover that you experience emotions of various kind.

Baby, when you are with me time flies: If that is so then why don’t you call up Christopher Nolan, he would be interested to hear about the mystery you have discovered for his next big movie project. Time neither runs nor does it fly, for the rest of the argument, one can discuss with a Professor of Physics. So, it is just a phrase to imply, when you are with your lover, you lose your sense of time, blame it to yourself.

We think hard to come up with such phrases but when someone in power says such phrases we do not bother to filter it as precisely as possible, we just quality it like fools.

Narrating eureka moments

Can inventions be independent of stories behind their discovery? I am yet to find an answer to that, but I must admit that stories give weight to the invention. Archimedes and the bath tub, Isaac Newton’s apple and Gravitational law, Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and train and platform, Madam Marie Curie’s garbage and radium, Dmitri Mendeleev’s dream and the periodic table, on the other hand, Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook (not a discovery but a social revolution) which was a product of revenge. Sometimes we end up hearing the most pretentious stories on earth, and sometimes who believe the story because it is simply great to hear, just like a fairy-tale inside a spacecraft. What amuses me most is, in these stories we try to find, ‘why the discovery happened rather than how the discovery happened?’

Suppose in near future Scientist ‘A’ builds a time the machine, and there is a grand exhibition of his invention. The scene will be something like this; Scientist B would like to know what the craft is made of, its durability and compatibility, Scientist C would like to know the chemical composition and reaction happening inside the craft, Scientist D would like to know the appropriate time taken to transfer an individual from a period to another period. As for the public who came to witness the exhibition, they do not know even a single thing about the black hole, and the majority of them will not even be interested in why the craft looks like an onion.  I bet, they will be more interested to know why it was build, and among the audience, there might be a romantic man who might just speculate that Scientist ‘A’ build the time machine to kiss Emma Watson of 2015 on whom his great- grandfather had a crush. Everyone will rejoice because there is a story most probably a love story attached to it. In the maddening crowd of theoretical explanations and the narratives of discovery, we the public forget how useful a scientific discovery is or in other sense, who really gets benefit out of such discoveries.

Phrase +Narratives = Myth

No matter what, I am not talking about causality because from the drama to the data is an implicit affair. I am not either making a radical transformation in the way the readers will think or applauding living in messiness. Reusing the debates which has been doing the rounds, let’s say there was a phrase and there was a story, a good narrator who had all the time in the world, one day sat on his couch and constructed a tale and shared it with his equally jobless friends, among them was a man who liked the story so much that he shared it to his brother-in-law who was a manipulatively opportunistic bastard, and being loyal to his trait used it for his selfish gain. He died but the myth became a belief for the people who were born after him. Dang, he is not alive to give evidence of what he claimed. Anyway, there are scientists who have overcome such myths through experiments, the results of which suppress or apply the existing stupidity.