The 'People' Person

Few would call me a social being. Even fewer would find me particularly engaging company. Those that do have most likely earned it, cos I have put them through the same rigorous standards that I have every human being and they have passed the test ;) The rest of humanity, I like at a distance.

And yet Homo sapiens are my strongest allies. I don’t know what I would do without them! Who would I observe, judge, criticize, penalize, extol, worship, classify and put in categories?

I think it started with high school Shakespeare and vivid character sketches of the exuberant Touchstone vs. the melancholy Jacques, the contemplative Hamlet, the ruthless Shylock, the meddling Puck. And the less melodramatic, yet equally potent, facets of Jane Eyre’s persona and the very temperamental little woman, Jo. As much for my passion for anything that didn’t involve mind-boggling numbers and equations, as for my intrigue with the human psyche, I ardently got into their shoes, dissected their personalities and strip-searched their minds. Almost as if they were real. And then I wondered – why couldn’t they be real?

Tiring of two-dimensional characters and a tad desettled by the intangibility of print and celluloid, I took a leaf out of my text book and brought it to reality. Turning my examination to real human beings made the possibilities endless, the choices many and the world my veritable playing field. Even more so, in a little subcontinent teeming with more human beings than it could possibly handle, where tight corners and perplexing scenarios were a part of daily life. Everyone was fair game -- my best friend, my far-off cousin, that abominable guy in the neighborhood -- not entirely free of bias, but subject to the same relentless scrutiny. I had no holier-than-thou objective of revolutionizing the human race. Everyone was entitled to be themselves. I liked the differences, enjoyed the versatility, delighted in the labels, and I wouldn’t change anything for the world.

Linda Goodman helped embellish the process, so the “dreamers” could become Pisceans, the “romantics,” Scorpions, the “scary ones,” Ariens, and I could take great pride in being the practical, logical, sensible earth sign, with two feet planted on the ground and one head firmly on the shoulders. Little did I realize that I was a romantic of my own kind – looking at the world through rose colored glasses, translating fiction to reality and attempting to transport the silver lining from the very silver screen. Walking down streets in search of Laura Castellano, along alleyways hoping to get stymied by BA Baracus and entering offices, fully expecting to see a William Kane. Being Dagny Taggart and Kate Blackwell, dreaming of Howard Roark and Hank Reardon.

Then came stage three: fascination with some people, annoyance with others, sheer intolerance of still more. Enough to fire me up. String me along into an hour-long debate. Sit in awe for days on end. Why is Laloo Yadav so darn stupid? What is that inexcusable fanatic, Thackeray trying to achieve? Rajiv Gandhi is the only cultured politician. Awe of the Karan Thapar of Eyewitness fame and being totally besotted with Gurumurthy‘s unique line of thinking. I sat in rapt attention while Tim Sebastian tore people apart on Hardtalk and Siddharth Basu scoffed at no-gooders on Mastermind India. I loved Ajay Jadeja’s nonchalance. Sachin Tendulkar’s intensity. Pete Sampras’ invincibility. Detested the pompous youngster that ruthlessly broke down my demigod of a decade (not for long, considering he now adorns my computer screen ;)).

I liked the politics and the sports, I enjoyed the books and the movies, essentially as representatives of people’s personas, so I could look at them and wonder – what was behind that Pistol Pete steely reserve and that ruthless Thapar aggression? And I carried it wherever I went.

Watching, observing, learning people.

Moving to an ethnically variegated country provided more angles for my love affair with the Homo sapien. Americans are an exuberant people, I have seen few that aren’t socially gifted. Chinese are no-nonsense and persevering. Brits are insanely witty; now, if only the laughter touched the eyes. Why are the smartest and funniest people almost always Jews? Why does it have to be an Indian that jumps the line?

American politics provided more labels, more prototypes, more easily fittable templates, columns and rows with issues and beliefs and people and places. A year in this country and I was lost in the subtle differences between a social liberal and libertarian, a fiscal conservative and liberal, the patakis and guilianis pitted against the clintons and kennedies, the limbaughs and moores against the mcCains and liebermans. My character sketch of Kerry included everything from his captainship of the debating team at Yale to his aggressive outcry post-Vietnam. I had a mental make-up of Howard Dean that toned down the dementia and highlighted the intensity. One of Bush that hyped the stupidity and downplayed the niceness.

And noone seems to escape that human radar. My co-worker goes out for coffee and I notice his cup isn’t attested with the familiar green circle. “I thought you went down to Starbucks?” An innocent, guileless question.

“Starbucks? Oh, no.” An innocent, guileless answer.

Not to me, however. I have to immediately jump to conclusions and fit him in my mental list of prototypes. “Oh, you are one of those,” I say with a glint in my eyes, mentally patting myself on the back for having found someone I could vent my pro-capitalist feelings to.

A quizzical lift of the eyebrow precedes such disappointingly trite reasoning as, “I just didn’t want to walk that far.”

Fair enough.

Not in my world, however. In my world every human being is a complex conglomeration of ideas, feelings, opinions and emotions, every action an expression of that irrefutable belief, every statement a release of that undying emotion. Nothing can be pedestrian, everything borders on the philosophical and profound...

I couldn’t say it better than my good pal, Dee:

"Why the hell do I need to get deep into [the psyche] of every person I am interested in (I mean, life is short) instead of treating them like a black box and sending inputs that I care about to see what outputs I get? Instead I will prattle on topics completely irrelevant to me (sorta like a chameleon) just to draw out what I need...ugh!!!!!"

And a very pleasurable ugh at that...

Off the top of my head, the ‘things’ I am currently fascinated by:

Roger Federer
Dan Brown’s creative juices
Max Kellerman’s quick wit
Bush’s idiocy
Bill Maher’s radicalism
How Bush and Maher can be the same species on the same planet...

For a self-proclaimed misanthrope, my life sure seems to be exceedingly human-centric...

When life looks on from the backseat...

I woke up this morning to a ghastly sight – no, not the snow-flakes blanketing my window pane (turning up the heat takes care of that), not the icy wedge that sent me skating on the fire escape (friction from some very brown rust stalls the fall), but snow on my celluloid screen!!!!! Yes, the screen I wake up to every Sunday morning in anticipation of a full two hours of some appetizing political chow-chow.

Chris Matthews followed by Meet the Press is, to me, as mandatory a Sunday morning ritual, as say, brushing my teeth is a daily one. So, nothing is going to take me away from my pot of coffee, the recliner and little Russ at 10:30 am on the last day of the week – a phone call, the fire alarm or a sleeping friend on the couch (had one woken up about a month ago -- he’s still thankful for Tim Russert’s unusually low tones for a newscaster).

So, obviously I was hopping mad at this reporter bundled up in wool and fleece, babbling on about the 12 inches all over Philadelphia. Memo: If I can see it out the window, it’s not news!!!! And why on earth is that more important than the question of whether McCain is ahead of Hillary in the polls?

. .
O


No sooner had that thought entered my mind than I began to evaluate my priorities. For regular human beings it is probably important to know how long the blizzard was going to last, if the buses and trolleys were still in service, if the airport was shut down, how many inches it was going to be or if they can get in to work tomorrow.

Ever since college where I spent more time hunched over The Hindu (not the religion) than applying a muddy face-mask, I have prided myself on having the “right” priorities in life. Unfortunately, those right priorities also mean sticking a post-it on the TV or computer to remind me to turn off the heater (you’d think the sweltering heat would be sufficient indication, but that could just as easily be the infuriating Ken Mehlman).

I spent about one unsuccessful hour explaining to a friend just how smart and funny Bill Maher was (while on the subject, why on earth are they re-running I’m Swiss under a different name, and why on earth am I watching it again?) at the end of which he said, “What is the point of criticizing Bush when there is nothing he can do about it?”
My immediate repartee, of course, was it was the same point as a Bruce Springstein concert or a broadway show. Art for the sake of art. Comedy for the sake of comedy. But then I began to wonder...

I spend exactly 30% of my life doing something I don’t necessarily believe is going anywhere – scientific research for the uninitiated, where I marvel at the working of the human heart but don’t necessarily think I can plug a hole in it to save a life. I am awestruck at the job already done and that is satisfying enough. On a typical day (one that does not involve B&N or a bar), I spend the rest watching political debates on TV, a bunch of New Yorkers hover around in a coffee shop or 200-pounders wrestle over a football.

I often forget to pay my phone bill, I always do my taxes on the midnight of the 14th of April, some important cant-live-without-them gadgets are still amiss in the apartment and I always seem to run out of detergent. But not to worry -- Roger Federer won the Australian Open, I have exactly half a dozen varieties of cheese in the fridge, my stack of Atlantics lies unscathed in the cabinet, my huge collection of Friends DVDs occupies a coveted spot on the AV rack and the one life-saving feature that is always available is HBO on demand.

Little wonder then that I decided to evaluate my priorities – I ain’t changing any of them just yet, but they make for a good post ;) So, I am just beginning to question if watching a sitcom is indeed more important than taking the phone call that says you’ve got to pay the bill that allows you to watch it in the first place.

As for my Sunday morning, CNN – my fallback news channel – saved the day, cos at least Blitzer still thought Iran was more important than the blitz [God bless 70°-Atlanta for being oblivious to the havoc that only snow can cause ;)]

Nonetheless, it’s brought me to an important conclusion: when Maher and Clinton become the bills more important to your life than the ominous one from Amex, boy, have you got trouble. But can’t worry about that just now. There’s a weblog I gotta tend to ;)

Let’s be melancholy...

Ok, it’s official. The Christmas season is behind us and it’s time to be melancholy. Either wholly or in part because I sat through 20 minutes of The Daily Show last night, waiting for the laughter to come but it never did. So, while all the comedians out there are still trying to get their bearings (I think they go through the holiday season like John Milton without ever uttering a joke or laughing at one – they need their break), I did the next best thing, namely, switch to a Sex and the City re-run and settle on the couch with a box of tissues.

Yeah folks, that’s my next agenda – make a case for being melancholy. Have you ever had a day, where after all the cheerful how are yous and engaging conversations and effervescent laughter, feigned and unfeigned, you need to go straight from the coat rack to the desk, deliver a monosyllablic greeting to a co-worker, plug in your ear phones, plonk down on the chair and just be sad? It’s called i-need-a-break-from-all-the-cheer and it’s good!

In a world where everything is labeled, it’s only natural that we associate being morose with something “bad”. When there is a crisis someone cries. It’s the most natural thing to do. Yet the immediate human reaction to crying is to stop it. “Don’t cry,” people say gently, thinking they’re being very helpful. Why not? That’s what the lachrymals are there for (excluding their other important job of delivering pleasure to the haughty pink bulb called the onion we can’t do without). Hell, it’s the first sound a human being makes. That can’t be unnatural!

Sometimes, there is nothing better than sitting down on a couch or crawling under a comforter and weeping your heart out – for no apparent reason or for a variety of them. It’s easy too. Settle down with all the goods – namely, a good, weepy situation, a loaded lachrymal gland and some kleen-ex. And cry. Just make sure you do it on your own time; noone wants to watch a sniffly, tear-streaked, mucus spouting human being. While I’m at it, noone wants to watch one yelling into a cell phone or farting loudly either.

Right from the time of Shakespeare’s Jacques (who in my limited knowledge of the bard’s work, is the greatest character ever made) we have attributed a certain trait-like quality to melancholy, making it an inextricable part of personality. But what if melancholy were merely a feeling, that one lapsed into in one’s most pensive state? Melancholy has oft been associated with art – the great poets’ most profound feelings came to the fore when they were sad, composers created masterpieces at their melancholic best and many an artist has brushed a stroke of pure genius in his most dismal state.

In last year’s October issue of The Atlantic Monthly, Joshua Wolf Shenk quite eloquently – and after extensive research – says this of arguably a person most famed for his gloom, “Lincoln didn't do great work because he solved the problem of his melancholy; the problem of his melancholy was all the more fuel for the fire of his great work.”

So, why is melancholy bad?

It’s an intense feeling, just like euphoria is an intense feeling or hatred is an intense feeling. It shakes you to your very core and the sheer magnitude of it is very different from your normal state of mind.

Catch-22 has got to be the closest contemporary attestation. One of the most popular books ever written, it is a satirical comedy that cracks up at least half the world. So do dark comedies like Dr. Strangeglove and tragically comic writers like O’Toole. So, what I am really trying to do here is, sell sadness by giving you evidences of how it can be entertaining, how it can be popular and finally, how it can be ‘good’.

Two years ago, my best pal and I started the “Laugh at yourself series”. We decided that if we are not going to have THE life, we might as well laugh at the one we do and be merry :) It includes everything from academic troubles to bad relationships to profound online conversations to dreams that won’t ever come true. And believe me, despite being a saga of all our woes, the inherent irony never fails to crack us up (whoever said Wodehouse was the infallible in the area? You want a good laugh? Look at your life ;)).

So, while sometimes it’s great to laugh away your worries at other times it’s splendid to just let the tears roll....

If this post has left you with the feeling that I am going to slash my wrists, you haven’t got it. So, now go to that corner and cry...

If you still have doubts about it, I’ll leave you to ponder over a few of Shenk’s lines, since I couldn’t say it better: “....what needs "treatment" is our own narrow ideas—of depression as an exclusively medical ailment that must be, and will be, squashed; of therapy as a thing dispensed only by professionals and measured only by a reduction of pain; and finally, of mental trials as a flaw in character....”

Gee, I can’t seem to find my soul!

Last afternoon I came face to face with a question that most people take lifetimes to ponder – is food more important than religion? It may seem like an esoteric question, but once I’m through – provided you’re still with me – you’ll realize that it is one of the most profound questions of the century...

With all of us lugging in holiday spirit and suitcases to work, I decided I had the luxury of a really long luncheon – complete with food, reading and mindless chatter. So, in preparation for it, I got the best meatball sub ever made and plonked it on my hallmark table by the window; normally, I wouldn’t leave such a marvelous piece of creation unguarded, but an irrepressible surge of thirst overcame all sense of security and I’d just disappeared for a few seconds to grab a bottle of water, when....

I return in mouth-watering anticipation only to find a pious co-worker blocking my view of the sandwich and, worse still, performing his salah. Now, this could take anywhere between 5 minutes and 5 hours, depending on his degree of spirituality. For a split second, my instinct was to dash around him and grab my sandwich – lest you think I am some kind of werewolf, imagine marinara and tender meat balls and provolone cheese spilling out from a toasted roll of Italian bread that can hardly contain its own richness. If you still don’t sympathize, I’m forced to conclude that you haven’t had the world’s best meatball sub (if you want to reverse that -- and I strongly urge that you do – I can be contacted for hours and location ;)).

Getting back to my predicament, my spiritual co-worker probably thought it was a pork roll sausage, cos at least from the angle I was in, he seemed to be directing a lot of his prayer to it. So, being the very considerate soul I am, I decided to wait it out just a wee bit longer and grabbed the next best thing – a copy of the Atlantic, deciding to satisfy my hunger for knowledge instead (some compensation).

He did finally leave after an interminable five minutes and left me thinking about our priorities as human beings. Here was a guy that obviously rendered a brown paper bag, depicting one of the three essential survival factors of life, insignificant in the face of religion. As for me, the only reason I waited was cos it was his religion and obviously extremely important to him. My own religion, I gave up the day I figured out I wasn’t getting any kind of nirvana till I ate that inexcusably juicy piece of angus; the biggest irony is that people pray to the cow without realizing jus how sal(i)vating it can be :)

Like I have said in excruciating detail many times before, I rarely make masochistic promises to myself, certainly none that include giving up food or living with rodents or freezing to death. It’s a short life we lead on this earth (though sometimes it does seem incredibly long) and there is enough misery to deal with, what with destiny and nature and god and the universe all competing to dole out their share. So, other than making sure that my right to wave my fist stops at my neighbor’s nose, I don’t really claim to have any I’m-holier-than-thou principles.

There was one thing, however, that I once told myself I’ll never ever do, mainly cos I felt I needed a “cool” principle, since everyone else seemed to be having one. “Paper bags,” my environmentalist friend would say, fixing the salesgirl with an ominous stare, rendering preposterous, even the mere suggestion of an existing alternative. “Let’s jus walk down a few more blocks, we’ll find the restaurant, I just don’t believe in 411” another would suggest, even if we are starving to death on a cold February night. “I don’t drink Starbucks coffee”, someone else would say a tad condescendingly to the warm and refreshing cappuccino in my hand; I consider telling them the “actual” crime is to stand there and shiver in the cold when a perfectly divine cup of caffeine, albeit capitalistic, is at your disposal, but change my mind. After all, my world-view is much too personal to me :)

So, my own little principle was that I’d never eat veal in my life (bad enough that I am politically incorrect in my thoughts and opinions). Moreover, I do think it’s unfair to feed a perfectly normal cow hormones and make it grow stunted all its life jus cos you wanted a certain added flavor in your meat (on a completely different note, I did believe till a week ago that bovine meat was perfectly divine as is). So, the one thing I told myself I’d never do, unfortunately had to do with food, the one thing I rarely deprive myself of. Isn’t that supposed to be the point of a principle, anyway? Deprivation, sacrifice, masochism? However, it makes it easier to break as well. And hence, last week I lost the last vestige of my ‘soul’ by giving up that little promise.

Before you make any judgments, I think you should hear me out. As it happened, we had this absolutely marvelous holiday luncheon planned in this absolutely marvelous Italian restaurant, where everyone swore the veal parmesan was absolutely divine. I must say I was a tad tempted but I decided I’d hear the list of entrees and give my principle some credence over good food. The waiter reeled off the list: veal parmesan --- long pause --- cacophonous rattle including chicken-somethin, mussels in red sauce, mussels in white whine and something indecipherable at the end. Since I sincerely believe that white meat should not be considered when there is some perfectly good red meat available (Indian cuisine exclusive) and that sea-food has no business in a meal beyond the first course (walnut encrusted salmon and mango-salsa-laced-shrimp-sushi excepted) I decided I just had to go for it. I felt a tiny little pang of guilt, but once the guy waltzed in with a dozen plates of aromatic, sizzling slabs of veal, the regret was long forgotten.

Anyway, the good thing (other than the incredibly delicious meat) was that I wasn’t the last remaining ‘soul-less’ person on earth. Everyone at the table not only ate veal for probably the thousandth time in their lives with not an ounce of remorse, but also had interesting anecdotes to share about the many ways of cervically dislocating (euthanasia, for the uninitiated, though it probably doesn’t sound like mercy-killing) the mice in the lab. Trust a bunch of stem-cell-researching, cancer-curing, evolution-touting, meat-eating scientists to always bring up the rear on the list of soulful people.

Just to clarify, I am not totally soul-less. Every time I have to snip the edge of a mouse’s tail, I feel like a monster. But then I put it in perspective --- half a million people die of heart and lung disease each year, and every experiment that involves a little rodent brings us closer to saving a human life. I gotta do what I gotta do. And in another part of the world, someone else burns a research lab to save that very mouse. They gotta do what they gotta do.

There are some things we believe in and some we don’t. Ultimately, in my opinion, the biggest sin is to not believe at all. Food and God apart, passion is but one of the most important survival factors...I might never understand what prompted my co-worker to abandon all in the middle of a work day and make a trip to the lounge and do his bidding to God, what I can understand is his intensity of feeling – that is the plane we share. You could sit in the Himalayas and count rosary beads, roll your tongue over every inch of that perfectly done steak or spend hours injecting disease-curing genes into little rodents – as long as you believe...

Digital __ Analog __ [Please check one]

“K, if it is anywhere in the world, it has to be on this block; I just know it,” V says.
“Really? On Curtis? I don’t remember it being on Curtis,” I interject.
“Curtis?” Blank look from V. Don’t names mean anything to these people?
“Yeah this is Curtis and 15th.” It says right there, in bold block letters. Don’t these people SEE?
An indifferent, “Oh” in response.

Apparently, they do see, and very well at that, cos sure enough, we spot the tiny little car as we near the end of the block and V’s ultimatum. It sits there, right in front of our eyes, oblivious to the three hours we’ve spent scouting the streets of downtown Denver, mentally calculating insurance costs and verbally whining to cops in the bone-chilling Colorado winter.

“How did you know.....?” I ask despite myself and brace myself for a response that wouldn’t necessarily mean much to me.
And I get it: “The trees...That’s the only street that has those trees...”
My turn to do the indifferent “Oh”.

Two years later: Different scenario, similar situation:

"I think we should take 18th street dow---", I stop midway cos A is already four feet down 18th.
“What were you saying?” – A.
“Never mind, how did you know we had to take this street? You didn’t even stop to look.”
“That big building over there. Plus, this is the only road that curves this way.”
“Hmmmmm, isn’t it easier to jus look at the sign? 18th street -- can’t go wrong there.”
A disbelieving furrow of the brow. “You mean that tiny little unlit board is more visible than that huge skyscraper two blocks away?”
“Well....” I hadn’t thought of it like that....

I’d always been this way. Hadn’t realized it was weird. I know exactly which ticketing counter at the train station moves the fastest, I can rattle off the bus schedule to the letter, I don’t just assume that the trolley comes every five minutes and I know the intersecting streets for all the Starbucks in the city. In other words, I am happiest when I have all of the information. Without it, I’m lost. It’s like a data piece that I can attach to an item and remember it by. Somewhat like the bands on my agarose gel – numbers 1 through 10, each unique in its own size and shape, nonetheless, I can’t label it ‘thin and narrow’, it’s got to be #7.

I had always thought of it as a strength. It is, to a point. What I didn’t realize was that it was a strength inherently developed to make up for a flaw — an utter lack of observational skills.

I prefer remembering numbers to colors, letters to shapes and symbols to sizes.

V and A (and probably half the section of the population) prefer the world of blues and reds and circles and squares.

We are taught colors and shapes in kindergarten alongside numbers and letters. I think the brain picks a side and stays there – from building blocks at age 2 to street signs at 20.

Now that I think about it, the ceiling fan I drew in pre-school may not have been exactly attractive but it always had the right number of screws. My cousin’s was a lot prettier, but it had no screws. How would the blade hold on? Crazy glue?

I never remember what the cleaning lady looks like, but when I see her in her uniform, I know her name is Cynthia and can call out to her and say hi. I couldn’t always pick out Ewan McGregor from a line-up but I know he was in Moulin Rouge and Trainspotting. Place them in the right context and I am Ms. Know-it-all. Skew their location in time and space, and I couldn’t place them if you put a gun to my head.

I belong to that section of the population that needs a mapquest map to know where they are going and a TO-DO list to see what they are doing. We need the “real” thing – we need the post-it sticky and the yellow pages -- things that we can see and touch, cos we can’t just “feel” and “know”. We need logic, we need proof, we need to make ‘sense’ a 100%, cos the left side upstairs demands it.

We are the ones that don’t always need a calculator, don’t go ga-ga over the blackberry, don’t use the cell phone’s voice activated dialing and don’t configure Microsoft Outlook on our computers. The left side of the brain does it for us, and it isn’t always perfect, but at least we know whom to blame when it goes wrong.

The ‘right’ (no relation to the overbearing wing on Capitol Hill) doesn’t need tangibles and numbers and names. Their brain does all the work as well, but it is so efficient at it, that they don’t see the stages; they only receive the fully processed information --- they have the luxury of calling it ‘intuition’.

Amid the digital cameras and analog watches, I think there is an important distinction we are missing – digital vs. analog human beings – those that remember and those that observe, those that read numbers and those that read shapes, those that need to dig out that piece of information from a corner of the brain and those that “just know”, those that are guided by logic and those that rely on intuition.

In either case it takes two kinds of people to populate the earth -- those that see, and those that follow those that see, so, on the rare occasion that intuition goes awry, they can pull out their Rand McNally and lead the way......We cannot work together cos “15th and Curtis” does not make sense to them and “those trees” don’t make sense to us, but we can sure help each other out, albeit in very different ways...

Virtually speaking...

After almost two years of my debut as a blogger (thanks to my steadfast, and more importantly, cyber-competent pal, Atool,) that started with a revelation of the domination of the cyberworld in my life, I decided it was time for part II of my virtual reality deliberation.

I still maintain that the best scene in Disclosure is where Tom Sanders enters the virtual representation of his company’s database, and often wonder how it would be to have that option in real life --- plug in different situations in a computer program and look at cause and effect, or better still, experience a wide array of emotions and actions Matrix-style from a wire-entangled pod.

For a predominantly computer phobic person, I am unusually fascinated by the world of simulations, and AS a computer-phobic person I do think my mind does a better job of it.

Since I left my high school days behind me (where my biggest worry was usually along the lines of “Do I begin with the homework or finish reading ‘Doctors’?”), more often than not, my most promising moment of the day has been draping the comforter around me from anywhere between 12 and 3 am, shutting out the real world and getting lost in ‘the beyond’ of beautiful dreams.

You’re constantly hearing people talk about fulfilling their dreams and translating their fantasies into reality. I, for one, want quite a few of my dreams to stay a dream. Isn’t it more fun to dream a dream than live a dream?

Be it Enid Blyton’s “enchanted land” series, landing the A-6 intruder at New York’s Intrepid museum or “Back to the future” at Universal Studios, I’ve been quite happy in my closeted little world of illusions right from somewhere around age six to two decades later.

When it was time for the monthly family movie outing, my sis always wanted the depressingly real 1947-Earth, I wanted Speed where a bus could jump over freeways or Jurassic Park where dinosaurs could roam the earth. My favorite show on TV is the most feel-good and unrealistic of them all--- six Manhattan residents spending 24 hours a day in a coffee shop and still living in fancy apartments. It may not exactly scream “reality” but let’s face it, I wouldn’t sit in front of a celluloid screen if I just wanted to see day-to-day life on the street. My fire-escape allows an unbiased view :)

I don’t know if I’ll ever go on a treasure hunt through ten different countries and I’m pretty sure I won’t ever sell outrageously priced chocolates on the streets of New York, but I got it all by sitting glued to every wheezing breath in the first season of The Amazing Race and one too many acerbic remarks in The Apprentice.

A lot of times I feel more excited about plopping down on my couch and sitting down for a full hour of Real Time or three of a Wimbledon men’s final than about meeting up with a good friend or calling a long lost pal who would guaranty a few laughs.

Is it because anything could go wrong in an I-am-breathing-the-same-air-you-are relationship while the one on the small screen is protected not only by layers of nitrocellulose, but also from the callousness that destiny seems so eager to impose in real life? Is it less complicated and more rewarding to live lives “through our heads”?

Is it a milder (I hope!) version of multiple personality syndrome, where we constantly try to compartmentalize our lives into the “perfect virtual” ones and the “not-so-perfect real” ones?

Do we just want to keep these two worlds strictly apart, instead of trying to find a compromise that may result from an ineffective transposition? Are dreams just a way of overlooking the trials and tribulations of the harsh world out there?

Can we live our entire lives being happy and satisfied in the pristine uncorrupted world upstairs, never bringing them out into the very tainted real one that threatens to throttle them in infancy?

Michael Crichton and Steven Spielberg apart, can the virtual ever be real?

The healing power of water

And I don't mean that in the "Aqua Fina" sort of way, cos God knows that the sound of fizzling, golden-brown Pepsi cascading over a heap of crushed ice would sooner heal my colds than a gallon of pure water.

What I mean here is the healing power that comes from senses other than taste: the sights, sounds and touch of water [and in the case of some insane human beings---“feel”---yeah, those members of our very own species that actually bask in the feeling of hair bunched over their brows or water dripping off their ponchos].

I've been thinking about this "healing prowess" a lot lately and I must say that while the internet and the microchip are all good, the lesser known, less-hyped evolution of human beings that we don’t talk about in PC World is in developing innovative ways to seek panaceas for all evil.

The most popular, of course, is this higher force called "God". I don’t have a problem with God, except that, as I see it, he seems as helpless as I am at preventing the unforeseen, the unexpected and certainly unwanted miseries of life. Nevertheless, to my heretical statements, there is often intense opposition. “He can’t control everything,” people say quite vehemently, protecting the credibility of an entity that may or may not exist and that quite certainly they have never seen. Take it from me: if the attorneys for God functioned in a normal court of law, prison cells would be empty.

And if you don't turn to God, you turn to Nature and this I don't mean in a Darwinian sense (no offense to old Charles; I am a huge fan of his theory, only this is neither the time nor place---and God help you if I decide to make it). Reason why people escape to a park or a stream or for those lucky hillbillies, the mountains to be one with nature during difficult times.
For me (I have discerned after 26 years) this is the simple sight of water ---whether it lashed from the distant horizon while I contemplated trivial high-school troubles on the shores of the Bay of Bengal, shimmered in its reassuring closeness along the banks of the Hudson while I battled with more complicated feelings than the inability to be teacher's pet in many a disheartening Jersey moment or the little lake in a tiny Colorado town I crossed mountains to get to during painful graduation hurdles, water has made washing away my worries just a little easier. What can be better testimony to this than the sheer elation I felt on discovering the Schuylkill River a few short blocks from my apartment a few weeks ago…..I have certainly been a happier person since, though I am quite sure Roger Federer had something to do with it as well. But since he falls under the category of the Gods I have already discussed, I’ll leave it at that. (Isn’t it wonderful to see the sheer invincibility that allows him to make shot after creative shot, putting away with effortless ease every hurdle in his path to the crown? If only we could battle Fate with a racket and quite so supernaturally at that).

In all fairness, the idiot box deserves some credit for my newfound happiness as well. That brings me to my next contender: Nature’s hegemony at delivering solace is fast being threatened by man’s own creations ---- the towering skyscrapers in New York City have oft given me more strength than Nature's concrete counterparts along the Eastern Ghats or the Rockies. Probably comes from the sense that My own species built this mammoth: I must be stronger than I think I am!

And whilst man is deeply involved in figuring out his own ways of dealing with misery, Destiny is deeply involved in figuring out more versatile ways of doling them out. The less vulnerable he is, the more ruthless she seems.
And so the cycle of life continues....

And miles to go before I sleep....

I have promises to keep...
And miles to go before I sleep....

I seem to be doing a lot of that lately--- the sleep of course, and then the miles, for the little town of Fort Collins seems to have blown out of proportion from its originally estimated four streets and a reservoir, come chilly autumn and a half healing ankle.

Getting to the good part --the sleep---there are these phases in life when you go through the entire day in a rush as if the whole intention of waking up were to go back to sleep again. While having to graduate in a month and working twelve hours a day certainly doesn’t help that process, it sure as hell provides a clear incentive.

Anyway, since I decided about three months ago that I was going to get off the beaten path and do something about the one that has consistently occupied my dreams since eighth grade, I have taken living "hopefully" to a whole new level. I mean it is one thing to go through high school, thinking college would be splendid but an entirely different one to fervently wish that by some force of magic the micropipette in your hand would transform into a pen, while the white precipitate in the tube tries its dandiest best to convince you that it is indeed the blueprint of life that all scientists claim it to be. That theory seems lost on you momentarily for that gleaming little white glob might well be papyrus in some condensed form, to harbor the deluge of thoughts threatening to overflow. (Scientists don’t call it blueprint for nothing!)

Like my good pal described it quite eloquently the other day, "living for the future while letting the present pass you by". He said it just didn’t seem right and I agree, though I have never believed in a right and wrong. As long as it works for you, and you are not affecting the fellow-law-abiding-human-being next to you, hold on to it, I say. Nor do I believe in a set of rules to acquire happiness, if it ever chances to come your way.
Grab on to it, be it with twenty minutes of an unseen-unheard-soul online or shattering a ridiculously expensive piece of crystal, as long as it delivers.

That's why yesterday took me completely by surprise; in my attempt to battle with science I have been adopting numerous strategies, the simplest being "attacking it probabilistically". Since I don’t really seem to understand Science or logic, I decided that if I conducted the same experiment over and over and over again, chance has it that it would work at least that one all-important time.

And it did! But what I wasn't prepared for was the unparalleled ecstasy I felt on seeing it work. "What the #@##$%@#%^@#%^@%^!" It goes against the entire principle of my being --- "I can’t derive happiness from something I positively hate!"

But it happened all the same and I am one step (out of 100000000000000000000000000) closer to graduation.

Oh well, don’t ever attempt to play life by the rules......

Ode to the roomie

[ With contributions from Vidy]

Vidya speaks >

It was a typical 9:00pm drive. Its something that both Katrix and I look forward to. Especially after a day filled with nothing but “ G’morning…..O No Ur Fine…That’s ok……..O That’s fine I can come over the weekend and work on it…….Sorry…Please….Excuse Me……..Thank You…..” Phew! What a day. Finally the 9:00pm drive.

Vidy: Tring tring
Katrix: WHAT!
Vidy: Hey u think we can go for the usual chakkar?
K: Hmmm wait 10:00pm is Friends, so if u wanna go we have to go now
V: Ok done can u come and pick me up.
K: Sure.

Ten minutes later both of us are in the Chevy, the car that has been a dear friend, philosopher and guide (believe me when I say guide. I read this book….Why Men Don’t Listen And Why Women Don’t Read maps…..I believed the former….courtesy Dad, but the latter dawned on me only after I came to the US of A.

So we are on our way, I turn the radio on and am thumping my hand on the arm rest. Katrix has her eyes on the road, she has improved tremendously……except for the occasional speeding over a bump or past an amber light that is accompanied by a predicted “What the F%#$!. This place has the worst bloody roads” and a faint heart attack for me. But today I am oblivious. I am absorbed in the world of Squaredance by Eminem…….he is making no bones that he hates the Bush administration. I make the mistake of mentioning that to Katrix.

Katrix: I like Bush! I mean what the hell! He is gonna come to power then all these suckers will keep their mouths shut.
V: Hmmmm. Hey this song is by Nickel Back. I love it!
K: Yeah me too. *grin*
V: Ammam very funny K.

Note: For ppl who don’t know Kartika well enough…which is rare, her sense of music is non-existent, kinda like my knowledge of American Politics.

V: Hey you know what John just said--- he has this awesome LOTR stuff that he wants me to see.
K: U and LOTR. I hate anything that’s fantastical. I think Matrix is awesome. I mean the philosophy applies so much to our lives.
V: WOW! Wait a sec, why would I want to see a movie that tells me something practical and banal! I like my fantasy world, my knight in shining armor…Arag….
K: Who-- the Hidalgo guy!
V: His name is Aragorn not Hidalgo *frown*
K: Whatever! U are such a kid!! Grow up, two year old!
V: Podi! :P
I know what to do to irritate her. She hates the “Homies” lingo. My “yo bro” vocab has improved thanx to my interest in afro-american singers and my passion for Comedy Central! Bring it on Dawg!

V: Yo B%&*#! Whatcha doin goin on at 45mph instead of 30 huh! I gotta tell u gurl I don’t want nobody stopping us and …..
K: SHUTUP!!!!!!!!!!!! My god! How the hell can u talk like that! Chi that’s so unsophisticated.
V: Hey that wasn’t nothing. Don’t front me gurl! U know I am down for u forever
*wink*

That did it! She had had enough! She switched off the Radio. Be fair! Who is the two year old!
Well its moments like these that make my mundane life worth living. So, here we are—two two-year-olds, in a Chevy, with music blaring. We love our small world; it’s our time, our spat, our semicharmed life!

V: Hey u know what, I think I like applied bio, I mean its awesome. Its really not enough to know how things happen, its great when u say “ hey u know we can use that to do this” isn’t that awesome!
K: I hate applied bio! I mean its like, paper publishing science.
V: Hmmmmm
K: Nope, it's like this. I wonder how nature thought of everything. I treat biology as a philosophy --know what I mean?
I dont, but I just nod anyway. After a few months with katrix, you kinda figure you have to let her have her way sometimes. But if she goes on and on about it, she's goin to get it back. She knows that too, I guess, cos she says that and stays quiet.
K: "well, I think jeff has that feeling too ---that I can philosophize about nature, but when it comes to techniques I am out on the running"
Another katrix trivia-- when she starts talkin about jeff, you gotta jus let her ramble.
V: olve is cute too pa! He is good at everything! I think aloud, ‘Are men like that made anymore????’
Double sighs!!!! Hmmmmmmmmmmm
Silence……
V: Hey u know what, we should do a barbecue. I learnt how to cook chicken from Jes. He says hickory wood is the best wood and all. Lets try na!
K: WHAT! NOW???
V: No, no. Some time later.
K: why is it u talk about things that are gonna happen one month from now? U are funny, girl!

That’s one thing I have noticed about myself. The “thinking-ahead” trait isn’t left at the work place. It follows me like a shadow, wherever I go. Sometimes I wonder what its like to live with me. It can be difficult I am sure, but not too bad I HOPE!

V: Omigosh we got to vacuum the house too.
K: Good God! What’s with u! relax. My god u are a Monica alright!
V: Yeah, you and your friends.
K: O bummer I am gonna miss Friends!
Note: Bummer is used when the mistake is self made, “ what the F^&*#?” is when the traffic light turns red, some guy is driving within the speed limit in front of her or any thing that is not her fault. This discrimination is very important for me.
K: HEY! Friends is the only thing that makes me happy, ok?
V: o yeah, that’s not fantastical at all. Am sure there are loads of such jobless friends living in lofty apartments in NY! How real!
K: I love Ross. He is so weird!
V: I like Chandler *grin*

Ok, so I am a hypocrite. I like Friends too, don’t deny it, but not to the same intensity as K. I have learnt that for K, everything is extreme---be it the strength of the coffee, the amount salt in sabzi, the state of her room. She feels everything to the extreme—love, hate--- both with equal intensity. I wish I were like that. To like something as much as she did, to hate something as much as she did. I wish I could crash and burn, not just linger!

K: He is just a regular guy. Nothing great about him except his good sense of humor.
V: That’s hard to come by now-a-days ok!
K: yeah that’s very true!

Peals of laughter. Finally we agree! Joy!!!! To celebrate we decide to stop at a café and pick up lattes. Back on the road.

Katrix’s mind Speaks >
Let’s move from the tales of Katrix’s adventurous driving to more mundane matters---like say, a typical work-day late evening. Fox news channel, the couch and the potato (no pun intended) are all I need to keep me happy. Vidy comes running out from her now-to-post-midnight-slogging-schedule for a five minute respite to toast a bagel.

"Shut up you guys, you are not making any sense," she says to nobody in particular; it takes me a moment to figure out she's talkin to the reasonably intelligent panel on Hannity and Colmes. I wonder how ANYthing would make any sense when you have just had a fraction of a second of real-world air after getting out of a room floating with protein crystals, much less self-proclaimed liberals and conservatives discussing Dick Clarke's latest book. She’d do more justice saying that to her crystal structures.

"You haven't even heard them for five minutes," I say.

She waits for exactly that amount of time.

“They don’t make any sense."

I feel a little better. At least she has had the chance to give them the benefit of doubt. And hasn't.

"I don’t know how you watch this. They all talk at the same time.” I don’t tell her that one more person only complicates matters further.

Now, from the boring details of a normal week day evening to the boring details of a Friday evening. Sigh! Yet another one.

"Why the hell don’t I have anything to do on a Friday evening?" Now, that could have been me or her---or any of the umpteen 20-somethings who aren't committed yet (Put that way --it sounds much better ---why on earth would I wanna commit to anything? I am a pretty non-committal person, except when you are talking about capitalism, Sampras or philly cheese steak).

Anyway, usually following those fateful 13 words is dining out, a movie or a drive to the mountains.

Let’s deal with each one in its entirety.
Blockbuster movie night! Yaay. It’s not American politics or moral values, so we decide on a movie pretty much without argument. But whether both of us are ultimately satisfied with it is a different question.

“Kate Blanchett is the most under-rated actress,” Vidy says for probably the twenty-fourth time during the course of Missing. There’s no response. She whips around. I don’t blame her. If I have willfully given up a chance to refute a statement (even if it is for the twenty-fourth time) there’s cause for concern. In other words, I am either muted or dead. Quite the opposite, in this case, however. The movie’s put me to sleep.

“She sure is under-rated,” I agree. “Her soporific skills haven’t been discovered yet.”

“It was an awesome movie. Can’t believe you didn’t like it.”

“I just can’t stand slow-moving movies.”

Of course, that’s an adjective no one else would use to describe the film.
And when you hear one of those words, which don’t mean much anywhere except in the katrician lexicon, you have pretty much hit rock bottom. End of argument.

Well, let’s just say Texas Chainsaw massacre is more my kind of movie.

“I hope it’s really scary,” I say from my signature position on the couch.

“Yeah, I hope so too”, Vidy says emphatically. And as if to reinforce her point, she ducks her head under the table at the first hint of a skull like object.

‘Is she just trying to make the movie scarier for me?’ I wonder.

I decide not when after a few minutes, all I see is something akin to the contour of her head under the comforter. I have to admit, the guy did hack through the man’s body with a chainsaw, but doesn’t the title of the movie pretty much spell that to you?

By the next chainsaw incident, Vidy had said, “I am not watching this movie” about five times. In all fairness, at least she’d moved further and further away from the television set. The second half of the movie happened with Vidy yelling, “Hey, what happened?” from the hallway every ten minutes.

Some way to watch a movie, I must say.

Dining out---now, that’s always fun considering our mutually exclusive eating choices. While I inarguably go for the first steak dish on the menu, Vidy is looking for that miracle food which comes without a trace of meat in it. If it’s nearing the end of the month, however, both of us restrict ourselves to the right side of the menu; it could be flavored grass for all we care.

After the usual “You really should start eating meat” from me and her “That thing smells”, and no offence taken by either side, we dig into the heavily decorated food with gusto.

The conversation is as rich as the food, although I make half of it incomprehensible by talking with my mouth full. Vidy hates that but then habits die-hard---I have always put food first.

We drive through downtown and I decide it will be fun to window-shop at The Cupboard—our favorite novelty shop. Both of us spend the time reassuring ourselves that we should be able to afford all that stuff at some point in life. “Wow, look at this cup—its wrought iron,” I say.

Vidy has a startled expression but all she says is “That’s porcelain. That’s how good porcelain looks.”

“Oh, really?” Didn’t know that. That doesn’t take away from my liking, however.

She shows me how to figure out good porcelain by placing the mouth of the goblet near my ear. She’s right. Even to my ears, that sounds musical.

After a Coldstone dessert or equally likely, a novel concoction at Alley Cat, we’re headed home.

A drive to the mountains- wow- or at least, we seem to be going in that general direction. We can’t see them in the night. ‘Somewhat similar to our lives,’ I say. ‘It’s there, yet not there.’

That begins a spate of philosophy-- on our different natures, our social lives—or lack of them, her passion for science and my hatred for it, my plausible writing future, dream men that elude us and family that’s always there for us.

In the distant background, a song plays. Vidy convinces me it’s my favorite song. “Really?” I start tapping my fingers though I could swear to you I have never heard it before. But on music, I think I trust her judgment more than mine.

Quibbling over the X and the Y

[I don’t think it’s fair to your dad that you spend twenty-two years of your life believing that he was “supposed” to take care of the television when it conked and pay the electricity bill when it came and yet “you” are the all-independent
new-age (wo)man........I don’t think it’s fair to you that after believing in all that, at the vulnerable age of 23, you are thrown into an alien land where you not only cope with urban life, differing attitudes to race, women's rights and socially taboo subjects such as homosexuality, BUT ALSO telemarketing, health insurance, customer service, toll-free calls and cell phone bills.....But then, whoever said the world was a fair place.....]

My little mop of hair was disheveled, my laces were out and as I rubbed the sweat off my hands onto the shorts that clearly couldn’t take it any more, I tossed my friend an evil, victorious grin. As you can probably imagine, I didn’t make a pretty sight. But I’d beat him in a roller-skating race and that’s all I cared about.

Life was simple then....

That was the time when the best part of day was the early morning when I’d scoot right out of bed and trot along beside my dad for that wonderful morning walk, drop off my sister at the bus stop and pout all the way home if I didn’t get to run across the road like that boy did.

When it was my turn to get to school, however, early mornings were no longer fun, but once I was scrubbed and uniformed and satcheled, the worst was over, for what followed were fantasy lands harboring magic chairs, the less exciting but more likely merry-go-round, unintelligible yet very real goods in the art book, the world of limericks and the joy of seeing my name in print; but nothing felt as good as that all-important high-five from the boy that crossed the finish line just abreast of me.

Then came the phase of stringent teachers, boring morning math, incomplete home works and unfair penalties, but it seemed a price worth paying for the afternoon that was to follow---hours of back-bench popcorn munching, unpunctuated periods (pardon the pun) of delightful dozing, barely suppressed snickers and cross-classroom-chits, Shakespeare in uniform, endless throwball, an occasional hiking expedition of vying to do just as well as the guys and everyday attempts at clinging on to that last precarious step on the bus because all of them did .......

High school brought with it late afternoons of hanging out at umpteen fast food places by the alma mater, a badly timed yet luxurious home-cooked luncheon, long hours of the salty seaside air, discussing Darwin and H.G. Wells alike through miles of formidable Chennai road, carrying back the remainder to the phone (in the unusual case of running out of breath before topics to talk on), uninterrupted, thirst-ridden reading, oratoricals and sales appeals and What’s the good word and the realization that competing with the men on an intellectual level was just as much fun....

College had something different to offer--- late evenings of sneaking onto the terrace and gazing at big bear while discussing dream men and our fond hopes of finding them in the not-too-distant future, on-the-spur-of- the-moment decisions to watch the latest romantic comedy in town, long hours of cycling through pitch darkness in the pastoral surroundings of the university campus, rejoicing on a sudden opportunity to go home to loved ones, endless games of Literati and cracks at The Hindu Crossword, contemplating on Rand’s objectivist philosophy in the wee hours of the morning, aiming to read A Brief History of Time because all the smart men out there had....

Where my moments of greatest reproach included buying a Barbie doll on relenting to peer pressure and giving in on one occasion to rely on a man to pull down my baggage for me, I prided myself on being one of the few girls that could handle a yamaha with effortless ease and having the privilege of being thrown out of hostel for heading one of the most far-reaching strikes in the history of the university! Perplexing, because bagging the academic proficiency award in high school or winning at the top art competition in the nation had left me relatively blasé.

Life sure was simple then.

Somewhere between leaving my home country and traveling to a foreign land (albeit my cherished dream for years), between wanting to be with home and family and wanting to be all on my own, between loving solitude and freedom and suddenly finding myself with too much of both, between looking at men as mere yardsticks and looking at them as potential life partners, I had redefined too many standards in life.

I don’t take credit for the redefinition, however........

That credit goes to that month-old American Express bill on my desk screaming for attention, that hour-long toll-free call for one extra dollar billed to me (yeah, yeah, I said toll-free), the familiar-screech of the fire alarm after 250 difficult minutes of oh-so-delightful Indian cooking, the life-and-death matter of haggling over that important car insurance quote, the conking of every possible gadget I own after a fateful power surge, that half-a-day of NYPD-grade explanations because I forgot the existence of the burglar alarm, Microsoft Word giving up on me two hours before my qualifying proposal was due, finding myself homeless because my room mate happened to find a cheap thrill in hanging up on the land lord, the spectacular snow storm that decided to take me, my friends and our rented car through two exciting 360° turns, the three hours I spent trying to get home because I dodged a jug handle on a complicated Jersey highway, my priced Camry bursting into flames, minutes after I stepped out of it.........

Yes, those are the moments in your life when “wanting to be as good as the men” takes a backseat.

And standing testimony to those very moments is that little bundle of brown fur in the far corner of my room....

Cyber-kat

[Befitting as the caption might be for a seasoned blogger, a better oxy-moron I could not come up with! To give you a little perspective, just about five years ago when the rest of the twentieth century world was glued to www.you-name-it.com, I was still toying with the idea of giving up the conventional writing pad and switching to Microsoft Word ......... Finally, I did, as you can see (and I still don’t dare Adobe Acrobat) and this has sure brought me a ‘blong’ way! Nevertheless, since I am trying to reflect here a certain contradiction in my personality (think Jekyll and Hyde), I decided to stick with the misnomer.....]

For as long as I can recall, I have gone about life looking for that ‘one’ thing that would make me happy, not really knowing what it was. I still don’t, but now I have a name for it ---‘cheese’. And for those of you who are worrying about the amount of calories I have gained, nope, much as I love that coagulated chunk of ripened milk, this name is more out of appreciation for Spencer Johnson’s Who moved my cheese than any craving I might have for the real thing.

I have been carrying the weight of “searching for happiness” about my shoulders since age 12 and always felt good about it. For a long time the cheese was really myself. I loved the way I was, my many traits and idiosyncrasies and took great pride and happiness in just “being me”. It was after I realized that the task of being me was wonderful, no doubt, but was proving to be as prosaic as breathing, an act that every human on earth is capable of doing for himself (let me not make light of it, considering I have been asthmatic for atleast six painful years, but it sure doesn’t come under the category of leisure in any diction), that I began to look for other ways of entertainment.

So, my cheese became the enchanting world of books. I lived, breathed and ate books for eight straight years from there, personified every character that I loved; even walked, talked and spoke like a few of them! And when the black and white of paperbacks ceased to inspire, I turned to the colorful world of celluloid. Living the intelligent Darby Shaw during a recess in academic achievement, a successful Laura Cameron during a particularly vulnerable moment or a boisterous Kate Blackwell during flashes of feminine helplessness did feel extremely good but amidst this myriad of personas, I was in constant fear of somewhere losing the real me.

I was soon absorbed into this deep chasm of botheration that I was living in a fantastical dream world that had no chance of transposing to reality. Hence followed a “realization” phase that included everything from rock climbing expeditions to a course in journalism. But alas, I still did not like the way my cheese was tasting.

The Wachowski brothers timed it well. Matrix could not have come at a more opportune time. Launching into philosophies of the real and the virtual, I was soon trying to comprehend if the ‘best actress’ award I had won in high school indeed tasted any better than the sight of Abel Rosnowski’s first and very own Baron Hotel (with all due thanks to Jefferey Archer).

Setting all my skepticism aside, I launched into limitless journeys of the human mind. With it, came my entry into cyberspace. The intriguing mysticism of the digital world added a certain dimension to the fantasies that hitherto ruled my life. My online counterparts not only had a profundity and abstractness that made me oblivious to living, breathing people around me, they also did away with the uninteresting prospect of dealing with the banalities of the tangible world. My flesh and blood companions were baffled by my relentless love of the computer. “This isn’t real” was their constant complaint.

“Well, what IS real?” Like all things, I grew out of my virtual existence and now I have a “real” world where I continue to say hi and hello, continue to discuss the weather, continue to go on a reasonably challenging hike. One recurring thought comes to mind--- I told an online counterpart once that I would love to go on an expedition like that in the Amazing Race; he echoed the thought that crossed my mind in retrospect --‘I’d rather have my mind go on such a journey’. Since then I have never used the term ‘couch potato’ for anyone. There is far more the mind can explore in a single day than the body can in eons.

---the cyber-kat that until a few years ago never knew a mouse that responded at the click of a button.