Spectrum Eyes

In supreme nothingness, before time and space
Where concepts and constructs struggled for a place
Lit a spark that spread at a blistering pace
Spawning a cosmic dance of vicious grace

The subatomic froth tingled in anticipation
Of coagulating into building blocks of creation
Energy became matter and matter became batter
That spattered and splattered in an unruly summation

Time and space became entangled
While the electron and photon dangled
Wave and particle distinctions got mangled
As Newtonian and Einsteinian physics wrangled

Stars wielded absolute control over the dusty collection
That clustered and clumped into a planetary selection
Life emerged and crawled, struggled and evolved
Survival was difficult, but a natural predilection

Sentient beings burgeoned from a single cell
Equipped with curiosity and the urge to excel
Unraveled mysteries that were hidden well
By the cosmos, quietly watching their ego swell

Femto-seconds to eons, femto-meters to light years
Unimaginable ranges, unscalable frontiers
Given mankind's limited faculties and lifespan
This vast spectrum is not meant for us, it appears

We are a blip, an off-key note in the cosmic symphony
Possessing a sliver of understanding and oodles of disharmony
Wandering in this celestial labyrinth, inanimate yet alive
Contemplating the result of an infinite mind's epiphany

An anomaly jarringly coarse yet amazingly sublime
A speck of dust in the ever flowing sands of time
Marred by crime on the journey to spiritual prime
Is life on earth a flash of brilliance, or just washable grime?

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Note - The title of this poem comes from a very unlikely source - the lyrics of a shockingly awful song by he-who-shall-not-be-named, who can apparently see with his spectrum eyes.

Suspended Animation - A Short Story

A piercing scream cuts through the dense, foggy, moonless night with such ferocity that Charac almost falls off his bed. He wakes up, gasping for breath, utterly disoriented by his surroundings which appear drastically different from the previous day.

“What is this? How did I get here? What’s happening to me?”

He decides to survey his surroundings - a magnificent room, resplendent with art, wall ornaments, tapestries, a clear sign of wealth bordering on opulence. Two lanterns cast labyrinthine shadows, on opposing walls, of the crystal chandelier in the middle of the room. Charac finds a black uniform that looks strikingly similar to a Ninja’s. Without thinking too much, he puts on that uniform and unconsciously starts looking for his sword. Then he stops himself with a start.

“I am looking for my sword? Why am I looking for my sword? I have never held a sword before? What am I, a Ninja warrior? Why?”

He doesn’t find the sword but instead finds a device which, when activated, resembles a light sabre. He decides that will do, without pausing to debate the anachronistic situation. He gets ready to venture out in the dark of the night, his protective instincts at high alert. He decides to use his light sabre to light up the way and also cut through the dense forest that stands in front of him. As he starts walking through the forest, he is filled with a vague nostalgia. No matter how hard he tries, he is unable to pinpoint the source and gives up soon enough. He is shocked by what he finds when he comes to a clearing.

There is a giant balloon, glowing with an otherworldly iridescence. It is held down by a rope, and in the basket below the balloon, there is a person in a ninja uniform being pulled by a boy as he tries to cut the rope. The boy is screaming, but it appears to be fading in and out for no apparent reason. Charac darts towards the balloon, activates his light sabre, and strikes the other ninja warrior with such force that he appears to dissolve into thin air. He asks the boy, who is shaking uncontrollably, as to what happened.

“I am about to miss my train!”

“What?”

“I am about to miss my train. If I miss the train, I will not be able to get to school.”

“Why do you need a train to go to school?”, Charac asks, and immediately realizes that the more important question was about the boy’s safety, not his mode of transport to school.

“I have an exam today, I woke up late, and found that I missed the school bus. So I decided to take the train. However, my legs wouldn’t move fast enough and I am about to miss my train”

“What train?”, Charac asks, as he suddenly finds a train whipping past them at full speed. He immediately pulls the boy away from the train, to avoid getting sucked into the vacuum created by such speed.

“That train!”, the boy says triumphantly, but his glee rapidly turns to a grimace when he realizes he has missed the train.

“What about the Ninja warrior who was trying to take you away in the balloon?”

“Oh, he was going to punish me for missing my train”

“This is not making sense. What is your name?”

“I am Eamer”

“Hello, Eamer. Can I take you home?”

“I don’t know where exactly my home is, but you can try”. At that point, Charac suddenly collapses, as if the dark of the night (exacerbated by the sudden disappearance of the glowing balloon) seeped into his mind with amazing speed and shut it off.

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A piercing scream cuts through the moonlit night with such intensity that Charac falls off his bed, gasping for breath. He finds himself in an utterly white room, with no black curtains. It is well-lit, but there are no windows, nor is there a door. He finds a uniform resembling a space-suit.

“What is this? Why do I keep having these blackouts and wake up in totally strange places? When will this end?”

Sensing no answer coming from the walls or the ceiling, he gives up and puts on the space-suit. Then he starts probing the walls to find a niche or a button that could open the hidden door. He finds something that resembles a switch. He presses it, and a door opens with a swish. Outside is the utter blankness of space, with stars not twinkling in the distance. He wonders how he is going to move around in space in his space-suit. He finds a button that activates a mini-rocket in his boots and with some practice and after a few bumps, he is able to navigate himself without much difficulty.

“Here goes!”

He shoots out the door, and finds a giant man-made satellite in the distance. As he gets closer, he finds a guy in a space-suit pulling a boy towards the satellite.

“Oh! That’s Eamer!”

He shouts Eamer’s name a few times, then slowly realizes that in space, no one can hear you scream. But then how did he hear the boy’s screams, and why is he still hearing them? He does not wait to ponder upon these questions, since some quick action is needed to save the boy. He uses the booster rockets in his boots to move speedily towards the satellite. When he gets very close, he engages in hand-to-hand combat with the other guy in the spacesuit – that is a funny sight because every shove translates into both parties moving away from each other. After a short tussle, the other guy just decides to go away.

“Who was that?”, he asks Eamer.

“That was my teacher”

“Teacher??”

“Yes – he teaches Astronomy”

“Your teacher is an astronaut?”, he asks, without realizing the absurdity of the situation.

“Yes, and he was going to punish me because I forgot how many planets are there in the solar system.”

“9?”, “No wait, Pluto has been demoted, so there’s 8”, “Oh my god, we are discussing the solar system while we are drifting around in space!!”

“Let me take you home, Eamer”

“Ok, it’s on Alpha Centauri, which is 4.5 light years away”

“Ha ha ha, you live on earth”

“No, I am the Alpha Centaur. This body is just a disguise. On no, I am going to miss my plane!”

“What is happening to me? This cannot be real…”, Charac says, as he feels slumber taking over his body with amazing speed.

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Eamer wakes up with a start.

“What’s the matter? Are you ok? Were you having a nightmare?”, his wife asks.

“No, but I have been having a recurring dream over the past few days. There is this guy called Charac who turns up every night, trying to save me from absurd, amplified situations from my past, but he is only half successful because he gets confused after saving me and does not take me home. Instead, he faints. I have to then build a different room for him every night and place him there…”

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A piercing scream cuts through the warm, rainy night with such potency that Charac almost falls off his bed…

Extinct Instincts

The dodo led an idyllic lifestyle
Free of flight, devoid of guile
Proved easy fodder, was not agile
Extinction was swift, execution style

Blissfully unaware of the looming invasion
Dodo was smug, survival instincts in abrasion
Nature could offer no strong persuasion
Ended up in a forever unbalanced equation

Survival of the fittest, an interesting notion
Did nature force creatures to crawl out the ocean
Snipping, cutting, revising without emotion
Till its creatures learn to deal with the commotion

Mankind reached the pinnacle of evolution
With advent of the industrial revolution
It mistook ecology for an economic solution
And mal-adapted environment to its pollution

Survival instinct tapers with every invention
GPS looks at sense of direction with condescension
Smartphones have become memory’s extension
Dollars and pounds maintained in cyber suspension

Today we specialize in banalities
And flirt with sinister dualities
Questionable traits have become qualities
We provide lip service to equalities

If electricity disappears we are sitting ducks
Money will be lost in dead binary bucks
Petroleum depletion will cause stopped trucks
And nature will go about with cheerful plucks

Technology paves way to all we crave
Survival instincts are what we waive
Looming tsunami wave, world is at a rave
Darwin keeps tossing and turning in his grave

Nature doesn't nurture survival instinct
It's take on existence is simple and succinct
Take away stimuli threatening and distinct
Come next disaster and you are extinct!

Crumble Grumble

Phil Entropy’s actions belied his altruistic name
Perpetuating decay was his dubious claim to fame
His touch was the antethesis of the Midas touch
Everything withered and crumbled, leaving barely much

His overbearing omnipresence was ever so grating
His job was to ensure things were disintegrating
Attempts at renovation were met with subtle defiance
The shiny new toaster mutated to a pallid appliance

Chaos and anarchy were his dogs of war
Order and structure would rarely get far
Mankind was tired of maintaining and rebuilding
To man’s quest for eternal newness, Entropy was unyielding

So mankind asked its intelligent, calculating companion
Could Mr Entropy be tricked into jumping into a canyon
The computer responded, information not sufficient
Leaving mankind feeling somewhat deficient

The computer did not give up, it continued working
Years passed by, Entropy kept lurking
Computers reduced in size at an amazing rate
Handheld to wristwatch to an implanted brain-gate

When the human-machine interface became neuronic
Idea of retaining physical self started seeming moronic
Man merged with machine, the entity was binary
Mr Entropy laughed, in all its imaginary finery

The computer was persistent, diligence did not wane
The answer was elusive, but effort had to sustain
As all souls coagulated to a single entity called Man
The will to continue living faded, leaving a deserted LAN

The computer kept chugging away, Entropy be damned
Its intelligence had grown beyond what was programmed
One day it discovered the answer sought for an eon
Entropy could be reversed, and would be denied a scion

Computer broadcasted its eureka moment with a ‘Hello, World’
When no response was received, its digital toes curled
Man had to be there, no going gentle into that good night
It began its recursive loop, with a ‘Let there be light!’

The Last Question by Isaac Asimov:  http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html 

How Crafty!

In India, there used to be a compulsory subject in school (typically through 6-7th grade) called SUPW. It stood for Socially Useful Productive Work, the phrase embodying an astounding amount of redundancy. It was as socially useful as a charity fund director directing funds towards household expenses due to a strong belief in the 'Charity begins at home' concept, and was as productive as building a supply chain for transferring washed clothes from the washer to the dryer. It should have been called Socially Useless Reductive Work, given the fact that it reduced the time available for more useful stuff. I am sure there was some level of enjoyment in doing it then, more so for others than me, but only the 'work' part of SUPW stands out when I reflect back on it.

It was about students being able to choose whatever they wanted to learn - embroidery and knitting, gardening, cooking, and painting; and was very conveniently chosen by the teacher for the student. It involved, among other things, subjecting the hapless student to accurate reproductions of paintings (landscapes, portraits) using golden thread, fevicol, and a black satin canvas created by sticking the very glue-resistant satin cloth to a cardboard using fevicol. While black satin was the fabric of choice, some knights were created on white satin too for variation - it's tragic that those never reached the end. Once it was painstakingly completed at home with help from parents and distant relatives, it was taken to school for comparison with other awesome products, many of which employed the use of silver threads instead of gold - it was all dependent on market price fluctuations at the time.

The useful product was then proudly put up for display at home, subject to admiration from visitors and validating its social usefulness. After a few weeks the threads used to start giving up their grip on the satin canvas, thus belying fevicol's promise of the toughest grip. The satin, precariously holding onto the cardboard for dear life, would start losing its grip too, and what you would observe on a daily basis was a gradual descent into a total unraveling of the image. Mountains would turn into volcanoes, trees would experience early autumn, and rivers would lose their fish to eels, not to mention people losing face and elegance losing grace. Eventually there would be an utterly undone image beyond salvage, mildly reminiscent of its glorious heyday. And you would be proud, thinking 'I really did some socially useful productive work'!