Paris, Rome and back.

Paris, hmmm..., I didn't quite live like a Parisien, but sure got a whiff, a good strong one, of what it would feel like. I spend four days in Paris, and though I'd've loved to stay and soak it in, the few days I spent gave me a sneak preview into the life of a Parisen.

Coming from the US of A, consumerist capital of the universe, its a welcome change, and at the same time, it jolts you a bit. Although I did my fair share of tourism (Tour Eiffel, Pantheon, Versailles, ...), I picked to stay at a place not thronged by tourists. Rue du la Convention primarily had cafés, small fruit and vegetable shops, a bit of fashion (goes without saying, doesn't it?), cigarette smoke, well dressed Parisiens, and life. From three onwards in the afternoon, until eleven at night (doesn't feel that late, sunset is past ten, in June at least), its hard to find a table at a café or a brasserie. If you find one, you just grab it, and wait till someone shows up for your order.

After a little bit of looking around, the thing that hit me most was that there exists no concept of fast food. There is no sight of disposable plate, glass or plastic "silverware". No ones in a hurry here. I'm not trying to say that people are lazy. I'm sure they're not, but nobody here takes a coffee and a sandwich to go and gets on the metro. Dining has its own place, and it gets the respect it deserves. Even if its a stop for boisson, you sit down, chatter a bit, enjoy your drink, people watch, and finally say au revoir.

People here are warm. Go to a boulangerie and though it is hard if you don't speak the laguage, the person behind the counter is likely to entertain you with a big smile, some small talk, jokes, offer a bite of this or that, offer some help choosing -- its a completely different experience. You just end up feeling good.

I don't think in all my wandering around I saw any obese people. Are people just more health conscious, or is there something fundamentally different here? Its not like you don't see people eating ice cream, pastries, cheese, but it doesn't seem to cause a problem.

I went on my last day here to a mall, thinking the experience would be incomplete without seeing how Parisiens shop. I think the place I went competes in size with the big malls of America. Its in a place called Châtelet les Halles and is three stories tall under the ground. Its the sale or the "soldes" season in Paris, and boy do Parisiens like to shop. By now of course I'm biased enough to think that the element of greediness is absent.

It appears to me that Parisiens are more in touch with their lives as opposed to their gluttonous, credit card wielding, robot like American counterparts. I may be completely wrong. However it seemed like something was better there than it is in good ol' New Jersey, and irrespective of my conclusions it made me realize that I wasn't far from that very robot I so despise. I think Paris has taught me that its time to stop and sip my coffee.

Roma, aah..., the land of ancient ruins, cobblestones, graffiti, espresso, biscotti and ciao. Stop by for a gelato, a piccolo, if you can't stomach the grande, and say ciao. Grab your over loaded cone with three of more flavours of the tastiest, softest and smoothest ice cream in the world, say your grazie, and leave with another ciao, a longer one this time, now that you've made friends with the pretty señorina behind the rainbow of gelato, who took fifty cents off your buck and fifty gelato 'cause it was your first.

Lovely Roma, pretty women, laid back señors who take a good two seconds to say per favore, and then two more to say it with their hands.

Espresso vapours wafting through the town, every caffè grind its coffee fresh and makes a shape with with the milk foam that displaces the thickest crema and makes its way to the heart.

In fact, all that can be said about Paris can be said about Roma, the coffee shops, the bars and trattorias, the laid back ways. The only difference, and its really an insignificant one, is that Parisiens exude a certain finesse and sophistication, while Romans seem a bit rustic, with all due respect to the many counter examples. Insignificant that it may be, with my prejudiced world view, I like the Romans a tad more. It all seems a bit more down to earth here. At the end of the day however, I think its all about taking a second to stare at the crema, a minute to wonder about it, and a lifetime to absorb it. When thats over, you can do in Rome as the Romans do, or even play Gladiator.

I'll soon be back home, as boarding time nears, and I'm about to finish this off. I know very well, I'll go back to having Chinese food to go, and cursing traffic. But every time I look at the oil on the canvas, and every time I see marble eyes, I'll remember to take a step back and sit down. If life comes at you too fast, it only makes it worse to rush forward.

The Marlboro Boy

What goes through his mind as he puffs
Clouds of smoke away

Like a man wise and old
puffs to his life.

Intoxicated by the future,
or letting go off his past

He puffs and puffs
Till the last.

Holds that stick of joy
between numbers much too small

He stands the stance of heroes
And puffs wisps so slender

Mamas and Papas watch
And they whisper words of shock,

And the young man stamps the butt
-- and walks.

I looked through the window
And saw him return

To notice my lute and show me
Two thumbs up.

He vanished again from sight
and introduced me to his clique --

One pushed a wheelchair, while the other sat in it,
Between his lips another murder stick.

The glass window it seemed
To insulate me from this grief,

And I turned away to be faced
By the young man who vanished ago.

Thirteen he said
But seemed barely eight,

Gave him the coins I had
For some bread to barely satiate.

I walked away as my flight was going,
knowing too well he'd buy more smoke,

My grief choked as he walked through the
Glass doors to his side of the world.

Daddy, daddy, why's the sky so gray?...

...she tugged at him, barely reaching up to his knees, but he knew no answer. Choking from welling eyes, he said, still looking away, "That's just the colour of the sky...", and bit his tongue even as he said the word colour. A tear dripped down from his cheek, leaving a black stain, of blood that had once been red.

It had been over four years now, and she was just two. When his first two had died the moment they opened their eyes, he blamed himself. He wept till he was bloodied. But that had all changed four years ago.

His joy was boundless when his third lived, fought, but lived, and now she was two. He had tried to kill himself once after that change, in vain. He wasn't one to take his own life. The world still had something to offer he felt, even if it took all the colour out of his life. And when it came, it did. She was born, with brilliant eyes, eyes a dazzling gray. He blamed himself.

As time passed he learned to live, learned to forget, and though the memories kept haunting him, he lived, for her, if not for anything. As time passed she learned to walk, to talk, to question, and to think. She saw the world differently, he knew, much different from what his memories told him. He closed his eyes, and felt the blue tides of the evening ebb, the shadows growing.

The tear rolled down his arm and reached her innocent fingers, streaking them a brilliant red. Something was awfully wrong he though. He opened his eyes, and saw the gray waves recede, and a spot of darkness in the shadow of the little girl who didn't stand there.

Loneliness, Solitude, Flight.

...and you're lonely as never before. The world dims out, steps falter, speech slurs, and you're falling. Like a small spec being taken away by the cascade, descending harshly into a deep ravine, where you await your fate that you seem to have resigned to, even if it never existed. You can no longer see clearly through the cataract but thoughts fly through the mind. Muddled thoughts. Complete incoherence brought upon by fear and desolation - you give up after much effort, and almost call it a day.

The fall is long and slow, as long as it takes a whole second to elapse, but what exists of the sense of time, now that the end seems so close. You realizeyou can no longer breathe, and you start to drown in you own fear, your own remorse. You suffer from isolation, and your loneliness grows steadily and rapidly.

You keep thinking about your loneliness, making efforts to keep thoughts unclouded, thinking about what sparked it, and why its now lead to such a state. You find no answers, the thread has been long lost. The world is now coming rapidly at you, while past struggles to keep on. The past, what got you here. What's happening to me, you think. And again. It only leads to more confusion.

Realizing there is no hope of understanding, you let go of your past. Strangely though, the world slows down suddenly. The cataract clears, and the loneliness becomes solitude. You feel a remote calm, a refreshing pride, and a tingling excitement. You almost hit the bottom of the ravine but you catch yourself with wings you never knew you had. With a brief look back you rise, and rise, and the solitude is now one of sheer happiness, of pride, joy, and passion.

And suddenly the solitude disappears, and you feel one with the whole world. You elevate yourself with the new found wings and take flight to a new destiny, one that you will change with every flap...

A day and some observations

Made it today on time. Not common these days with a skewed body clock. Squished my finger in the door though. It was cold outside and I was clutching my flask of piping hot coffee. They make good flasks these days, the heat barely gets to the outside. My fingers are frozen stiff. Didn't realize I had squished one - I was grinning stupidly at a pretty girl. After what must have been an eternity, the pain receptors were triggered and the searing pain shot through my brain. A big bearded man is going on about Markov processes and "nice" matrices. The finger calls out for help with quick nerve impulse SOSs. Lucky for me the hot coffee has finally awakened the higher fucntions of my struggling grey mass (Yes, I use higher brain functions to respond to spinal impulses (Boy, is the bearded biophysics chap influencing me)). So yes where was I. Oh ya, the responses. So my middle finger is warming up while all the others are cold as hell (?). This and the coffee and a bearded physicist get me thinking (oh and two lucid dreams in two months) - what if you can cheat the brain to think someone smashed your fingers? Brain responds (even if you don't use higher functions like me) and your fingers heat up (trust me here - significantly!)! No more cold fingers! Look at me I'm so cool, can walk in the cold - no gloves, and I'm not a fool! Hold on a minute, I don't think I quite understand what this man is saying. Oh, but thats not because I'm writing this trash - the higher brain functions are still warming the injured extremity. Phew, think I am vaguely back on track now, thanks to the good old coin toss. Probabilities. Fun. So we have to figure out how to cheat the brain. Its not as impossible as it seems at first (We all know how to procrastinate). As it seems though, convincing yourself to take a break is much easier than convincing yourself you have a smashed finger. I just noticed I don't know a shit about matrices. Anyway, lets think about the following question: Is it possible to remember pain? Motivation is that may be, memory might trigger the same response as to the real thing. Now I didn't mention that lucid dream just to sound cool (Dream is destiny.... (piano fills)). So in this dream, I found it fairly easy to feel sensations in all their glory, and clearly there wasn't any moist grass on my bed. The sensations must be based on memory with a certain amount of intelligent extrapolation. Ofcourse, that you can remember sensations need not imply that the brain would respond to then like if they were real, but lets assume that the brain's not so smart. How does one learn to do such a thing then? How does one remember sensations at will?

Time warp by atleast four hours. I'm in a colloquium now. Non-linear Shrodinger equation and soliton solutions. By a mathematician. I'm not complaining. I wouldn't understand anyway. We were talking about some brain control thing. May be I'll follow that train of thought later. More interesting things now. Physics and math education. Looking forward to some fireworks here. Some bad humour now, and some geek bad humour. People leaving. Speaker's reeling off some objectives of some, well, objective. Overhead projector display is skewed, speaker's buzzing, ofcourse, people seem quite non-perturbed by this. Perhaps everyone's in a state of dream. The Xi on the black board has one squiggle too many. Only the want to continue making observations keeps me here. Why am I making ovservations? Well, it started with the jammed finger and kept going from there. Blog power keeping me going. I'm sure I won't write another for two months atleast. People leaving. Momentary edginess in speakers voice. Areas of rectangles - I know that! (They're 2D Euclidean space rectangles, you see). Momentary amusement about self being so cool and disconnected. Hold on, we just went from cubic Shrodinger equation and soliton solutions to areas of rectangles! Something is seriously wrong here! (Uncoolness floods back in). Did I just hear the mention of rotation groups? Wait, I think she was talking about kids working in groups and rotating among themselves. Lady, there's physicists here, you have to watch what you say! Everyone's completely amused at whats going on. Physicists rejoicing at the expense of a mathematician. Not quite new. Questions being thrown back and forth. This is fun. May be we can think about that thing again (This lecture has started sounding like a governor's speech). Umm, so how does one cheat his head? Oh yes, we were thinking memory. So lets so this. Train. Pick up some perfume, pick up a hammer. Smash your finger. Smell the perfume. Everyone can think of times when a smell has triggered a memory. So may be if you do this enough number of times, you might successfully create a link between that smell and the smashed finger. All you gotta do now, is smell, and hopefully your brain will react like your fingers been smashed. I don't know a think about the brain or anything to do with it, but I'm guessing training of this form will develop the connections. Ofcourse, you may not have any fingers at the end of the exercise but thats apart from the point. Well, lectures over folks. Hers, and mine. Lets go home.

Student Visas II (my interview)

First, a little note: This and the previous article on student visas have been written with respect to the Chennai (Madras) Consulate. Some things might be different at other places.

So I had my visa interview. And I got my visa. Yippee for that :-). It was far simpler than I expected it to be. The whole procedure (enter to exit) took about 30 minutes. This article is not meant to be a guide to visa interviews. Its just got my experiences.

I was allotted a 7:45 am time slot for the interview. Its an approximate time, but they do sort the queue outside the embassy according to your time slots. That was nice, 'cause there were some over enthusiastic (or maybe over cautious) people with a 9:30 slot standing ahead of me in the queue. No point going too early.

There's a quick frisk (more like a do you have so and so on you) before you enter the main area to make sure you're not going to do an Uncle Fester inside. Then theres the preliminary document checking done by Indian folks. They just look at your core documents (Forms, I-20, Receipt etc.), and make sure they're all ok. Try not to trouble them by dropping your docs all over the place and getting wrong photos etc. They're cool, and some are pretty ;-).

In the main block, there was first a biometric fingerprint scan, and then you sit down and wait your turn for the interview. Not a very long wait.

The Interview itself is cool. In my opinion all they wanna see is that your cool, genuine, and not shady. My interview was something like the following: (presented in standard format :-) )

Me: Good Morning
Visa guy (muscular well built phirang chap): 'Mornin', how're you doin'?
Me: Great, how're you?
VO (nodding a good): Lemme see your stuff.
Me pushes in the folder and waits.
VO: Right, so how many places did you apply to and where?
Me: UCSB, USC, Rutgers, Stony Brook, ... (trails off)
VO: Says here you have a full assistantship, can I see your letter. And your GRE and TOEFL scorecards, and your gradecard.
Me: Yeah (pushes in stuff)
VO: So why Rutgers. Just outta curiosity.
Me: I had to choose from USC and Rutgers and RU has a bigger department, which gives me more options.
VO: Right. Your passport will reach you in 2-3 days by courier. Goodluck with you studies.
Me (peaaaaccceee!!!): Thanks.

Exit, stage right.

Is it fair to be dark?

I was taking a bus ride this morning when I happened to notice a girl in the first rows of the bus. She was not ugly, but she was dark. And her features weren't dusky to go with the skin. Somehow the dark skin was a mismatch. She might have even made it as cute with fair skin. I suddenly realised I was staring and quickly shifted my eyes away, but my mind din't.

A little thought and it will occur to us how much we as "intelligent animals" give to looks, or to what we see, more generally. Whether ideas about colour, appearances, and such things are developed due to environmental influences, or whether they are natural it is difficult to say. I don't talk here in general about the whole human race, I talk of a much smaller set, the set of people I know and have come in contact with, whose average mental tendencies will I'm sure be a reasonable match to those any (Indian) 21 year old would know.

Let me first get to this skin colour issue. At a few points in this text, one must pause to ask oneself some of these questions. I'm sure some of the answers will be positive. How many times have you or people around you made a quick note of a person (a)if his/her skin colour was dark (b) fair? Some may make an unconscious note to remember the name or a certain detail about the fairer person, and some others may remember the darker simply because he was so. Ofcourse this is a very artificial situation most won't come across in the same form, so it may be difficult to identify with. We as Indians have a tendency to look up to fair skin and if not look down, not consider specially those with dark skin. I would like to quickly add that this again does not go true for everybody, and there are I'm sure a lot of people who make a conscious effort to avoid this - which is very good.

Lets put ourselves in some more situations. Lets add some common "turn offs". Say you have to meet a person to ask a doubt, say with your class assignment, and you have to choose by asking each of these people non-technical questions. Person A looks smart, fair, handsome or beautiful, person B is plain, dark, and doesn't speak very fluent English. (the English language - another "value adding" aspect we'll look at later.) A non-technical question would obviosuly test to a greater degree the persons social skills, and although you know very well that you cannot decide on this basis who the better person is to answer a query, more and more meetings with these people, will subconsciously make you lean to A, the smarter, crisper, and fairer individual. Again, exceptions exist, and I don't intend to generalize too much, but it is a good idea to search oneself for even a hint of such emotions.

Now, this issue is more prominent with the opposite sex, and then, even more in the guy looking at girl direction. I am told women do not associate so much importance to appearances - instinctively. When a person looks at another of the opposite gender, although completely unintentional, the instincts act a little bit, and it is difficult to look at the person with a blank mind. And since for a complete stranger, looks are the only thing that can be seen, they do contribute to a first impression. And there, fair wins over dark. It takes a dark girl very very pretty and symmetric features to be called pretty, but fair skin compensates a lot for features that leave a lot to be desired. Just imagine some (fair) attractive faces with dark skin and some (dark) unattractive or plain faces with fair skin, and you'll see what I mean.

So thats about the colour thing. Now I'll spend some time on more of these "first impression" creating things. An example. I have a friend, and the first thing he does when he hears about or sees a new person or profile, is note the surname. This person has agreed to considering a person for a job (in a hypothetical situation) because he was a brahmin, and not considering the other because he belonged to a reserved category, or was a non brahmin. It was quite a shock to me that people of my generation and even my age think this way, but I'm sure there are many others who think like this too. And there's nothing conscious about it. It has been imbibed so deeply in the system that its gut reaction.

Howevermuch you deny the existence of these biases, each and every one of us has our rules. We "gauge" people, and we can't do so unless we have a benchmarking system. We have ideals and we compare. Its the most natural thing to do - to understand something you connect it and compare it with something you know and understand. A person who's learned all his distances in kilometers will for a while atleast convert from miles till he/she gets a hang of what the mile "feels" like. These biases have to systematically looked at and eliminated from the regular thought process. After all, you could've been born fair or dark, cute or ugly, smart or dull, and its to a large degree a random process (not considering all the genetics stuff). So since its not really a fair game, it is everybody's right to be given a fair (sorry thats how the words are, even the language itself seems colour-biased) chance. Oh yes about English, learn to speak good English - it is something that you can effect and unless you are in oriental lands, something that a lot of people will still keep using to "place" you. Its not fair to be made dark, but you gotta kick yourself if you don't wanna fix what you can.

The Drive

It was over four hours since we set out, and beginning to get boring. All signs of a conversation had died, and words seemed far and few. Even the road offered no surprises as the two martinis on the dash stayed still. She could feel it too. It was tiring and the long stretches of gray dotted with green offered no respite. I had lost all sense of destination and with every new mile the road seemed to lead more and more towards nowhere.

The first stop was exciting and held a lot of promise. Expectation was fresh and we drank it with joy. Little was I aware that four hours down the road would get so dreary and dead. It was almost unimaginable then. But raods can twist and turn, sharper than the sharpest bends you'd ever dream of, and then, the martinis hadn't even shook yet.

For a while the tarmac was straight and steady, smooth and fluid, and we looked at each other more often than we looked at the road that lay ahead. Much more. A little too much. But luck was on our side and we avoided all the trafic without much effort. That was when the first stop came. The one that held promise. Promise. Seems like a word too ideal for this world. What do little minds know of the future but. If every man's sails caught the wind, there wouldn't be a drive.

The slick roads gave way to some dirt tracks for a short while. But my wheels were built to take them. We struggled across many patches of wet and deep, almost having to push at times, but got out nevertheless. We still looked at each other with fondness, and the courage of silken paths aheads. Courage though was starting to turn to hope and the silk was starting to show moth holes. The fourth hour was nearing. The third round of martinis stood on the dash.

It was over four hours now, and beginning to get boring. All signs of a conversation had died, and words seemed far and few. Even the road offered no surprises as the fourth round of martinis on the dash stayed still. This time still they stayed. She could feel it too. The road was lost and the grays and greens were blending into a color unknown. Everything around seemed reason enough to stop. The martinis were giving me hope yet.

Five hours. Fifth round of martinis. This time they spilt. One rapid turn. The door swung open and I hit a boulder. My car wouldn't start again. I left it all. The longing to look back. I walked and kept walking. Hoping for the hope of a new ride. A new drive.