F005: Casualty of Causality

ST Notes: It's 4am. I should be studying but this story needs to be told. It is those few pieces which were born out of their title instead of being given one.
PS- Turning out to be completely different than what had first hit me.
PPS-Now that I look at it, it's a bit raw but I realize, I started out just with a title and no thought. *chuckle*

The long lecture hall was beginning to empty. There were those who were lingering around, trying to enjoy the air conditioned room for a few more seconds and then there were those who were with the professor at the bottom of the hall, asking their doubts.
As Professor Connors was leaving, a young mind stepped in front of him. The mind, inquisitive and inspired, spoke, 'Sir, aren't cause and effect irrelevant?'

The professor halted. He gazed at this young mind and the person that bore it. The eyes were bright with wonder and a sense of pride surrounded him. 'Now that you have made that carefully worded sentence in order to gain my attention, which you have, would you care to elaborate?'

The young man faltered. His confidence lost a bit, he spoke nervously, 'Sir, what I meant was, we now understand more about the space time continuum than we ever did-'

'A statement which is true when spoken at any moment from the 1900s to now. My boy, we shall always know today more than what we knew yesterday. But I understand what you're trying to say. Go on.'

'Right. Sorry. We now know sufficiently accurate information about the space time continuum to understand that cause and effect do not necessarily follow each other. We can now confidently say that time is actually stationary and that we are passing through it. That cause and its effect are present simultaneously in the same instant. All of time is happening simultaneously. Why then do we take cause and effect to be an understandable, quantifiable scientific pursuit? Why not look at the bigger picture? That causality is a sub set of time and that it just our perception of time that gives causality any meaning? What are your thoughts on it?'

'While you're trying to crucify causality, let me refresh your memory.' The professor started drawing circles as sets and arrows to specific connections and timelines. The blackboard soon turned into what looked like a war zone. 'You were conceived AS A RESULT OF sexual intercourse. You were born in an hospital AS A RESULT OF a team of a medically trained professionals. You were educated, fed and kept alive AS A RESULT OF monetary incentives received by your parents which have their own sets but let us focus on just you. AS A RESULT OF all this, you are able to stand here and think and you say causality is irrelevant?'

The student shivered. The raw power of intelligence had torn him down to shreds.

'Now don't wither like an autumn leaf. The way you are seeing things is from an outside perspective. Outside time. But you forget that you exist IN TIME. Your interest must be nurtured and one day you might just make some new discovery in it but I just want to make you understand something. In trying to look at the bigger picture, don't step back and gaze. Instead, look deep and gaze at the fabric of the universe. For grandiosity is attained from the smallest of miracles. Time may pass through us but we experience time in a linear fashion. We may wonder about alternate timelines but it rests upon causality. We, this world, humanity, everything depends upon causality. We are the casualty of causality.'

Silence fell across the room as students and faculty members crowded and silently heard this searing mind.

'We are the casualty of causality. Everything that happens to us is a direct result of some conceivable or inconceivable action. The reason we are having this conversation. The reason the Earth is spinning. The reason the Sun shines. From actual casualties of war or disease to casualties of the human situation, we are wounded by our own hands. That is where science comes in. That is where we, as mere mortals, try to understand the near-divine interplay of objects and organisms that we call life. Knowledge leads us forward and that is causality too. The inevitability of its existence is reason of its omnipotence. Even in its own definition. This beautiful alliterative phrase is our whole existence. Love, hate, war, peace, youth, death, anger, lust. We shall always be a casualty.'

With the finality of a judges gavel, the professor moved through the stunned crowd at that remark. Slowly and steadily, an applause grew. As it reached its crescendo and died, the professor chuckled, 'And that was a result of you asking me that question. Nice, eh?'

The crowd laughed and slowly dissipated except for one young mind, stunned into deep reverence and thought. A casualty of brilliance.

F004: The Leather Spine

(ST Notes: pending publication. T'was a productive WhatsApp chat. Thank you, muse)

The tired brow was sweating,

exhausted legs burning.

His rough ragged breathing

and his chest was heaving

For twas a long day
as all days now seemed.
Though his body was broken
only his eyes did gleam.

Darting from corner to corner
searching for the treasure.
To release him from this prison
and into a world of pleasure.

And lo behold, there it lay
amongst his sheets of yesterday.
Where he'd left it in his sleep
when his demons were at bay

His fingers found the spine

and forgot their fatigue
Softly he traced a line
along its crumpled being

Breathing in their story

Flipping through their lives
of kings, queens, wizards
of daughters, husbands and wives

To him they were real
more than a world now gone dim
And he was a part of them
as they were a part of him

He picked up were he'd left
A sunny day of spring

and though the night grew on

No darkness could it bring

And onwards he devoured

pages after pages
Their lives now he favoured
Than his own, of ages.

And when he did finish
The pain tore him apart

Melancholy filled his heart
as their souls did depart

And now the darkness crept
The dirty room visible.
For then he silently wept

Only emptiness he found

The night did wear out
and in came a sunny day
But his face was blank
and happiness far away

The same weary paths
His body now dragged on
His mind was somewhere
Lost from dusk to dawn

And then he saw
A sight sweeter than wine
For his heart did thaw
As he saw another spine.

Image001: MBBS Typography

MBBS Typography

F003P00: Forward to the Past

(A new start for a different story. Haven't even given it a serious thought. Let's see how it goes.)

It started as a very silly idea. A very childish thought at controlling the uncontrollable. It was human nature I guess, gaining more control on the unknown, the bizarre, the unavoidable. It was born out of regret, guilt and resentment. It was born out of sighs, tears and anger.

It was born out of a human trying to play God.

We can choose our future but not our past.

Why not?

F002: The Medical Marvel

ST Notes: After a long time, a new post and that too in the fictional category. The following is an article that was formulated upon request and on the promise of a Domino's pizza. The article was typed but the pizza is yet to be had.

Some may analyse this is as a commentary on our disconnected personality, with others and ourselves and the hope to reverse it. Others will say it to be a subtle remark upon karma and few will see this is as the dark side of enlightenment.
The truth is: It is a Sci-Fi rambling made palatable for the ink.
Certainly not my best attempt but one that is very close to my heart.

(First published in GoSuMag 13. Released 25th April 2014.)

The Medical Marvel


It started one day when I was brushing my teeth. Time seemed to slow down. I noticed a strange sharpness in the way my hand moved. For the first time in my life, I was aware of the fact that my hand was moving.

Dont get me wrong. I am not a paraplegic, nor am I disabled. I was very much capable of moving my arm and every other conceivable body part. But for the first time was AWARE of my hand moving. I not only could acknowledge my hand moving but also FEEL it. It was and still is difficult to explain but it happened. The brilliant, tingling sensation went away as it had come.

The next day, I fell asleep on the couch on my left arm. As I woke up, I realized I must have slept on it for hours because it felt heavy and cold and powerless. As I tried to move it, IT happened again. I could FEEL my arm WAKING up, as if it was a separate entity, yet a part of me. I could FEEL the veins emptying and the warmth returning. I could FEEL the power in my arm, the tone of my muscles and the tension in my sinews. There was a change this time though. IT remained.

The whole week, I marveled my new sense. I called it Appreciation. We can see, smell, touch, taste and hear things but do we really appreciate them? For the first time in human history, I could. I could Appreciate my left arm and through it, the world. Even with my eyes closed, I could Appreciate each physical variable my left arm could 'feel'. The best way I can put it is that I could suddenly very finely resolve the impulses that came from my arm to my cortex. Like my usual senses had been amplified a 100 times. I could feel the temperature gradient over each square inch of my arm, the tension in each muscle fibre, the stresses on my bones and the force of my blood. If I concentrated, I could dissect through my arm, in my head, and understand my physiology and anatomy. The more I concentrated, the better I got and the more volume of my body I could Appreciate. It took 2 weeks for it spread across both my arms, 5 days for my torso, 3 for my legs and 1 for my head. Finally, I could Appreciate myself as a whole and as a million pieces.

It did take a toll on me. I was exhausted rapidly at first and developed a fever. From my new found skill I could gather that it was the price I had to pay. While walking, I could feel my individual fibres contracting, individual muscles. I could feel the build up of metabolites, the change in blood flow, the change in pressure in my lungs, even the motions of my bowels. I knew my body better than anyone. More than that, I could sense the world with a new reverence. Each surface, each blow of the wind brought ecstatic impulses in my mind. It filled my body with light.

Slowly, I made an organization system. I could decrease my sensitivity to a bare minimum or highlight one portion of my body. I had filters through which I could sense one particular stream of information of my body. Be it oxygenation or the molecular concentration of glucose. Every quantifiable information was available.

However, soon I realized that apart from my increased sensory skills, there slowly crept in increased motor skills too. From gross to the fine, with increased details available to me, I could now control my body as finely too.

It was great. I had finally figured it out. I could control my metabolism. Surprisingly, homeostasis is a wasteful practice. As I directed my body, I put up increased insulation, redirecting extra fat exclusively to my skin, burning the rest up into proteins. I contracted a certain group of fibres at a time and randomly changed them to avoid fatigue. This way my stamina tripled but my consumption dropped to 20%. Emotions, stress and exercise were a joke now that I could control even my neurotransmitters. I had voluntary control over everything. Liver, kidney, lungs, glands, muscles and heart. Everything. I took it too far once, heightening my Appreciation by focusing on increasing my I/O impulses using redirected neurotransmitters. My brain started burning up, my vitals going haywire. I imagined with increased capacity, I could handle the cost but it was vicious cycle of exponential proportions. The more I Appreciated, the more I had to take care of my body and its requirements. Before I burned up, I closed my eyes and focused just on my breath. The rapid rhythm and tried slowing it down. It started working and I slowly infused melatonin, growing drowsy and finally sleeping.

People never can understand my condition but it was amusing indeed to me, I was a superhero in myself. I could manage my strength, stamina, longevity of life, fatigue in an invincible way. I could outlive everyone, I could outperform everyone, I could outdo everyone. But I couldn't. This mutation was my boon and my bane. It all started when I started wondering about what was under my skull (using what was under my skull).

You see, there are some properties of receptors that you can overcome only till some time. This one was called tolerance. Once I got used to my heightened sense, it became my baseline. I felt normal. I hadn't felt normal in years. However, I couldn't erase my memories. I remembered the awesomeness and now sorely missed it. Life became depressingly normal. Even though I still retained my Appreciation, it was no longer special. Change is eternal. But once you attain the limits of perception, what then?


I went deeper.


From what I Appreciated, I knew that it was not extra sensorial perception but a mixture of hypersensitive neurons and highly diffused connections. So basically, my brain was much more than normally wired with the different receptors and motor organs of my body. Each area of my brain received, interconnected and sent much more data than normal. But what about my brain? Can I FEEL my brain think up my thoughts, my actions? Could I Appreciate my brain? Could I Appreciate the thing that was Appreciating? Could I merge the physical and psychological aspects of the human mind? Could I analyze the brain, my thoughts, how they were formed, my memories, how they were stored? I went into a trance. I had never concentrated harder on anything else. I had to do it. I had to test my limits or forever be stuck in this hellish prison of a boring static reality. I had to Appreciate not my body but my being. I ended up Appreciating my Appreciation. Now that is an explosion right there. I'm surprised I didn't die. It was probably cause of tolerance that I survived for 5 seconds before flat lining.

The funny thing was that in this whole experience I had almost forgotten that I was a medical student and, though I had been hardly performing my duties, I was on hospital campus 24 hours a day. The first thing I remember after I was resuscitated was her eyes. She was leaning over me, crying, Her tears fell on my face, my lips. That was the most real thing I had felt in months. The amplitude of impulse related to wind velocity didn't matter, the force distribution of various surfaces didn't matter, the pressure dynamics of my left renal artery didn't matter, What mattered was that she was crying. Because of me. It struck me like a thunderbolt. I had to stop.

And I did. All because of her. Her smile was the strongest impulse I needed. Her lips, the only surface that I cared about. Her walk, the only motion worth appreciating. She brought me back.

No, I didnt lose it. I still have it, locked down in the recesses of my mind like cancer, waiting to come back. First it was hard but like every de-addiction program, it slowly became easier. I no longer felt the need to dissect and divulge and distort and discover. I started to experience the world as it came. I wanted cause and effect to affect my fate, not my mind. I still observed but with a chuckle on my lips. I remarked on the subtleties of nature. But there was a time of the day when it all came back to me, when it was an necessary evil.

To keep my brain in the natural rhythm, my brain must sleep or else IT will come back and I would again become absorbed with the details and mechanically go about myself. And sleep is not easy to come once you have Appreciated all physiological processes. Then it was an order, now I wanted it to be a routine, involuntary. So as a quick remedy, I Appreciate my mind every night. Just the right amount. Just a little bit and the last thought always is her smile.

Every night, I die.



What brings me back each morning isn't me, isn't my brain, isn't my mutation, isn't God.


It is her smile.

NF003: October Sky

After a flurry of episodes, starting from Sherlock's new series (the new episode comes out in a few hours) to Game of Thrones S03 to Mythbusters, The Big Bang Theory and finally ending the streak by the movie October Sky, I am drawn that very corner of my mind which dwells upon such thoughts.

October Sky is a biographical account of how a small town boy dreams big, of making rockets and succeeds. Against all odds and resistances, he does succeed. Reminds me of my brother for two reasons: His recent visit and how much he resembled the lead character.

The odd ones, the misfits are the ones who make it big, who push the limits and actually make it. Sounding like Steve Jobs, aint I? But it is true. Not only in movies is the underdog the surprise victor of a challenge. Its the novelty of it which makes it noteworthy. A normal man, climbing a rung of the metaphorical ladder is an expected pattern of growth. It falls within the limits of reality that society defines. It is the weird-os, the eccentrics who surprise everyone with their mere reaching out for that same rung. That is something that people never seem to digest. But that was in the past. Now, the underdog is expected to win. It has become an expected pattern.

The thrill remains.

Moving on, I realise that this is turning out to be a repetitive and lousy writing style of fine. I would have to take your leave till February. The burden of academia (not really) and my extra curricular activities burden me. My time rather. My mind remains free.

Till then, keep your wits sharp. The mind is the only blade that gets sharper on use. Valar morghulis