(In) Sanity I Trust

I , Raseel , the worshipper of Homer J Simpson, Commander of the Pot-belly army, Chief of the Lazy Forces, Believer of Sloth and Gluttony, Eater of the First Order of Ultra-Junk foods, Enemy of the Exercise, hereby declare the Commencement of the Barik Raseel Project.

Join me , oh Lazy and Fat Ones, in my journey to Slimville !!!

It is only with a tear in my eye , sadness in my heart and a burp in my mouth that I sadly announce the declaration of this project.

It is not to betray our community, but teach a lesson to the theirs.

Fret not my pot-bellied brothers and sisters, for I’m not crossing the line forever. It is only with a focussed intention in my mind that I have taken this decision and I shall be back before long.

It is a necessary , albiet dirty, step that must be taken.

I do this not for to loose pounds but to gain respect.

My love for food and all things lazy has not died, but is in fact, kept safe in the deepest recesses of my , uhh.. tummy.

So wish me luck, as I embark upon this difficult task, through pangs of hunger and seas of sweat, …. as I reach the Goal and forever end the wretched Argument and answer  The Question :

Can they really do it ?

They were standing a bit relaxed. The morning had been good. Quite a few from the other side had been slain. Their numbers were far too low. The more confident senior ranking members had started discussing of the celebrations. They wouldn’t think of attacking even if their numbers had been double. That would mean pure, intentional suicide on their part.

From down here, they could see their defense shields shining in the hot sun. They must be thinking what would be the least embarrassing way to concede defeat, one of them thought.

Meanwhile, the almost-defeated, bruised and battered, bloodied and tired soldiers, were in fact, planning the least embarrassing way to concede defeat. Just lay down the weapons and hold your head high. Accept defeat with dignity, suggested one…. Murmurs of approval…. Don’t mentioned “defeat”, substitute the word with “truce”, said another voice…. A louder murmur !!

More such suggestions. One could hear the collective brain thinking !!!

Only one amongst them doesn’t seem to be contemplating the situation at hand. They were still a good number of them alive. Sure, the ones below, were way too many for an easy victory. But still, it wasn’t impossible.

Was everyone else really ready to put down their weapons ? Did they really believe everything was over ? Do such people really exist ?

Even as he gripped his defense shield harder , he was unable to comprehend the psychology behind theirs.

One quick glance of sympathy towards his colleague. “Poor souls” … he spared a thought… “They are doomed to win !!!”

The next moment he found himself bouncing down the slope. The hot, fine-grained sand made it difficult for him to pick up speed. But after the first few steps, he had picked up a good pace.

They saw him jump down and start to run in the direction of the enemy.

First they thought it was an hallucination.

Then , they wished it was !!!

As he was nearing his full speed, he could feel each and every tendon in his body. He could feel his muscles tightening and relaxing with his every move. The shield was fiercely gripped. No one would be able to take or break through his defense mechanism. Let them try their luck on the exposed parts of his body.

A cool streak of sweat was breaking down his brow. The rhythmic motion of his running and the swelling anger from within was almost soothing. In a different circumstance, in a different world, in a different time, his heart-rate would have been dangerously quickened. But today, he had to fight his biggest battle !! Today it would not skip a single beat !! Today it remained loyally constant !!!

The wind from the opposite direction was brushing past his eyes, causing them to water slightly. That didn’t blur his vision !! That didn’t budge his focus !!!

When the soldiers below saw a dot coming towards them, most of them couldn’t suppress a smile. One lone warrior comes to take on their entire army , while all his colleagues contemplate giving up and watch him run towards certain death ?

The commander heads asked for binoculars so that they could see who this foolish albeit brave warrior was.

One glance at his menacing persona and they knew, that more than a handful of their soldiers would perish trying to stop him. Sigh.. the wastage !!

As a form of respect towards the running warrior, the commander ordered two rows of soldiers to be ready for attack. Somewhat bemusingly, the soldiers prepared themselves.

Let’s teach this son of a bitch a thing or two for acting smart, they thought.

Even as the small puddle of an army below him was slowly turning into the large sea that it was, he did not loose his pace. There was no thought of his colleagues, who had not joined him. There was no fear of death. No tiredness in the body from the grueling run in scorching desert under the unforgiving sun. No illusions of victory. He had no time for perspectives !!!

He was just focussed aggressively on what lay ahead, in the next few minutes.

And then it happened !!!

From somewhere within him rose a blood-curling, guttural shriek, the likes of which no man had ever heard before. It was the bellow of a determined mind.

It was the thundering sound of a man who knows what he is doing. It was the kind of sound that tears through ambiguity , through indecisions, through self-doubt. The shriek conveyed a single , unmistakable sentiment of the brave warrior.

“Bring it On !!!”

All those who heard this in-human wail, found a chill running down their spine !!!

Those who were to face him, in all their confidence and knowledge that they were backed by innumerable colleagues (whilst he comes down alone), felt a tug in their loins. They felt a hard stone rising up their throat, so that they had to swallow to resume normal breathing.

Even as he ran full-throttle towards his so-called nemesis, he was now aware of another sound. A sound quite like the one coming out of his own body. The shrieks had the same rhythm, the same tempo, all in all, the same notes.

From below, the army and commanders, their jaws dropped, poured into their binoculars, their eyes popping out. They were seeing a sight they knew they would not be seeing had it not been for that god forsaken dot.

One single dot making it’s way down the huge mound of sand…. followed by a thousand other exactly similar looking dots.

None of them seemed to exhibit any fear, doubt or uncertainty in their eyes. None of them seemed to move hesitantly. All of them looked eactly alike… determined, focussed, fearless, emotionless, alone !!!

A thousand sure hands came down upon a million shocked, unsure, over-confident ones and what followed after that was a clamor of metal and flesh, only to be paused intermittently by the gushing of blood, like no one had ever heard before.

After an indeterminate interval of time, HE stood on top the bodies panting. Bloodied and bruised, battered and tired, but with a gleam of victory in his eyes.

As he looked around the scores of dead bodies and his colleagues, he thought to himself, “Poor souls. They were doomed to win !!!”

A post about another digression !!

I have decided not to post any technical topics on this blog.

I prefer to remain insane here.

But those of you who have liked by previous tech posts, I have moved them to a new place.

I shall continue with my technical posts HERE.

Henceforth, I shall not be posting anything related to Open Source software here.

Instead, I shall continue posting on this topic as The OpenSourceDeal‘s official blogger.

So to get all the news on Open Source software, catch my blogs at The OpenSourceDeal blog

I recently did a guest blog on pluggd.in, India’s TechCrunch.

Thanks to Ashish for posting the article.

Feel free to digg it.

The last time I was mesmerised, …. not just fascinated or merely spell-bound, but mesmerised by music was a couple of years ago in Bangalore when I attended this concert by a li’l band called “Shakti“. I did go to an “Iron Maiden” concert this year, but frankly, the sound system there wasn’t as good and apart from the fact that I was hearing one of my favourite bands of all time, there was no real acoustic pleasure.

But last weekend, I attended a concert called “Urja : The Power of Music“.

Team Urja consisted of the following luminaries :

Kumaresh and Ganesh on Violins. They were called child-prodigies on Violins. Playing Violin, a considerable difficult instrument to play, from the age 8, these guys are apparently revered in the world of Indian classical music .

Taufeeq Qureshi : Youngest son of Ustad Allah Rakha is also a world renowned Percussionist who can “play” music with his mouth as well as with his hands.

Ustad Zakir Hussain : Last, but certainly not the least, the front-man of this little cabal was Mr.Twiddle-Fingers himself, the fasted Table player in the world, Ustad Zakir Hussain. He needs no introduction and I will not waste any time in doing so either.

When we entered the Navrosjee Wadia College stadium where this foursome were to perform, it was pretty empty. I was a bit disappointed to see such a dearth of enthusiasm especially when such an esteemed and august audience was playing. But I was not to be dis-illusioned. In a matter of half an hour, the whole ground was filled with teeming bodies of music lovers.

What happened in the next couple of hours was magic. I could go on and on about how I was transcended to a different world, how the percussions of Taufeeq Qureshi and melodies from the Violins of the prodigious brothers was immensely entertaining, how the complete tandem and synchronization between all the maestros was flawless, or how even a mediocre music listener like myself could understand what level of practise or riyaz these stalwarts must have undergone. But I will not bother with all these ramblings.

What had be completely trans-fixed were the fingers of the Tabla Maestro. As Zakir started his solo, the pin-drop silence in a stadium of atleast 5000 people, was deafening. He then proceeded to hypnotise this body of listeners for 20 minutes. 20 minutes !! Being a Tabla player myself, I know how physically challenging it is to play for 5 minutes continuously at the speed at which he does.

I was watching his hands closely on the Mega Screens, but in vain. He was producing sounds from the Tabla pair that I had never heard before. The camera could not catch the movement of all his fingers, so that the effect created was as if there was more than one person playing the instrument.

All in all, from all the three performances that I have been to, I think this was Zakir’s best. The next time, there is a performance by the Maestro, I’ll make sure to update the details here so that people have not yet attended his performances can join in and know what they have missed till date.