A poem that will never be forgotten

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood and I --
I took the one less travelled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost

I've never ever read a group of english words assembled better than this.

Courtesy Shubhi

My Kinda Teddy Bear

Group94

I'm just trying out this hot new thingy from the Blogger guys, and it rocks! I had to post a pic, and what better pic to post than the most beautiful lady to have adorned my desktop. 

Why specs matter

An Insignificant but Interesting article

Over the last few days I’ve had a few events playing ping pong with my eternal philosophy. All utterly useless, I must warn. It all started around a week back, when I was discussing DOOM 3's amazing graphics with a few friends. Somehow the discussion moved onto how, even after years of progress, man made systems are limited to a view of some thousand pixels. Someone asked, what is the resolution of the view we have of our world? It’s probably some unimaginably huge number, infinity to us. Optical zoom is infact said to be limited only by practical boundaries. That, again, extends to all of man’s inventions. Someone put forward the theory that all of man’s invention is indeed nothing but an emulation of nature’s creations. Indeed, who can argue with that.

And then it had to come to this. How terribly insignificant our existence is. We don’t know what’s beyond the Universe or what’s inside the electron; hell, we don’t know how it all started and when it’s going to end. It’s like, there’s this thing, something that is deeply entrenched in our daily existence, yet something that we haven’t been able to discover for our entire existence, something that we cannot even think about, which is beyond our domain of comprehension. We’re like a line drawn on a page of some cosmic book. We might be a part of an intricate design; but are more likely to be a careless scrawl.

Then, just the day before yesterday, I was reading an article on some blog, and it struck me, if we’re even thinking that there may be other pages than the one we are written on, just doing that makes us something different. Since a line on a page cannot even think that there is something beyond. But we can.

And then, someone made me a courtesy call. Someone showed me some care. Someone shared a dream. And as I watched the moon glow yesterday night, I thought, of course we have a purpose. Each and every one of us. And we live it every day. We are a part of whatever or whoever is running the show, if we weren’t there it would contradict his laws. We hold the universe together. Then the cynicism rooted inside asked, so is that all? Is our significance limited to just existing?

I had a look at the moon again. And the stars around it. I thought, what is their worth? What are they here for? This universe, all the worlds and stars included. Beyond their vastness and incomprehensibility, do they really serve a purpose? Maybe that’s where we’re wrong. We tend to mistake enormity for significance. The dynamics and vigor of the minds and hearts of human beings are much more interesting than the vast spaces of the cosmos.

For all we know, the purpose of an entire universe may be to ignite the hearts of two lovers lying down, watching the stars in awe on a clear night.

Insomniac

I see the shadows whispering,
as if making a silent pact
The winds are blowing swiftly
but they keep the autumn leaves intact

I feel the creatures closing in
waiting for a call
The feelings grow stronger
A touch, a sound, a bawl

As if in tandem, the moon comes out
It's light unseen, figure illusory

And then the figures dance
and the wind dies
In an opera of the morbid,
the autumn leaves fly

The figures of the dark
they appear every time
Every time I close the door
Every time I shut the light

I can't close my eyes
I'm afraid of the dark

The Answers

Before you look, give the puzzles one last shot (look down)

Who am i kidding. Click on the comments link, you lazy slob.

Three riddles

1. Given two bars exactly similar in appearance; one being iron while the other being a magnet; how do you find which one's which?

2. How do you plant 4 trees in my square garden so that they are all at the same distance to one another?

3. There is a strong, blaringly obvious, factual error in my last post which certifies its fallacy. Can you find it? (For this one, you'll need some primitive knowledge about India)

A monkey's tail and a bird's wings

There's a monkey in the jungle
Watching a vapour trail
Caught up in the conflict
Between his brain and his tail

19-2000, Gorillaz

The only time I visited a wildlife sanctuary was last summer; we had a family trip to some Tiger Sanctuary in Gujarat. We didn't see no damn Tigers. But it was a good experience, moving around in jeeps, with our faithful, rifle wielding guide, who by the way sucked at his job; his expert comments ranging from "Look, a giraffe!" to "Tigers can be dangerous". Yeah, as if I was gonna hand-feed one of them.

Anyways, as I said, we saw no Tigers. So it never came to that. The sanctuary had a biggish pond, with a flock of some very beautiful migratory birds, storks I think. We were watching them in peace when the dumb fella went up too close to one of them, with evil intensions. "Pakad ke dekhenge, sabjii ?". Birds are good at gauging such intensions, and they are good at flying.

So the entire flock flew off, leaving the poor man with no hope for extra tips, and the audience in humor over his obvious disappointment.

But there was something strange about this flock. Flocks of migratory birds usually have a strong sense of unity to them, they move together, following the same migratory path every year, across generations. But this flock had a bird that flew in a different direction. It initially flapped it's wings slowly, moving in random directions. It looked unsure, as if it was engaged in a battle within itself. As if it was fighting some bounds. The bounds of convention?

And then, as the rest of the flock flew farther and farther away, until it was completely obliterated from sight; the bird made a symbolic deep dive, and charged towards a new direction with such a fervor which indicated to me that it had lost all its shackles. And boy, did it fly. It flew like a bird which had just learnt how to fly; yet it flew higher and stronger than I have ever seen a bird fly.

I'd never know what happened to it, probably it wandered off to drier regions and lived its last as the seasons changed.

Or maybe, just maybe, it went to greener pastures and found newer waters, maybe as the seasons changed it reached more compatible regions; and eventually became the forerunner of an entire new generation of migratory birds, which flew on the path set by this one bird.

Until one day, when one of them found it in itself to challenge convention and find its own path.