Behavioral Merry go round

Wiser heads than yours truly have acknowledged that life goes around in circles. You might have seen "History repeats itself" or some such similar sentiment expounded from pulpits of varying degrees of reconditeness. What it all comes down to is that there are only certain sequences that occur in life. So if you hang around long enough, the same sequence is bound to show up again.

In this entry, I am more interested in the repetition of ideas and way of life rather than a repetition of events itself. Time and again, many of us watched as some ideas materialize, get out of fashion and are again resurrected at a later point in time. Very reminiscent of Hegel's thesis-antithesis-synthesis postulate. A thesis comes along gets outdated and then is synthesized at a later point in time with better and deeper understanding. If an idea is good in its essence, it would surface back again even if it got temporarily dis-credited in the interim. But when it does resurface, it would be much better understood the second (or maybe the third) time around.

Recently, this recurrence theme struck me in a totally unrelated context. I was watching one of those science fiction movies in which the heroine is skimpily clad in synthetic apparel that can barely contain her abundant features. It looked very close to another movie that I watched elsewhere with its main theme featuring tribals in the pacific islands. What was interesting is that the heroine in the tribal movie reminded me of the one in the sci-fi movie both in mannerisms and dressing. Both were amazons, clad in bikinis, warrior like and laughed like hyenas. So I thought if the same woman were to act in both the movies, all she has to do is to swap one skimpy bikini with another one.

Looks like we haven't changed much with the passage of time!! Or maybe we just started with the thesis that clothes are only required to cover your most "vulnerable" parts and then wandered off into an anti-thesic tangent(if that is the word I want) experimenting with different varieties of apparels. Finally, we synthesized our understanding of dressing and realized again that a minimalist apparel is the way to go. That is why our vision of the women in the future is very close to "primitive" tribal women.

Interesting huh?

Cats on the cradle

I have always loved Harry Chapin's Cats on the Cradle song. It is a very touching song and takes me down memory lane to the happy times I had with my dad. It tells you to act on your noble sentiments - it is not sufficient to have them.

Another song echoing parallel sentiments is "Always on my mind". This also tells (of course in a totally different context) that the intention is there though the implementation may be lacking.

It has been fairly rough for me to follow these sentiments in real life. Many times I wished I could do something but wont get to do it either because of upbringing, environment or plain old inertia. But I try to get around to doing it some time somehow. Like this blog for instance, it has been there in my mind to do it for a long time but could never sit down in a placid enough state to pen down what I feel. Not that there is someone sitting on the other side eagerly awaiting for the next drop of nectar to fall so they can lap it up. But it feels good to get it off the chest.

It is especially true with my dad. I wanted to do so many things with him, get him to come and stay with me and involve him in multiple ways with my day to day life rather than having this weekly conversation on the phone (we never lived in the same city for the past 19 years) . I did spend time with him but not to the extent that I wanted. With his passing, I had this intense sadness. But somehow, I feel much closer to him. Everytime I see his picture, I know he is around in the room or in the vicinity. And it is not spooky either - just a plain sense of closeness.

So there it is in black and white - I love you dad. Feels good just saying it.

See What I am saying???

We went the other day to catch some music from Buddy Guy in Delhi. Of course, being the show man that he was, Buddy Guy was great. It was interesting that he kept verifying if the audience was following what he was saying which I guess is natural considering that we are from an "unknown" culture and language.

I kind of began to see why "See what I am saying" (which I would abbreviate to SWIAS) has become such a popular ebonics expression. Yeah if you spent half your life having to explain what you mean because the people were unable to follow your slang - I can quite see you making SWIAS your stock in trade.

Of course black comedy is full of SWIAS. I have seen a sitcom the other day where every second word was that. It went like "I see what i am saying went up the girl see what I am saying and axed her see what i am saying about her mom see what i am saying" - That was it.. I really could not see what he was saying.