War poems.

While thinking of war, a poem by Wilfred Owen always comes to my mind . The one titled "The Strange Meeting". 

The poem ends with the following lines :

'I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now....'


Also comes to mind the story of the Christmas Truce, a brief, rare event that took place in between Germans and the English during WW I . During Christmas, a brief cease-fire was ordered. During this time, soldiers from both sides got out of the trenches, into the No-man's land and celebrated Christmas together, shared cigarettes, showed each other their photographs, sang together. In fact a letter from a young English soldier to his family reads -

'.. the most amazing Christmas I ever had. Just before dinner I had the pleasure of shaking hands with several Germans: a party of them came half way over to us; so several of us went out to them. I exchanged one of my balaclavas for a hat. I've also got a button off one of their tunics. We also exchanged smokes etc. and had a decent chat. They say they won't fire tomorrow if we don't so I suppose we shall get a bit of a holiday - perhaps. After exchanging autographs and them wishing us a Happy New Year we departed and came back and had our dinner.

We can hardly believe that we've been firing at them for the last week or two - it all seems so strange. At present its freezing hard and everything is covered with ice...

There are plenty of huge shell holes in front of our trenches, also pieces of shrapnel to be found. I never expected to shake hands with Germans between the firing lines on Christmas Day and I don't suppose you thought of us doing so"

These hard-hitting lines bring forward the wretchedness of war.

The English Patient

Finished this amazing book called "The English Patient" by Micheal Ondaatje, yesterday. The book revolves around four people - Hana, a young nurse, who's is nursing her last patient, a burns victim; Caravaggio, an Italian thief, whose thumbs were cut-off when he was caught; Kip, a young Sikh sapper, involved in mine-defusing; and at the centre lies the English patient, burnt beyond recognition, without a face or a name, with just his Herodotus with him, being tended to by the nurse. In the background, the world war-II is raging. The book describes war, through the eyes of these people staying together at the Villa San Girolamo at Pisa. Each of the four people is a victim of the war. Hana - forced to grow up suddenly in the war, tending to soldiers on the verge of death; the Sapper, with his high-risk job of dismantling bombs, his life a daily joust with death; each of them seeing death everywhere, familiar faces disappearing in the clutches of death, hardening, building a shell around themselves, becoming extremely business-like about their occupation, learning not to feel, going like an automaton through the steps - be it nursing or bomb disposal.

Now with the war moving on ahead, the return to normal life is impossible. Each of them is still fighting a war - within themselves. Each finding a reason to live - Hana, who obsessively refuses to abandon the burnt man, tending to him with a fetish, giving him morphine, the sole reliever of his pain, reading to him , listening to his ramblings - filled with history of the world, interspersed with his own life story , narrated in the third person. [ "Death means you are in the third person"] ; Caravaggio - coming back for his friend's daughter and also, trying to determine the identity of the English patient, surviving with his shots of Morphine; Kip - with his disciplined life and with his complete involvement - though detached- in his work; and the English patient, with his History.

The English patient's narrative is filled with anecdotes of ancient history and the geographical descriptions of the desert. Infact, his life is very much like the desert he loves - impossible to decipher completely, shifting shapes, diverse, arid, with brief moments of immense pleasure like an Oasis .

The book also tells of the love between the English patient and Katherine, which lead to his present state, talks of feelings of surrender and possession; also, of Kip and Hana, Hana - losing her father, Kip - losing his mentor, his father-figure; two people drawn together by their loss, an unspoken understanding of what the other has undergone.

Ondaatje's style of writing is melancholic and haunting. The book is like a box being slowly unraveled in front of our eyes. As the story progresses, we feel ourselves being drawn into it, learning bit by bit about the characters and their multi-layered personalities, as you would slowly know a person in real life. Till, you are in the villa, seeing it all happen. You can feel their despair, their brief moments of joy, the utter hopelessness of the war, the havoc it wrecks - on the land, on the soldiers and civilians; the beauty of deserts as seen through the English patient's eyes; the love, the hate , the hope and the wretchedness of it all.

A great read! Deserves the Booker that it has got :)

Fate and Folding

My friend commented upon the previous post on "folding and philosophy", and so did Akka . Both felt that if the end was already predetermined, then, all our efforts are in vain, coz, no matter what we did, we would just get what was ordained. The end must be , at least partly, the consequence of our actions.

This got me thinking on this subject again. What they said seemed logical. So, lets go back to the folding funnel.

As you can see, there are several local minima, having lower free energy values. At the bottom of the funnel, there are several states having nearly equal free energy. Maybe, based on the path we take, we reach one of the states. If the path is not the ordained one, we may get into one of the local minima. We might or might not get out of the local minima, and begin our downhill roll again. If we do, we may take any of the final low energy states, each of which is equally good. So, perhaps, fate has a couple of things- equally good- planned out for us. Unless we do something very drastic, which locks us up in one of those local minima states, we will end up in any of the 'good' states. A round about way of saying, in the end, everything happens for the good :D

Alan G. MacDiarmid

Happened to read the autobiography of Alan G. MacDiarmid today. [http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2000/macdiarmid-autobio.html] He , along with two others, won the Chemistry Nobel in 2000, for the discovery and development of conducting polymers [Fascinating stuff! :)] . Felt truly humbled. He came from a poor family in New Zealand, with not enough to eat, let alone spend on books and other study material; worked throughout his school days - as a milk delivery boy, paper boy , and later, as a helper in the labs - to earn money for his education. Now, he's achieved the pinnacle of success - the Nobel. This may seem similar to the story of several other achievers. But what I really appreciated - was his interest in Science. Even while working as a helper in the lab, instead of cribbing [ which is what I might have done :D], he used the opportunity to explore his interest in chemistry. He first chanced upon the orange crystals of S4N4 during this period, and his interest in them held till the days of his MSc when he specifically requested his Prof and worked on these crystals. To his luck, his colleague, Heeger, [@ U.Penn] discovered conductance in an SxNx polymer , when MacDiarmid remebered his earlier work on S4N4. Together they were able to characterise conductance of SxNx polymers and with Shirakawa, they also worked on conductance of polyacetylene. Moving away from technical details , I want to reproduce some of his statements from his autobiography :

1. "I am a very lucky person and the harder I work the luckier I seem to be"!
2. "...an 'A's grade in a class is not a sign of success." Success is knowing that you have done your best and have exploited your God-given or gene-given abilities to the next maximum extent. More than this, no one can do.

He ends his writing with the following story , which I have reproduced here :

Seeking the Great White Bird of Absolute Truth

The dependency of any one person's research on the labors of scores of earlier scientific pioneers is illustrated very beautifully by a few sentences of this variation from a book by Olive Schreiner, written at the turn of the century, entitled, "The Story of an African Farm." I would like to share with you this adapted portion.

The story concerns a young hunter who, in his youth, heard about the great white bird of "absolute truth" which lived at the very top of a high mountain far in the east. He had spent all his life seeking it without success - and now he was growing old.

The old thin hands cut the stone ill and jaggedly, for the fingers were stiff and bent. The beauty and strength of the man were gone.

At last, an old, wizened, shrunken face looked out above the rocks. He saw the eternal mountains still rising to the white clouds high above him.

The old hunter folded his tired hands and lay down by the precipice where he had worked away his life.

I have sought," he said, "for long years I have labored; but I have not found her. By the rough and twisted path hewn by countless others before me, I have slowly and laboriously climbed. I have not rested. I have not repined. And I have not seen her; now my strength is gone. Where I lie down, worn out, other men will stand, young and fresh. By the steps that I, and those before me, have cut, they will climb; by the stairs that we have built, they will mount. They will never know those who made them, their names are forgotten in the mists of time. At the clumsy work they will laugh; when the stones roll, they will curse us; but they will mount, and on our work they will climb, and by our stair! They will find her, and through us!"

The tears rolled from beneath the shriveled eyelids. If truth had appeared above him in the clouds now, he could not have seen her, the mist of death was in his eyes.

... Then slowly from the white sky above, through the still air, came something falling ... falling ... falling. Softly it fluttered down and dropped on to the breast of the dying man. He felt it with his hands -

- it was -
	- a feather.

Folding and Philosophy.

Continuing along the lines of the previous post:

Protein folding, truly, holds the key to understanding the process of Life. In a lecture I attended, the folding funnel was described beautifully in the following way. Imagine a blindfolded golfer. On a horizontal course, the ball he hits may go in any direction, aimlessly. But imagine a sloping course, shaped like a funnel, with the hole at the bottom of the conical greens. The blindfolded golfer hits the ball from his position on the rim. No matter which path the ball takes, it eventually rolls down the course and goes into the hole.

So is our life. Maybe Fate has already decided what the hole or our Goal is and has placed us on the edge of the funnel. We, too, are like the blindfolded golfer, unable to see ahead, worrying about what will happen with each stroke. What we have within our control is just the path chosen. Based on the path, we accumulate different experiences. Same paths may be bumpy, some maybe extremely smooth [the minimal free energy path?], but we reach the goal eventually.

Musings.......

Just wanted to pen down some of the things I learnt from Prati :

1. Growth can either be in width, or in depth. It may be derived from new experiences, or from complete immersion into whatever we are doing. Both are equal. At the end of the day, a carpenter totally involved in his work would have gained knowledge similar to that of a scientist or a traveller who has gone round the World.
2. What is knowledge? It is not the amassing of facts, it is not information. Knowledge transforms people, it makes one grow.
3. Nothing is wrong, nothing is right, in an absolute sense. It is the circumstance which makes something right and something wrong. In the end, everything comes round in a full circle.
4. Your goal is pre-destined. So, instead of writhing in mental turmoil, as to what One should do, it is better to completely involve oneself, in whichever path life leads him, and seek knowledge.

But this, then, brings the question.. Are we so completely helpless? Do we not have anything in our hands? Mere puppets in the hands of that Supreme being or Fate or whatever? Then again, believing in Fate makes life much more easier. One doesn’t feel the burden of decision making weighing down upon the shoulders. Maybe it is an inter-play between the two. Something like genetics, where both the genotype and the environment decide what the final phenotype of the individual is. The environment selects which genes should express and which shouldn’t, and, in turn, decide the characteristics of the final individual. Maybe what decisions we take are like the Genotype, and Fate is the environment, and what we become finally, is decided by both.

Driving me crazy!

I first asked for my own vehicle when I was in class 9th. The Family initially seemed reluctant, but finally got me my scooty when I just finished I PU. I was mighty proud of my Black Beauty (still am!) After the initial month or two of hesitant and vary driving, I, one day, woke up to the realization that I just loved driving!! It was a manifestation of my independent spirit. No more waiting for the BMTC, no more bickering with the auto drivers. I was free, I was a bird, taking off whenever I pleased, on whichever route I chose, under the control of no one’s will but mine. I enjoyed driving not only on good clear roads, but also in the traffic, jostling with hundreds of other motorists. It was a jungle out there, Darwinism come alive, with only the fittest surviving. The unfit could be seen, sticking as close to the left as possible, driving with looks of absolute terror on their faces, at a pace such that a snail could overtake them! These creatures would, then, disappear into oblivion, maybe sell their vehicles, and drown themselves among the masses that travel in the bulging BMTCs, cursing the chaotic traffic of Bangalore with their co-passengers. The winners were those who survived the battle for existence long enough to discover an order amidst the chaos. These were the Chosen Ones who understood the Law of the Jungle and lived by it.

Driving was one of the things I really missed upon shifting to the Insti. I would satisfy my urge sometimes by beg-borrow-stealing CR’s or Twin’s cycle, but the thrill of driving 60 kmph, with the wind in your hair [figuratively, since I mostly wear a helmet :D] is something that a cycle cant ever give you.

The moment I came home this December, my hands were itching to get a grip on that accelerator and zoom off. But Providence had it that my first outing was in a threesome [which translates into an auto being the vehicle of choice!] As a backseat driver, I looked at The Bangalore Traffic with a whole new perspective. These people dint believe in traffic rules. The left-right turn indicators were vestigial organs of the vehicle, buttons that were added to fill up empty spaces on the handle bar. The only button that was important was the Horn, which they used to the maximum possible extent. The white bars on the road, marking the lanes, could have as well been graffiti made by street urchins, and no one looked twice (literally) before switching lanes. Signboards about School zones or Speed limits made just as much sense as Holmer’s Odyssey in pure Greek, unabridged! I kept dishing out this Gyan and lot more, about how Mumbai’s traffic though voluminous, was less chaotic, about how rash that auto wala was going, that a particular mo-bike driver dint have an ounce of brain in his head, and so on, to my poor sis and Sume [who probably put up with this commentary for the sole reason that I had returned home after 6 long months :D].

Thus, I took out my bike on the next day, with all virtuous thoughts about sticking to traffic rules and so on, and set off, with Nelly Furtado’s “I’m like a bird” going through my head. My bird soon had a bumpy landing when cyclists began to overtake me, with a smirk on their faces. I forced myself to remain cool, lecturing myself about good driving habits and what not, when an auto driver, who was steadily driving to my left, suddenly cut into my lane, forcing me to brake sharply. All virtuous thoughts were immediately banished, fours years of traffic-training kicked into action, accelerator turned and my engine roared [well, as much as a 60 cc one can!!] ! I was determined to show the auto driver a thing or two about driving. From then on, it was War. Along the entire stretch of road, lasting about 3 kms, it was a one-on-one battle between the two of us. I had the eternal advantage of a bike rider – the ability to squeeze between bigger vehicles - and used this to the hilt at all possible signals and halts. While he had the possession of an engine much more powerful than my poor 60 cc cylinder. At times he had the lead, and sometimes I could give him the Thenga. Finally, at a point, we parted ways, not sure who was the victor, but both having thoroughly enjoyed the Struggle for Supremacy. Grinning happily, I drove away, and while doing so, I caught sight of myself in my rearview mirror. I had fangs and horns.. I was a creature of the Jungle again, a Warrior, and “Home returned the Warrior, Alive” !! :D

My Experiments with the Kettle

This is in continuation to the previous post :

A solution to the coffee problem [or the 'lack of coffee' problem] came across in the form of the electric kettle that Rash brought. We both were terribly thrilled with all the exciting gastronomic delights that were made possible by the kettle. For inaugaration, we decided on making coffee. The ad on the TV showed making instant coffee to be the next easiest thing to drinking a cup of water. The girl in the ad, her family (to whom she serves the coffee) .. even the coffee pot seem to be smiling!! So, we started off with sachets of Instant coffee powder and a bottle of water.The instructions on the pack said :
Step 1: Heat 150ml of water , to the point where it is just about to boil, but not boiling.
Step 2 : Add to this, the powder from one sachet
Step 3 : Stir
Step 4 : coffee is ready ! :D
So, we were all set to go! Problem 1 rose in the form of lack of a measuring cylinder :D Being chemists, or rather, biochemists, we were used to measuring using cylinders and flasks, but how does one visually estimate 150 ml?? Then, we, the young scientists, calculated that the bottle was a 600 ml one, so, roughly about one-fourth should suffice. Problem two was making the decision as to when the water was "Heated to the point where it is just about to boil, but not boiling". After a lot of watching the kettle (and trust me, the watched pot truly does not boil! ), we decided that the water had heated enough. Then, poured it into our coffee mugs [we believe doing things in style, you see..], added the powder and stirred (see, we did not forget a single step) and with a prayer on our lips, we took our first sips of the stuff........ and, realised, that the coffee was great.. if only, you could evaporate half the water from it :D Well, the one-fourth had apparently become more than a one-third while pouring out!

The second tryst with the kettle was making Maggi. Feeling that our canteen wala over-prices and under-serves maggi, we decided to make it with our newly acquired possession. Afterall, Do minute hi toh lagte hain , maggi banane mein! Well armed with packets of Maggi, plates, spoons and ofcourse, water, we began with our cooking experiment. This time, with additional care to add just as much water as the packet said, we proceeded with caution and excitement. The delicious aroma of maggi began to fill the air, and mouths watering, we waited for it to be done. After a much-more-than-do-minute wait, we had to sadly acknowledge that this time round too, the water was in excess.The instructions on the pack are for cooking maggi in an open vessel, where you can bring the water to a boil and let it evaporate, while the noodles cook; a facility, which the kettle, inspite of its several virtues, didnot possess! We, then, formulated a hypothesis that while cooking Maggi in the kettle, one should always add half the amount of water specified on the pack!! [ a bit of free gyan for those of you who cook using a kettle :D]

The lesser I say about the time I made tomato soup in the kettle, the better it is! I will just assure you that both the kettle, and ourselves are still very much intact! :D

By and by, after several attempts, few successful and well, few unsuccessful, we have now become experts at "Kettle Cooking" [Like , Microwave cooking :D] . We can infact, write a book, " Kettle cooking - to do and what-not-to do" It'll be a best seller among hostel-dwellers, for sure !!

The Cup of Life

I have been a confirmed coffee addict since my childhood. The moment I had my first sip of coffee from amma's cup , I was hooked. Amma recounts tales where I would insist for "Taapi" in toddle tongue! There is even a small cup back home, which was exclusively meant for my coffee and I remember sitting, cradling my cuppa, slurping away happily. :D

Over the years, the only thing that changed was the cup size and the number of servings. I grew from being a small coffee addict to a big one [pun fully intended :D]. During my II PU exams, I was going steady at nearly 8 cups a day and, I am sure, if anyone made a study of the stuff flowing through my veins [though I can't say why they might want to do it :D], they would most likely find it to be coffee !

Amma is a firm follower of "too much is too bad". So apart from using minimal oil while cooking (which is good), she also believes in adding minimal powder while making coffee (which a'int :D). Annu, on the other hand, shares my love for strong coffee. The coffee he made for me, in the mornings on which I managed to wake up real early, was the best I have ever had. Nearly black, with minimal milk and a pellet of Sweetex, its aroma was enough to drive out the last wisps of sleep from my eyes and get me out of bed! Those early morning coffees with Annu, sitting at the dining table, planning out the study schedule for the day and winding up with washing and putting away the cups... it is a memory I'll always treasure..........

Being from a strictly coffee-brewing family, I never ever had tea till I was in my 10th class. Friendship with Prati started off a spree of new experiences, one of which was the introduction to tea. We had most of our discussions (which ranged from topics like Saankhya philosophy to the latest fad in dieting :D) over hot cups of tea that she prepared.

That initiation was a real boon, for I soon moved out of the 'coffee lovers' paradise'. Hostel life has its own sets of plusses and minuses [like everything else :)], but adding to my cup of woes here, is the lack of a real good Cuppa ! The people here believe in running through the day with tea sloshing away within them.. elaichi-waali chai, adrak-waali chai, masala chai.. and what not! But, none of this can substitute my beloved Cuppa and, I never miss a chance of going to the Shack and filling in on my dose of caffeine for the day.

Exam times still see me going faithfully to the canteen to have a cup of the sweet, milky stuff called 'Coffee' by the vendor. While I insist that the caffeine helps me stay awake, Rash says it is purely psychological, and tell you what, I agree with her. That vile machine-brewed liquid probably contains a speck of caffeine, just enough to keep a fly awake for a few seconds!! Most of the times, it seems to have a soporific, rather than a stimulating effect on me and I sleep much better after a cup of coffee from the canteen than after a cup of milk :D But we, humans, are creatures of habit and coffee is one such habit I haven't been able to shrug off. Bliss, still, is a cup of coffee - black, strong and totally life-giving :D

An Apple a day..

Just returned, after finishing an exam. End sems chaalu, finished two, many more to go! Feeling quite relaxed during exams this sem, quite a change from my BSc days, where my exams would spell sleepless nights for the whole family! Last minute prep, endless cups of coffee, late nights and a lot of pestering amma.. "Amma, layek zatta nave?? " :D Praying, bribing God, 'pls pls, see me through this time round, I promise I ll be better prepared from the next time' !! Now it all seems like a dream, one you remember with fond feelings and a smile on your face....

Exam time now means, lukkha in the evening, sleep a while, listen to some music, an early dinner, then sit down to study... couple of hours down, go into Rash's room, gappe for a while, with prolly a coffee and even, a Maggi to follow! Back to study.. sleep in the early morn, wake up after couple more hours ..Gone are the days when staying up till 3 AM was a herculean task, which won admiring glances in your friends' circle.. Now the phrase 'night out' is as common as 'hi' or 'good luck' :) .. Study hard through the morn, a bit of nbd (come on, you cant have exams without a bit of ndb :D) .. then, it is exam time!! The paper's generally not bad.. and with the relative grading system, if your paper is going bad, you just hope so is everyone else's! :D All's well, that ends well.. and, the exam is done!!

Enough about exams for now, time to justify the title of the post :) Been listening to Fiona Apple, and, Am I hooked, or what!! This lady has an amazing voice - mezzo-soprano - and her songs have extremely powerful lyrics. A welcome change from hip-hop teengirl stuff that most female popstars do. Her style of singing is great as well.. lots of 'gamaka' [dont know how else to put it! ] . Listeing to "paper bag" now.. Here are the lyrics :

"Paper Bag"

I was staring at the sky, just looking for a star
To pray on, or wish on, or something like that
I was having a sweet fix of a daydream of a boy
Whose reality I knew, was a hopeless to be had
But then the dove of hope began its downward slope
And I believed for a moment that my chances
Were approaching to be grabbed
But as it came down near, so did a weary tear
I thought it was a bird, but it was just a paper bag
Hunger hurts, and I want him so bad, oh it kills
'Cause I know I'm a mess he don't wanna clean up
I got to fold 'cause these hands are too shaky to hold
Hunger hurts, but starving works, when it costs too much to love
And I went crazy again today, looking for a strand to climb
Looking for a little hope
Baby said he couldn't stay, wouldn't put his lips to mine,
And a fail to kiss is a fail to cope
I said, 'Honey, I don't feel so good, don't feel justified
Come on put a little love here in my void,' he said
'It's all in your head,' and I said, 'So's everything'
But he didn't get it I thought he was a man
But he was just a little boy
Hunger hurts, and I want him so bad, oh it kills
'Cause I know I'm a mess he don't wanna clean up
I got to fold 'cause these hands are too shaky to hold
Hunger hurts, but starving works, when it costs too much to love

This lady's a gem!!! :)

Still feeling catty! :)

Garfield rocks, totally!! :D

Talking "cats and dogs"

Seeing a couple of kittens in the mess today morning reminded me of my pets - both past and present ones. I have had the fortune to experience the company of both dogs and cats.

Dogs are the best ego boosters you can get! A dog loves its family (as in, the one that is rearing it) completely. If you have seen the total devotion on a puppy's face, you'll understand what I mean. They make you feel as though you are the king, the sole priority in their lives. The rousing welcome given by a dog, once you are back home (even if you have just left just 10 mins back :D) is enough to pull you out of the deepest dumps! But, a dog also develops various accessory feelings such as jealousy, insecurity, possessiveness. It sulks if it feels it isn't getting attention, resents show of affection towards any other animal, especially babies or other dogs. It gets hurt, and suffers the pain which accompanies such great love and attachment.

A cat is a much more bindaas creature ! :) As a friend once remarked, "You own a dog, but a cat- owns you! " It stays with you, but never lets you take it for granted. It sets the rules, all the terms and conditions for its stay. It decides what food it will eat and where it will sleep.. and , you are very much mistaken if you think you can coax it to do otherwise! If you dare be adamant and refuse to agree to its terms, then it has no qualms in leaving you and moving on! "The cat, with its indignity and independence is very much like what the human animal should be but isn't" (Paul Corey). It shows affection, but with a kind of detachment. The moments when a cat chooses to love you - other than when it needs food- you feel as though you have been blessed! It is as if a monarch, looked down from his perch on an elephant, at a lowly peasant and smiled at him. That is the attitude of the cat, towards the human it is living with! It does not consider the human its master, it is more like, 'I deserve all that you are doing for me, because I am gracing your home with my presence!' In cats' eyes, all things belong to cats. They are the ultimate followers of the Charvaka philosophy! They care not about the future, they totally believe in what they have at hand and aim towards total gratification of sensual pleasures! As Abe Lincoln remarked, "No matter how badly cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens " :) Curiously, these strong willed creatures do not rake up the human ego. They seem to radiate this calm statement of " I am your cat, You are my human" and it must be their self assurance that somehow convinces us to willingly give in to their terms and rear them at home! How nice it would be if we could be like cats - Lovable, affectionate, yet not clinging, moving on when life is not going according to their terms, unwilling to compromise, independent, having utmost self esteem and self confidence, very sure of what they want in life and also getting what they want!
Before winding up, here's a panel featuring my favourite cat :

A Knotty problem

Thoughts are a lot like proteins [I can hear a huge cry from my friends "There she goes about proteins again " ! :)] Proteins are also dynamic, vibrant entities. As long as they fold correctly, " God 's in His heaven—All 's right with the world!". But when they misfold, chaos reigns. A spanner is thrown into the works. More chaos, if the misfolded one starts aggregating with the newly formed ones, setting off a chain reaction of misfolding. Total lack of function. Mayhem!

As I was saying, thoughts are a lot like proteins. As long as they are clear, all is fine, and you are at peace. A single crooked thought can set off an exponential increase of unhealthy thoughts, till you feel your head is a time bomb ticking away steadily, ready to explode the next minute. You feel it would be such a great relief to get those thougths out of your mind.

Infact, everyone should have a personal Pensieve. [remember your Harry Potter.. and , if you havent read one, from which era are you?? :)] The Pensieve is to thoughts what a chaperone is to those poor misfolded proteins. It allows you to take out all those knotted thoughts and put them away from your mind. There, far away from the confines of your skull, they untangle themselves, and sort themselves out to a point where you can go back and analyse them. In the meanwhile, the remianing thoughts in your mind also get a chance to revive and flourish. So, that is what this blog is to me.. a Pensieve, to pen down both the knots and the what-nots of my mind. :)

Statutory Warning : If you are reading this blog for an intellectually stimulating experience, Stop! These will most likely be the ramblings of a confused mind, trying to sort out itself. But if you too are a sailor, adrift, trying to find his bearings, maybe you can relate to what is being 'penned' down here .