So while I was waiting for my shots a peculiar thing started happening on the set. The discussions between the creative head, the director and the writer started becoming longer and longer as the story progressed. This was directly proportional to my wait time.

Since I had so much time my brain started ticking and I started to search for a reason about these discussions that were becoming longer with each passing scene. I realized that when you write a story there is only a certain level of detail that you add to it but as the actors start to perform it  more nuances and detail is added automatically. Sometimes this additional detail add an aspect to the story that the writer had not thought of earlier.

God forbid if it’s a sharply written suspense thriller with all ends tied with logic!

The more minutely you will look at the story the more anomalies and paradoxes will crop up.

Waiting and wondering about these things suddenly I remembered something I read long time ago, it said

” The author of our universe created things merely by speaking, by saying ‘Let there be light’ The only thing mere speaking can create, we know, is a story, a play an epic poem, a fiction. Where we live is created by and in words: uni-verse.”
Fiction by Robert Nozick

I started wondering that it is a wonderful way to know whether or not God exists. Also whether whatever will happen is pre-decided or not. I mean has HE already written the book and we are just supposed to act out the story that he wrote for us. If that is the case then we are supposed to find a lot of anomalies in the story (in our lives) as no matter how detailed he would have written there will be nuances he would have left out as an author, which will only come to light once we start acting out the story written for us.

What we need to figure out now is the nature of these anomalies in life, what kind of details would a Supreme Being forget to fill? Can I fill in those details myself as an actor of the story, if I do add some nuances myself will it backfire and would make the Creator to revise the already pre-written story.

On the other hand if God does not exist then there should be no anomalies no paradoxes anywhere. Then we are just an organic machine like thing able to think about our own self and grow and propagate. Nobody wrote a story for us.

Oh! God I want to find the nature of these anomalies and paradoxes in my story.

I feel like an atheist most of the times, my belief lies in stories.

I will want to know what would you think when you will read this post. So, after I finish writing the post I will read it again just to figure out what you felt while reading it.

I am so crazy about getting into people’s heads that I might end up reading this post a 1000 times, each time pretending to be a different person that I know who would read this.

I have been searching for ways to get into people’s heads for a long time now.

When I read a book – the thing that interests me more than the story is what went inside the writer’s head while he/she was writing it. I found Anna Karenina so boring as a story but somehow the book was telling me what Tolstoy was thinking while writing it and so I could easily read nearly 900 pages.

The moment someone interests me the first thing I want to do is get into that person’s head. I want to know how he/she thinks and since I have no device to get into anyone’s head, I try my tricks. I start playing a game – a game of action-reaction.

I say things just to see the person’s reaction while in normal conditions normal me would have kept quite, I remain silent to see the reaction in situations when normal me would have spoken. Yet,the most beautiful device of the game is ‘shock’. Have I ever shocked you with my behavior, my work, my outrageousness – If I did, trust me I was looking for a way into your head. When you are shocked the wall of pretense breaks  to reveal the real you. I get a glimpse of you. I agree that shock is a cheap device in any artwork  and after once or twice the person will build a wall against the ‘shock’ and the artist in search for ways to get into people’s head will keep on devising ways to shock them. Her self-expression might get lost as all the energy will go into building the shock element in her work. It’s a bad trap to fall in.

Yet the device of ‘shock’ keeps enticing me. It seeps into my designs, in my stories even in my life.

Are there other ways then, to get to know you better, to get into your head.

See how interested I am in you, I really want to see the world with a different point of view with numerous points of views actually.

The only other way to get into your head is by your expression, I would like to hear you speak. I would love to see your paintings to  see what goes in your head what colors you see the world in and of course  I would love to read whatever you write as that gives me a pathway to your brain and if you ever make a film that would be just awesome.

So let’s make a deal I give you a pathway in my brain by writing, talking, painting (oh! I am bad at it please make do with the computer art I make), making films etc. and you open the pathways to your brain by your ways of expressions. Trust me I have played the game and it is super fun. So, let’s try it!

Oh! now I need to reread the post to know how it felt in your head…The games we play with ourselves…:)

The beliefs that we hold are based on our convenience and the narrowness of our perception. The world is not really made of tables, cars, computers, people, houses, geographical locations etc. All of these are just concepts. Concepts made by us according to our convenience and the level of our perception. I mean is it a table my computer is kept on or is it a piece of wood or is it a collection of cellulose, hemicelluloses, lignin or is it protons, electrons, neutrons (quarks!). The point is I see it and believe its a table. A table is just a concept made out of my convenience,conditioning and the scale of my perception but that doesn’t mean that there are not other levels to it. A table can be perceived in numerous ways, an ant would perceive a table as something else – something based on its scale of perception.

If I see this picture above I will say its a table designed By Frank Lloyd Wright oh! sorry I mean its a ‘picture of the table’ designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. What am I saying! I must be out of my mind, these are actually ‘pixels on my computer screen looking like a picture of the table’ designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. So what actually is it! what am I really seeing.

Will I not look at this thing and feed myself a concept most convenient to me about it.

I have realized that the most beautiful types of sciences and arts emerge when we go beyond our normal level of perception and see things/people/concepts from another level. The level that is not generally very convenient.

But how do I go to this another level. My director said to me some days ago ‘ If you will not leave what you are holding right now, how will you ever experience new things’.

The newness will not be in the things that you will see, it will be in your point of view!

Otherwise the world is surely made of tables, cars, computers, houses, humans, roads, mountains and stupidity!

Oh! spending so much time on keeping a thought away does make you fall for it!

Still I keep holding this individuality of mine close to my heart. Not only do I protect it physically I am ready to fight for my mental concepts.

The mental concepts which this universe selected for me and made me interact with.

I designed

I wrote a story

I discovered/ invented

I wrote this blog post

which ‘I’ am I talking about? To form this ‘I’ so much was fed to it by others for years and so much is being fed now.

Like each individual is a permutation of the same (copies) sets of genes so is each individual a permutation and combination of a set of thoughts, desires, ideas (memes).

Oh! but here lies the catch – even if the above statement is true still the DNA (comprising of genes) in no two humans is the same and the ideas and concepts in no two human brains are all exactly the same (despite similar inputs).

Even if you have shared my life and had similar experiences while we were awake I am sure of one thing the dreams that I dream at night are unshared and un-seen by anyone.

Are they signs of my Individuality? Or you may say that I dream of things that I think about through the waking hours and hence it does not matter weather other people have shared this virtual reality of mine or not- they have shared its seed.

I am still searching for the individuality (see its so strong I am not even thinking of searching the collectivity).

This post has been sown in my mind by Renu Satija (my biology teacher), Hofstader (I am a strange loop), Richard Dawkins (Selfish Genes and Selfish Memes) and a dream I saw this afternoon.

Still it is ‘I’ who wrote this here…

I need an airplane

and the fare is high.

Though I have been collecting for a while

in  boxes made of mud and wood

my money, is all in small coins

unspent on other desires since childhood.

For the flight

I pay the fare in coins

and after the rise I walk out of the plane,

without wings and a dire need to fly.

So again each day I collect coins

weirdly shaped and sized.

Some small like time, some heavy as my mind.

Having flown often you say ‘its just once or twice

maybe thrice and the thrill will die,

the airplane will loose its charm and so will the flight’

but only if you knew how I had collected my coins

and how I had tore open all the boxes of mud and wood

for that airplane flight,

only if you knew  that walking was not even an option

even without wings I needed to fly

you would know it will never loose the fascination

only if you had seen how I collect each coin…

my storyless story (storiasenzastoria)

कभी जब मुझे बहुत सारा साहस चाहिए होता है.

मुझे आपने से शायद प्रेम है, बहुत प्रेम. मुझे अपनी सोच से भी प्रेम है. मुझे डर था की ये प्रेम किसी को दिख जाएगा तो वो मुझ पर बहुत हँसेगा.

उस दिन मैं स्टेशन पर बैठी थी एक दोस्त के साथ और एक आदमी आया जिसे मैने एक पल के लिए देखा. उसने भी एक पल के लिए उस बेंच को देखा जिस पर मैं बैठी थी. उस एक पल में मुझे कुछ अजीब सा दिखा उसकी आँखों में – मैं सही-सही नहीं कह सकती की क्या पर कुछ अजीब था. फिर मैने देखा की उसके हाथ में एक सूटकेस था और वो नंगे पावं था. मैने एक कहानी बना ली अपने दिमाग़ में कि शायद यह बहुत दिनों से स्टेशन्स पर सो रहा है, कहीं से भाग कर आया है बॉम्बे, शायद लोगों का समान भी चोरी करता हो वगेरह- वगेरह.

यह सारी कहानी मैने बाद में बनाई पर मुझे ऐसा लगा की वो जो एक पल था जब मैने उसकी आँखे देखी थी और जिस पल मुझे कुछ अजीब सा लगा था दरअसल यह कहानी कुछ -कुछ उसी वक़्त बन चुकी थी मेरे दिमाग़ में, बस मैने उसे थोड़ी देर उसे और ध्यान से देख कर आपनी इस कहानी को पूरा कर लिया.

इस घटना से मुझे एक अजीब सा डर लगा, मैं तो किसी को अपना लिखा पढ़ाने में डरती हूँ की कहीं उसे यह ना पता चल जाए की मैं क्या सोचती हूँ…पर अगर एक छण को किसी अजनबी की आँख में मुझे एक कहानी दिख गयी थी, तो इसका मतलब है की मेरी सारी कहानियाँ तो उन सब को दिख जाती होंगी जिनसे मैं अक्सर मिलती हूँ. पूरी तरह सही सही ना भी सही पर उन्होने मेरी आँखें देख कर कितनी कहानियाँ बना ली होंगी मेरे बारे में.

कुछ दिन पहले एक व्यक्ति ने मेरी बात सुननी और समझनी छोड़ दी, उसने शायद एक कहानी बना ली मेरे बारे में. मैने बहुत समझने और समझाने की कोशिश की पर फिर मुझे लगने लगा शायद मैं किसी और भाषा में बोल रही हूँ, किसी ऐसी भाषा में जो उसे समझ नहीं आती.

मैने सोचा भाषा बदल कर देखूँ शायद वो मेरी बात सुने.

पर इस स्टेशन वाली घटना ने मुझे समझा दिया की यह मैं ग़लत सोच रही थी अगर मैं फ़ारसी में भी कहती, या चुप भी रहती – तो भी उसे पता तो था ही की मैने क्या सोचा है. वो तो मेरी शक्ल पर, मेरी आँखों में पूरी तरह दिख रहा होगा – तो मैने कहा या नहीं कहा या फ़ारसी में कहा या फ्रेंच में, लिखा या नहीं लिखा क्या फरक पड़ा.

हाँ इतना ज़रूर है की जैसे उस स्टेशन वाले व्यक्ति की कहानी जो मैने समझी शायद सच ना हो पूरी तरह, हो सकता है मेरी कहानी जो उसने बनाई थोड़ी जल्दी जल्दी में, मेरे कहे हुए सिर्फ़ एक-दो वाक्यों से शायद पूरी तरह सच ना हो.

मुझे उससे कहना है कि – कभी वक़्त मिले तो पूरी कहानी सुनियेगा, अपनी कहानी सुनाने में मुझे बहुत मज़ा आएगा (मैने कहा ना मुझे खुद से बहुत प्रेम है).

In anomalies of time

In  Déjà vu and shrines.

With eyes closed,

Even with open mind.

I was searching for the mystery called ‘I’.

When I reached half way through this book,

Where my heart skipped a beat at the mention of a loop.

Now when the answer seems so near,

Oh! how I am scared of it all being so clear.

‘I’ want it to be more than just an illusion,

I want ‘me’ to exist -

Not just in your perception;

But in the concreteness of concrete if concrete is real,

I think I will have to see it with your eyes my ‘Ideal’,

Out of this loop within loop.

I do want to know all answers,

But now I am scared of a book.

So let me ask you – is Cinderella real?

The fairy tale in which she lives is real or imaginary?

I met this old woman one day and as we sat talking about things – suddenly out of the blue she told me that I look like Cinderella to her. Probably it was the dress I was wearing that day or the two tightly tied pleats I had made for my Grand rehearsal for the play.

As the discussion went ahead I told her jokingly that I am hoping to get my glass slipper on 25th December at midnight.

It was 25th December, I was on stage performing. It was the last show of our play. We had been rehearsing for it for over 2 months. The play had a sequence where all of us were suppose to compete for a shoe.The director had left it open-ended, anyone could win that shoe. I had never wanted that shoe, I had never won in any of the rehearsals.

But this time the director had made some changes in our positions and the new position gave me a better chance of getting the shoe. Besides, a small desire had filled my heart to feel the ecstasy of acting out winning on stage ever since all of us were made to rehearse it in the Grand rehearsal since anyone could win.

Loaded with all these coincidences I won a white colored left leg PT shoe that day (no match for a glass slipper…eh!). The same day after the play I lost one of my favorite red colored sandal backstage (left leg of course! It was a day of coincidences)

So now I had a PT shoe for one leg and a red colored sandal for the other one.

It was weird and I should have been frustrated at the stupidity of the situation but at that very moment I remembered the conversation with the old lady. I couldn’t help but smile   (I am smiling even now while writing this).

Nobody around me knew but in my head I was Cinderella that night. It was 25th December and sandals and shoes were playing tricks on me.

So where do you draw the boundary now, did I only loose a red colored sandal and won a white colored PT shoe that day. Was this the only reality? The smile on my face was real for sure. The reason for that smile was the fairy tale of Cinderella, if I never knew the fairy tale I would just be frustrated at the loss of a dear red sandal.

Now I know what that old woman saw in me to call me Cinderella, probably she saw that I am challenging the boundary of reality, I was ready to believe in the reality of ideas and the reality of fairy tales as long as they can make me smile!