Kallu K.

A few days back I felt like talking about my perception of the world around mi. Since I didn’t have anybody around I decided to talk to Bob (Bob is a very good friend of mine and a very good listener, also probably Bob is the only person who likes to talk about such stuff). I asked him how was life laying it out for him to play it out he replies same old. This is like a code between us since we saw the movie “Starsky And Hutch”. He asks mi how am I doing and I say not bad. Then before I forget whut I wanted to talk about I tell him that today I wanted to talk about my perception of the world around mi. Very brusquely he tells mi to stop bugging him and lookup the word perception in the dictionary first. I thought it was very rude of him to behave with mi in this fashion but Bob is a very intelligent person and I value his advise very highly so I did whut he told mi to. I looked up (the word) “perception” in the dictionary.

perception – n. 1 the act of perceiving: His perception of the change came in a flash. SYN: insight, apprehension, discernment, comprehension. 2 the power of perceiving: a keen perception. Defect in manners is usually the defect of fine perceptions (Emerson). 3 understanding that is the result of perceiving; percept: He had a clear perception of what was wrong and soon fixed it. 4 Psychology. The study of the complex process by which complex patterns of environmental energies become known as objects, events, people, and other aspects of the world.
Ref. The World Book Dictionary 1994

The dictionary guided mi from (the word) “perception”, to (the word) “perceive” to (the word) “see” through many versions of (the word) see like “see after”, “see into”, … during which I started to think about “C” the programming language, then “C++” and “C#” and then I remembered Mr. Balaguruswamy who has written some great books on learning “C” and “C++” among others and the fact that “C#” is a part of “.NET” which is made by “Microsoft” and taught to mi by Mr. A. Khadiye and that “Microsoft” has made “IE” which doesn’t render my blog “www.sublogs.blogspot.com” properly as compared to “FireFox” because of something called CSS and so on till I was guided by the dictionary to (the word) “observe” the word made mi observe what I was doing i.e. my chain of thoughts.

And I started thinking. Now let mi tell you “thinking” (suddenly I feel like looking up all words in the dictionary) is the one thing I really love doing, as you might have realized by now. People often say that I think too much. I think that everybody thinks, whut differs is whut we think about. Also often people are not consciously aware that they are thinking.

Well, I started thinking about the content of my chain of thoughts. Computer languages, teachers of computer languages, Microsoft, my blog, FireFox and finally more computer stuff. Well this is whut my world is made up of…

P.S. This article started out a year back… and I am nowhere near the end of it…

Since childhood I have always been very confused why people don’t understand mi or why I couldn’t understand them. I always felt that either there was something drastically wrong with mi or those around mi. Since there were so many numbers on the other side I thought they must be right. Some time back something very interesting happened and I realized why it was possible, to not be understood or to not be able to understand. How did it happen ? It was the drops of rain. The monsoon of 2003.

I was doing my Bachelors in Information Technology and we had a subject called Java, Ya! Java programming. By the way Java was fun nevertheless I like C# more but all my work done so far is in VB. That’s life’s confusion at it’s best. What we are taught in college isn’t enough, it’s never enough so I joined a coaching class for more practice and exposure, maybe a little self study could have also worked but I was too lazy, I think. Plus the classes gave mi a good place to socialize albeit with the same people I met at college. Khadiye Sir was our instructor (the same teacher at college) and my batch mates (were my classmates at college). I used to go for coaching almost everyday. Actually the timings and days kept changing. So in essence we ended up going to class almost everyday.

When the classes started so did the monsoon and it rained and rained and rained… I used to reach the classes early because I skipped lunch. The others would take their time and come after lunch. So I got 30 to 45 minutes on my own, rather mi and the rain drops. The windcheater was no good and neither was the raincoat, I got wet everyday. However I liked it. I would sit on a small wall near the coaching class and soak. As there was nothing to do I took up the hobby of raindrop watching.

Come to think of it, it was a very funny hobby, but I really enjoyed sitting in the rain and getting wet (then). Alone mi in my world. People would look at mi and sneer “Crazy guy”. I would often sing a song that I had heard when I was a child. “Raindrops keep falling on my head … ” sung by B. J. Thomas. It’s a cool song from the movie “Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid”. Then it happened.

After some days of raindrop watching I realized that the probability of two drops of rain falling at the same point was quite remote and my brain went “Hmm… interesting, very interesting”. Then one day I saw two drops of rain fall almost at the same point. So I figured that at some point in time two drops of rain would definitely fall at the same point but in the back of mi head I knew I was onto something. But I could not put a finger on what exactly nevertheless I persisted.

Damm… it was hard on my knees (Ops! head). The monsoon was drawing to an end and I began to develop a sudden sense of panic as if I were about to miss out on something very important. Suddenly one day out of the blue it struck mi that still every drop was unique because they touched the earth at different times. “Wow!!! Every drop of rain is unique!!!”. Out of sheer excitement I told everybody in the class about what had happened. “Dude, you know every drop of rain is unique!”, “How come?”, “All drops of rain have a unique point of contact with earth, time being the critical factor, blah blah blah …”, “So What!”. And as always they said, “He is nuts”. There is nothing new in that, I have heard it too many times. I won’t say that it doesn’t bother mi, it does. It still does. Although I would really love to say “Who cares, !@#$ you!!!”. The truth is that it still bothers mi, but I am getting there, little by little, everyday. I knew, there was something more to it, that there was something still left, a final twist in this already interesting experience. Every drop of rain is unique, so what else ?

The monsoon was almost over and for once I had not fallen ill, I am prone to tonsillitis and other respiratory diseases. Just when I thought I had escaped I fell sick, realistically what else could I have really expected after all that raindrop watching. Tonsillitis, high fever, etc… the regular stuff. I got a lot of time to think about the raindrops and the eluding mystery they held, the final piece in the jigsaw. Then one day I recollected, every snowflake is unique, that’s what they told us in school. Every raindrop is unique, hmm… Hey!!! everything in this world is unique. Everything living or otherwise is unique. That would mean that every human being is unique too!!! Now this was mind-boggling because it’s so obvious that you cannot miss it and yet it takes a lifetime of soul-searching to realize.

Very few moments in life are so life changing, like the day I went to the mountains for the first time, like when I thought that I had fallen in love for the first time, like the day I realized the power of lust, like the time when I actually did fall in love, like when love set mi free and I started to soar (and I realized one never falls in love), like the day I understood that money is important, the day I came across death for the first time, or the time when I learnt that friends can betray you, like the first time I had coffee, …

It’s been more than 2 years since. As they say there is a lot of difference in knowing, understanding and implementing. Most people get stuck on the second step where one has to accept the truth behind the lies. I’m stuck on the third one, where the truth has to be made a part of ones lifestyle almost everybody stumbles on this one. In all probability it would take another lifetime to implement this but I am trying. Everybody is different and that is the beauty of life. We all live in our own universe. There is nothing like one universe, it is a matter of perception off course. These individual universes interact with those of others around us I don’t know whether by purpose, fate or by simple chance. This is another of life’s mysteries that has puzzled mi for a long long time and so far I am nowhere near the answer.

People change, I have changed too, I am still changing. Now I don’t enjoy getting wet in the rain anymore, it reminds mi that I still have a long way to go, a very long way to go…