WANDeRiNG MiND!

ESP (Extra Sensory Perception) is most commonly called the “sixth sense”. It is sensory information that an individual receives which comes beyond the ordinary five senses sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. It can provide the individual with information of the present, past, and future; as it seems to originate in a second, or alternate reality.

There are theories concerning individuals who possess ESP and how they acquired this ability. One theory holds that some people such as seers, prophets and diviners were bore with the gift, which was inherited by their relatives. Another theory hold that it is a primordial sense which has decreased in populations as their cultures advanced. Still another theory claims ESP is a supersense, which evolves in the nervous system.

That was just for your reading pleasure. Am in no way trying to claim my 15 minutes of fame by saying I have a sixth sense and I can see the future. No. But like I mentioned in my previous post, I believe that the ESP, or sixth sense, is a part of everyone whether they like it or not. It is a normal part of the human psyche and not abnormal or reserved for special or gifted persons. Psychical research does support the theory that everyone is born with ESP capability, though some may possess more than others. Most people have experienced at least one ESP experience in their lives. Maybe many of us just don’t give it a second thought, or just dismiss it saying, “I think I have had a deja vu of this!”

Think about it. Anyway, here I continue to share a few more of my past experiences, ‘coz they have always made me wonder.

From 1993, fast forward to 1997-98, when I was undergoing industrial training in Coimbatore (Tamil Nadu, India). I used to stay with my friend in a room provided by the company we worked for, and our lives used to be real boring unless we go out and watch a movie or spend time with other friends during the weekends. Every weekend we made it a point to meet another friend of ours who used to stay with his dad in another part of the city, and then all 3 of us together watch a movie. If that guy’s dad went visiting the rest of the family back in their native land, we used to stay over for the weekend and all three of us used to have some fun.

One day, it so happened that we were totally bored and found ourselves with no options but to go stay at out friend’s place, even if his dad’s there. We took the bus and went all the way, and after getting down, we were walking to his place just talking. I suddenly felt something was weird and not right. I felt we won’t be able to stay over at this guy’s place and will have to go back to our room. I turned to my friend and told him so. He casually asked what could happen that we cannot be staying over there. And my reply was, “What if his mom and sisters have come from native?” My friend was cool and he told me not to worry ‘coz that situation was very unlikely. Why would all of them come here all of a sudden anyway?

So we walked and reached our friend’s house. We went up and knocked at the door. And what do we see? The door is opened by his mother!! I was so dumbfounded that I was speechless for a while. When I got back to my senses I realized that the whole family was present there having decided to enjoy the weekend together. Well, we just spent some time there with them and later went back to our room for the night..

There were two other incidents of “having a hunch”, where I was meant to take a decision. In one I lost while the other saved our lives maybe.

The first one was when I had to leave my sick dog – a bitch (in the proper sense of the word) alone at home and go somewhere for a day. My mom and sister were with my grandparents and my dad and I were to join them. But my little pet, which I loved so much, was sick and she wasn’t moving around much. I was worried about her and told my mom so when she called. But mom said it’s alright and there’s no need to worry as we would be back home the very next day, just a matter of few hours and she will be fine. I couldn’t be sure though and thought of taking her along with us instead of leaving her all alone with no care, but later decided not to, ‘coz I didn’t want her to suffer due to the travel. So I left her with a cozy little mattress and food and water, hoping she would be fine, and went to my granny’s place. But all the while I was really worried about something.

Next morning we left from there and on our way back just dropped in at my aunt’s place. A few minutes after we reached there, my aunt’s phone rang and the call was for my mom. I was suddenly gripped by this terrible fear something I didn’t know. My mom took the phone and as she spoke I saw her face change too. Yup, our little bitch was dead, left all alone when she needed us most. I knew it was gonna happen, but I ignored it. And I had never been as sad in my life as I was that day.

The other one was when I had to go book tickets for my cousins and myself when 4 of us planned to go to our native together from Bangalore. At the ticket counter, the guy gave me tickets on the driver’s side of the bus, somewhere in the rear half. That’s never a safe place to sit when you travel long distance, coz buses and trucks from the opposite direction will be just ripping past you. One mistake and you could be the victim of a freak accident. I lost a friend in one such. He died coz he was in the wrong seat, and a truck from the opposite side suddenly lost control and hit the bus, exactly where he was seated. Ever since, I haven’t really enjoyed traveling sitting on the driver’s side of the bus. But sometimes, I don’t bother much and just go with what’s available.

When the guy at the counter offered me those seats, I didn’t wanna ask him for a change and thought will settle for it, coz that was a festive season and getting tickets itself was a problem. But then something told me I should ask for seats on the other side. Even though I hesitated at first, I went ahead and asked him. He checked and finally I was able to get seats for all of us on the other side of the bus. It so happened that the bus we took met with an accident just about an hour before it reached the destination. Another bus coming from the opposite direction slammed into our bus right in the rear half of it, on the driver’s side of course. It was a bad hit and a major part of our bus was ripped off. Many were injured, including us, though we escaped with minor ones. But a mother and daughter lost their lives in the accident. I later realized that they had occupied the seats somewhere where the guy had originally offered us.

Our luck was somebody else’s bad luck.

[to be concluded in next...]

Everyone is aware of his or her five basic senses, seeing, feeling, smelling, hearing and tasting. What everyone is not so well aware of is their sixth sense, that sense of otherworldliness, a connection to something more and greater than their physical senses are able to perceive. This is the entrance to the world of the unseen encounter, the unheard communication, the unfelt touch of someone from the spiritual world trying to make a connection with someone in the physical body.

Everybody’s heard of the sixth sense and stories surrounding it. So many movies have been made with the theme like the boy who saw dead people as in M. Night Shyamalan’s movie The Sixth Sense, or the man who saw the tomorrow as in Iyyer, The Great, an old Malayalam movie. But have you ever had a hunch, an instinct or an intuition? Some experts claim that such hunches might actually foretell the future. Others aren’t so sure. Here’s a story I found on the net.

Alex was cleaning his double-action, six-shot revolver in preparation for a bunting trip later in the month. In this pistol, when the trigger is pulled the hammer is cocked, the cylinder revolves, and the hammer falls on the next chamber, all in one smooth motion. For safety’s sake, Alex normally kept five bullets in the revolver, with the hammer resting on the sixth, empty chamber.Before cleaning the gun, he later said, he removed the five bullets and set them aside. When finished cleaning, he began to put the bullets back in the cylinder. When he arrived at the fifth and final bullet, he suddenly got a distinct sense of dread. It had something to do with that bullet.

Alex was bothered about the odd feeling because nothing like it had ever happened to him before. He decided to trust his gut, so he put the bullet aside and positioned the pistol’s hammer as usual over the sixth chamber. The chamber next to it, which normally held the fifth bullet, was now also empty.

Two weeks later, Alex was at a hunting lodge with his fiancee and her parents. That evening, unexpectedly, a violent argument broke out between the parents. Alex tried to calm them down, but the father, in an insane rage, grabbed Alex’s gun, which had been in a drawer, and pointed it at his wife.

Alex tried to intervene by jumping between the gun and the woman, but he was too late — the trigger was already being pulled. For a horrifying split second, Alex know that he was about to get shot at point-blank range. But instead of a sudden, gruesome death, the pistol went “click.” The cylinder had revolved to an empty chamber — the very chamber that would have contained the fifth bullet if Alex had not set it aside two weeks earlier.

Had Alex actually predicted the future, or was this just an extraordinary coincidence? Does a sixth sense really exist? It’s been a hot topic with researchers for a long time.

Am not sure about it either, but I did have these strange hunches and intuitions in the past, and not just once, but quite a number of times that I remember at least. Let me share a few here.

Long back, when I was a kid, I remember telling my sister one day that she’s gonna fall down and hurt herself that day. She didn’t take it seriously, but it turned out that she did actually fall and hurt herself that same day. I don’t know what impact that really had on my sister back then but she thought that I did “predict” the future. But that wasn’t any sixth sense. It was just a coincidence. But later, years later, in October 1993 if I remember right, something happened which really shook me.

Back then I was in senior secondary school, and it was a crucial year for me. But more than the textbooks and classes, I was interested in music, movies and the stars. With my pocket money, I used to buy many magazines and books that otherwise my parents wouldn’t let me have ‘coz they were worried about me losing my grip on the studies. These magazines I used to keep them in my room, inside a shelf, hidden amongst the many books and papers. Then one day we all went on a 4-day trip from the school. We had all the fun and were back to our hometown by about dinnertime on the 4th day. As I said bye to my friends and walked home, I suddenly had this weird feeling inside. It was a kind of intuition, that my mother has taken my absence as a right time to clean up my room and shelf and that she had found out my little secret, the magazines hidden under the books. I was really scared that moment. It wasn’t a big deal actually. It wasn’t like they were some “forbidden” books. But I was still scared. I reached home and my parents were having dinner. I spoke to them for a few minutes and went to my room to freshen up. The first thing I noticed was, my room was indeed cleaned. I rushed to shelf and checked inside. Yup, my moms actually cleaned it up, and guess what; all those magazines and books that I had kept from them were missing!

Of course I had to answer a lot of questions to my mom after that but what really shook me was the fact that I actually “saw” it coming. I should have dismissed it as just a coincidence, but I couldn’t. I mean, I was coming back from 4 days of fun with friends and there was no reason why I should have suddenly been worrying about my mom finding out my secret which, to begin with, wasn’t as serious as having killed somebody and buried the body in my backyard.

I couldn’t dismiss it that easily. I sat and let my mind wander, as usual. I tried to remember if something similar had happened any time earlier in my life. The only incident I could remember, other than my sister hurting herself, was something that took place a few years earlier when celebrating a festival with all my cousins. That day we were all having a great time bursting crackers and enjoying fireworks. In between, one of my cousins was trying to light a flowerpot – that conical stuff which shoots up fire like a fountain. It wouldn’t light up even after repeated tries. So she left it. After sometime I saw her going to give it another try. I suddenly sensed danger there and told her not to do it. I told her it’s gonna explode instead of just shooting the fire up. She just gave me a blunt look, which ideally would have translated to “Such a coward”. I let her go. She went ahead with her intentions, sat down and tried to get it work. And then – the flowerpot exploded. It wasn’t a big one, and so it sounded just like a small cracker. My cousin sat there, stunned. Everybody ran to her and asked her if she was hurt. She said no, she was just fine. Minutes later, she was missing and I found her sitting in her room, with tears in her eyes. She had indeed burnt her hand.

Could that have been a hunch that told the future, or just another coincidence? I had dismissed it back then as a case of me being more sensible than my cousin but now it seemed like it was kind of a sixth sense that was telling me what’s gonna happen. I discussed these incidents with a friend of mine and he too had some stories to tell me. So I started believing that the sixth sense or whatever that is, is a part of everyone whether or not they like it. It is a normal part of the human psyche and not abnormal or reserved for special or gifted persons.

[to be continued...]

Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life…You give them a piece of you. They didn’t ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn’t your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like ‘maybe we should be just friends’ turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It’s a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.

- Neil Gaiman (English born American Author of “The Sandman”, b.1960)

Ok, I don’t hate love. But is love really an overrated factor in life? No, I need to be more specific here. Not love in general, but that love you have for a special someone. That’s the one am talking about. Let’s see…

You meet a person of your opposite sex (err… or maybe your own, in case of gays or lesbians), you become friends, get closer, know each other so well, and one fine day realize you can’t live without each other. You sit and think.

Is the friendship turning to something more?

After much brooding and brain scrambling, you come to a conclusion.

Yes, am in love.

You look around. You see yourself in a wonderland, filled with green meadows, beautiful flowers, clear blue sky, crystal clear stream, butterflies fluttering by. You search for someone you can break this new discovery to. And finally when you do, they all flaunt you. Make fun of you. Feel happy for you. Or maybe even feel jealous of you. But you don’t care. You get on with your newfound life. Your new found interest. Your love.

The first few months, everything goes great for the two of you. It’s just love everywhere you go and in everything you do. And why not? You are best of friends, now more than that. But as life goes on, things start changing. Something seems different every time you care to look around. The wonderland has fewer flowers. There are signs of a thundershower in the sky. The stream is much drier than it ever was. You don’t understand why. You suddenly seem to be too obsessed with your love. Your best friend is now someone you often have arguments with. Sometimes even fight with. Somewhere along the way, you left the fact that your love was your best friend who stood by you through it all. You tend to find faults with that person which you never cared about earlier. Sometimes that ends up in turning you whole life into a hellhole. One fine day you decide “maybe we should be just friends”.

And that’s where you end. Just friends. Not even the best friends you used to be. It’s a total fall out. The question is, why?

Why is it that we tend to hurt the person we love so much?
Why is it that as friends we have no reservations whatsoever but as lovers things change between the same pair?
Why is it that as friends we understand each other better but as lovers we seem to have so many misunderstandings?

I know what you must be wondering now. “What happened to this guy? Did he breakup with his girlfriend or something?” Oh, no. Never. But we did go through some bad phases. And at times I even thought I shouldn’t be ruining her life like this. I thought maybe I should let her go coz she’s never gonna be happy with me. I told her that I got such thoughts. And she asked me if I could actually get her out of my system.

I thought about it (just for a second, heehee).
Hell. No. I can never get her out of my thoughts. I go nuts if I don’t see her even a day. She’s my dream. How can I ever let go of that?
And she told me, neither can she.

And we were back to being normal people again

Somebody had asked me, is it really worth being in a relationship? Sure there are quite some moments filled with love that you may cherish, but so often you have problems cropping up and you end up hurting each other. Is it worth all the trouble just to enjoy those few nice moments?

Yes. It is worth all that and more… for me at least. Even though we have had so many bad moments and have been at the verge of killing each other (exaggeration, kindly note… we ain’t that bad ) the fact remains that the moments we cherish are the best we have ever had and will anytime overlay the bad moments. Like the warm hug after “settling a fight”. That is so amazing, that no matter how bad or stupid the fight was, everything disappears… just like that.

The difference between friendship and love is how much you can hurt each other. I feel, instead of just falling in love with your friend, maybe you should try befriending the person you love too. I don’t know if that’s how it works, but it ought to, right?

I have a fool in me. One who feels too much, talks too less, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries. I need to tame this fool. And life can be a lot better. It’s a thought worth trying. I would, ‘coz I dont hate love.

And my special someone, is really worth it.

Like someone said,

Dance as though no one is watching you.
Love as though you have never been hurt before.
Sing as though no one can hear you.
Live as though heaven is on earth.

Damn it!It’s happened, just like I was afraid it would. I’ve been tagged!!!
And hence the melodramatic (??) title for this post.

(For those who don’t know what “Naheeeeee” means, it’s “Noooooooo” in Hindi… Err… Hindi movies to be more specific… used mostly by characters who are getting abused, tortured, tormented, raped, killed and so on. Explains a lot, doesn’t it?)

The deal is, I’ve to give a list of 15 things I would like to do before the age of 40. Grrrr… Nivi.. I’ll avenge myself for this.

Hmmm. now…me being the dreamer I am (not the ones I dream with my eyes closed, but the ones I do with them open.. and somebody said such people are dangerous. Ahem! Point to be noted by some people… *wink* wink*) I have a long list of “wish I could do” and “man, I have to do that” things. Picking just 15 from them that I think I wanna do before am 40, ain’t that easy. And right now, am too busy to even write and post something. But somehow, I manage.

So, 15 things to do? Before the age of 40? Now that’s something to wish for, considering that I’m fast entering the last year of my 20s. That leaves me with just 11 years, but what the heck! Here goes…

1. First things first. I wanna fly to Australia. No silly, not growing my own wings for that. I mean I wanna go to Australia. I’ve been planning on this for quite a long time. And I even dropped it a couple of times from my list of must-do things, for various reasons. But now, with support from all sides, am working on it and hopefully this will be the first thing to be granted in my long list of wishes. Probably before 30.(Fingers crossed tight. Ouch!)

2. “Drop the bomb and snatch sin”.. I know what that sounds like, but don’t worry, am not planning on a WW3. It’s just a literal translation of what I would have said in the Mallu slang. Those who know me and the sin am talking about, and is aware of the issues we face in getting together, would have got the picture now. And for those who don’t, am sorry, but it’s hard to explain. So I wouldn’t go into details on this now.

3. My DreamWorks. YES, am talking about DreamWorks, the Hollywood production house, and NO am not planning to buy it out. But I wanna set up a small studio like that and grow big from there on. Am an animation and sfx freak. I love cartoons. I love comics. I love superhero movies like Spiderman. Am a graphic designer and animator by profession, and I’ve struggled and sacrificed a lot to be where I am now, even if it doesn’t seem like a big achievement when seen by an onlooker. My own studio, like DreamWorks and Pixar, is my ultimate dream. Am working on that, and just for y’all to know… if you ever come across the name cubixart sometime later in your life, remember me… Coz that’s where am gonna start. That’s gonna be my studio name

4. Repay my debts… both in kind and/or cash. Yes, I owe a lot of them both to a lot of people, even if they never asked me for anything in return, for their unconditional support in the most crucial phases of my life. My parents, my sister, my cousins, my friends, all included. My only concern is, am late in doing it.

5. Be a hunk. Woo the babes.
(hahahahaha… Me? A hunk? Wooing babes? God! Hahahahahaha…)
Ok, jokes apart, am talking of working out. Getting into shape. (No wooing or shooing babes involved here, I swear). Never in my wildest dreams did I think people would call me FAT! Hmmm… I think this should have been first on the list. Anywayz.

6. Dream room, in a dream house. Now that’s one of my crazy dreams. Coz everybody has a dream house and so do I… but my dream room, is different. My dream house can be on the beach, in the country side, in the jungle or even a lush green hill station. But wherever it is, I have this dream room in there that’s totally… completely planned, designed and built in my mind. From the material of the door hinges to which button switches on what. I have no intentions of discussing that here though, coz it’s my dream room and it’s gonna be there only in my mind till I actually build it. It’s gonna be unique and now y’all know something like this exists in my head

7. Adopt a child. My humble contribution towards the millions of needy children in the world.

8. Horses. Dogs. I love horses. I love horses. I love horses. Such beautiful creatures. And I love dogs. Such faithful and adorable beings. I wanna have a lot of them around me. That’s gonna be a long term plan. Not something to be done before am 40. But atleast, I’ll have a couple of dogs and maybe a horse. Now don’t picture me on a horse in the streets of Bangalore. Nevah! This is definitely gonna be in Australia only. Be a part time cowboy maybe

9. Fly a helicopter. Another of my long cherished dreams. I love ‘em choppers. Always have had a fascination for them. Amazing machines. I so badly wanna fly one. Not just fly IN one. I used to say I’ll do it at least once before I die. But then, what’s the point in trying to fly it when I can’t even figure out if it’s the controls or my walking stick that am holding????

10. Travel the world. Ok, maybe not travel the whole world before am 40. O’coz I could do it if I wanted to, right? That crazy old scientist did it in just 80 days when even the Wright bros were repairing bicycles, didn’t he? Anyways, the point is, I wanna travel to as many places as I can before am 40. I wanna travel in such a way that I can enjoy every single moment of it. Am not that keen on taking a flight and going and staying in some star hotel and going around in a cab, nope. I wanna live every moment of that travel, to the fullest.

11. Learn to dance. No classical dance nor to be a great dancer. And I don’t mean just jumping around like a mad monkey in a discotheque. Just wanna learn to move myself to the music. Just get into the groove. (I can hear someone laughing…)

12. Go trekking… into deep jungle. Back to the jungle. I love it. And I wanna explore it. Deep. Deeper. The last time I went to the jungle, I really missed trekking into it. I was like a child who was taken to Disneyland but not allowed to take any of the rides. It was terrible.

13. Drive an off-roader, top speed, filmy ishtyle. I love cars. I love a few classic ones. I love a few that has class. And I love many of the off-roaders. I love driving too. I just wanna rip across the terrains in a sturdy vehicle, once at least.

14. Be romantic. Am very unromantic as of now. Am quite horny, but not so romantic (heeheehee) I don’t buy her flowers. I don’t sing sweet li’l stupid songs to her. I never went down on my knees and said “Marry me” or “Be my valentine” to her. I never took her to a couples only party and jived to the music. I never had a candle light dinner with soft music playing in the BG. I never popped surprises at her. I never bought her things I would have really love to. In other words, am never romantic. So it’s high time I did something about it. I wanna take her to the beach and walk on the wet sand, holding her hand and the cool breeze on our face. I wanna spend the evening with my arms around her, enjoying the sun set. I wanna jump out of the corner with a bouquet of flowers, just to see the surprised expression on her face. I wanna do a lot of things. And all that and more before I start using dentures.

15. And the last but not the least thing I wanna do. Kiss in the rain. Do I need to elaborate on that? I guess not

Phew! Ok, this is a quick draft. Didn’t do any mathematics to find out exactly what 15 things I would like to do in the next 11 years. But these are the 15 things out of the many more that I wanna and may do. Things I may not be able to enjoy much at an older age as I would now.

Do pardon me.

In my last post I was talking about what my ultimate work place would be like. My two favorite places in the whole world are the beaches and the jungles. The Blue and the Green. The two colors of Mother Nature that I love. But in a beach, there are limitations. Like, it’s no fun sitting on the beach under the noon Sun, is it? Beaches are fun from dusk till dawn. The best place to be that time.All my life I’d been to beaches with my parents or relatives to play in the water and see the Sun set, and as soon as it does it’s time to go home as if the show is over. When we friends go, we used to temporarily turn into frogs and take to the waters as if no world existed beyond the walls of the well.

As a kid I was told the Sun rises in the east and sets in the west, but I always thought east is where the mountains are and west is where the oceans are. In other words, for me, the Sun rises from amongst the mountains and sets into the ocean! Isn’t that how we used to draw “sunset” and “sunrise” in our drawing class? Well, o’course that’s ‘coz I come from a beautiful li’l coastal town in the western shores of the Indian peninsula.

When I grew up and had more grey matter up there, I knew it’s different if I go to the eastern shores. There the Sun would rise from the ocean and set amidst the mountains.

Really?? Hey, cool! I wanna to see that.

Sure enough, I got to, when I went to a city on the eastern coast and spent over a year and a half there for my studies. The beach, as usual, was a wonderful place. But the one thing I missed on those beaches is obviously the beautiful reddish – orange circle, the Sun, on the horizon coming down and disappearing into the water. Basically, it was a li’l boring for me.

Then one evening, in fact a li’l late in the evening, around 20:30hrs, I was bugged and so decided to go to the beach with my cousin. We did, and we were sitting and enjoying the cool wind in our hair, when far away, at the end of the black sheet of ocean I saw a faint glow. It got brighter and brighter and soon I saw a glimpse of the Moon!

Man, I tell you… I was awestruck! I’ve seen the Full Moon, rising up and glowing out there… looking so amazingly beautiful. And I’ve seen the New Moon, a crescent, looking like a bright polished hook, way up in the sky. But this… it completely blew my mind. It was a near complete Moon, really huge, bigger than I’d ever seen it, and it was rising up slowly, throwing a reflection on the dark water, making it sparkle. It looked like a thousand diamonds spread across a plain. The scene was so beautiful; I wished it would just stay on for ever. I missed my camera that moment. If only I had it with me, I could have captured perhaps the most beautiful sight of my life.

Now I stay far away from the beaches. Geographically, am on the Deccan Plateau, and this place is over 3000ft above Mean Sea Level. Sure, no chances of a tsunami hitting us, but that also mean this place lacks one of the most beautiful places to be. But then, this place is quite green, in fact, one of the greenest cities I’d ever been to. But of late the greenery seems to be vanishing. It’s a poorly planned hi-tech city and the ever growing traffic is too much for the existing infrastructure. So the authorities are busy cutting down trees and widening the roads and building flyovers.

Who cares about the trees and the green beauty anyways?

I do. I wish this city was like it used to be, less crowded, and greener. I think my idea of be connected, work while you live your own life wherever you want to be, my ultimate work place, would help a lot in that. Hmmm… What do you think?