Amazing Thoughts - From Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

Currently deep into the Magnum Opus of literary fiction - Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. With every description vivid, every tiny detail non-discountable, well she nearly captures it all. People may say that she has this obsession with the 'minutiae' of every event. However, I feel, it is this knack for freezing a moment, capturing every single detail in that scene and then unfreezing it all with as much ease is what makes her a compelling writer. Beneath all the fiction there is a fine thread of reality, all it needs is a bit of thinking... There is this particular narrative where she talks about the "Impact of broken faith and trust in childhood". Such a hard hitting truth! Simply stunning. I have reproduced the piece verbatim to avoid diluting the writer's intent...

"The great oak tree had stood on a hill over the Hudson, in a lonely spot in the Taggart estate. Eddie Willers, aged seven, liked to come and look at that tree. It had stood there for hundreds of years, and he thought it would always stand there. Its roots clutched the hill like a fist with fingers sunk into the soil, and he thought that if a giant were to seize it by a top, he would not be able to uproot it, but would swing the hill and the whole of the earth with it, like a ball at the end of the string. He felt safe in the oak tree’s presence; it was a thing that nothing could change or threaten; it was his greatest symbol of strength.
One night, lightening struck the oak tree. Eddie saw it the next morning. It lay broken in half, and he looked into its trunk as into the mouth of a black tunnel. The trunk was only an empty shell; its heart had rotted away long ago; there was nothing inside – just a thin gray dust that was being dispersed by the whim of the faintest wind. The living power had gone, and the shape it left had not been able to stand without it.Years later, he heard it said that children should be protected from shock, from their first knowledge of death, pain or fear. But these had never scarred him; his shock came when he stood very quietly, looking into the black hole of the trunk. It was an immense betrayal – the more terrible because he could not grasp what it was that had been betrayed. It was not himself, he knew, nor his trust; it was something else. He stood there for a while, making no sound, then he walked back to his home. He never spoke about it to anyone, then or since."

Am really speechless! Hats off to her ingenuity...

A Call from the “Land of the Holy Sands”.. Part 2

Part 2: Even "Impossible" says "I M Possible"!

Various seating permutations and combinations were tried during the journey to make it to Goa alive! Who on earth says that "Size does not matter"? Trust me, like hell it matters! Everything around us changed – the weather, the time, the people, the roads... everything.... well almost everything, except the speed of the driver! Perhaps the most distracting elements that further hampered the speed of our journey were the frequent calls from his girl friend/newly-wedded wife! (the amount of blushing that he did while answering those calls made me actually wonder if ‘she’ was the girl or ‘he’ was the girl!). Anyway, with the help of a few soul-stirring singers (and a majority soul-tearing/sole-elevating singers – ‘Chappal Slap Worthy’, if I must explain!), we attempted to ‘rag’ this blushing Romeo by belting out sensual and romantic Bollywood numbers. Music, I believe, takes two forms – the first being ‘music’ and the other being ‘Himesh Reshammiya’! Well, till date I used to consider Himesh as the flip side of music. However, my musical world was to receive a severe cultural shock! To our utter bewilderment, this driving ‘Kaminey’ joined in rendering the song! It was humiliating to say the least. The hunters had become the hunted! The sound that emerged when he let loose his vocal chords, with due respect to their community at large – Donkeys are Gods! I had always thought that ‘music’ and ‘Himesh’ formed the ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’ of the music world respectively. That day a new dimension was added to my definition of music – now I had the ‘Good’, the ‘Bad’ and the ‘Ugly’! Sorry, is there anything shoddier than ugly? I would prefer it replaced!
In an attempt to save our ‘already rocking journey’ from his phone calls, we had unknowingly landed ourselves in a deeper abyss. Our musical outburst had woken up the apparently ‘music loving’ element in this character. Utter blasphemy followed thereafter. One after another, the spirits of all the old-time immortal songs were raped and brutally killed and mercilessly chopped to pieces! The long-dead composers of those immortal songs must have had a hell-of-a-night in their graves! A quick bio-break at that point in time saved limitless more musical geniuses from further torture! I am glad that we contributed at least that much to music! The journey resumed, but, without any more killings! We had travelled a very long time yet we were surprisingly far away from Goa. No amount of mile stone calculations or time verifications could solve this mystery of our ‘distance vs time’ concept. Even ‘time’ itself stopped for some time to let us cover some distance, but it gave up! For convenience, henceforth I will refer to that Qualis as the ‘treadmill’!
The subsequent ups and downs during the ‘jog’ turned insignificant at the thought of approaching Goa. Let me fast forward at 32x now............ After... a... long... time, we could begin to smell a change in the air. This is no joke, but, even as one approaches Goa there is a different kind of air that permeates everywhere. It definitely has to be something more that just a psychological feeling! Anyway, even as we approached the border we were stopped by Maharashtra police. We were asked to give some money. What the f#%^! (the driver meant to say ‘Suck’, remember the ‘S’ and ‘F’ syndrome?) Even to get out of a state we needed to give money!? Were we still in Mumbai or what? Having paid the same, we then approached the Goa check-point. Let me tell you, we saw why Goa is different then and there. The Goa police did not even bother to bother us! They were already having a blast, they didn’t need us to ruin it. Finally, and let me say it slowly to match the speed of our entry, we... had... entered... Goa...!.! Hail the Bloody Mary!
Very quickly we needed to urgently attend to our basic needs! First it was ‘nature’s call’ and then it was ‘Need for Food’. After touring a few hotels (no food left!) and drinking two shockingly expensive tender coconuts (beer costs a fraction of any other health drink, so why the hell would anyone care for their health anyway!?), we arrived at a place which had semblance of a hotel and the proprietors promised us food! Even as we were awaiting our order to come, in walked an overweight man with two aides. As soon as he sat on the table, his antics began! It was Christmas and I am pretty sure this dude was no Christian, yet he had taken the opportunity to ‘drown’ himself in celebration! He was completely in a parallel world – "absolute talli" is what the Punjabis would say! He went on screaming something and after a while simply walked in to the kitchen shouting! Well, we were partially relieved because a bulk of our order had already arrived. No risk there! Anyway, by the time the 12 gluttons on our table finished our food (2 extra-large capacity ‘Tamilians’ had joined us from Channai by then), the owners had decided to close their hotel forever! What 7 generations of entrepreneurs had efficiently managed for over decades, this gluttonous 12 member team had wiped out on one single day! At least the morally gladdening part was that it was Christmas and what better day could you get to close your operations on!
If the Qualis was a treadmill till then, after the ‘final-rights-of-the-hotel-completed’ incident it had become a immobile/dysfunctional treadmill! Each of the occupants had achieved an unbelievable 10% improvement on their personal best weight (you call this improvement!) and to top it all the driver had achieved an unthinkable 20% increase (thanks to his girlfriend/wife’s phone call of over-an-hour and the freedom of having a separate table)! If that Qualis was a human being, I am pretty sure it would have attempted suicide at least a couple of times after its death!! (think of it – a dead person attempting suicide!) We had to travel to Palolem Beach, the southernmost point in Goa, the place where our imaginary beach hut existed (none of us had any idea where we were staying except for the fact that we had the phone number of a dude who had promised us the beach house). Whomever we asked for direction they just pointed their hands right ahead, indicating straight! After some time I started to wonder if ‘pointing hands straight’ after all meant anything different. I am reminded of a similar episode from a colleague’s life and need to deviate for a moment. Two of them had been to Kodaikanal and they were on a rented bike. They asked the traffic police guys to guide them to a particular location. The police guys had responded with a harsh "Poh Daa". One of them convinced the other that it meant ‘go straight’! The similar thing repeated with many other police folks ahead! Finally they found themselves stranded in middle of nowhere! ......As you may know "Poh Daa" simply means "Get out! (you idiots)"
After some ‘city darshan’ (the event when a driver takes you round and round a place to figure out the right address) we reached the beach and yes, there indeed was a lovely beach house for us! The ‘Guinness book worthy’ travel that we had just completed warranted a desperate need for relaxation of the body and mind. The natural choice was to head to a massage parlour. On enquiry, a Mallu girl from one of the neighbouring parlours offered massage services to all our gentlemen, one by one! But then, thank the heavens that we asked for the fine print and were politely informed that it was a ‘package deal’ - with the Mallu girl, you would get her husband as well! What the #%&$! (feel free to use any four-lettered words, probably "Fork" or say "Pork"! Why, what were you thinking?) These MBA Marketing folks, just to increase the short term sales of their companies have come up with such impossible gimmicks that they have forfeited the value of human species and thrown them to the dogs! Even for a peaceful thing as massage we have got ‘package deals’ now... "Take the wife and get the husband free!" That is taking complementary gifts to the next cheap level! Angry with life for this unfair treatment, the group dropped all plans for massage. The very thought of these complex deals had relaxed our minds and our bodies could just manage along as well! Having done a quick survey/foot drill of the neighbourhood, we were all set to get to the right places at the right time. It was gradually getting dark and Goa was beginning to wake up! In Goa you know, the day actually begins at night... Our group has a long ‘day’ to cover... Must take your leave now....