n+1

A couple of weeks ago, I learnt an important lesson – there’s a difference between “you’re not understanding me correctly” and “I’m not explaining it well enough to you”. The former is a very Indian thing. We love passing the blame. The latter is an American (and possibly Canadian and Australian/basically First World) method of argument. I have not had the chance to test it out in public, but in online discussions, I’ve seen some success when trying to get my point of view across if I don’t try to pass the buck to someone else. That’s a testament to human behavior. But we’re not here to talk about that, are we?

It feels like almost yesterday when I was talking about rhinos and having lived for a quarter of a century. In fact, that date was 42 blog posts and 365 days ago. It’s been another year. Not a pivotal one, but there’s always next year, as they say. I’m 26 and I’ve come to a conclusion – if I live to be a 100 and more, I’ll call every year above a 100 as a +1 life. It’s a good game I look forward to playing. I know what you’re thinking – this overweight, under-active boy (Man) isn’t going far. But hey, science and technology do this thing called progress. In fact, I read somewhere that the person who will live to be a hundred and fifty years of age, thanks to medical science, was born as early as last year. That person will see civilizations change, Nations rise and fall and will put Queen Elizabeth’s view of the history of the world to shame. I look forward to not being that person.

I was reading recently, about a person named Geoff Dyer, who was explaining about his ordeal through something called an ischemic stroke, a condition which cuts off blood supply to the brain and causes things such as loss of peripheral vision and middle of the day trips to the hospital, both of which happened to Dyer. He went on to talk about his experience and his surprisingly speedy recovery (he was out the next day) as well as the absurd uncertainty that now lurks about his every day. But Dyer is a writer and as a favor to all of us, he included a quote from an old Russian sci-fi movie, something that’s become an absolute favorite for me. It says –

we never know when we’re going to die and because of that we are, at any given moment, immortal.

So yeah, that’s it. Another year’s gone by. There are things that have happened and are still in motion. I’ve been reading about the Mahabharata thanks to an amazing book on the topic of Dharma by Gurcharan Das and it’s led me to discover some amazing things about the history of India.

I feel amazingly optimistic about the future and hope to keep cranking out stuff for others to read. My regards to all those who drop by and poke around, even the hacker who loves trying to get into my blog (seriously, why would my password be ‘nitin123’??).

In other news, a funny incident happened with a good friend, Bhaskar Vaish today. But he’s asked me not to blog about it. So this is me, not blogging about you Bhaskar. 🙂