I believe that the idea of heaven should be updated progressively by each
generation. As an example, the contemporary heaven must be wired
for the Internet.
I have never owned a pet in my life, nor do I
particularly have the desire to do so.
I am on a lifetime quest to
read at least one book from every country in the world written by an
author native to that country. (Written in English, not a book about that
country.) This is my World Literature project and I am less than 5% done.
Hours and hours of cooking won’t bother me, but I hate
doing the dishes afterwards.
When I find
bugs or cockroaches, I don’t kill or quash them. I spend a lot of time in
trying to trap them unharmed (using newspapers and plastic containers) and
then I walk out of our building
and let the insect go free.
The Travel Channel never
fails to inspire me to want to climb
mountains, ski downhill and cross deserts. I get up, fix myself some nacho chips and salsa and settle back on the couch to watch the next inspiring episode unfold.
Of all the spiritual streams,
Zen is the
one that resonates the most with me. I make repeated attempts at reading
and understanding Alan Watts, Dr. Suzuki and Kabat-Zinn.
For a day or two after
finishing a good book of fiction, I miss the characters and feel mildly
disoriented.
I’ve never learned to swim, though I have made sporadic
attempts at learning. I generally try to keep away from public pools.
Of all possible modes of
transport, trains are my favorite by far. I love to travel in them on nights.
And I love to travel by day, reading, watching meadows and other people’s
backyards roll by while I indulge in one unhealthy
snack after another.
I have never driven a vehicle in Europe.
It upsets my aesthetic sense
when homemade recordings in audiocassettes chop off songs midway.
Ever since my dad taught me
the game of chess,
I have always found it inordinately fascinating. I can follow complex ideas when explained to me by grandmasters, but I
cannot think of them myself.
I hold an engineering degree and lament the fact that I didn’t get it in Fine Arts. But I also know
that if had obtained a degree in the arts, I would have regretted not
pursuing engineering or science.
I pace myself with reading
certain authors. I will read at most one book by them per year. The authors in that list include Paul Theroux, James Michener,
James Salter.
I do not mind having to watch
a movie alone. To me, movie watching is not a communal or a social activity.
It is almost meditative and I take it very seriously.
When
jet-lagged and unable to sleep, I am in the habit of
making incredibly unfunny jokes. Then, I crack up laughing silly over them.
I have not knowingly eaten anything that had animal meat
in it.
The stereotypical belief that males hate to shop
applies to me as far as malls go. I cannot stand the idea of shopping for clothes. But I am happy to spend
time grocery shopping, thinking of all the new ingredients
that could be bought.
Oftentimes,
I have to remind myself of my real age, the
fact that I have a
wife
and that I manage a dozen people at
work
Even after all these years, I
look forward to a trip to a local library
the way a kid might look forward to a trip to a candy store.
Volcanoes fascinate
me, and every time I see one, I secretly hope to climb to the top one day and peer in.
I find physical exercise extremely boring, and am never able to overcome the inertia
to get started.
The fear of mediocrity is one of my biggest fears.
If I create a random
list of 50 things, it might contain
five items on food & cooking, two
on work, nine on books, 105 links, and 1 on the
list itself. I have always liked self-reference because it breaks all rules and
levels.
Haven’t ever had a fracture,
nor have I been hospitalized overnight. I
have,
however, had stitches put in
after I blocked a home-carved javelin with my
forehead.
Often, when I feel like
eating something I will look up exotic recipes from the Web, buy the ingredients, make the dish, serve it during dinner
and remind my wife that she is lucky to have a husband who cooks
exotic things for her.
My skin cannot handle cold
water showers at all. After I am done showering, it will take five minutes for
the steam to clear before I can see myself in the mirror.
Of all the books I have ever read, Richard Bach’s
Jonathan Livingston Seagull is the one I have read the most number
of times.
For over twenty
years, I have been putzing around with software of one sort or another.
The one that I consider myself to be a master of is Microsoft PowerPoint.
The fact that so many of us choose to fritter time away unmindfully despite being capable of
producing so many constructive things saddens
me.
I sometimes get a mild fever that lasts a day or two when I come across
something that impresses the heck out of me by being so extraordinarily
good – a lecture, a presentation, a book, a great idea, or a new field of study I
didn’t know anything about. I don’t know why this happens.
From my mother’s side, I have
inherited the trait of breaking into uncontrollable paroxysms of laughter for silly
things. This urge shows up at the most inappropriate times and has gotten
me into trouble on many occasions.
When I don’t have a book lined up to read, it makes me
real uncomfortable. The
first things I pack when going on a trip are the books.
When I read books, I don’t skip paragraphs. I read every line.
Salted
cashews are, for me, the perfect
snack. I cannot think of any time that I might
refuse to have a few, no matter how many other things I have just eaten.
Jewelry
has never had much appeal for
me. I don’t wear a
wedding ring.
When I am flying over oceans
in an airplane, I get a vague sense of unease – a
combination of fear and helplessness. I don’t have this unease when the
aircraft is flying over land. Yes, I know it is irrational.
It wouldn’t at all be surprising to see books that have
been checked out from 4 or 5 different libraries
in my
apartment.
The
idea of holding a 9.30-5.30 job, of doing this 5
days a week year after year often appalls me. I find the very thought
utterly stifling and even ridiculous.
I
like to know as little about a movie
as possible before I watch it, except the assurance that it is not a total
waste of my time. I want to see it the way the director intended me to,
with no prior knowledge and thus full of surprises.
I
cannot nap during afternoons. I have even tried Benedryl a couple of times,
and I still couldn’t doze off in the middle of the day.
However, when
jet
lagged, I can sleep all hours of the day, but I am wide awake all night long.
When there are 1000s of recipes on the Web, I wonder why we ever cook the same dish more than once a year?
Though I laugh at the idea of anyone having a favorite color, a surprisingly
large number of my things are in shades of burgundy.
I wouldn’t think twice about driving 15 miles to go to a used books
sale.
Even though I know that I
will never ever be a >2000
rated chess player, the idea of improving my game appeals to
me. At least once every few months, I will borrow a chess book from the library and work on tactical problems.
This desire to constantly improve (with no incentive monetary or
otherwise), I find interesting and even quaint.
Among the many things I am
ambivalent about is the issue of whether copying music
on to audiocassettes
and CDs for personal use (without paying) is okay.
I almost never remember to look at myself in a mirror, and on those occasions that I do catch a
glimpse, I am always surprised to find that I have forgotten to comb my
hair.
I don’t subscribe to the idea of praying for anything.
If there does exist a God with
a grand
design, I seriously doubt that me praying will make that God
deviate from the pre-planned scheme. However, I don’t mind praying for something for
someone else.
Every night, I go to bed with a small sense of loss that
another day has ended.
Ram Prasad
March 2003