New Sense

I recently had the pleasure of watching a Indian adaptation of the classic Moliere play titled “The Imaginary Invalid”. Staged at the KH Kala Soudha in South Bangalore and performed by energetic cast of a budding theater group, the play combined a hilarious plot and brilliant characterization to make it a memorable evening.

The Imaginary Invalid is the story of a hypochondriac father who wants to get his daughter married to a doctor, so that his medical bills will be taken care of. Adding to the mix is a second wife who would rather have her step-daughter converted to a nun so that she can grab all of the man’s property.

One of the biggest winners of the play has to be its Indianisation. For far too long we have had Indians playing western plays trying hard to fake western accents and ending up with abysmal performances. The Imaginary Invalid makes it a point to bring across the diversity of India by making the characters from different Indian backgrounds, which worked wonders to the comedy and the relevance of the play.

The cast’s energy and enthusiasm is what immediately catches our attention, Praveen who plays the protagonist combined with the actor playing the maid servant were excellent with their comic timing. The character of the young suitor who was coached to impress the protagonist was one of the most memorable of characters in the ensemble. The stage design also stood its own as one of the important characters of the play. It provided the perfect canvas for the actors to work on.

The three act play had its good and bad moments. Personally I throughly enjoyed the second act but was a bit more skeptical as the third act seemed to drag a little longer than expected. The laugh lines were well handled and it seemed like the audience was enjoying the play right thru.

All in all the Imaginary Invalid was a well executed adaptation of the French play(Le Malade imaginaire). It provided for a excellent evening of entertainment.

Ps: The Imaginary Invalid is being performed again later this week at the Alliance Francaise.

One day Two Buddhist Monks who were on a long journey approached a raging river. On the river bank stood a beautiful young lady. She approached them asking for help to cross the river as she feared drowning. The first monk walked ignored her and crossed the river. The second monk picked up the woman and carried her across the river. He placed her down, they parted ways with woman and on they went with their journey.

As the journey went on, the second monk could see some concern on the other monk’s mind, he asked what was wrong. The monk replied, “how could you carry her like that? You know we can’t touch women, it’s against our way of life”. The second monk answered, “I left the woman at the rivers edge a long way back, why are you still carrying her?”

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This has to be one of my favorite zen stories. I have narrated this story so many times that I have lost count and each time I narrate it, I appreciate it a little more…

What I have realised is that its very easy in life to get carried away with the flow of information. I have always been vary of the thoughts I was carrying with me and the disadvantages of their burden.

Very often we carry with us just a singular opinion of an incident and with that come assumptions and prejudice. Things change over time, the perpetrators forget the incident and yet we continue holding onto the assumptions and prejudice. I think it was Buddha who once said “Being angry at someone is like holding onto a burning piece of coal to throw it at them, we are the only ones getting burnt”

One of the hardest lessons I have had to learn in life is that no matter how good you are, no matter how well planned you execute a task it will never make everyone happy. And that sometimes the only way to get the peace of mind you seek is to simply let go.

I believe in jinxes. I am generally not a very superstitious person but there are somethings I cant get myself to do. I believe at in some level doing one act will jinx doing something else or ruin its progress.

For one, if I ever have to do something that I believe is very important to me… I don’t like to talk about it before hand. I always fear that when someone hears about it and exclaims “Wow you are doing that… Cool”(I get that sometimes), I am jinxed to either give up on doing it or something else randomly happens that takes all the fun out of doing whatever.

I know its a mental block and the pattern has happened too few times to even make it a proper pattern but the thought is always there.

Another jinx I believe in has got to do with birthday wishes(few of my friends know this one). I believe that what ever I wish on my birthday I will definitely get it, just that I will never get it in the way I originally wanted. This is a odd funny jinx but has been coming true for the last three years. The odd thing is that for two of the three years when I made the wish I believed I had wished for something I would never have. By the next birthday the wish had come true and turned sour… This year I made a wish after my friends insisted I make it, that came true within just two weeks but dammit not the way I wanted!

The reason I talk about all this today is I believe I finally broke another jinx I had… With that I now believe I can get my mind over fate and conquer my other jinxes.

This jinx was a part of me for over a decade. It started one day when I told my friend a story I was planning to write. He was a close friend and after listening to the story said he thought it was average… Average from a close friend mean a little better than pathetic. I never wrote that story.

It happened a couple of times later when I told someone a story/blog/concept before writing it and never wrote it. Sometimes they loved it too much that I felt too satisfied to write it…

But last week something odd happened. I sat down and told a story to my teacher and a couple of close friends, this story had been lingering in my mind for a year now and I never got around to write it. They listened to it intently for over 45 minutes… During that time their rapt attention to my story telling convinced me it was time to get a move on things. I got valuable feedback about parts that created a doubt in my mind but most important of all they made me feel alive with a zest to finish this.

I believe in jinxes but now I also believe that they disappear one day.

Taken at the Batasia Loop, Darjeeling War Memorial, Darjeeling. This is a memorial to the Gorkha soldiers of the Indian Army who sacrificed their lives after the Indian Independence in 1947.

I was watching the latest episode of Futurama and sipping a hot cup of tea when this question randomly popped into my head:

If I do succeed in making that time machine how the hell am I going to test it?

Ok that question has a lot to do with the latest episode of Futurama… In the episode the Professor invents a “One Way Time Machine”. For details watch the episode (it was pretty good too)

Back to the subject of this post… “How do you test a time machine?”

If it was a normal machine I would try and get it into the state required for it start properly and then check the outputs/results and iterate. But that wont work with a time machine!

Lets say I convince a poor bugger to test my machine(Of course I wont test it myself what if it blows up or something ), there are three possible results:

1. It works perfectly well – ‘Thats coz I am pretty good at building this stuff‘
2. It fails miserably (basically nothing happens) – ‘Ohh cant these assistants do one thing right, guess I have to do everything myself‘
3. It works partially – This is the case we need to talk about…

Lets say it worked fine for going back in time but not forward… I would expect the bugger to track me down and tell me I was successful. What if he went too far back? He cant pass on the message thru my great grand parents! – ‘Oh damn! thats what my granny meant when she said “Works fine, look at going forward” ‘

Basically it wont help my results now, how will I know what to fix…

Lets say it goes only forward… The future me would be thrilled to know but the present me just cant sit around waiting to know
Again if he goes too ahead in time, well thats pointless aint it…

My basic point about all this is that if I can invent a machine that can make people(and itself) disappear I should technically be able to pass it off as a partially working time machine… Right?