The Sixth Day Effect

My head is crammed with the litters of intransitive desperation as I cease to put my cerebrum into action. The computer screen vomits zillions of tiny, insensitive, dumb figurines clad in outfits of various colours. They are indifferent to my sense of craving for solace in an otherwise ruthlessly materialistic world. "Time flies when you are having fun" seems to have been a matter of the irrecoverable past as I reminisce about the days I had spent at home during my last trip. Like any other software professional I too have to sustain the ordeal of working away from home & "Home is where the heart is" barely makes my present settlement an adjustable one.

Tension, stress, and the remaining scums of the human emotions residing on the negative side, keep on pestering me as in when I try to stage a YOU-CAN-DO-IT kind of recovery. I squirm for respite only to be alarmed by a pop-up reminder grinning, "You have a Team-Meeting" on the cadaverous monitor of my HP Workstation. Probably, I'd have been better off Working in a station rather than WHACKING the workstation. I turn around to find MUGLEs(With Due respect to JK "Harry Potter" Rowling) i.e. MOST UNWANTED GROUP of LAZY ENTITIES(A whole bunch of colossal HP-UX Workstations) howling inside the Test room as if they would writhe my neck provided I step into it. My life is all agog to call it quits and raring to sneak into another body for it finds this one disgustingly cliched and moronic. I too, become intractably virulent and seriously consider Plastic Surgery/Facelift as an alternative to escaping the pathetic attenuation of human conditions.

Oh Yes !! Is that possible ? A Replacement...Astonishingly similar. That would be an incredible 1722 (Ek Saath Do Do...Bollywood Zindabaad). Gone are the days when double roles, duplicates aka Kumbh mele mein bichhde bhai... used to rule the roost. This is the age of CLONES. Genetic mapping & Replication is undoubtedly in the driver's seat. My replica would strive to build a better world for me. I'd transfer my responsibilities into the Junior's(I was born earlier, he was created later) head and shoulders and so on... While I laze around in the bed & surf channels, he'd create programs, write source code, mail documents & dispatch deliverables JIT. He'd unflinchingly come forward to carry forward the pending assignments. He'd deal with the outer world while I prepare to take a dip in the swimming pool. He'd literally translate all my thoughts to action the moment I concur upon an immediate deployment.

What next ?? where would he stay ? Fairly simple... He'd stay where I won't, in the office. I'll be vacationing at home, I wouldn't even report here once. Since it becomes his duty to look after the responsibilities he has been assigned to, I would care less if he fiddles around with them. After all, that's the objective, he was created to meet. Well, I'd be able to give quality time to my parents and heart. Life wouldn't be as meaningless as before. It'll be beautiful & I'd be enjoying every bit of it...TILL...WHAT...He ARRIVES to DEMAND...

Oh !! No... I had never imagined a catastrophe more venomous than this. He'd demand access into my personal life. It will be inevitably a case of GENETIC DISCRIMINATION & RE-ENGINEERED JEALOUSY. He'll plead for his share in my family until his desire gets the beast out of him. He'll infuse malevolence pertaining to my presence in my family members. He'll deliberately siphon suspicion into the mental corridors of my kith and kin until they start disbelieving me. My Love will refuse to put faith in me for she'll be failing to distinguish between two copies of the same anatomy. My brother would spare no efforts to unravel the truth, eventually turning his sweet pair of eyes off me. My parents would fall prey to the creepy ambitions of the REPLICANT. I'd be conceived upon as having been given a GENETIC INCARNATION. My world would pull down the shutters on my face. That'd spell VICTORY FOR SCIENCE & DEFEAT FOR HUMANITY.

I wouldn't budge until I have demolished this facade of self-proclaimed advancement. After all, I'm born to my parents & stayed in my Mother's womb for nine months while he's the ephemeral creation of sporadic creativity. I'm the source, the master and he's just a GENETIC PROGRAM, a spoof. I'd show up with all my might & implant a SELF-DESTRUCTIVE GENETIC DESIGN in him. That'd cut short his life span marginally, although it won't kill him. There exists a VIRUS FOR EVERY PROGRAM YOU WRITE/CREATE, but you can't destruct something that's not your creation, the right to which is only HIS (UP THERE) proprietary.

In the meantime, I perform a magnificent touchdown to my current status, when my colleague informs me of something wonderful, "Kamal, tomorrow's the SIXTH DAY (Saturday)"...Saturday & Sunday are offdays for me.


N.B. The Sixth Day Law bans Human Cloning & punishes the perpetrator with a long prison term and the clone with immediate eradication.

Violence Unloaded :: Peace Uploaded

I happened to watch "Matrix Reloaded" with a couple of my friends. I had been taken aback by the out-of-the-world trailers replete with eye-popping stunt sequences and mesmresing special effects (They used to be special earlier,as of now even a kindergarten toddler could come up with a 20-page autopsy of the thematic ensemble, vividly describing the sequences with clinical precision). Well, that's a different ball game. I'm more concerned about disintegrating the entire scenario, shuffling around the pieces & presenting another fantasy which I hope appears understandable yet more effective.

Machines, Programs, Reloading, Mainframes, Cognitive Disillusionment, Matrix...
Add to it Prophecies, Oracle (No DataBase here:)), Destiny, Fate...

A person may find it easier to identify with the second list of jargons when translated to his dialect, since I'm doubtful as to how many languages have made entries in the latest revisions of their colloquial lexicon pertaining to the first list notwithstanding the marauding conquest of a monster called IT whom everyone either loathes or drools over. So, the Beverly Hills guys thought of taking advantage of the "Drooling factor" and decidely agreed upon the age-old formula of Good Vs Evil, David Vs Goliath..., borrowing heavily from the Shaolin Brand of Martial Arts (This seems to be the current bent of the West towards the Oriental IF NOT MARITAL THEN MARTIAL). The bottom-line was Mindless Violence & movies of this ilk seemed to glorify the CRASH-BOOM-BANG saga.

OK, I agree, action sequences, inexplicably GRAVITY-DEFYING choreography adorned with the stylishly garbed hero getting the better of a 100 odd dummies OR rescuing his enamorata with drop-dead panache OR EVEN doing a SURGEON's Job by literally performing a Virtual Pin-HOLE excavation of the bullet with no scalpels, no scissors but BARE HANDS (That'd do surgery proud & Surgeons shameful !!!) & Yes without applying Local Anaesthesia (Myopin at least) makes the adrenalin rush faster, at break-neck speed in most ordinary mortals, including myself, especially when the Sound system ejaculates 16000watts of Digitally pulsating background score. If you wonder as to how I'm boasting of the fashionable Medical terms, then I must make it public that I belong to a family of Doctors...(My Father is a Cardio-Anaesthetic Surgeon). As to the martial arts section, I must ponder a bit before revealing that I hold a Black belt in Kung-fu (manchurian).

So all the while I was thinking if this was possible !!! WHAT ?? One fine day we all wake up to find that we are devoid of VIOLENCE. We can't think of causing harm to anyone, we can't scold, we can't assault and that holds true for all the mortals...What do you think would be in store for us ?

Well, I believe that VIOLENCE abets VIOLENCE. Since, all the individuals w'd have Violence erased from their Genetic Sequences, the very concept of enmity, hatred, bitterness would have become ghosts of the past. The human actions would have got redefined or say, refined. Since, Man w'd no longer think of others in a negative manner, the concept of crime would get obliterated. The next time, one raises his arms, it'd be either to lift a baby up, or to bid someone goodbye or may be to PLUCK A PAIR OF JASMINE FOR HIS SWEETHEART. The concept of weapons would vanish into oblivion. Pistols w'd no longer be used to fire bullets, but the triggers would shower petals and perfumes. Tanks would become the firing compatriot of a Tractor wherein SEEDS/FERTILISERS would be spayed upon the far-reaching farmlands. Missiles would turn into Food/Message carriers in the face of an impending natural calamity providing succour to the needy & deprived, they would no longer burst into flames/pellets, but food packets. Nuclear reactors would be converted to safe-breeding reactors facilitating the generation of power rather than nuclear devices what they used to be earlier. Countries would cease to exist within international boundaries for land will be free of incarceration. People will come together, love will grow, poverty will be thrown into shackles since governments w'd redeem tackling the humanitarian issues in the first place and they'd no longer be bound by the need of war or defence related issues. Peace will manifest throughout the geography of this planet. Humankind will complete a full circle...

Doesn't it sound more realistic than a surreptitious non-entity titled MATRIX ?

"PEACE UPLOADED/VIOLENCE UNLOADED is far better than MATRIX RELOADED"

Call of the Grey Matter

The resplendent beams of the rising sun steer their way through the curvaceous anatomy of the sprightly jungle to dazzle the verdant corridor, albeit gradually. The ambience resonates with soft chirps, slowly transcends the mischievous howls, culminating in the majestic roar in what appears to be a fusion of earthly sentiments that pervade the taciturn persona of the green empire. Life moves out of the soporific abode to grace the charming territory in all its capacity with the agility of a young cheetah, the experience of an ageing orangutang, the cunningness of a vivacious fox, the magnificence of a royal Bengal tiger, the dazzle of an ecstatic peacock and what not !! The varieties of life forms that one comes across in the entire spectrum of wildlife symbolize what is actually known as Free Spirit. This epitomizes the natural, untamed instincts of the animal kingdom that have been in existence since time immemorial. The feral incarnations have been known to pass on the lessons of survival to their offspring notwithstanding the ravages of time. In the perennial battle between the predator and prey, the survivor comes out unscathed primarily because it puts into action these enduring tactics. Wilderness is all about being free, untapped and untrained. Once the concept of training takes over, the learning becomes less lateral and leans heavily towards a pre-defined objective. The underlying credo for that matter belies the fact that domesticating any entity hones its skills. In fact, the more one gets taught, the farther it drifts from the core subject matter.

The cacophony of the bustling metropolis compels the plebian mortals to abandon their nocturnal delights. Buried inside the thick foliage which otherwise is a rare sight in the cities, lies a sprawling campus overlooking the splendid works of architecture collectively referred to as a B-school wherein ‘B’ expands to Business. Here resides the most remarkable organism that has ever descended on our planet to manifest time-tested theories in the most incomprehensible manner. The elements of the aforementioned organism have inherited the right to colloquially identify themselves as B-school Grads from their predecessors. They dress smart, speak neat, behave sophisticated, dream lofty, walk tall and display all possible traits that can trick the naive onlooker into assuming whether he had actually landed on the wrong planet. This most singular species believes in swearing by the likes of Kotler, De Bono, Robbins, Anderson et al to authenticate its oratorical and analytical prowess. Endless hours of grueling sessions are devoted to contradicting what is universally true and abiding by the illusions of the flawed. Its here in these esoteric campuses, the species undergoes the radical transformation from a state of unadulterated mindset to that of an inordinate inflection. In this process, it loses the pristine charm of raw knowledge to the lucre of conditioned applicability. The so called B-school Grad would unflinchingly don the garb of a would-be manager to decisively overrule any existing concept as being highly erroneous just to showcase his superfluous understanding of the market. Having done so, the next moment he would flaunt a piece of paper mysteriously titled “…graduated from the best B-school” grinning to the flash of the irresistible endowments in whatever form they appear, dollars, pounds, euros, rupees all alike. But, he ceases to function in consonance with his innate abilities, the assets he is gifted with.

Wilderness represents a perfect allegory to the very meaning of being boundless, yet undeniably original. The creatures of this uncultivated world learn to carry on by interacting with their ambience. They harness the senses to communicate with the unexplored in order to sniff possibilities of a calamity. The free spirit makes it possible for them to employ all possible combinations to extract a suitable avenue for existence. Contrast this with the approach ordained by their more illustrious counterparts in pursuit of a piece of paper aptly christened MBA Degree wherein the level of thought employed is behemoth but the outcome is inexplicably disorganized. Years of unregulated classroom learning take the sheen off their able brains and render them highly inactive. They become receptive only to a standardized version of skillfulness wherein they employ a pre-defined set of constructs to achieve the objective. A highly self-conscious MBA graduate, when asked to find out the number of granules spread over an unclenched palm, would seemingly hurry to perform a regression analysis to test the homogeneity of the particles, open a highly incoherent software package on his laptop to adjust the standard error, refer the marketing topology to carry out a cluster analysis on the exactness of the range, proceed to study the behaviour of termites to calculate the depth of the mound only to arrive at a mind boggling figure of a quarter and a half million approximated to the 100th place on the decimal side. Our local tea-boy, on the other hand, would not even take a quarter of a second to arrive upon the fact that all we have is only a handful of granules. The naïve youngster might not have visited the primary school, let alone any B-school, but on the face of it possesses enough common sense to utilize at the right instance. It’s his interaction with the surroundings that have taught him the basics of survival which no B-school, howsoever glorious, can ever fancy to impart.

The idea is therefore, to establish a bridge between the environmental learning and skill development in classrooms. The notion of intelligence is controversial enough to throw open innumerable forums for argument. But, the seat of human intelligence, as conceived by the biologists would certainly be augmented by the proficient usage of the grey cells in the brain. A continual exposure to testing situations on the platform of reality stimulates these units of cerebral activity. In fact, steady interaction with the elements of nature nurtures the essence of free spirit in animals. Hence, it’s highly imperative that a sense of simulated training should be incorporated in the mindset of the B-school graduates. This would subsequently narrow the gap between their natural flair and adapted competence. What else, but the sanctity and composure of the jungle life would suffice well to the paradigm of skill development in them? Therein, the individuals would carefully study the customized manners of their less gifted counterparts to analyze the implications of real world decisions. This could be of tremendous benefit to the future of mankind. Possibly, the cradle of humanity would deliver what years of modern coaching have not been able to – The Quest for Perfection.