I Will Not Go Gentle

 I was recently reading this article where Neil Gaiman talks about how Terry Pratchett is not jolly, he is angry. I have hyperlinked the article here. It isn't a secret to anyone who has visited my blog that I am a bibliophile and like books more than people. But of late , I've been struggling and reading this article put a lot of things into perspective for me. 

Gaiman writes,

"I rage at the imminent loss of my friend. And I think, “What would Terry do with this anger?” Then I pick up my pen, and I start to write."

I felt every word of that sentence. For me writing has been an escape, be it jotting down quotes from books or peopling my walls with quotes and posters  the written word has always been my friend. I know few other ways of expression than writing, for even the photos I take have either lyrics as captions or writing that is purely original.

I also agree with Gaiman when he says that anger is an engine. But like all engines, anger can cause failures and hurt the people who care for you. I know there are things I do in anger which I regret later, but when doing them I feel a sense of pride and justice is being served, that i have been wronged and now the world owes me blood. It is this thought that scares me the most. At the moment, there are two wars raging in the world, both due to anger, people are dying and an entire generation has been wiped out. Anger isn't doing anyone good here.

So, I guess what I'm trying to say is that in time, and I hope that time comes sooner rather than later, I will adapt into the process and accept my anger, not as a tool for revenge but as a motivator to get things I need to get done, done. 

As for those of you who have felt hurt or have been hurt by my anger, know that I'm trying..I really am.

I do not want to be an angry person, I was made into one. But that anger has made me kind, it has gifted me with a stubborn nature and since I know what I do not want, I know that I shall get what I do want.

Thank you for reading this, if you stuck around this far.

The Bilge Master

Converting "Could" to "Should"

 “To be or not to be, that is the question”, is a quote that everyone is familiar with in some form or the other. For me personally, this quote asks an important question, viz- “Could it happen?” and follows it up with one of the most interesting questions I’ve ever come across- “Should it happen?” This brings me, in my usual roundabout way to the discussion I hope to have with you as you pursue this article, a discussion on the word “speculation” and specifically, speculative fiction.

 Could dragons exist? Should time travel be possible? Is there alien life and could someone be trying to establish contact with us, or are we alone?

 The above paragraph are the questions a tween me kept asking my father, one of the most accomplished engineers I have ever seen. These questions were born of the fire in my belly which was ignited when I read Isaac Asimov for the first time and in particular his short story “Robot AL-76 Goes Astray”. The Three Laws of Robotics fascinated me- how could you create a machine capable of being able to obey laws, of existing to serve or to carry out tasks that humans could do? Could this machine love? Could this machine know hate? Could this machine…? Should this machine…?

 Anyone who has been following the news or checking social media is aware of the SAG AFTRA controversy and I for one, (as an amateur writer) find myself strongly in the camp of those on strike. I am elated that their terms ended up being met. But it prompted in me the desire to pen this, (on a word processing software, to be uploaded to a server hosted under Google’s umbrella. Yes, I am aware of how sci fi I sound, of how speculative fiction-ish I sound, of how dated I sound and of how abnormal this would seem to someone from the past).

 Humans are a remarkable species and their imagination knows no bounds. Since the discovery of fire, and the invention of the wheel, humans have never looked back. All of us at some point, have wondered about the lines at the top of this post- and some of us have been influenced by them, and created- converted the could to the should and in doing so made room for more could.

 I am often told engineers are not creative and am painfully aware of the rivalry that exists betwixt science and the arts.  My only statement here is that everything you see around you was once nothing but lines on paper. Everything. Let that sink in for a bit.

 Here is the thing see, here is why according to me, we need to keep converting could to should- we need to keep creating, we need to keep being curious and we need to keep learning without fear. Rabindranath dreamt of a utopia in his poem and said as much- “Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high/Where knowledge is free” …

 

And to think that this writeup was inspired by a simple list of books, all of them falling under speculative fiction and suddenly some cog in my brain started to turn and now here we are, 550 odd words into this rant and I don’t even know what I’m saying at this point and so I’ll just leave you with a little T.S. Eliot

 

“Do I dare disturb the universe?”

 The Bilge Master