Starman

 I haven’t written long-form content for a very long time so I guess today’s as good a day as any and today I would like to talk about an indirect lesson I learnt. My day was quite good and prepared me for the hectic days of the upcoming week.

I got home from an improv workshop to find a book waiting for me. This book, “Take a Seat at the Cosmic Campfire” is written by Dhara Parekh who also has a novel called “Unearthing Idyll” out which is book one of the “Asymptote Universe” saga. Dhara asked me to beta read for her and I gladly did, although I maintain that I was not very helpful and she disagrees. Either way I am on the third story right now and having a ball with how refreshing these stories are! I should add here that I am a science fiction junkie and have unabashedly grown up cutting my teeth on Isaac Asimov, Arthur C Clarke and Douglas Adams, whose works have enabled me in recent times to read books by Gene Wolfe and Ursula K LeGuin and having consumed these books have made me curious to explore the works of Adrian Tchaikovsky.

I will be posting a review of Dhara’s book on Instagram and Goodreads very shortly as I am confident that the book will be fully read by Tuesday. I just want to tell Dhara that so far it has been a wonderful journey!

But let’s now go into the past for a brief moment. All the science fiction I’ve read as a kid and all the science fiction I’m reading now and all the science fiction I will read as an older man deal with one thing at the core of each story- the future and I suppose what I’ve realised so late in my journey into the worlds of Asimov and Clarke or my upcoming journeys into Tchaikovsky is about the future, a future worth looking forward to, not a past to remain angry about.

That was the lesson I learnt today while I played Tekken 7 with my friend who had dropped in spontaneously and stayed for quite a while. It was a treat hosting her and reading short stories out to her in what she terms my “narrative voice”.

As for the improv workshop, I saw growth in me. I also observed growth in a lot of the people I’ve been participating in these workshops with, and I realised that here is a part of me to work on, a new skill to build; yet another future to look ahead to.

And then of course,I saw that a friend in my book club wrote the next installment of a serialized travel story he’s writing and I glimpsed another future, one where I get to the other end of the rainbow that is his travel story’s conclusion.

Had you told last week’s Ashesh that this week he would churn out this article, or if I were to call last week’s Ashesh past Ashesh, I really and firmly believe he would have whined about how he was unable to write long form articles just now.

But hey, look! Here’s a long-form article from Ashesh.

Lesson? Look ahead, I guess ‘coz try as you might you won’t go back to the past.

But you will have a future!

The Bilge Master

Links

1. Dhara’s book

2. Sidharth’s blog

Savor the Pause: A New Year Greeting

 

“What is this life so full of care,

We have no time,

To stand and stare?”

~ “Leisure” by W.H. Davies

It’s been a long time coming but the year has passed us by. Many things happened to all of us this year. Some people had the good fortune to marry the love of their lives and others had the misfortune to break their wrist. However, this year showed me so many things.

While doomscrolling on Instagram one day,I came across Keira Knightley in an advertisement for Black Dog whiskey where the tag line was “Savor the pause”. I was talking to a friend just now and suddenly realized that 2023 was all about savoring the pause. A lot of things happened in and around me in 2023.

I walked with a bespectacled friend down alleyways, chatting about paperbacks vs audiobooks. Suddenly she reached up and put her cap on my head and took a picture .I never really cared about caps but then again,savor the pause.

I read 82 books this year- some that made me laugh, some that made me cry and to some,I had to say goodbye to. I got hold of Slash’s autobiography and I packed my Harry Potter books into a friend’s bag, letting them go for the price of a biryani at Zeeshan.

I gained weight and lost it, only to gain it back again. I’m an electrical engineer, and I think my body has realized that because it kept my weight in a loop this year- lose-gain-lose-gain-lose. Oh, who am I kidding? I slacked off on working out and can’t look the face in the mirror in the eye anymore. (Think “DYWTYLM” by Sleep Token).

I also took quite a few photos (Instagram below, follow, don’t unfollow).

So, we’re in a new year now, but the old year also saw me learn about jokes and actively participate in improv jams, where I saw raw talent unfurl before me under the guidance of a good facilitator. It turns out, I’m not just “The PJ Machine of Bengal”as some people one said. I’m nowhere close to that title, but what I am is a man who got a chance to make himself and others laugh. (Look up Calcutta Comedy Company on Instagram and BookMyShow for details. Poetry and Stand Up Comedy also a part of this organization).

There was a lot of “new”in the year that was. New books, new music,the news that Portnoy returned to Dream Theater, the rediscovery of Tool’s “Lateralus”, the 3AM random craziness, the books and candles sent to me by a great friend in the USA,whose house boasts quite a few dogs.

T.S. Eliot said that last year’s words belong to last year’s language and also asked his reader if he should dare to disturb the universe. On the other hand, Emily Dickinson could not stop for Death. As for me, I saw fear in a handful of dust, playing “Batman: Arkham Knight” and also realized that the key to life is to keep a cool head to “savor the pause”

Here’s to a new year, full of mistakes, lessons, laughter, tears and joy!

Links:

1.. Instagram

The Bilge Master

A Little Bit About Video Games

 

We’ve all heard stories at some point in our lives have we not? Some have appealed to us and some have not.

Every year for my birthday I buy books and have books gifted to me. My entire family have been readers and most of my close friends are readers. This would be interesting, I know but so far it is nothing you haven’t heard before, especially if you’re a library mouse like me.

Stories can be told in many ways. As Neil Gaiman said, “We owe it to ourselves to tell stories”. And with that let me come to a medium of story telling that allows the person the ability to interact with the story.

I’m talking about video games. I recently started playing again, and I found so much of growth in how the story of the game has changed. I’ve grown up playing Age of Empires and then along came Assassin’s Creed which led me around the world, sometimes dropping me in Italy, other times in the Caribbean as a pirate and rendering gorgeous worlds to explore, to dig up secrets and to make the most of what I had on my plate or in my toolkit.

I’ve been allowed to live the lives of assassins, of Jedi Knights, of archaeologists and of wizards and elves to name just a fistful. The plots have been sci fi, fantasy, military, some borrowed from anime, some games inspired by anime and most of the games I’ve been playing are brilliant.

I wonder what would happen if Neil Gaiman wrote a game. George RR Martin has written Elden Ring and that is a fantastic game.

I can only wonder what new adventure awaits me every time I boot up a game and start moving my mouse around or holding down the walk forward key.

And not just that, I have found that sometimes you need to relax your mind after a long day when all you’ve wanted to do was kill your boss, so kill a drug dealer in a game instead. As long as you don’t allow the lines to be blurred or crossed, you’re fine.

Anyway, this is me saying that video games have meant and continue to mean a lot to me. As a writer, some of the stories I’ve witnessed in a game have ended up as a Chekov’s gun somewhere in an article or a poem or something. I can only hope that games come up with more worlds to explore and more stories to witness.

And I’d like to close with a very favourite quote of mine:

“Video games are bad for you? That’s what they said about rock and roll” ~ Shigeru Miyamoto

The Bilge Master

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

 

Another Day

The fields are burning again

There is no food, no rest, no kind touch on my fevered brow 

There is just silence, as if a vacuum has covered up the world 

There is a man in the corner 

His lips move frantically, he is pleading 

But the entity he is praying to no longer exists 

Not here, no

For here is where we go to die

Here is where angels forsake us, they fall 

Here is where God's disgraced son holds court 

Here, the currency is sin and the richer you are, the blacker your heart

Upon the burning plain, they march

A horde of demons, a reminder of sins you committed in the past 

What is your future, you ask? 

You? You who are imprisoned here think you can make demands? 

You are naught but hollow, naught but a husk 

You used to be human, now you're a disgrace 

Abandon all hope, for hope has no place here

And the louder you scream, the longer you stay

Round and round the mulberry bush you go

Day after day after day

The Bilge Master

The Return of the Little Prince

 There's a certain romance in knowing that there's one last train that can take you home, where your love lies waiting. But consider this, what if your love was not one, but many. As Zafon said in The Shadow of the Wind, there are worse prisons than words, and sometimes the prisons we build are the ones where we are busy with matters of consequence.

And if into this mixture, we introduce a child, what then? Let us consider this child. Pick up a pencil and make a Drawing No 1 for me please. Good, A box. Very good. I see the matters of consequence have not made their way into our relationship yet, and if we are lucky perhaps they never will.

So let me tell you about something today. Let me tell you what I saw in a child's eye the other day. I saw a tear, a tear of pain, for the child had lost its way. The child had wanted to reunite with a person, intending to befriend him, to recognize him again and having recognized him to acknowledge him. But this person, stuck in a loop regarding those infuriating matters of consequence did not even look up from his ledger.

Why do we forget we were children? Why do the adults in our lives make us doubt ourselves? Neurodivergence is a large word to speak of, but an easy word to understand in reality. When we are children, our curiosity makes us be able to befriend such big words, to sit with them and not be imprisoned by them. It is tragic that as we age, we change. We consider words prisons and we consider that there are worse prisons than words. There is a child to be comforted in all of us, if we could look up from our aeroplanes and understand that we are responsible for what we have tamed.

The thing about having a wounded child inside you is that the salve for that wound comes from places you'd least expect succour from. The child you once were may one day meet another such child, only this child he or she or they met may not have these matters of consequence bog them down. But was it easy for this person to remember how to be a child again? More often than not, it is one of the most difficult of journeys. There's so many things about ourselves we wish we could change- our clothes, our hair, parts of our body, the books we read, the people we love, who we wish more than anything will love us back.

Yet, all is not lost. Sometimes we meet children in the guise of adults. Children whom the inhabitant of Asteroid B-612 has visited and spoken to of roses, and in speaking to them of roses, reminded them that although there are many such flowers in the world, the fact that they gave time to one such flower is all that matters really in the grand scheme of things. 

Every year, I turn older. Every year, for years on end, I read about the inhabitant of Asteroid B-612. It is because of The Little Prince that I have met my best friend, it is because of him that I have learnt that sometimes all it needs to free oneself from a prison is to look outside the window, to see children playing football in a park, or to pick up a harmonica and make music. 

Maybe, just maybe, the matter of consequence is that the Prince has come back from his star and has brought you something you can tame? Maybe that landscape you go to when you are feeling lonely is no longer vacant? Maybe the face you see in the mirror wants you to know, that no matter what and no matter where there is always time to make a Drawing No 1 again.

A piece I wanted to write for a very, very, very long time. This pertains to the novella Exupery wrote called "The Little Prince", and it is a tribute to the people I have met because I read it, the people who remind me that a hat is a boa constrictor who has eaten an elephant. And to them, I just have this to say- thank you for taming me!

The Bilge Master