Karnataka Express

6:40 am. Karnataka Express. Utter fog outside. Very cold. The train’s stationary. Darkness inside the AC compartment. People sleeping, shivering, snoring. One asshole is choosing a ring tone for his phone (at 6:30 am!)

The train is standing a few hundred metres before a station called Antri. This is apparently quite close to Gwalior. Should have been in Agra by now. The train’s late, by at least two hours. Perhaps it is for the best. The idea of sitting in the cold outside is rather chilly.
In a bid to aggressively court winter (haven’t experienced winter this whole season, december was sweaty in Bombay, Bangalore has been bright and sunny since I have moved. Doesn’t quite feel complete till winter has been experienced), I have been wearing a lightly padded sweatshirt (only). Not carrying that one heavy jacket in trying to keep the load light.
Realizing this morning that perhaps it wasn’t a bright idea after all.

Update: 7:50 am. The train hasn’t moved. Person in the next compartment has had a family dispute covered on phone when he called a relative in Agra saying that he wouldn’t be able to drop in (“itni thand hai ji ki mujhe to samajh hi nahi aa raha, ki main kya karoon”). Consistent movement of vendors and people to the loo. We had gotten up at 6 to get done with the daily ablutions. That included washing the face. Brrrr. World of a difference in temperatures, outside and inside the train. No phone network, no GPRS.

Update: 12:55 pm. The train is 8 hours late, by now. Have just crossed Gwalior. Another hour and a half to Agra. Wouldn’t get much time at Agra. The evening train’s at 8.

Accessing the Metaverse

Bangalore, 4th day. Morning. 10:45 am. Bright sunshine outside on the balcony. Coffee. Self made. Canned heat on the earphones. On repeat. Had that headless feeling a while back, sitting on this chair, accessing this laptop on this table in the middle of this living room. Music playing in my ears. I could be anywhere! That headless feeling, the feeling that the life in the head often becomes much bigger than the life that the physical self inhabits. And that unwittingly the satisfaction for life starts shifting towards satisfactions in the head as opposed to satisfactions that the physical self relishes. (That headless feeling was felt most while living and working in Calcutta, the least in Bombay. Also, surprisingly very low in Patna.)

Snow Crash called it the Metaverse. The collective online space is a dead-on, of course. But I am sure there is a personal subset of the Metaverse that everyone carries across inside their own dainty little heads. A sort of Earth calling metaverse port. A converter of thoughts, motivations and happenings from the outside world into a metaverse compatible version. And vice versa.

Don’t behave like you don’t know what I am talking about.

Right now, the predominant feeling though is of being in GP’s flat at Dona Paula in Goa. Not thinking. Blank. And liking the slow movement of time from morning till night. Watching it peacefully.

I am however at my sister’s house, waiting for my luggage from Bombay to arrive. Have been waiting since yesterday. Concerned (note, not worried) about the number of new breakages on my motorcycle this time around, if the television would have survived the shoddy packaging. But a distant feel. Very distant. (Update: Luggage has arrived. By and large looks okay from the outside. Tea has been spilt (from the container). The bullet’s lights are all broken, but that was expected.)

Did my own bit of sleuthing for a problem that had me puzzled and I just could not figure it out for a while . Yesterday, I could not log-in to my gmail account all I could. Gmail has always been sort of a primary and unique password thing for me, so I was sort of surprised. Then after a couple of frustrated trials, clicked on ‘Can’t access account’. Yet again, I was surprised, irritated but thankful for the number of checks they make before they let you in. It involved sending sms codes to the mobile number you have entered in the account information. So well, long story short. Changed password. Next morning (today), cannot access gmail again, this time from phone. Entering the password again and again, and same lock out. I could have changed the password immediately again. But found it very weird for some reason. Could have blamed it on being high last night, but then again it was very weird.

Discovered after a while that the left shift key on the keyboard to this laptop is un-operational. It wasn’t taking the password last night because the shift key was not working. Then when I changed the password, it took the new password without the use of the shift key, and hence this morning I could not access the account again because I was accessing it from a keyboard where the shift key was working.

Geez. One little bloody invisible key. You see but you do not observe.

Saw the second episode of the second season of BBC’s Sherlock. Wasn’t half as fun as the first one (though this also is true. Also, this and this, but bah, what will you do without a little sexism).

Stuff that I had ordered online over the last month or so had been waiting for me, when I arrived in Bangalore. The Kindle (in a lime green cover), the 1800 bucks fountain pen (haven’t written with it yet), the Sandisk Sansa Fuze portable music player.

On the second day that I was in Bangalore, Sharma and me made a long pending purchase, of the DSLR camera, and a car music system. Spoiling myself? Following the time honored tradition of spoiling self sick after quitting a job? (Bought my first Parker fountain pen after quitting the first job, my first laptop after quitting the third). Time shall tell.

Finished reading Aman Sethi’s A Free Man in a day. It was fun to read (very quotable, deliberate?) and a quick, brisk read, but it was unmistakably poverty porn. The ONLY reason it worked the way it worked is because you cannot imagine yourself living like that, with that much money to wrangle. Nothing wrong with that, nothing wrong with tasteful poverty porn. Also as far as poverty porn goes, this is subtly and beautifully done. Aman has weaved himself into the stories very well, and the stark difference to his own life is also beautifully part of the book. The episode of his wallet being stolen is as much a part of the soul of the book as any of Ashraf’s ravings. And definitely very gonzo. Reminded me  of (my own) a haryana visit. And in a very weird way, of Upamanyu Chatterjee’s books. I would certainly recommend this book.

Have started reading James Clavell’s Shogun.

Defining well-being

Read quite an interesting article this morning, but more than the article, and the results of the article, I wanted to put down the process of getting to that data.

But blah de blah, first things first, here’s the article. Get a midlife (By Patricia Cohen in The NY Times). The first line sums up what the article is trying to say and all further arguments that it brings in,

YOU may be surprised to learn that when researchers asked people over 65 to pick the age they would most like to return to, the majority bypassed the wild and wrinkle-less pastures of their teens, 20s and 30s, and chose their 40s.

But what I was very interested in, is how they went about defining well-being, while on the process of getting to well-being at 40.

The problem with the physical inventory of middle age, though, is that it inevitably emphasizes loss — the end of fertility, decreased stamina, the absence of youth. Middle age begins, one cultural critic declared, the moment you think of yourself as “not young.” The approach is the same as that taken by physicians and psychologists, who have defined wellness and happiness in terms of what was missing: health was an absence of illness; a well-adjusted psyche meant an absence of depression and dysfunction.

The most recent research on middle age, by contrast, has looked at gains as well as deficits.

This is where it gets interesting. Carol Ryff, the director of the Institute on Aging at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, developed a list of questions to measure well-being and divided them into six broad categories.

1. Personal growth (having new experiences that challenge how you think about yourself);
2. Autonomy (having confidence in your opinions even if they are contrary to the general consensus);
3. Supportive social relationships;
4. Self-regard (liking most aspects of your personality);
5. Control of your life; and
6. A sense of purpose.

Quite succinct, I felt.