Works Of Contemplation

There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat, And we must take the current when it serves, Or lose all our ventures.  These lines were spoken by Shakespeare through the guise of Brutus in 'Julius Caesar'. Had my high-school English text not contained lessons on Shakespeare's plays, my thoughts would never have been influenced or widened to the level it currently has been now. The above quote has been one of many that I have tried to understand and also could relate myself to, during my trysts with life's curves. Being an open-minded person comes with its own travails. Acquaintances dismiss you off with a wave of the hand or a shrug of the face whenever you contradict society's opinion. Friends do not quite grasp your flight of thoughts and utter all-too-familiar refrains of exasperation. To ride all this a...

Admittedly, the title reeks of sophistication and mumbo-jumbo. Yet, read me out, persist and put in an effort to understand the lines. As individuals, I reckon all of us are obsessed with the notion of quantifying. We set ourselves standards and goals. Unfortunately, with an intent and a foresight that such-and-such goal should be established as 'achieved' or 'failed' to the world at large, we begin to set yardsticks and measurable results. Few of the common goals that I have heard people set for self include 'losing 5 kg in 60 days', 'securing a 90% score in the upcoming exams', 'walking 30 minutes a day', 'burning X calories per day' and so on. I concur with the argument that certain goals need to be quantified as a measure of evaluation. However, I counter-argue that metrics need not be and should not be set for goals that are put in place with an intent to improve an individual's quality of life. The word 'quality of life...

Glittering are the stars above my head Shimmering they are, to my eye She looks down, at faces wry And hopes Not of a happy emotional flood But of a life deeply explored Not of a rich material load But of removing each's illusionary shroud. And to them I say, Be true, to self and all in fray.

Do we think? Do we truly think? Response 1: Yes we do. We think and decide the food to be consumed daily, we think and plan ahead to reach our workplace or educational institution on time. We do think. A lot. Response 2:  Be more specific please. The universe is a melting-pot of disciplines. Where specifically is the area that you want me to base my answer to that question on? Response 3: What I think and profess to the world outside will be far different and occasionally be unreasonable to you. For this reason, I shall not answer the question. Response 4: We stress our brains quite intensely at the workplace or at the educational institution. Please do not plead with me to think anymore than I already do. Response 5: The age for thinking has passed me. Let me spend my days relaxing and taking rest after having run a metaphorical marathon my whole life. These are the typical comments that I could distill from my mind, imagining a situation where individuals of varying ages...

Okay, so here goes a post after a long time. For my readers, assuming safely that there are quite a few residing in the poshest corners of the globe, the wait would have seemed interminable.   And that was just that. An illusion. The wait shall now be terminated. TL: DR à Bring in Automation at the workplace. Keep it out of every youngster’s reach till then. I have been attending an Automation course the past week. Before venturing into that, let me provide a background to my story. After entering the workplace and post months of training, 3 to be precise, I regained my spark of interest in programming, which hopefully will now be a raging fire. This caused a flurry of frantic browsing activity. Previously, I have never gone past 2 pages of Google’s results, and here I was, wading past 5 of all the crawling it threw up. I searched for the language that I should start feeding my fire of programming with. I searched for the limitations that every language had, I searche...

Stephen Curry. To the uninitiated, the name means and evokes nothing. To the casual observer, a cynical comment at the preposterous package. To the relatively interested, a wave-like analysis of the success achieved. To the crazed Warriors fan, a deep dive into the musings on the elegance and grace with which Mozart played the instrument, Federer caressed the tennis ball, Dravid cajoled the cricket ball, and Curry toyed with the basketball. Have you ever paused and observed the eyes of a child when given a toy to play with? All that can be only imagined by us, of playing with that toy, are put into action by that child. Even the unimaginable at times. Such is the relationship between Curry, the child, and basketball, the toy. A little on him: Curry is a player in the NBA team of Golden States Warriors. He is the reigning two-time Most Valuable Player (MVP) in the NBA. The player who draws in the crowds at regular-season games and elicits sounds of approval and appraisal. Hi...

Sonnets do not seem so dull suddenly .  Most of us hate hot and sultry summer days, don't we? Well then. We should be intrigued to witness a minority group that is interested in them. To such a group belongs Shakespeare. Yes. The very same person who penned pearls of wisdom on the landscape of love, the agony of pain and the anti-ephemeral nature of reproduction. Femininity is mostly associated with beauty. William ventures to an extent where he undermines the magnificence of the Sun illuminating Earth, and elevates the beauty of his love. However delve further into the sonnet and you will find a parallel story emerging. A story of the Sun's glory! Weaving both extremes into a single sonnet, he implores the reader to make a choice. Persons who are and have been in love would relate the sonnet to a woman's beauty while the rest would relate it to the Sun. Note the lines 'Rough winds...short a date'. Winds of high velocity may obscure the brightness ...