Disclaimer :This post is for mature audience who are exposed to horror literature. The author is not responsible for indiscriminate reading.
Popo was an ordinary instrumentation engineer from the dept of telecom who had gone thru a lot in life, and the following details have been extracted from memoirs he jotted down in Klupikistan, a place 29 degree north to equator and 79 degree east.
Six weeks prior to this recorded memoir, on a fateful Tuesday evening,popo received a stamped official mail with orders to relocate to a remote place in the northern cantonment zone, to repair a high radio transmission tower at a location code named as 'Hill 16'. The place was ear marked as 'remote' and 'sensitive'.He looked up the telecom maps and reality dawned on him. Fate is suddenly forcing him out of his moorings to the farthermost corner of India and he was to leave in a few weeks.
There were conflicting entries of differing dates everywhere in his recorded notes , but he spent the coming weeks equipping himself with maps, connectivity instruments , and household durables and mentally prepared himself for this coming spring time ordeal. Roughly 3 weeks later, popo found himself driving along virgin roads towards his destination, with sparse human population greeting him all along the winding paths.There was something about this beautiful area that made him feel relaxed, yet he knew something was different, is it the people around.. he wondered, but people were so few in number, and most of them looked like mindless zombies and none of them ever blinked.
Soon, he reached a comfortable vantage point and Hill 16 was in distant view with endless tracts of wild flowers filling the wide valleys spanning miles across ,filling the spaces between him and his radio tower and he continued his journey forward .Popo knew that he was on his own, and felt proud of his resourcefulness and Independence, and strongly felt he needed no help from anyone. While he started to have a visual of the Hill and the tower at a distance, popo decided to carry on with his plans to make that valley his new abode.
But there was one singularity which strangely didn't strike him as odd. Popo was yet to meet the people he expected to see at that location!
He moved along the valley enjoying the beauty of the flowers and the grand hills free of any fear or doubt. Nothing earthly seemed to bother him until gradually, a vague and discomforting feeling started growing within making him feel he knew this place intimately in connection with some dreamy fear and that he had been there in that dangerously beautiful valley before ..He remained still, tried to hold his thoughts and suddently he could'nt clearly distinguish between his past and present thoughts. Popo stopped blinking just like the rest of the villagers he saw before.He tried to remember incoherently, things he didn't fully understand and he repeatedly tried to ensure he was'nt dreaming, Everything around looked certain and familiar for a while ...
..A desolated house in the valley almost straight ahead of him caught his attention.He cautiously moved closer and still everything felt gropingly familiar. Popo was flooded by dajavu as if he occupied the house before, he opened the door and got overwhelmed with fear for the first time, when he saw his own FM radio, cofe maker and gaming console in the living room.Popo's mind was racing. Why did he come here and more importantly,when. He had to strain his thoughts to find an answer . Yes it was the radio tower, he looked at it longingly trying not to forget why he is here , but his hands shook as he opened the maps and visitor guide books lying on the floor and one wind fluttered page read as follows.
"This place is definitely not for the weak hearted.The place has a Strange past and is home to stranger creatures.Dark forces reign here and both Chinese and Hindu myths forbid travellers from traversing these parts.These places are doorways to the other world.In spring, the valley flowers would be in full bloom and their fragrance has mind altering affects.The traveller's doom is certain as he loses his memory and travels forever in circles never finding his way out of the valley"
Popo's eyes were strained and yet, he didn't blink.He crushed that paper without reading it further as he realised he was losing his memory rapidly ..but he remembered his primary objective still..and that was to repair the radio transmission tower ..he gazed at the distant tower from his window.. and a strong desire took hold of him that come what may, he'll set out and seek what he truly came there for.It was still noon and he stepped out of his house .
Popo looked back at his house and took the precaution of covering himself with a hankie to avoid exposure to the strong fragrance . The light around him seemed unreal and he wondered if his senses are being deceived again. He set out at a brisk pace, making sure his direction is constantly towards hill 16. The light around him faded further and it was 1.30 PM by the watch. The whole area darkened swiftly and Popo was convinced he was loosing his eye sight. He looked up in despair and realised it was a solar eclipse. He suddenly remembered that a solar eclipse was due in march at 29 degree north of equator and 79 degree east. He looked back at his house feeling a bit happy that he could still remember things like eclipses. His moment of joy evaporated suddenly when his house started shaking vigorously like a wild monster.Gradually the light around faded and everything around was soon eerie and dark.He couldn't take that sight anymore and started running towards Hill 16 ..his heart pounding fast in the pitch dark of the eclipse ....and what he heard then was a distinct rumble from all around and something overwhelmingly huge said from all directions " it is d a r k e s t now " ..tears flowed down popo's cheeks for the first time with fear, anguish and helplessness, but he continued the upward ascent as if his very life depended on it.
A part of him vaguely knew he was reaching heights he never ascended before and a thought crossed his mind that the tower cannot be far now. He nervously checked for his maps and got his instruments ready, but as the sun came out of the eclipse he realised there was no radio tower in sight anywhere . Instead, what he saw was a power transmission tower which was not in use.It stood huge and lifeless like a ghost structure in misuse before him. "Is this what I was chasing all along ?" he wondered with utter shock and grief.He soon realized he lost his way long back and can never get back to either civilization or his place of relocation.He didn't want to go back to that house, he was disgusted with his own footprints in that valley, with those crumpled memoirs and that rumbling house. He paused to look around and behold the treacherous climb he so successfully conquered in apparent darkness and wondered for a vague moment if it was indeed he who managed such a climb. He felt irrevocably far away from everyone he knew. He looked up at the ascending peaks of the sublime Himalayas and a strong desire to climb, was the only desire he had..
As he climbed along, amid ferns and rocks, a quiet wind flattered his heart to warmth and a finer perfume breathed from slender trees. Everything around him grew strange and subtle and beautiful.
Popo's last memoir described what he saw there, but his handwriting and language changed remarkably in this memoir and it ran as follows:
" Here on a boulder carved like a huge throne a woman sat in gold and purple sheen,armed with the trident and the thunderbolt , her feet upon a counchant lions's back.A formidable smile curved round her lips and heaven fire laughed in the corners of her eyes. Her body, was a mass of courage and strength with a halo of lightnings around her head"
Sovereign was her word of luminous command and her speech restored hope in his heart .
"' I stand upon earth's path of danger and grief and help the unfortunate and save the doomed. To the strong I bring the guerdon of their strength, to men who long I carry their coveted joy,to the weak I bring the armour of my force, I am fortune justifying the great and wise.I am Durga, goddess of the proud and strong,And Lakshmi, Queen of the fair and fortunate !!! "
Popo's incredible memoirs were archived and never saw the light of day.The area he ventured to was a no man's land and neither India nor China claims it as its exclusive territory.
Friday, March 7, 2008
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Bridges to Future
"Everything that can be invented has been invented." - Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.
"The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives." - Admiral William Leahy, US Atomic Bomb Project.
"Man will never reach the moon regardless of all future scientific advances." - Dr. Lee De Forest, inventor of the vacuum tube and father of television.
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." - Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp, 1977.
Recheck the quotes above. The quotes were the result of world class research, feasibility studies and understanding of known facts by people who were considered experts in their respective domains. These are a few shining examples of our inability to foresee change.There are lots more. For a simpler example, tune in to the daily weather forecasts.
What could be the reasons behind our fundamental lack of grasp over the future.
Nature appears placid and calm without showing many external signs of change till a critical point in time is reached, as if she is waiting for the internal conditions to be really ripe and once this internal condition is met, the external form factor changes dramatically! Tough to predict this integrally, since even our deep studies are physical in essence and deal with surface realities which have to be seen or measured to be believed,usually by which time the effect is already on threshold and prediction becomes irrelevant .Simple examples are Volcanoes and Avalanches, A complex example could be the rise or fall of a Nation or an Advent of A New Age and the Crash of old forms and structures.
Things move at an accelerated rate after a critical point is reached.
Chain reactions are precisely that. They implode or explode in geometric progression and the rate of movement is tough to determine if the process which accelerates or fuels the change also undergoes change itself or is subject to forces which change based on intercepting conditions. A simple example is an explosion.
If we increase the degree of complexity by bringing in the human touch and the occult forces into perceiving and creating change while also being a part of it, the problem almost becomes mind boggling. Change itself is accelerating in our current times !! It takes fewer years now to change your perspective, or change views or change the way we live or for the landmarks of your city to change compared to corresponding changes in these 'variables' a decade back. So handling change is one thing, but if change itself accelerates, predicting the future becomes tougher by a degree. Whats the impact of this on the human mind? Why should we predict change ? Well a good prediction can save a few thousand lives or make a few million dollars ! A good understanding of the future can help channelize peoples thoughts and help bring about a more concerted effort towards realizing or averting that very future we envisage or predict !! This almost brings us to the panchatantra story where the King challenges the soothsayer to predict his own moment of death with a sword in his hand ready to contradict whatever the soothsayer predicts.But thats a fairly simple scenario.How about global changes ?Who exactly turns the wheel of change and who is being turned . Can we look past the maze of infinite variables which determine or propel the direction and rate of change of which we seem to be a part in varying degrees.
We might live in different nations, but more fundamentally we live in mildly differing tense* . A very tiny fraction of the population lives in the past ( as tibals,aborigins etc whose way of life is still the way it was probably before the metal ages) . A large part of the population live as food gatherers of the medieval past ( leading life based on agriculture , horticulture , farming etc etc) .A portion of the population live in the present times. This classification based on tense, is fundamental and has more relevance than national divide as it is the real basis of psychological reactions to truth irrespective of culture and nation. Culture shock is a misnomer, what shocks us when we interact with people is not the difference of culture but the mild difference of tense. One will be comfortable with a Chinese or an American as long as both perceive things at the same rate irrespective of ones dress, accent or 'culture' . The real difference lies in pace.Even among the urban groups of the same country, if the divide were cultural we would'nt have so many psychological clashes. The difference lies in tense and time. Some are obsolete, some are apt and some are futuristic. Thats the fundamental divide. The pace of evolution itself which affects all of us could hopefully bridge this gap among people all over the world by bridging the gulf of tense. I personally think this is hapenning every where around us with an increasing rapidity by a strange force of nature which seems to be almost pressing us into the future.
We all think our future is in our own hands. Is it the 'hands' that were created by our past habits or the 'hands' of the present with a will to act based on the current moment or is it the hands of the future trying to strangely determine or influence the current events to fulfill its own secret prophesy ? Or is it all three in varying measures ? It gets more and more clear that using the method of science and statistical analysis is pretty slow and self limiting and certainly, if we are dealing with extrapolations of variables to determine results, we are doomed to commit big mistakes. We might get small trends rite, but what matters the most appears as elusive as ever. What matters most is a state of errorlessness, of certainty, of non linear vision and a direct perception of the universe without limits . What matters most is non dependence on huge self limiting structures which were created based on past compulsions. What matters most is a supra abundance of knowledge which completes knowledge. Future predictions are doomed to fail if we don't see the whole . And what matters the most is a vision of the whole, the lack of which probably vexed man since he first began to think.If this was his first problem, an answer or response to what matters most to him could very well be his veiled future. Till then, the return and crash of imperfect forms and a haphazard growth of consciousness may come in handy. A safe prediction would be a fall out of old forms and structures to give place to new ones combined with an increased sense of transience of everything whose permanence was taken for granted in the past.Today,we see shifting forms resulting in an ever greater exodus of humanity towards a critical point in the future.After all, that is nature's style of working and we can collaborate with her to hasten that glorious future which in the grand scheme of things is already inevitable.
*( tense - noun form - dictionary reference of time, as past, present, or future,
expressed by such a category )
"The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives." - Admiral William Leahy, US Atomic Bomb Project.
"Man will never reach the moon regardless of all future scientific advances." - Dr. Lee De Forest, inventor of the vacuum tube and father of television.
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." - Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp, 1977.
Recheck the quotes above. The quotes were the result of world class research, feasibility studies and understanding of known facts by people who were considered experts in their respective domains. These are a few shining examples of our inability to foresee change.There are lots more. For a simpler example, tune in to the daily weather forecasts.
What could be the reasons behind our fundamental lack of grasp over the future.
Nature appears placid and calm without showing many external signs of change till a critical point in time is reached, as if she is waiting for the internal conditions to be really ripe and once this internal condition is met, the external form factor changes dramatically! Tough to predict this integrally, since even our deep studies are physical in essence and deal with surface realities which have to be seen or measured to be believed,usually by which time the effect is already on threshold and prediction becomes irrelevant .Simple examples are Volcanoes and Avalanches, A complex example could be the rise or fall of a Nation or an Advent of A New Age and the Crash of old forms and structures.
Things move at an accelerated rate after a critical point is reached.
Chain reactions are precisely that. They implode or explode in geometric progression and the rate of movement is tough to determine if the process which accelerates or fuels the change also undergoes change itself or is subject to forces which change based on intercepting conditions. A simple example is an explosion.
If we increase the degree of complexity by bringing in the human touch and the occult forces into perceiving and creating change while also being a part of it, the problem almost becomes mind boggling. Change itself is accelerating in our current times !! It takes fewer years now to change your perspective, or change views or change the way we live or for the landmarks of your city to change compared to corresponding changes in these 'variables' a decade back. So handling change is one thing, but if change itself accelerates, predicting the future becomes tougher by a degree. Whats the impact of this on the human mind? Why should we predict change ? Well a good prediction can save a few thousand lives or make a few million dollars ! A good understanding of the future can help channelize peoples thoughts and help bring about a more concerted effort towards realizing or averting that very future we envisage or predict !! This almost brings us to the panchatantra story where the King challenges the soothsayer to predict his own moment of death with a sword in his hand ready to contradict whatever the soothsayer predicts.But thats a fairly simple scenario.How about global changes ?Who exactly turns the wheel of change and who is being turned . Can we look past the maze of infinite variables which determine or propel the direction and rate of change of which we seem to be a part in varying degrees.
We might live in different nations, but more fundamentally we live in mildly differing tense* . A very tiny fraction of the population lives in the past ( as tibals,aborigins etc whose way of life is still the way it was probably before the metal ages) . A large part of the population live as food gatherers of the medieval past ( leading life based on agriculture , horticulture , farming etc etc) .A portion of the population live in the present times. This classification based on tense, is fundamental and has more relevance than national divide as it is the real basis of psychological reactions to truth irrespective of culture and nation. Culture shock is a misnomer, what shocks us when we interact with people is not the difference of culture but the mild difference of tense. One will be comfortable with a Chinese or an American as long as both perceive things at the same rate irrespective of ones dress, accent or 'culture' . The real difference lies in pace.Even among the urban groups of the same country, if the divide were cultural we would'nt have so many psychological clashes. The difference lies in tense and time. Some are obsolete, some are apt and some are futuristic. Thats the fundamental divide. The pace of evolution itself which affects all of us could hopefully bridge this gap among people all over the world by bridging the gulf of tense. I personally think this is hapenning every where around us with an increasing rapidity by a strange force of nature which seems to be almost pressing us into the future.
We all think our future is in our own hands. Is it the 'hands' that were created by our past habits or the 'hands' of the present with a will to act based on the current moment or is it the hands of the future trying to strangely determine or influence the current events to fulfill its own secret prophesy ? Or is it all three in varying measures ? It gets more and more clear that using the method of science and statistical analysis is pretty slow and self limiting and certainly, if we are dealing with extrapolations of variables to determine results, we are doomed to commit big mistakes. We might get small trends rite, but what matters the most appears as elusive as ever. What matters most is a state of errorlessness, of certainty, of non linear vision and a direct perception of the universe without limits . What matters most is non dependence on huge self limiting structures which were created based on past compulsions. What matters most is a supra abundance of knowledge which completes knowledge. Future predictions are doomed to fail if we don't see the whole . And what matters the most is a vision of the whole, the lack of which probably vexed man since he first began to think.If this was his first problem, an answer or response to what matters most to him could very well be his veiled future. Till then, the return and crash of imperfect forms and a haphazard growth of consciousness may come in handy. A safe prediction would be a fall out of old forms and structures to give place to new ones combined with an increased sense of transience of everything whose permanence was taken for granted in the past.Today,we see shifting forms resulting in an ever greater exodus of humanity towards a critical point in the future.After all, that is nature's style of working and we can collaborate with her to hasten that glorious future which in the grand scheme of things is already inevitable.
*( tense - noun form - dictionary reference of time, as past, present, or future,
expressed by such a category )
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