Jealousy and Pets

I saw Black Beauty today. And I cried..again like the several times I had when I read the book. Think I am a sissy? Be my guest. I don't care. The fact is that I can't understand that how can people be so cruel with animals?

Was reading Maneka Gandhi's article that day. A recent survey has found out that animals display secondary emotions like jealousy. Before scientists only believed that animals were capable of displaying only primary emotions like love and sadness. Huh, this is by far the stupidest survey I have come across. Any one who has lived with animals knows that they are capable of showing most or even all of the emotions humans display.

Jealousy for instance, is a primary emotion found in animals. When they see other animals being showered with more affection than they are, they are invariably jealous. Starting from monkeys to dogs, every animal shows this emotion. Gandhi talked about one particular instant where a friend of hers got home a monkey to rid herself of the void when her husband went to army. This monkey became a close companion of hers.

When the husband returned after a war injury, the monkey became very jealous. It used to display all signs of jealousy and even attack her husband. This went on till the husband gave his wife a choice on to choose any one of them. The infuriated wife at the stupidity of the choice, chose the monkey over the husband. The husband left with their child. A month later, the monkey died and the lady committed suicide.

Sad case, but it is the truth. It has been seen that pets do feel threatened when they see their owners paying more attention to somebody else; this some other body can be another pet or even a human. Pets are way more sensitive than humans and even if you try to hide something from them, sooner or later they will come to know of it. Bottom line, don't mess with your pets! We think they don't understand things but their sense of perception is far bigger than ours.

Take Care and Love your Pet.

Fly to Space All The Way!

And finally it is here! The dream of dreams, the vision which many of us have grown up to but could hardly think to achieve in real life- you can now pay to visit space! The first paying space tourist was Dennis Tito, who visited space nine years ago on a Soyuz rocket and stayed for seven days at the International Space Station(ISS). Though probably many might say it was easy for Tito who was a US rocket scientist before making a fortune through investment management. Being a passenger of the Russian space agency, Tito had to pay as high as an eight figure sum (some report around $20 million) for the privilege!

The cost was high and the number of seats limited; so in the past decade only six tourists had made it to zero gravity ground. But the story is different now. Reports say that by 2020, the space tourism industry could be a 700 million dollar business. For $200,000 every visit, you can now book a seat in the spaceship of Virgin Galactic, a company taken to heights by its billionaire owner, Sir Richard Branson.

Will Pomerantz of the X Prize Foundation, an institute that arranges for competitions to encourage commercial space travel says, "People grow up just fascinated by space travel. There are primitive emotions and instincts that drive people to it. It's loud, it's sexy and it is in some senses dangerous, so it gets a lot of people excited. But the people who got into this as a hobby are starting to realize that it needn't be just that."

Around $45 million has already been taken in by Virgin Galactic to reserve seats for spaceflights. Among the famous faces who plan to be on the first flights are Hollywood director, Brian Singer and former Dallas star, Victoria Principal.

The six passenger spacecraft called the Virgin SpaceShips (VSS) is the best funded and most advanced of the space tourism ventures. Burt Rutan, winner of the 2004 X Prize with Prototype has developed this space ship.

The VSS Enterprise will carry the passengers to an altitude of about 50,000 feet while being attached to a mothership. Then it will launch the rest of the way into space. The Independent reports, "Last Monday, both mothership and Enterprise flew up to that height together in a maiden test flight."

Other companies creating space ships for commercial space travel include California based Xcor, Armadillo Aerospace and Jeff Bezos of Amazon fame. Google is also reputed to fund an X Prize in order to send a robotic rover on the moon' the first commercial venture of a kind.

Looks like, holidaying in Mars and spending weekends in ISS are just years away!

Courtesy: The Independent, London

A Discourse on the Relative Comparison of Humans and Animals

It's at times like these, when you wonder what's wrong with you. Does the fault lie with people or with you? Surely everyone cannot be wrong. What is it then? May be everything should not be taken seriously? But what do you do when you feel bad? Feelings are not justified or unjustified; feelings are..just what they are, feelings. Why do people hurt you deliberately? May be..the fault is with me. May be I am the one who should stop mixing with humans. I don't understand them; I can't fathom what they want. And I CAN'T be a hypocrite! That is one thing you need to be an expert in if you want to be a sociable, approachable human. I am better with animals. The problem of language does not exist there. With animals, you don't need to speak. Fancy all formalist and structuralist theory would hold no ground in the animal kingdom! Coz they can't speak. They have their own communication system- sounds, touch. You don't even need to speak to them to "talk" to them! Eyes are enough.

Sometimes I ask myself, is it really worth it? The pain I mean. Dunno.

But one thing I know...and that is I can't stand it any more. Slowly but surely the wall of patience is crumbling down.

A Torn Page from a Diary

Date: Any date in the Past

Day: Any day from Monday to Sunday

An Open Letter (Of course it's open only to me, not to you)

Dear Sweet Little Friend of Mine

You might wonder what prompted me to write an open letter(I know I know, it's in my diary, you can't read it and you are not supposed to read it. I just like the sound of it- you know 'open letter'!). Some days hence, the wait has been terrible. Wait, wait, wait for what? You might ask. This arrogance of yours, I can tolerate. This indifference of yours, I cannot. People say I have fallen for you. I contest them with all my might. Truth is, you mean a lot to me. Remember, I told you once, you are 11 years late in my life? All my life, I have wanted a friend like you. Someone who I could trust. Someone in front of whom, I could be myself. People think I don't care what they think. Truth is, I do. I am scared to be myself in front of them. But you are not like that. The remarkable ease with which you charm people around you, make them your fans shocks me. I can't be like you. I don't even want to be like you. I have my own uniqueness, you have your own. Anyways, so I was saying that it takes time for me to open up. But with you, I never thought twice. With you I was myself. Tell you a little secret? People don't have the ability to tolerate me the way I am. Everyone, the closest to me with whom I have opened up, have invariably left me. It pains so much when your closest ones, whom you love the most in life, drift apart from you. I did not want you to be the third. I never did. Truth is I never thought you would leave me. You sounded so convincing. And determined. You promised you would not think of me like that. Then why did you leave me? First time, it was a shock, I tell you. I could not believe that you had left me. I was numb. I was so scared of feeling the pain. I was devastated. Why would you do this to me? What wrong had I done? I deleted your memories from my life. But I could not delete them from my heart. You meant so much to me, and I knew you couldn't hurt me. Then why did you?

I realized may be it was not your fault. May be you did not understand you would hurt me. Some friends made me realize that may be, it was because you wanted to keep your friendship. May be you did not want me to have any misconceptions and therefore get hurt. You know what? Let me tell you the truth.

Truth is I have never wanted anything from you. Unless some friends really compelled me to think about it, I would not have even given it a serious thought. I never thought you would like me. You are so free spirited, so witty, so approachable, so kind. I cannot even aspire to be with you. You are a free bird in the sky. You are a star shining like a diamond in the sky. Excuse the poetry! Lol.

But you are, like a diamond! What can I say? You are so special to me that I don't want to lose you. You are very precious to me, like his heart was to Davy Jones! :P You are so delicate, so priceless that I want to keep you hidden in a chest and bury it somewhere deep, or throw it into the ocean! So that no one, specially I can get hold of it. Or else, I am scared, I would hurt you.

Frankly speaking, I would never let my feelings come in the way of our friendship. I never did want anything. You know why? Coz I know I don't deserve you. I have always known that. :)

I just wish you get all the happiness in the world. I wish you success and lots of best wishes. I wish you get the person of your dreams.

Yours sincerely

The ever silent observer

Oedipus and The Human Condition

And here I am jumbling meaningless sh*t again, for no fault of mine. Oedipus Tyrannos- a fascinating text. Sir taught about the human condition today- precarious and unpredictable. So why does Oedipus go on searching for the truth when blissful ignorance surrounds him? Why do I take responsibility of a matter when there is nothing I can do about it? But you know what's more incredible? The human condition. The fact that people become so defensive when you hit (however unwittingly) at a person's soft spot.

A likes C. A tells that to B. B talks to D and says that A cares for C a lot. D says that to A. A feels bad. A accuses B of breaking A's trust. B tries to explain. B calls D up immediately and asks D to explain things to A. But A refuses to listen. Just plain listen. Even with the phone on, loudspeaker on, A refuses to listen.

Why does A refuse to listen? Does B feel bad? Don't ask me, ask them.

B has own insecurities. Like Oedipus, B has sworn to find the truth. B has to protect her reputation. B has to normalize her friendship with A. B can't let A talk bad about her in public. B is shy. B is scared. B, in one word, is a coward, afraid of people and what they say. But what about A?

Why is A so defensive? Isn't C just a friend? Why mind so much even if someone talks about it? Aah..friendship. A terrible thing. You know someone for ages. Sat beside him. Attended countless lectures. Looked into his eyes. Seen his loneliness. Why can't he be a little more matured? Why doesn't he see he's my best friend? Such an obnoxious childish fellow! Can't he see he hurts me so much by his indifference, his arrogance? Imbecile! Look at what you have done! Now others are saying I am obsessing about you! My friends think I talk of you all the time. What do they know? You are the one at fault. Not me! How dare they talk about me like this? And how dare, you, YOU of all people hurt me like this? Don't you know I miss you? Can't you see I HATE YOU?

P.S: All characters in this post are fictitious and any resemblance to anyone living or dead is purely coincidental. :P

Questions

Idealism. Petty sick idealism. What efforts we go to to live up to our ideal self! Follow our principles, our values. But what happens when we find that our values have no value? That we are all running after some thing that does not hold importance. You might ask, importance for whom?

Aren't our values important to us because of which we decide to follow them in the first place? But when you see people you like, your near and dear ones, succumbing to the age old commercialization, what do you do? Do you rigidly keep on following your "age old" values? Or do you stop? Flow with the wind?

We have always heard that beauty is not skin deep. We have always heard that money does not make a man. His character does. So what if you try to follow them in your life? You learn that you are not good enough because you do not fit in the characteristic convention of "Beauty" as it goes now.

You learn that you have worth, that you are important only when you have money to boast of. Relationships, values all tend to get commercialized. Do you change your values? Or do you fight? Happiness after all is not more important than our values. And if the people who constitute our happiness seem to change, why can't we be a little more flexible?

Moreover we should remember that just because we try to live up to our ideal self does not mean that everybody, even our close ones will. But is this realization enough to survive? To be happy? What about all those "unrealistic" expectations you had of your near and dear ones? Let's say you are crestfallen. You have two choices. Either you give up or you continue to fight this mad war against the whole community alone. What if there is a third choice?

As Post-colonial Literature would point out, why not use the master's tools to capture him? Like Caliban did to Prospero. What if you become part of the system to change or at least prove the system wrong? Like how about you become "attractive" to show that beauty is not skin deep. Like you earn money to show that money is not more important than relationships. How about it?

You might prove the whole world wrong, the whole system wrong. But can you find it in your heart to forgive those closed ones who left you once because you did not have what the world, the society considered important? Can realization help you? Time will tell.

But as they say, Revenge is Sweet.

My First Steam Bath..... and May be the Last One Too!

For those of you who have been to steam baths, don't laugh. I had my first steam bath experience recently. Now I don't really do well with hotness, fire and all of those things. A very timid person by nature, I however also have a taste for the unknown, the adventurous.

Now you can well guess what it comes to when you have such a combination of both extremes in a person. It is always "To be or not to be", that is the eternal question. So after many days of hesitation I finally picked up the courage to take a free steam bath that I had on my gym receipt.

Enter the steam room. Smoke, smoke, smoke everywhere! I was scared it might be a fire! My first instinct was to run. But ah..no, I am brave, Brave girls don't run. Shit. I tried to recollect all the good things told to me about steam. Your face would glow, fat would be shed, blah blah blah! Who cares? How do I breathe? There is no oxygen mask here. Probably they should have kept one here.

So I open the door and peep outside to catch my breath. Again I close the door. Steam is supposed to be good, I tell myself. Therefore suffer in silence. Suddenly there is an abrupt noise. The steam stops completely. I get scared. What now? It resumes again after a short while. Accha ok, so this is how it goes. After three such intervals, I decide I have had enough of "Hotness". So consoling my mind about the few hundred pounds I had shed (:P) and the new "glow" on my face, I come out of the steam room.

P.S: A word of caution for all of you who have never been inside a steam room: It is literally STEAM! It is hot and it is water. It is not smoke, there is no fire. But don't forget to take oxygen masks while you are inside! :P

Waiting..Once Again

It's late at night and I know "normal" people might be sleeping. What am I doing laying awake at such a time? I have college tomorrow. I have my work. That's right, I have a life to lead. But the wait..it's killing, it's making me restless and it's painful. Remember my last post on "waiting"? Ah well..here I stand at the close of another year, writing a similar post once again. Acronyms don't matter, I don't even care any more. The timid me, who once was bothered about what people will think has become so restless, so tired of pretending that I have shed all covers. I don't care if people know, I don't care what they say..Hell...I just need some peace. And If they can't bloody well provide me that, they have no right to poke their noses in my private matter. And you know the best part, I don't care even if they do. I don't know how far it will stay, I don't know what I should do to relieve me of this restlessness, I just know I am tired. Hell tired. And I can't take it any more.