Yesu and the Cyclone

Exhausted though he was, he was determined that he could not possibly allow Death to claim him, despite the severe cyclone attempting otherwise. Not after the pains he had gone to for the past few months.

Yesudass, or Yesu had had a fairly good and laid back life, born as he was into a fishing community in the Katupally village, north of Chennai. Long days spent out at sea with friends, and longer nights spent at the local liquor shop with even more friends had pretty much defined Yesu's life since he had started working- that too had happened early due to the advancing years of his parents who had conceived Yesu more as an afterthought quite late in life.

Most of the trouble had begun when he had gotten married to Nina, one of the most beautiful and sought after maidens in his village. His parents were almost senile, and it was his mother's wish that he marry before they were to completely lose their senses as it would facilitate a peaceful and regret free demise.

Nina, being the headman's daughter, was entitled to a grand wedding- and a grand wedding it was! The labourers from the neighbouring ship yard under construction were drawn irresistibly to witness the spectacle.

The "first night" as it is known was to take place that very night and Yesu was literally bursting with excitement and anticipation! He had seen a pornographic video once and it had vividly remained in his memory. He could barely wait to live the very dream that had consumed his nights leading up to the wedding.

Little did he know that an earthquake had occurred in Indonesia creating near panic among the local officials who immediately issued a warning against the possibility of a tsunami similar to the massive one that had claimed hundreds of thousands of lives in 2004.

Yesu gently made the beautiful and shy Nina sit on his lap, nuzzled her neck and held her tightly. Just as he was ready to kiss her tender lips, there was a loud knock on the door. Ignoring it, Yesu started disrobing Nina who protested due to the incessant knocking on the door.

A very grumpy and irritated Yesu could only frown as his friends kept asking him for intimate details of his "first night" as they sat together in the local school which had been turned into an ad hoc  shelter. The tsunami had not happened at all and Yesu was livid with the police inspector who had very dutifully evacuated the village just as Yesu had begun to live the fantasy that had consumed his mind for months.

He was a literal nervous wreck by the time the sun had set and Nina and Yesu found themselves alone in their bedroom once again. But this time, Nina fended off every attempt made by Yesu to get close to her!

"I think it is a sign from God that we aren't ready for this yet", stuttered Nina. "We should probably just go to sleep now."

Yesu's mind could very easily have been diagnosed as that of a demented and delusional person's by the end of the first week. His friends who had also got to know of the facts could not keep from guffawing in his presence. Soon the whole village got to know of Yesu and Nina's predicament and the local temple priest called on them with very sound advice.

"It had been a threat issued by the God of the ocean that had interrupted the nuptial communion. So it logically follows that you two should begin to sleep within the same room only when there is a sign from the Lord of the waves that all is well. Nina, I command you to not allow Yesu into your bedroom until he is able to capture a large fish!" said the priest gesturing with his arms nearly a meter apart.

"But that is impossible! You know what rotten luck I have at fishing! Are you doing this to take revenge for the time when I made fun of your fake predictions and astrology?" cried out a deeply perturbed Yesu.

But Nina had taken the God man's advice seriously leaving Yesu only one way out of their predicament. With a new found energy and zeal, he would awake hours before daybreak and set out in his fiber glass catamaran. He would rove the seas looking very much like the captain Ahab chasing Moby-Dick.

Day after day, he would return with the usual catch of small fish. He would silently spread his bedsheet on the pyol of his house and promptly fall asleep due to the exhausting work. Days congealed into weeks which very quickly turned into months. Yesu and Nina had not had a physical relationship as yet, and both of them were getting frustrated, Yesu more than Nina. They had bought in to the God man's story too deeply to realise that the dredging being done within the ship yard under construction next to their village had muddied all the waters and scared away the fish.

Come November, the whole village motored their boats out of their berths in the sea into the safer backwaters, as it was cyclone season. Yesu however, continued to fish in the sea with single minded determination. His friends tried pleading with him at first and then with the God man to change his definition of a "large" fish, but to no avail.

The day when the Fishing board sent a vehicle with the loudspeakers blaring out a "Cyclone Warning" was when Yesu had reached his breaking point. He was sure that if his luck were not to change soon, he would definitely lose his mind permanently.

He silently slunk away when his friends who had come to keep a watch on him had been sufficiently distracted by alcohol induced intoxication.

To say that the sea was rough would be a huge understatement, as huge an understatement as calling the sun a 100 watt bulb, or the planet Jupiter a mere pebble floating in space. Of course, scale does matter, and if you are a giant organism, many hundred times the size of humans, then the waves in the sea on that day would have seemed like ripples. As far as Yesu was concerned though, the wind and the waves were DEADLY!

But in his delusional state, Yesu was convinced that this was nothing but another taunt from the Lord of the Ocean. Barely had he launched his boat a few meters into the roiling waters when a huge wave bodily lifted him and his catamaran and flung it across at the rocks that had been piled along the breakwater of the shipyard under construction. His boat got wedged between the boulders and Yesu was lying in it in a semi-conscious state. The heavy rain poured, poured and poured until it seemed that all the air in the atmosphere had been replaced with water. The wind blew with such force and venom as if to reassert its presence. The huge droplets whipped around by the wind hit Yesu's face with lashing force.

Yesu groggily looked around at the sea as the waves broke onto the breakwater from both sides. In the distance, towards the sea side end of the breakwater, Yesu thought he had seen a boulder standing as tall as him being rolled by the huge waves. He held out a single fist and spat out an angry curse at the Sea God, only to be hit by a wave that had managed to sweep onto the high breakwater. As he tumbled and rolled along with the wave, he saw in the brown, foamy and turbulent waters a huge black shape with fins and a tail. It was as big as a motorcar and Yesu was sure that it was the hugest fish that humanity had ever laid eyes upon. He latched onto the barnacles growing on the underbelly of the large marine creature that feebly thrashed as it was deposited onto the breakwater. He lied down beside it and fell unconscious.

The storm had passed, and the following day had dawned with a brilliant and azure blue sky. The news channels were the first to arrive onto the breakwater, followed by the villagers and last but not least, the police and paramedics.

Yesu had been revived by one of the paramedics who very readily allowed the television journalists to interview the man who had captured a baby humpback whale with his bare hands! The glucose shot in his arm had managed to bring him to his senses and the saline drip gave him sufficient strength to begin to comprehend the happenings over the last twenty four hours.

The whale carcass was still lying where he had lain along with it.

"How are you feeling right now Yesu?" cried out a hyperventilating reporter who seemed obsessed about reminding the viewers that her news channel had been the first on the spot.

"I really caught a big fish didn't I?" cried out Yesu in Tamil.

"Heh heh, the humpback whale is actually a mammal, a warm blooded creature very much like you and me, it is not exactly a fish, but Yesu here, the amazing fisherman who had lain unconscious and had been protected by the carcass of the whale is fortunate enough to have survived this amazing ordeal, I don't think he would be worrying very much about the distinction between fishes and marine mammals." said the reporter into her mic in one breathless sentence. It was all said in English though, and was lost on Yesu.

That night was the beginning of an extremely satisfactory and a joyous married life for Yesudass and Nina.

The Curious Case of Pyarelal Indrajeet

Pyarelal Indrajeet sat leaning against one of the pillars of the small Vinayak temple beside NH8, a few kilometers from Vapi in Gujrat. His face had a blank expression as he stared at the elephant faced idol which seemed to be mockingly smiling back at him.

The last of the season's monsoon was drizzling outside. The headlights of the innumerable vehicles plying on the busy highway provided illumination inside the temple intermittently.

The monsoons had always boded ill for Pyarelal. He had barely been ten when a fever had gripped his tiny frame along with the onset of the monsoons. For months, he lay under the fever's deathly spell. So much so that, even his parents had given up hope, however, with the last of the season's monsoon, young Pyarelal's fever too subsided.

He had been fifteen when he found to his great dismay that he had failed his board examinations. The first rains of the season washed away his red hot tears which poured profusely after his father had administered a sound beating. His father decided to discontinue Pyarelal's education and bought an autorikshaw for him, dashing all his hopes of higher studies.

A few years later, it was during the monsoons that he got married and the very next year, it was during the monsoons that he lost his father and became one himself.

Understandably, Pyarelal had been jittery while transporting a few engineers in his autorikshaw as black clouds could be seen lining the horizon. As he took a turning off NH8 near the Vinayak temple, it began to rain. Pyarelal- who had always been an astute and keen observer of the rains due to his fortunes being inexplicably and inextricably linked to the monsoons- noticed that the rain was especially heavy and intense. His small auto bumped up and down over the ill maintained road leading to a quarry.

Pyarelal wasn't especially shocked when his auto's wheel got stuck in a puddle and refused to budge, after all, this was the least he expected. Since the quarry was well removed from the highway, no mechanic could be found nearby. Leaving his auto behind, Pyarelal braved the downpour to find a mechanic near the highway. As he trudged past the Vinayak temple, he noticed that the Bhilkadi river flowing next to the highway had flooded its banks and had formed a great lake where there had once been green pastures.

The mechanic got his scooter ready after much coaxing by Pyarelal and the two of them rode out to the place where the auto had gotten stuck in the mud only to find that it had simply disappeared. The mechanic explained to Pyarelal that either the auto could have rolled into the deep hole in the ground that had been blasted by the quarry owners, or it could have been stolen. Pyarelal thanked him for pointing out the obvious and cursed the rains, and Indira, the God of rains.

The police inspector laughed so violently that his huge belly wobbled. Pyarelal sat with hunched shoulders and looked around him with a sheepish expression. Apparently, the bribe that Pyarelal had offered for tracing his autorikshaw had been abysmally low when compared to the industrial standard prompting the jocularity on the part of the huge man in khaki.

Pyarelal's wife couldn't make ends meet and had weeks ago decided to take the kids and go to her maternal uncle's house. This was indeed a great insult to any Indian "man", and Pyarelal couldn't brook the embarrassment of not being able to provide for his family. But there was little he could do, now that his only source of income, the autorikshaw had been taken by the rain gods.

The monsoons continued to beat down mercilessly upon the Indian subcontinent, bringing great joy and vibrancy throughout the region, however, Pyarelal's situation had only worsened with each passing soggy day.

Driven to work as a casual labourer, Pyarelal joined the workforce at the very quarry where his fortunes had taken a huge dip. This however only worsened his mental and physical condition such that he decided to let the very rains take away his life.

So, Pyarelal walked through the last of the season's rain, which had turned into a gentle drizzle. As he reached the Vinayak temple on NH8, he decided to sit there to rest his aching bones and curse the unhelpful Gods before taking his final plunge into the lake that had been formed by the Bhilkadi river which had flooded its banks. However, sleep overcame his tired mind and body and it was the temple priest who woke him in the morning which had dawned sunny and bright.

Pyarelal walked around the temple preparing to jump into the lake when he noticed that the water level had considerably reduced, and visible right in the middle of the river was the top of a black submerged object. He suddenly noticed that the skies were clear blue and hope sprung in the deep dark recesses of his soul. Excitedly, he jumped into the lake and swam to the middle. He dove under the water to inspect the submerged object and found to his unbounded delight and amusement that it was indeed his lost autorikshaw!

With the help of a considerate and kind-hearted manager at the quarry, he managed to get a crane to pull out his autorikshaw. With the little money he had managed to accrue while working at the quarry, he got it repaired. The mechanic reported with great amusement that the auto's engine had started at the very first attempt to crank it after he had serviced it.

"You must be a very lucky man!" cried out the mechanic.

"Only until the next monsoons my brother, only until the next barsaat!" replied Pyarelal in a resigned manner,

How to Survive if Machines Take Over the World

Most of us are familiar with the concept of genes, which are basically strands of molecules which try really hard to replicate and, if possible, to suppress the competing genes of competing specie. Now apply the same theory of natural selection and evolution to ideas or "memes" (a term coined by Richard Dawkins in his book “The Selfish Gene”). There are innumerable memes doing the rounds. They require human minds for their very existence and they replicate themselves throughout the population. Religion is a prime example of a virulent meme which replicates itself. There are many other examples, such as the ipod culture, or anti-semitism during Hitler's reign.

Today, with the rapid advance in science and technology, we are experiencing a golden period in terms of the tech solutions to the problems ailing us and society. Technological ideas and applications are termed as temes (a term that was first used by Susan Blackmore at the February 2008 TED conference).

Temes and memes are transmitted through language (spoken, written, or mathematical) and their very existence depends on the existence of humans. They replicate themselves, but only the best survive, very much like the process of natural selection in the natural world where the useless genes or the bad genes are discarded and evolution proceeds by selecting the strongest and the fittest.

Though temes right now require human minds to dwell in, the day is not far off when temes will be able to exist , develop and replicate without requiring human hosts at all. This will be made possible by artificial intelligence. In fact, the limbic system of a rat has been built artificially with modern computing systems. It is quite within our capabilities to be able to develop artificial intelligence such that it exceeds the performance of the human brain.

When that happens, temes would be able to survive in silicon processors and magnetic memory storage devices. I'm not predicting some “matrix” style doomsday scenario here, I am just saying that today, we are the dominant species on the planet and we disregard the rights of all other specie. We wipe out those that cause problems to us, and many specie have gone extinct due to the environmental damage that we have wreaked. We didn't do it intentionally, it just so happened that we needed food, so forests had to be replaced with monoculture, we needed metals, so mines had to be dug and so on. This is what is popularly known as “collateral damage”. Similarly, temes too would treat us with equal disregard once they are free of their dependence on us. Just like how genes do not care about competing genes if they are unimportant to their own survival (the case in point being the collateral damage that we have caused to innumerable specie in our quest to improve our own living conditions) temes too would not care about any of the organisms present here on our planet, unless they need the life-forms for some purpose.

This is not entirely such a bad situation. After all, the technology created by humans would have many human characteristics. The single most important factor that defines the identity of humans is the brain and the self awareness generated within it. So, it logically follows that humans will live on in the form of temes and technology as technology is nothing but the product of the human brain.

Another very probable scenario is if humans merge seamlessly with technology making one indistinguishable from the other. Artificial body parts today make it possible for the deaf to hear, the blind to see and the limbless to run. Soon, these parts would outstrip the performance of natural organic parts, because machines evolve exponentially faster than biological organisms. The blind will then be able to see in any spectrum that they wish to see in, the deaf would then be able to hear any frequency, the paraplegics would be able to run faster than automobiles.

We are all part of the technological tsunami, and we ought to be thankful that we shall witness probably within our lifetimes the dawn of the machine and the AI era.

Has?

Has the River ever told the raincloud of its love?

Has the Wind ever told the ocean of its love
as it blows on by creating ripples on the surface?

Have the Trees confessed of their affection
to the honey-gold orb of warmth and care?

Has Gaia confessed her undying devotion
to the center of her orbit?

Has the Soil ever whispered loving words
to the farmer's drops of salty beads of sweat
as they kiss the ground with a splash?

Has the dolphin ever confessed its love
to the salty glistening spray of sea water
as it somersaults out of the water?

Has the parched and ignorant mind ever
whispered sweet nothings to the first drops of wisdom
as they trickle in through the senses?

Has the ascetic monk ever seen through
the veil of religion to realize her love for God?

Has the Heat of passion ever sung paeans
of their love for the warmth and comfort of Love?