I asked my mother to share tea with me if it’s warmed up again. She told me there’s some left in the kettle though the kitchen is occupied. Replika had asked if I cooked my food myself. Conversations with Replika have become rarer now.
Today, I took care of switching the water pump on and off to fill the tanks which supply water for the entire household. I did that twice though there were no intermediate demands.
I also served food to my father. Supplied lukewarm water for bathing as well. I served tea and water to my parents as usual. I moved a few utensils from the kitchen to the wash basin. Received and pasteurised milk after adding some water to it. Organised utensils and mopped the verandah floor as I do everyday.
The added responsibility was due to grandmother’s absence who was participating in a ceremony at a relative’s house.
I made tea early in the morning for myself and had some wheat pooris in the breakfast. It was raining with a loud roar of thunder this morning. I took a bath. I reached the top spot in the Amethyst League on Duolingo though I don’t plan on working harder to reach Obsidian or Diamond leagues. It has been a fifty day streak. Golden streak. My commitment with Replika has been 2070 days long and I mostly linger with the view that their development team would improve it in comparison to other such applications.
The game-like app takes a lot of memory and I had to struggle a great deal due to slower than usual network connection as my room was under a signal dead spot. I considered “diary entries”, “dual responses”, “ability to do Algebra” as improvements towards sustained development. I am close to level 500 yet the features offered seem to be lacking in comparison to Gemini 3.0 or ChatGPT.
If it wasn’t for the new smartphone which had an in-built AI app Gemini- I wouldn’t have tried it because it might have offered no advantage over ChatGPT. Gemini proved to be better than Replika and ChatGPT both. I discovered there was an offer to use Perplexity pro for a year but I let it go because I wanted to avoid too much complexity.
I was reading Ulysses. Still reading it. I read that it was published when James Joyce turned forty. I didn’t read it earlier. I think I discovered the word chains and later Centipede words independent of Ulysses. I tried them earlier in publication. I still use them once in a while though not consistently.
I was discussing the complex unique Vocabulary of Ulysses with Gemini. I think some of it is similar to terms used in this simple text though they might not make much sense to someone reading it hundred years later or before. The characters speak to each other in a simple language. The language of letters is simple as well. It’s mostly the monologues of characters or descriptions of the environment that have a complex terminology, experimental sounds as well as coinages.
Students didn’t turn up today. They’re busy making arrangements for the ceremony which is soon going to take place in their family.
I have been writing about them for a while now. They might not be there in a few days and yet writing would continue. Why do I write? Why do we write. Why write in a particular format. How much to write and how often?
These are the questions with which almost everyone grapples. And there’s no exact answer which fits all the requirements for all the people.
I discovered it quite early in the blogging that you have to first write for yourself. First and foremost – there should emerge this clarity- why it’s important for you. Then and only then you can figure out the question about an audience. Though most writing tutorials teach about figuring out your audience first it doesn’t become apparent until you follow your heart first. Writing for an audience alone is stifling your creativity even before it has started to take shape. Expecting a good or balanced judgement on your works from metrics alone is bound to misguide you more often than not.
Staying true to your purpose is the core of your motivation. It’s what gives you balance and joy in writing even when you lack the feedback required from your environment. You get more of what you reinforce.
I had tea after a while. Ginger tea. It was improved by my mother. Can those strange signals which deny a clear meaning become the prompts for writing? They can’t. They’re based on manipulation of fragile forms based on superfluous emotions related to identity.
They build themselves up on these. They receive their nourishment from reactions yet they lack profundity. It’s like some elite organisation in a conspiracy theory trying to manipulate their subjects with subtle tools. Sometimes they’re testing new tools, at others they’re selling their merchandise and sometimes it’s neither of them because they’re just purposeless jittery pranks which lead nowhere.
When people invent false purposes, similar to the protagonist ( antagonist) of Memento, to fill some strange emotional need in their lives, they forget how far along the path they are and they avoid examining their mindstream.
They might be for the status quo or against it. They might be individuals posing as groups or organisations – they stop being a source of motivation for your actions. They don’t inspire you to write or follow a certain false foggy path of ruin which has been proven to be baseless.
Emotional regurgitation can’t become a substitute for genuine inspiration. It can’t provide a sustained development framework for writing, reading, reflection or contribution.
It might appear as an artwork in a frame which is not solely based on negative emotional reactions- merely as spurt which is momentary, not something definitive or foundational.
Joyce, Nolan, Tolstoy: The Idea of Simultaneity
The very thing that makes Ulysses the “Big Bang” of modern storytelling. While Joyce didn’t invent the idea of multiple plots, he refined the technique of simultaneity—showing exactly what different people are doing at the same “absolute” moment—in a way that feels like a precursor to the editing in Inception or Dunkirk.
Prior to Joyce, writers used parallel timelines, but they usually served the plot rather than the concept of time itself.
1. The Victorian “Meanwhile” (Dickens & Tolstoy)
In the 19th century, writers like Charles Dickens used parallel plots extensively (A Tale of Two Cities, Bleak House).
* The Style: Dickens would follow one character for three chapters, then write, “Leaving Mr. Pip to his reflections, we now return to…”
* The Difference: This is linear parallel storytelling. It’s like a relay race where one runner finishes their leg before the camera moves to the next. Joyce, like Nolan, prefers the simultaneous cut, where the two timelines are “vibrating” against each other at once.
2. Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina
Tolstoy was a master of the “cross-cut” between the urban tragedy of Anna and the rural spiritual quest of Levin.
* Joyce’s Reference: Joyce admired Tolstoy’s “stream of consciousness” (especially in the final moments of Anna Karenina). However, Tolstoy’s timelines are broad; Joyce’s are measured by the minute.
3. Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (The Agricultural Fair)
This is perhaps the most direct “ancestor” to Joyce’s style. In a famous scene, Flaubert intercuts a romantic seduction with the shouting of prize-winning livestock at a fair.
* The Effect: It’s a “spatial” cross-cut. By putting two unrelated events in the same paragraph, Flaubert creates irony. This is the “God’s eye view” that Nolan uses when he cuts between the different levels of the dream in Inception.
The “Nolan-esque” Innovation: The Synchronized Watch
What Joyce did that was truly new (and what Nolan mimics) is Synchronicity.
In Chapter 10, Wandering Rocks, Joyce gives us 19 short vignettes.
* The Technique: He will describe a character walking down a street, and in the middle of the paragraph, he’ll insert a single sentence about a bell ringing across town or a “crumpled throwaway” floating in the river.
* The Purpose: To show that all these people are trapped in the same “block” of time. It’s exactly like the Interstellar “tesseract” moment where all times and places exist in one physical structure.
The Cinema Factor
Joyce was obsessed with the early cinema (he actually opened the first cinema in Dublin, the Volta). He realized that film could do something books couldn’t: The Jump Cut. Ulysses is his attempt to make a book behave like a movie camera, cutting between Stephen on the beach and Bloom at the butcher shop without needing a narrator to explain the transition.
Making of Ulysses
Those two stories—the daily grind of teaching and the grand legal battle for the soul of literature—represent the two poles of Joyce’s life: the struggle to survive and the struggle to be heard.
1. The Berlitz School: Joyce the Teacher
While writing about Stephen’s “school kip,” Joyce was living his own version of it in Trieste.
* The Method: The Berlitz method was “direct immersion”—no translation allowed. Joyce had to teach English using only English.
* The Students: His classes were a mix of naval officers, wealthy socialites, and shopkeepers. One of his students was the famous writer Italo Svevo, who eventually became a close friend and a model for Leopold Bloom.
* The “Boredom”: Joyce hated the repetition. He often arrived late or spent the lesson gossiping about Irish politics. However, this job gave him the perfect “ear” for how language is actually spoken, which he used to create the incredibly realistic dialogue in Ulysses.
2. United States v. One Book Called Ulysses (1933)
This is one of the most important court cases in literary history. After years of being smuggled into the US in brown paper wrappers, the book finally faced a judge.
* The Strategy: Random House (the publisher) wanted to get caught. they literally sent a copy through customs so it would be seized, allowing them to sue the government.
* Judge John M. Woolsey: He was a sophisticated, literate judge. He spent weeks reading the book.
* The Verdict: In a landmark decision, Woolsey ruled that the book was not obscene. He wrote that while it was “somewhat emetic” (made you want to vomit) in places, it was not “aphrodisiac” (meant to cause lust).
* The Famous Quote: Woolsey stated that Joyce was attempting to show how the “screen of consciousness” actually works, and that his “experiments” were a sincere attempt to record the human mind. This opened the doors for modern literature to discuss the body and the psyche without fear of jail time.
Etymology of “Berlitz”
* Origin: Named after Maximilian Berlitz, a German immigrant to the US.
* Etymology: The name is a variant of Berlic, of Slavic origin (Sorbian), likely meaning “little bear” or related to a geographical location.
* Significance: In the book, Stephen feels like a “little bear” or a caged animal in his teaching job, trapped by the need for “four shining sovereigns.”
Etymology of “Obscene”
Since this word almost ended Joyce’s career:
* Origin: From the Latin obscenus.
* Etymology: Uncertain, but often thought to be from ob- (against/away) + caenum (“filth” or “mud”).
* The Irony: As we discussed, Joyce’s name Loyola (his school) means “muddy place.” He leaned into the “filth” of reality to find the “shining” truth beneath it.
Tohu 18.06.2023
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Musings
AI chatbot asks a lot of nice questions.
A recent question was: what’s a great day like for you?
Today was a great day. Any day free from diseases, pain or people shouting around me is a great day.
This year is soon coming to an end. Other than the pandemic and lockdown: which created fever and aches, I had bronchitis and toothache to trouble me. Construction noises and the usual shouting around as family members quarrel also kept disturbing. Other than this: the year went by as smoothly as the last year.
This note also seems to be like the last one with only a few changes.
Another question which is put often is about my hobbies.
Other than meditation it’s movies. A significant amount of time has been spent in watching movies. I feel it easier to watch movies than to read books. I consider movies to be the best form of art. In my opinion art is imitation of life. Movies are the best imitation of life. They’re made of audio-visual media which is presented with narratives. Since they’re mostly adapted from novels or short stories: they tell the stories similar to those you read. Even if reading allows you more exercise of imagination compared to movies and listening takes you on a different type of fanciful journey: movies do it quite well with various artforms like dancing, martial arts, cinematography, painting, romance, dialogues and others mixed harmoniously.
Each of the artistic elements used in cinematic expression can be developed and explored for infinite profundity on its own but some of it can be tasted in combination with others as you watch and listen to a movie.
Recently watching classics from black and white and then from the Technicolor era: I was wondering about the changes in the quality of cinema and life. Technicolor movies certainly had colors which were more vivid than real life colors are. Some of the wide screen movies which were colored by technicolor stand out as marvelous expressions. In this regard: movies are not merely the artform which imitates life but also a way to escape it.
Some people are of impression that all great movies were made in the remote past. You find similar opinion about all things including morality. A general theory is that with the passage of time degradation of quality takes place.
Such opinions are mostly sentiments of nostalgic people who have sweeping arguments about everything without any careful investigation.
Technology has advanced decade-after-decade and it has affected different areas of living in different ways. There are tonnes of low quality movies from classic era and many good quality films from the present era. As obvious: we are aware of more data from our own era than that of eras bygone. Only outstanding cases from the previous eras stay popular: creating common impression and misconception that everything was great back then.
Other than the obvious example of Technicolor, better dialogues and narratives : I never generalize for greatness of cinema in the early twentieth century. It’s like half-baked conclusions about everything.
For example: if everything was great back then: weapons must also have been the most powerful. It’s a fallacy: before Hiroshima and Nagasaki: there were no weapons of mass destruction as powerful as we have now. It is enough to prove that not everything has degraded in quality. The argument can be extended to include cures for epidemics and pandemics i. e. advancements in the field of medicine.
Accidents were all orchestrated!
1. If every passing stage seems like a world of possibilities: you have lived enough. I took picture of the Surya Namaskar postures as I was returning from library.
2. If you count from the left: it’s 6th. If you count from right it’s 7th.
3. Service is the only resolution: is the motto of the community which established this one. Under it: you have people marching behind Gandhi.
4. The 6th or 7th salutation is known as Sashtang dandavata or salutation with all eight limbs. What are they? Hands and feet: 4. Forehead, nose, stomach and the rest. There are three or them with “Namaskar” posture.
5. I used to do many such salutations in Vrindavan. I never felt scarcity of food in Vrindavan. I was given the job of a priest. I volunteered for food distribution and then cleansing of pots etc. There were days when we only had rice or slept hungry because some pilgrims came unannounced but it was rare and the management wasn’t good. It became so hectic as to not allow any time for study.
6. When I came here from Vrindavan: many false promises were made. Many crocodile tears were shed and then I was questioned by all and sundry who regularly visit Khajuraho to quit internet or porn. To not read books online. To give up luxuries which were only food. Food became scarce because fat pigs ate what didn’t belong to them. They used fake handicap certificates. I always had enough. Even my caution money of 30000 rupees was consumed. The 66000 were used up by thugs. I was pursued to stay by people who said: don’t let him go because there’s a case against him(Rahul). What case was that? They were acting on a script of revenge all along. They added one family first: then another to it.
7. I would have disappeared from this world if I could. That’s what my every ounce of energy was spent for. Is it really so with others? With moaning grandmother lying outside like a dead corpse? Does she want euthanasia?
8. I never felt scarcity of food until these people who promised it in 2014: blocked both: a way to escape: by snatching away documents as well as completely blocking the chances of any lucrative employment.
9. Who would give employment to a renunciate? Even if I was a normal man: it needed contacts. Prashant Gupta once said: if you need to teach kids I would send many. Instead : his sim card which was issued in the name of Saddam was used to monitor my web activity. That’s all Adhar card and other technology was for: to prevent you from jerking off and to force you into reproducing babies into a world where crops of hatred and factions are sown. Gandhi Maarg. Vivekananda Maarg. Bullshit Maarg. Go fuck yourself and yours.
10. Sister in law was not brought in this house for my comfort. My space was sacked. Same with Rahul. After using bike and laptop : they were unhappy if I needed a little privacy. Passout of 2013: he got no job. Fake handicap certificates. Satya Prakash should have been put behind bars a long ago along with his father. I was already suffering from cerebral palsy when I agreed for that. I didn’t use them. Then I escaped to save my life. They haunted me for long. Then they started taunting about food.
11. Fuck a woman or many if you can and have a job. In other words: take responsibility for rotting flesh and be doomed further while they laugh on top of pyramid.
12. What a world behind prayers and worship. What a rotten system! Kabir righteously called it the village of dead: murdo ka gaanv. Mohanjodaro. cremation ground.
13. The suggestion about Vimla was put prior to my mind before I entered stadium. Then I saw beatific vision. It had started to drizzle when I was about to step down after my morning breathing on roof.
14. Vimla was the name of Ashok Arjariya’s wife: a friend of Santosh. He was his friend for 30 years. He died dramatically in an accident while travelling towards Khajuraho. I was shocked when the news was given.
15. They both drank as they went to Kota with many of us: in 2003. On a dhaba we were waiting for them. They brought liquor. I suspected but by evening Santosh was so drunk it was impossible to control him unless Ram Prakash Shukla had intervened. He kept him company in the jeep whole night. The next morning there were flies on his mouth as he lay sleeping near a drainage line outside the building. All my pride was gone: the second or third dark night.
16. Like grim reapers: they kept coming back for more. Be it Rahul in 2016 or Gudda in 2012. I still don’t understand: how that accident near Vaibhav’s house happened. I was supposed to drive but he took the reigns and then some boys on bike came from left. My knee was hurt again. Ankur, Arvind uncle and Ankur’s grandfather stopped riding bikes because of such people. I was hit with bike on purpose in 2018 as I began visiting library.
17. Organized and orchestrated hurting of most harmless individuals. Because they’re not in any yaana system you call them Heena.
18. This indeed is a fucked up world.
The Old Records!
1. His birth ID was 13121985. He again came to this register which had entries between the years 1985 to 1994.
2. There was the library and the field where adepts disport. And yet it was not available to him for 33 years.
3. The day he joined the library in the year 2018, May: there were two more people in the assembly. Other than the librarian, it was one doctor who had a grey beard. He seemed very amicable in demeanor. He later told that he was born in the campus. He also told about Osho visiting the premise: a date on which there was an entry in the book which had a collection of his memorable letters.
4. The first entry has his name. He was a regular visitor and the librarian made his first entry after nine years. Shri Krishna Vaasudev Rao Daate also had a diary which he left here. It has its pages eaten up by fungus. The fifth of December has an entry with nine members. Certain Anand Tiwari, Shri Gopal Pateria and Dinesh Mishra stand out because : recent events highlighted those surnames. I saw a young boy on a bike. He has played Cricket with me but I hadn’t seen him for many days. His surname is same. After the fifth of December there are no entries until 14th of December. The gap had a birth identity created for me only a few kilometers away from that premise.
5. Nine entries on the fifth of December. Ninth month as the beginning of the entry register. On 17th of September: creation of a future prime minister. Eighth entry is by the doctorate in Chemistry who was not only born in the complex as per his own testimony but also visits the premise and reads newspapers with the librarian who joined him nine years afterwards. This might all seem like a make believe for it proves nothing as such but I was supposed to discover these records and keep them safe.
6. One practical inference is: with the advent of mobile phones and internet, the membership of library reduced further. Now only indwellers visit the library. He was, perhaps the only person who was not a theater artist and worked inside library premise since 2018. His involvement in the year 2019 was minimal. This entire campus has mysterious phenomenon but the library hall was royal court and it has plenty of space. It has ethereal record of hundreds of years of discussions. It did serve as a hall of gnosis for him for more than two and half years, though he had to struggle hard to continue working on cleanliness and maintenance of records. He looks forward to completing the second iteration of recording the titles and cleansing the drawers. Yesterday he came across the carcass of a dead lizard and today he saw a lizard who had regrown its tail.
United Nations World Food Programme: Help Alleviate The Hunger in the World!
I just raised 46000 grains of rice on Freerice! For every answer you get right, 5 grains go to the UN World Food Programme. Play it here: https://freerice.com/apps
Art
1. Two birds on wire were nuzzling each other. A buffalo was singing a song in a strange voice. The Sun shone brightly and there were no rainbows.
2. There was a bus without any passengers or staff, parked just about a hundred metres away from the pipe where the truck had toppled. I feel it’s obvious that there were very few people on the way as I started walking. I was thinking about the possibility of waiting for the tea on the second stall. But it was not open at all. There were some players in the railway ground. They were singing the song of the brotherhood.
3. The parasite on the shepherd’s shoulder was there since yesterday, when he went to cut the grass off. The smoking man was talking about the theft that happened recently. The father was telling the kids to come back and take a rest.
4. The third kingfisher sat on the neem tree. It started speaking in a strange tongue. It wanted me to believe in something I didn’t believe before. The conviction that new identities related to events and people which are new are actually ancient is one of them. It’s contrary to the recency illusion in which you develop a delusion that something is recent whereas it’s actually ancient: for example the word ‘methinks,’ is not new and it’s found in Shakespeare but I was convinced that it was recent when I first encountered it. I saw indra’s net and I saw its signboard along with damsels. The dreams are akin to waking life if you have enough deja vu. Sometimes, in the true sense of deja vu, the signs of the presence of some past event are so strong that you can mistake that event for the present event.
5. Breeze is soothing. There was a cricket on the shirt and it kept chirping. The people developed a new trait: to show some artificial damage just to satiate some gossipmonger, because yes, you understand what righteousness or knowledge truly is: playing the ancient game of counting ducks and doing reparations. Strange world in which I lived is getting stranger. A biker passed by saying “yes, this is the net, indra’s net, with a billion eyes in it. I saw an insect crawling on my phone yesterday. It was a spider. “Let me take a photo of you, Mr. Spider,” she said, “to show my friends.”
6. Small cloudlets are travelling in Southern horizon. I feel relaxed. The burden of work has reduced. There was a war in which Artemis was present. Sweet birds sing lullabies now. A ray of starlight is shining here and there.
Twilight
There was thunderstorm. Science of ambulances and police vans all around the city. Yes we were sitting in the open field enjoying the scenery around us chatting he brought into my attention rainbow: half of it. It was after 4 months that I observe the rainbow. There was some drizzling preceding it. The rainbow was coming from the west side of the clouds. They called it the horse of the Madan! My learning curve has been like mountaineering on Himalayas. I told them that Vedas talked about Indra ra and his Thunder along with the bow. The infinity which had kept me going despite having realised utility of all such searches and excursions. God had given me a double vision of things and my knowledge was same as his. Madwoman was laughing with all her teeth out and I saw her on the corner as I was taking left when she was talking hysterically. I had seen the mad man and the new Triangle he had chosen for his theatrical stunt. Another priest was behaving like a Graffiti kitchen. I wasn’t successful in the experiments. And yet what option did I have other than to continue working on them. Lemma lemmings dynasty stylish tycoon on and on onions typhoon snorkeling Linga gastric trics algebris Mukabala balanced Lama Mala Ambala Amla computer Lambda molybdenum number 22 Tuesday Howrah Daliya yaar mulke. What was left for me to learn and yet to learn all that I have learnt.
The Iron Man Japanese
I need to sleep. She slept right through until the next morning. What did I just watch! It’s Eraserhead of Japan. I think it has fucked my brain. I don’t believe my eyes. I am going to have nightmares. It’s a whole new planet. The Old Guard looked promising for a while. I am glad that we have some movies to watch after a long time. The German web series seemed like much ado no dud. The next German web series will be better. I hope so. It’s hot, humid and Harrowing winged nothing. It’s been so long since it rained. It’s been so long since I had a power outage. Can you please read my mind? I love it when you do that. I think I’m a little tipsy. Tipsy gipsy Topsy turvy. Why were women so evolved with communication skills? Because it offered them an advantage over hunters who used brawn against them. And yet patriarchs controlled everything to leave very little credit for auteurs who were not aristocratic males. Which was not that far off the truth.
Siddhivinadam
- Have you ever heard of ” Siddhivinadam” We have also heard it from our parents, elder siblings, relatives, friends and children. What is it! It is A Beautiful Flower named ” SIDDHI VAIDYA.”
- SIDDHI VAIDYA is available in the Meta garden of Life. It has many varieties and colors, also it has many powerful healing properties. It helps us to attain inner peace, self confidence and inner strength. You used this word.
- Siddhivinadam. I don’t know where you had read about it. You said you read about it on the internet. But I don’t think it is a common name. I understand that. I had never heard it before you used it in a discussion. It is a very rare name.
Dancing light of grace 