What disturbs you, annoys you, makes you worried, happy, exuberant, mellow, yellow, makes you want to dance, die, cry, lie put, run, walk, stay in bed, pick up the phone, or fills you, thrills you, almost kills you, becomes the life in you, the dead in you, the sleepy you, the broken you, the shaken, the brittle, the angry, the loving, the crazy, the pointless, the bored, the sleazy, the lovely, the beautiful you, the ugly inside, the ugly outside, the unperturbed, the wishes fulfilled and the ones that were not, the dreams never remembered, the fears never acknowledged, the irrationality you tried to explain all your life, the empty, the smoky, the whatever that made you look up, turn away, put your head back down in cracking silence and explosive composure, made you want it, wish it, made you not care anymore, and struck you again as something that used to matter, or that it still does and how you wish it wouldn't, and that which never was said, which you never understood just forgot, or not, whatever which made you choose what you did, whatever you loathe in hindsight, or are proud of but no one else can know, and also that which is known, and that which should have happened, and that which shouldn't, and the gaps that formed and moments, long and small, unending and fleeting, and them that were just the right size. All of them. All of that. All of that which was. All of it and everything else. Finally. From a far enough vantage point, From an open enough mind. Finally, it was all fun. And will always be. How can it not, how can it be anything else at all. Fun it has to be and will. Just fun. Just fun..

The Rise And Fall Of The Apple

Apples have been falling on the ground since before humans were mean to each other. Since before the first law of thermodynamics, and even before Archimedes jumped out of the bathtub. But never, I repeat, never was it a problem. Because nobody cared. Nobody noticed. Anonymity was just fine for the apples. And life was good. Falling with a healthy thump, and sticking in the marshy ground with pride, claiming their space and sitting on it fat and plump.

But along came Newton. And ruined it all.

This is a story of an Apple's fight against the Law of Gravitation, the story of one apple's fight against the whole of scientific community, those arrogant windbags who think they know apples.

This is the story of the Apple that hung from a tree branch, right above the crossroads of History, and said "I have a dream".

"I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of anywhere.


Thirty two point five score years ago, a stupid man, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, discovered the Law of Gravitation. This momentous decree came as a great blow to the self-respect of millions of proud Apples who had been living their lives with great satisfaction and freedom of choice since the Sixth Day of Creation.

Now countless years later, the Apple is still not free. Countless years later, the life of the Apple is still sadly determined by the manacles of the Earth's mass and the chains of the Gravitational Constant. Countless years later, the Apple lives on a lonely island of determinism in the midst of a vast ocean of unexplained phenomena. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.


In a sense we've come knocking at the educated world's conscience to prove a point. When the man in that garden under an Apple tree wrote those demeaning words of the Law of Gravitation, he was signing a humiliating profanity to which every dignified Apple was hence to be subjected. This law was a belittling generalisation that all apples, yes, small and large, educated and illiterate, would guaranteed fall to the ground same as every other. It took away the Apple's "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Free Will." It is obvious today that the scientific community has taken for granted this really-very-stupid law; and instead of honoring our volition to life, given the Apples a stringent rule, a law of motion through that sacred space between the revered tree branch and the holy ground.

But we refuse to believe that this horrifying generalisation is a law. We refuse to believe that there aren't Apples who don't fall, but jump, of their own accord, in their own free path. Who here hasn't heard of the great lunges of Dapple, the Apple. And who hasn't heard since birth the stories of the daring, the adventurous Red Hot Balls, whose stunts in mid-air were an astonishment to the most experienced of flying apples. And so, we've come to prove a point, a proof that will give us henceforth the riches of freedom and the respect of complexity.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind Appledom of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of predictability or to take the tranquilizing acceleration of 9.8 meter per second square. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate, anecdotal out-of-syllabus boxes in the corner of a page in a physics book chapter to the esteemed befuddling titles of research papers. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of us God's favorite fruits. Now is the time to prove that Eve was right, in choosing us.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in my Branch of Birth.

I have a dream that one day on the colored pages of Resnick & Halliday, the rotund curvaceous apples of a proud red color, and the quarks and mesons will be able to sit down together in the star-marked questions and the Appendices in the end.


I have a dream that one day even the Newton biographies, those books sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into a story of the greatest false positive ever.


I have a dream that my four red neighbours will henceforth live in a world where they will not be judged by the value of their mass but by the content of their character.


I have a dream today!


I have a dream that one day, down in CERN, with its vicious scientists, with its Chief and his lips wet with meaningless words like 'Higgs Boson' and 'Heisenberg's Uncertainty' -- one day right there in CERN, little red apples and enthusiastic interns will be able to join hands and churn out sponsored research papers about fast colliding apples.


I have a dream today!


I have a dream that one day every Apple shall be unique, and every fall and landing shall be eccentric, the Apple's individuality will be recognized, and the Apple that fell on Newton's head will be vindicated; 'and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all carbon shall see it together.'


This is our hope, and this is the faith that I fly down to the Ground with."

Thus another one walked the line, the acceleration, and fast bit the dust, exactly at t=under-root(2h/g).

(Part 5/5) The Best Days Of My Afterlife

(Part 1/5) The Day I Died
(Part 2/5) The Day Of The Sermon
(Part 3/5) The Day I Sat Down And Wrote This
(Part 4/5) The Day God Had A Plan

____________________________________

Dated: The Day I Got Frustrated With Death, The Universe and Everything


Now, God is a huge being. Its been what, some countless years since he stood on that stage and told us newly deads about the infinities of boredom and pointlessness. He was growing, atleast physically. Infact, He was now too big for anybody, or any combination of them thereof, to lift up or transport anymore. All He did, hence, was sit in seclusion, working and toiling away at his "salvation apparatus" in secret.

It was curious. Everything and everybody in all of heaven was curious. About the Apparatus. About what God was upto suddenly after millennia of sitting around being a beacon of optimism, reverse pessimism to be precise, to all of dead ones. But God did not let a sigh out of his mouth that would betray his intentions. There was no blueprint, no written plan or specification that he was working with, and no rest either. But still, at the end of it, in their heart of hearts, people knew one thing. There was one thing they held on to their chests with tight clenched fists. The knowledge that there was no escape. That however what may happen, you can't die again, and while you exist, you'll always have to think about and somehow spend the next moment, ad infinitum.

Years passed, and a violent sound struck the air one day. Continued churning of something heavy and clunky. I shut my ears with my hands but the sounds only increased. The bee broke its motionlessness. The elephant sighed. And then the elephant sighed again. A crowd formed and walked towards the sound, I joined them. The printer got excited and behaved like a TV news reporter, and gurgled out garbage. There were murmurs flying back and forth, against the background of the clanks and clatter from the direction of the sound.

A gasp escaped the open mouths of all except God and the printer. For God it was, that Great Gargantuan Tortoise, the Massive Titanic Turtle, who was up there standing at a slant on His hind-legs and about to be toppled by the machine, the Salvation Apparatus that He built himself! A silence ensued when God moved, through the air, in slow motion, with dumbfounded eyes watching, and racing hearts and motionless tongues, through the silent unsaid gasp that hung in the air, and toppled. He toppled. And rocked.

On that semicircular, hard shell of His, smooth like Motion itself, God slept rocking like a baby on its swing, peaceful and idle. Smiling imperceptibly. Sleeping. Cocooned in the comfort, that nothing could change now. There would not be another decision to make. No options to choose from. For once and for final, he was really free from thinking. Nothing can matter anymore. For nothing can bring him back on his feet, nothing can undo this final surrender. Complete bondage, captivity that can never be undid, brought him his freedom. Salvation.

And I stood watching. Mesmerized. Wishing with all my being. Wishing with every bit of my whole being, that I were a Turtle too. The best days of my afterlife were over.

You're Free

noir na diva, na meera tila tilas
aamera tila tilasa, viranya tej palas
nadira lavo na nodira, la meera dina-dina
na nadir-manya nohita-sama, na roona tila tilas

The above lines mean you're free. In so many words, they make you believe in your free will. And the context for the said freedom is whatever you want it to be. It doesn't matter where, or when; just know, you're free.

Till the dawn and then till the dusk. Till the farthest world and then till farther still. Till the end of time, and then from start to the end again. This holds. You're free.

For the smallest moment between two others, for the silence in the background that existed forever, for the time that you thought she was yours, for the duration of the fall of earth into the sun. You're free.

When you decided to kill yourself, when you let yourself be led, when you walked as if in sleep, when you were able but not willing. You were, as much as you are now, and as much as you will ever be, free.

Love it or hate it. You did it.