The ‘Perfect’ Birthday

I am generally not very ecstatic about my birthdays. I don’t consider them very special or exciting enough, except the fact that I get to talk to the most of my friends on the same day. It is not that I don’t like to celebrate, or shy away from throwing parties. I just don’t think that only a birthday is a special day. Everyday is a special day, in fact every moment is! Nature doesn’t act any differently on these so-called special days like showering one with flowers or money! Only way it makes you feel special is by your friends. Biologically there are always some dying cells and new-born cells to replace them instantly, so theoretically one dies and is born every moment. Psychologically you are born with new understanding every moment. So it is uncharacteristic, as well as amusing, that I am very excited about my birthday this year as I turn 28. There are a couple of reasons for that, one founded in literature and the other in mathematics.   

What I found in literature : My office friends gifted me Thomas Hardy’s classic Far From the Madding Crowd on my last birthday, but not before I treated them for lunch. Lousy friends I have. Love them all! I have a firm belief that every event and every thing has some significance in your life. That day I could not comprehend what significance this book would have in future. I did not get chance to read it until just before my following birthday. The description of certain farmer Oak bemused me and made me eager to wait for the day when I turn 28. It reminds me of myself. Here is that apt and very beautiful passage:

“He had just reached the time of life at which "young" is ceasing to be the prefix of "man" in speaking of one. He was at the brightest period of masculine growth, for his intellect and his emotions were clearly separated: he had passed the time during which the influence of youth indiscriminately mingles them in the character of impulse, and he had not yet arrived at the stage wherein they become united again, in the character of prejudice, by the influence of a wife and family. In short, he was twenty-eight, and a bachelor.”

What the mathematics provided : Pythagorean Brotherhood was fascinated by numbers – Pythagoras proudly declared that Everything is Number – and among the numbers, they were after the very special and rarest numbers, called the perfect numbers. A perfect number is a positive number whose divisors exactly add up to the number itself. The first perfect number is 6, because 1, 2, and 3 are its proper positive divisors, and 1 + 2 + 3 = 6. The next perfect number, adding to my excitement, is 28, because 1 + 2 + 4 + 7 + 14 = 28 :) In other words, the perfection is achieved not when there is nothing to add, but when there is nothing to remove. These perfect numbers comply to that definition because adding the divisors just make the same number again, nothing more, nothing less.

The perfection of 6 and 28 is also acknowledged by some cultures who observed that the moon orbits the earth every 28 days and who declared that God created the world in 6 days. When I was 6, I was too young to appreciate this perfection and the next perfect number is 496, which I will not live to see unless I am blessed with immortality. So 28 remains to be the sole celebration of perfection in my current life. Let there be celebration galore!

The Silence of the Lamb

One of the finest scenes of Yash Chopra’s memorable movie Silsila comes when Dr. Anand (Sanjeev Kumar) and Shobha (Jaya Bachchan) are chatting in the doctor’s clinic. Both of them are aware of their spouses’ clandestine affair. The good-natured doctor advises Shobha to exercise her right and plunge into action. In return, Shobha asks him, “Aur raja kya kar rahe hai?”, referring him as raja, and obviously showing dissatisfaction over his lack of action. That moment the palpable pain and helplessness over his face is enormous. He is drowned in silence. Whenever I see Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, I am reminded of that scene.

The recent unearthing of some corruption scams have been quite uncomfortable for the PM.  The two most striking ones are CWG scam and 2G spectrum scam. They obviously have dented the image of the country on the global front. Together they might reveal the graft of 200000 crores. But the statistics only does not reveal the true nature of wrongdoing.  What is really unnerving is that these scams had gone on for many years, right under the nose of the PM. By no means, I am accusing him of graft. To his credit, even his staunchest enemies would not dare to blame him for corruption. He is incorruptible, and that is given.  It is not possible that he was not aware of the scams much before the world came to know about it. He chose to remain silent over the whole episodes arises a suspicion in the mind that he was privy and gave his approval. What baffles me is his silence on these matters.

He has been silent for too long. Silence is golden, but it ceases to be a virtue if not backed by right action. Then you become object of public ridicule. Remember the joke doing rounds on internet - Regarding 2G Manmohan Singh said "I know only 2G -that are RahulG and SoniaG"?  The PM’s credibility is at stack.  You cannot claim your right to remain silent when you are a leader of a country of 1.2 billion people. Nor can you find relief in the fact that you were performing your dharma with utmost sincerity, barring these incidents. In more than one ways, his is the situation akin to that of Bhishma in epic Mahabharata. Like Bhishma, he decides to do his duty selflessly, but for the wrong side (the sides are not the political parties, – they are all same  -but the people of the country and their betrayers). In that way he has betrayed the country. All he has to offer is that like Caeser’s wife, the PM should also be free of suspicion. The problem, Mr Singh, is that in the country where family values are still revered, the whole family of Caeser’s wife is expected to be free of suspicion. 

Being a PM, he is answerable to the people of the country. By some strange and misplaced sense of duty, the PM thinks that he is only answerable to Sonia Gandhi because she put him into that seat of power in 2004 by renouncing the crown. No, Mr PM, you were not given any favor but you were favored because of your clean image. There was no one else who could have claimed that.  Sonia, in fact, did not renounce the power; she renounced the responsibility. In the current arrangement, she decides the policies and portfolios while the PM gets all the blame for anything which is not right. That was the reason A Raja was made telecom minister again in 2009 in spite of Manmohan Singh’s opposition. Politics certainly has some place for theatrics. Atal Bihari Vajpayee showed that when he threatened to resign and got his way when he was PM. It’s time Manmohan Singh follows his predecessor.

The country is suffering because of these unwanted happenings and there are not many people we can hope to provide the beacon of light – Rahul Gandhi is also busy dividing the people of the country like many others, Narendra Modi is busy taunting Congress leaders, Advani is busy bringing Uma Bharati back in BJP and other leaders are busy strengthening their little pockets of power. True that the night is the darkest before the dawn, but there is a lingering question in mind – Kya is raat ki subah hogi?

The Ultra Special

 

Waking up with a burden of history is no good feeling. And I had twins to tackle with the day I woke up for the Bangalore Ultra Marathon 2010. One, I was going as a reigning champion in the 37.5 KM category. Victory feels sweet the day you taste it but also puts you under the pressure of expectations, from your well-wishers as well as from yourself, the next time you compete. My change of category from 37.5 KM to 50 KM not withstanding, I somehow could not rid my mind of that fact, though I always considered that win a favor from fortunes. Second, more importantly, was the recent incident of bonking when I had severe back pain as well as feeling of intense exhaustion while training for the Ultra. I stopped after 36 KM that fateful day, feeling terribly dejected. The pain ruled so much over my mind that I tried, with little success, to show it an exit door thru a poem. Then there was that niggle in my left knee, which frequently gives me scare. In short, it was a terrible state to be in.

The race started at 6 AM, during that period of twilight when the darkness gives way for the light. As the runners got into their rhythm and pace, I found myself running with Ajith, a fellow from my runnerhood.  The sky was clean and cloudless, and the sun peeped over the green meadows and hillocks. Something in that sun was telling me that it was going to be a hot day. Ajith also agreed to that. The mood was rapturous among the runners, not fully aware of the sun’s plans, as they kept on chatting and cheering. My anxieties started vanishing, rather slowly like the pace I was running at, watching the proceedings around me. A little while later, the history was history again and the pain became just another four letter word. When you hit the road, nothing matters but the present. Running, or any other sport for that matter, helps one achieve what the zen philosophers and psychologists always profess – live in the moment. The mind, however, has too many doors to escape. One of the important psychological studies this year shows that Just about half of the average person's time is spent "mind wandering". My mind wandered in the world of the words, especially the four letter words, and could not stop observing how some of the four letter words have profound effect on life(itself one of those words) – love. luck, fate, will, pain...even f**k.

All this while, I kept on looking at the fellow runners and noticing their efforts. During the first round, the runners greeted each other with loud cheers. As they grinded themselves further, the greetings became less ecstatic and more subtle. In the end, one only moved his eyes to say the most. There is unwritten pact between runners to acknowledge the agony and ecstasy of running. The camaraderie keeps growing during the thin and thick of the running. The 12m12m which we will embark on next year is born out of such camaraderie.

By the time I finished the half distance, the sun was ruthless in its pursuit of sucking energy from the runners. Mai, a Motorola colleague, who came all the way from US to run one of the best ultra marathons in the world, was all red and struggling to keep her heartbeat. The effect was evident on the other runners also. The Bangalore weather was considered to be the biggest advantage for this illustrious event but this year it sprung a surprise not many people were ready for. In the end many people would give up their challenge in what was later believed to be the toughest Bangalore Ultra Marathon till date. The recent training in late mornings and afternoons certainly helped me a lot in reducing the effect of the heat. Along with that I carefully kept eating oranges and bananas and glucose biscuits to fuel the engine. The bigger challenge was to keep the monotony out of the equation which results from 4 rounds of 12.5 KM each. To that effect, I planned to utilize ipod in the last round to listen to songs which could give me some boost. How well it worked that day! I finished the distance after 5 hours and 35 minutes. That being my first ultra marathon distance(anything more than 42.195 KM), I thought I did pretty well. The heart still rejoices for finishing my first ultra distance. But the icing on the cake is the realization that the past and pain are just the bystanders which you can choose not to heed.