Try Me One

Move slowly. Pack. Drive. Drive through the evening, through the sunset, through the night. 

Rejoice at someone else's smile. In your own dark abyss, full of secrets, is a glimmer that came from knowing that you gave someone else a light. 

Satisfy your hunger. Then drive some more. And then satisfy your hunger again, and again, and again. And then look upon the horizon and feel hungry again. 

Feel hungry. Feel thirsty. Feel lonely. Feel insecure. Feel cold. Feel sad. Feel frightened. 

Feel everything, and come so close, and yet not satisfy anything. 

Sleep. The best solace. A warm hug. The best comfort. A beautiful ocean. The best rest. The hunger ebbs away gently.

Drink your sorrow away, then sleep once more. Solace, comfort and rest all come together again.

Drive away again. Relax. Breathe. Calm down. Get excited, then calm down again. Feel restless. 

Share a joke. Share a laugh. The core of everything is cold stone, but the skin always craves warmth. 

Remember an old sequence, from twenty years ago, which looked exactly as beautiful as this. It makes you desperate. You reach out, and the wind envelopes your body, caring nothing for all the props of sophistication and civilization. 

The wind will never leave you, never betray you, and you can never betray it, as long as you breathe. For a moment, your despair dies. 

And then you come back to cold, hard reality. In the form of a highway that takes you inexorably back to the prison where you have been condemned to die. The trance breaks. 

Can you avoid punishment for running away? No. Can you break out and away from the prison, forever? Maybe. That's what this journey was all about.

Random Thought: Boy Meets Girl - the PhD Story

Boy meets girl. Boy is a few years senior to girl. Boy and girl are both doing PhD, in the same institute, same field. Boy and girl have common friends. Boy and girl and common friends do a lot of fun stuff together. 

Boy and girl like each other. Boy and girl go out for movies together. Boy and girl consider that this might be a serious thing. Boy and girl even attend international conferences together (convenient, since both are in the same field). 

Boy finishes first, and goes off to a foreign country to work. Boy keeps sending girl postcards and letters about his work and his friends. Boy and girl talk on phone once in a while. Girl keeps on in the meantime with her PhD. This goes on for three years. 

Boy comes back home, and gets a job in the institute. Boy and girl decide to marry. Girl tells her dad, who is extremely annoyed, but decides to give boy a chance. Boy cooks dinner for dad, and over dinner they discuss Physics, their common love. 

Girl asks dad what he thinks, and he replies that boy's cooking is better than girl's cooking. Dad agrees, though he probably doesn't approve in his heart. But he wants to see his little girl happy.

Boy and girl get married, and later have a baby girl. Baby girl will have her own stories to tell, too. But that's for another day.

(Dedicated to UK and NNR, with thanks for all the love)

Opening Doors

Apparently, the way I open car doors confuses my friend. 

"What are you thinking when you open the car door?"

"Huh? What?"

"You always pause for a moment before you open the door, like you're thinking something, I don't know..."

"Oh... okay... and what do you think I'm thinking?"

"I dunno... like maybe, is this guy a gentleman and will he open the door for me, or something like that... I'm just curious. You're always thinking something."

"Heh heh heh heh heh... dude, I don't need guys to open doors for me..."

What is it with guys and opening doors for girls? More than that, what is it about girls opening doors for themselves or for guys that upsets everyone?

Really, opening a door is not a huge task, anyone can do it. I don't understand why this 'chivalry' factor is so special. Sure, it's a thing coming from old times, and women are thought to be the more 'delicate' sex, and so must be treated very nicely and politely all the time. It may have made sense in those times, if the doors were too heavy or something, but that argument just does not work today. 

The history of how this situation comes about is long and complex, and certainly no afternoon read. But it's fascination to observe how it operates. If a third party looks at a guy opening a door for a girl, the unconscious thought triggered is, oh isn't he being a perfect gentleman. If the girl opens the door and the guy just walks through like nothing special happened, the idea generated is, what a jerk! he's allowing a girl to open the door for him! This has actually happened to me. I've gotten those "Oh, poor girl, what a jerk she's with" kind of stares a couple of times.

Guys have opened doors for me before now, for no other reason than that they are guys and I'm a girl. I've opened doors for guys, only to have them look at me awkwardly and then proceed through the door, or try to take the door from me and let me enter first. I've never myself seen a case where a girl opens a door and a guy goes through without thinking anything more or less than that the girl is just being nice.

It's just plain polite manners to open the door for someone else. I'll accept an argument that younger people should open the door for the elderly, or that it makes sense to open the door for someone senior, like your parents or your boss. It's polite when guys open doors for girls. It's equally polite when girls open doors for guys. There shouldn't be anything weird or awkward or extraordinary about that, for either guys or girls. 'Chivalry' isn't something special; it's just this subset of nice behaviour, and shouldn't be considered anything more than that.

I won't bother to talk about picking up bags right now.

Break A Leg

Everyone should break a bone exactly once in their lifetime. Preferably in your teens or early twenties, so that you are old enough to think philosophically about it, and yet young enough that it heals at a decent rate. I have had my share of accidents and so on, but the worst I've suffered is a muscle pull, which I managed about two weeks back, on a hiking trip.

In such cases, one should also preserve for posterity the way by which one came upon one's injury, embarrassing though it may be. After all, you'll only do this once in a lifetime. How did mine happen? I and a friend were on this nice hike through a rather tricky trail, which effectively went up a hillside covered with rocks and foliage. On the return, we had to take the same tricky path, and going downhill on a steep slope is damned tricky, especially with shoes that are as ill-treated as mine are. I slipped off a rock that we were supposed to jump, hardly four feet in height perhaps, and landed hard on my left side. I didn't break any bones, but I did scrape my knee, bruise my hip and pull my elbow.

In the immediate aftermath of the fall, I thought I had gotten off pretty lightly. The real pains began the next day. I thought I'd have a mild bruise on my knee; it turned out to be a pretty bad flesh wound (the kind you get when you skid a bike on a sandy road somewhere in India). I thought the elbow was just a muscle ache; it turned out to be a pretty bad tear, and I was unable to do anything at all with the entire arm. I had a dull ache in my hip, but only yesterday did I notice the bruise, which is completely below the skin, and covers fully two square inches. I've been limping around for the better part of two weeks, as expected.

What I did not expect was how freaking difficult it is to get through life with something as simple as a torn elbow and a scraped knee. Apart from the limping, I mean. I could do nothing with my left arm for a couple of days. I couldn't lift anything, I couldn't lean on it, I couldn't flex or twist it in all those intricate ways required for simple tasks like turning the doorknob, opening the fridge, or wearing my backpack. And all the while, my knee was no better: it kept stinging all the while, whether I stood or sat, it pulled against my jeans whenever I walked, and it showed just no signs of healing. No amount of medication or ointments did anything to ameliorate the situation for a week. After four days, I didn't bother with any of it, except to use a spray bandage to cover the wound, and I progressed at pretty much the same rate. I may have slowed down repair in the first week by allowing my knee to get wet when I bathed. (The first rule of healing is clean the wound and let it dry up, and don't let it get wet. How could I have disobeyed that rule?)

It was hellishly irritating. Even in my sleep, I'd wake up frequently, because while tossing and turning in my sleep, I'd inadvertently roll into a position of pain, and my body would scream bloody murder. Things did improve slowly, on a continuum. I can't quite point out exactly when what improvement came about, but of course it did, as it was supposed to, and the past two days have been good. I can walk comfortably now, I don't need the spray bandage, and the wound doesn't sting. My elbow hurts if I twist it into specific positions, but I can at least pick up the milk carton (though not my laptop), amongst other things.

I've never actually given any thought to what people with various disabilities must go through. You can read as many books and watch as many videos about different people with various kinds of handicaps and what they must face, about how they must struggle so hard to regain even the briefest semblance to a 'normal' life. I feel a new kind of respect now, one that arises from being aware of what a fellow human being must go through. I feel a little humbled, given that all these small things that I can take for granted in my full health, are not small matters for so many people. Yet they live, they work, and they are happy. It's a really humbling realization.

I shall probably heal fully within another week or so. And I shall be careful not to push my luck any further regarding my health and physical well-being. I've been having dreams from which I wake up and can remember no more than the word osteoporosis, and always then my mother's stern warnings regarding milk and calcium come back to me. Ain't a pretty feeling.

Random Conversation: Your Hair Looks Good

Me: "Hey dude... I like the hair, looks good."

Girl: "See? See? I told you."

Boy: "Thank you, thank you."

Girl: "Much better than that junglee look with all of it floating around his neck..."

Me: "Hey no, that was good too..."

Boy: "See? I have support!" 

Girl: "One supporter... yeah sure, go be happy."

Me: "No, come on, that look was adorable too..."

Boy: (Stunned) "Adorable? I don't wanna be adorable...! I wanna be handsome, you know... sexy... stunning..."

Me: "But you..." (Pause)

Girl: "What? What? Say it fully...!" (Giggles)

Me: "See, you can change your look, and handsome is fine... But you are adorable, and that ain't gonna change. So, live with it!" 

Boy: (Speechless)

Girl: (Giggles some more)

Me: (Grin)

California Rocks

California rocks are amazing. You live, and you feel alive, and you love what's going on in your life, and then one day you climb a bunch of rocks bordering a creek, and you feel like life has started afresh, all over again.

The journey starts when a new friend you've just met invites you out kayaking. Bang in the middle of nowhere. Kayaking? Really?? It's possible in this city??? You have got to be kidding me!!!

It's an awesome experience. It's just you, the kayak, the paddle, the lifejacket, the calm, quiet canals, the warm sun, the cool breeze, the salty water, the friendly people all around, and your own muscles, working away hard, stretching and relaxing, pulling and pushing, until you feel your biceps have doubled in size. It's exercise that requires a lot of focus, and quite a bit of energy, but you do have the option of taking a break in between, to relax, gearing up for the next bout of exercise. It's even better if you row a two-person kayak: you and your partner can row alternately, so that one person works while the other rests, or you can row and rest together (gives an opportunity for some very nice conversation).

The canals follow their own protocols as well. Canal traffic after all, is not very different from road traffic; there can be a lot of it, or there may be very little, everyone needs to use the waterways, there are big boats and there are small kayaks, and it's entirely possible to hit someone and sustain a bad amount of damage. So you need to have some rules to follow. As with road traffic, you stick to one side of the canal; if you approach a bigger vessel, you slow down; and if you cause damage, you gotta pay for it. Of course, you don't get to drive if you don't have a licence, in this case you can't enter the water unless you know how to swim.

The joy of the trip is heightened when you round it off with lunch at a Greek cafe. Not to mention an exhilarating motorbike ride at seventy miles per hour on the freeway.

A couple of days later, you go out for lunch again. This time, the surprise sprung on you is Peruvian food. Again, it comes up out of nowhere, a snug little spot tucked away in a place you'd never have expected to find unless you specifically searched for it. This place is so good, I'm surprised it is still such a quiet place, but I guess until it is discovered, the people who know of it have the pleasure of knowing as well that they are of the lucky few to savor it.

You have to marvel at how life can give you new stuff to enjoy, and think about. I had never imagined before that I would one day taste and plough through genuine Peruvian fare (and I know it's genuine, because my friend has been to Peru and had it straight from the llama's master's table). It's delightful as a cuisine, filling yet lightweight, tasty yet nutritious. They are especially fond of seafood, and have some lovely dishes (my personal recommendation - the ceviche. Delicate parts of fish soaked raw in citrus juices, served with sides of puffed corn and edible seaweeds. Finger licking good). Equally amazing are the juices they make. I've forgotten the names, but they were prepared home style at the restaurant that we visited, and so were absolutely delectable. (When did I become such a foodie?)

The fun doesn't stop there. Next steps, you go for what seems to be an ordinary hike in a pretty little place, nestled snugly in a valley with a creek running right through the hills. It's quite ordinary; you walk along at a nice easy pace, enjoy the creek bubbling along, the birds singing, the leaves rustling. Then your friend pushes you off the beaten trail, onto a smaller one leading into the gorge cut by the creek between the rocks. Soon, there is no trail altogether, and the rocks are all you have. So what do you do? You start moving along the rocks, just above the water, using the cracks and holes in the rocks as handholds and footholds. One false step, and plosh into the cold water you go, so you had better know how to swim, and more so how to deal with cold. Or do everyone a favour, and imagine that it's a lake brimming with lava and brimstone, and just don't fall into it. (Big evil grin)

Before we started, I thought I was a goner, that I was going to plop into the water sometime soon. Amazingly (or perhaps not so), it turned out to be easy, and more importantly, fun. We jumped rocks crossing the creek quite a few times, always looking for ways to proceed further. After a point, there were no more rocks to scale, so we thought of following up the creek to the point where it joins the trail. Follow it we did, but we never found the trail, and had to turn back at sundown, crossing all the terrain we had covered, and then the rocks, in the darkness. I almost did fall into the water at one point, but was rescued by my friend. In my defence, that part was really tricky, and it was dark.

Overall, the whole sequence was something exciting, something brilliant, something new, fresh, invigorating. Somehow, it feels like it would be even more exciting in a subsequent attempt, for now we can proceed further, perhaps in a different direction.

(Dedicated to my friend, el hombre fuerte, to whom I owe the pleasure of these experiences)

Matrimonial Plans

One of my friends recently wrote to me, asking for advice regarding higher studies in international locations. He's interested in a PhD, but that would take a time investment of five years, which his parents are not willing to allow. They are okay with a Master's program apparently, because that requires just two years, and they want him back home with them as soon as possible. Now that is a completely natural sentiment. A lot of parents feel like that for various reasons. But guess what? One major reason is that they want him married soon enough. In fact, they have also simultaneously started looking for a bride for him. This news freaked me out rather badly.

He's just 21. Why do they want to get him married right now? He's just starting the prime of his youth; this is the time to be free, to be single, to not be burdened yet with the responsibility of keeping care of a family and all. The young mind works best when its free, when it doesn't have to be caged within social relationships. The very fact that they are looking for a 'suitable' match means that they intend to get him wedded within three years.

A friend pointed out that people have religious beliefs that bring about this sort of idea. One typical belief is that parents feel that they must 'fulfill' their duty by finding a suitable match for their kids, as soon as possible (although I thought this idea was applied more to daughters than sons). Another idea is that kids should be married off soon, before they get 'disruptive' ideas that would turn them in other 'undesirable' directions. And especially for a kid who's going abroad, they don't want him to stay there too long and be influenced by the ideas of a foreign (and morally depraved) land.

There are several other ideas of this sort. I don't find any sense in any of them. Teenage and early twenties are the best years of one's life, the prime years. It's a time to grow, to discover, to develop, to explore. And this happens best if you are single. The process of exploration contributes in a big way to becoming a mature person, and it's a little silly to make a commitment as serious as marriage before being mature enough to handle it. People get into relationships to start with, because they allow you to explore, but do not enforce the other serious attachments that come with marriage. (If you get out of a relationship, nobody has to think about who gets the house or how much is to be paid in alimony.) Life is a sort of experiment, and it's only fun if you play with the equipment and the materials yourself and have some freedom to do so, as opposed to someone standing behind your shoulder and whispering instructions all the time. Saddle yourself with a fixed idea right at the start, and that's the end of the experiment.

And people are too young at 21, or even 23 or 24, to get into something so intense as marriage. That's just too young an age to make a decision about something that should potentially last your entire life. The personal bias entering at this stage is the fact that I don't believe in arranged marriages (in fact, I think that entire concept sucks), but even without that, how fixed is your character at 23 or 24? People change so much in their teens, and they tend to start stabilizing in their 20s. It makes sense to make the decision of sticking with one partner for good a little late, when you've stabilized enough and your decision would with high probability be a sensible and reliable one.

In cold, calculative reflection, it's probably very easy to soliloquize about this. I'm sure everyone does it. And yet, people often make such weird decisions with their lives. The moment it's happening to us, the cold calculations all go down the drain. There ain't no solution for that, I guess. Except blogging!

Random Thought: The Nameless

"Names are not important. To speak is to name names, but to speak is not important. A thing happens once that has never happened before. Seeing it, a man looks upon reality. He cannot tell others what he has seen. Others wish to know, however, so they question him saying, 'What is it like, this thing you have seen?' So he tries to tell them. Perhaps he has seen the very first fire in the world. He tells them, 'It is red, like a poppy, but through it dance other colors. It has no form, like water, flowing everywhere. It is warm, like the sun of summer, only warmer. It exists for a time upon a piece of wood, and then the wood is gone, as though it were eaten, leaving behind that which is black and can be sifted like sand. When the wood is gone, it too is gone.' Therefore, the hearers must think reality is like a poppy, like water, like the sun, like that which eats and excretes. They think it is like to anything that they are told it is like by the man who has known it. But they have not looked upon fire. They cannot really know it. They can only know of it. But fire comes again into the world, many times. More men look upon fire. After a time, fire is as common as grass and clouds and the air they breathe. They see that, while it is like a poppy, it is not a poppy, while it is like water, it is not water, while it is like the sun, it is not the sun, and while it is like that which eats and passes wastes, it is not that which eats and passes wastes, but something different from each of these apart or all of these together. So they look upon this new thing and they make a new word to call it. They call it 'fire.' 

"If they come upon one who still has not seen it and they speak to him of fire, he does not know what they mean. So they, in turn, fall back upon telling him what fire is like. As they do so, they know from their own experience that what they are telling him is not the truth, but only a part of it. They know that this man will never know reality from their words, though all the words in the world are theirs to use. He must look upon the fire, smell of it, warm his hands by it, stare into its heart, or remain forever ignorant. Therefore, 'fire' does not matter, 'earth' and 'air' and 'water' do not matter. 'I' do not matter. No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words. The more words he remembers, the cleverer do his fellows esteem him. He looks upon the great transformations of the world, but he does not see them as they were seen when man looked upon reality for the first time. Their names come to his lips and he smiles as he tastes them, thinking he knows them in the naming. The thing that has never happened before is still happening. It is still a miracle. The great burning blossom squats, flowing, upon the limb of the world, excreting the ash of the world, and being none of these things I have named and at the same time all of them, and this is reality, the Nameless."

- Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light

It's fun to take thoughts like these and think about them. Oftentimes, I won't really think about them the moment I read them. It takes a long sleepy bus journey at two in the morning, from the library to my home, to set me free, so that I would float into the air, drift away, and understand what I've read in my own way.

I had fun analyzing this thought, in terms of digital signal processing. Suppose I see something, I see it in an analog sense. If you see it, you would understand it in an analog sense too. But suppose I see it, and you haven't seen it and I try to describe it to you, it's always going to be a digital understanding for you. And that's an approximation to the actual thing. It's not exact. The finer the words I choose (ie the higher the sampling rate), the better the approximation will be. But it's still only an approximation. 

Reality is individual for each person; it's the way each one perceives it. But when one tries to describe it to another, words aren't and won't ever be as complete as the actual experience itself. The process of putting something into words and describing it to another person is essentially a truncation, a sort of sampling, and while that can be made to resemble the actual case very closely, it never is really exact. 

It's much more fun then, to examine and discover the world on your own, because that makes for a complete experience. Of course, it helps to go along with others' descriptions and experiences, since those could present different points of view and thus enrich our own experience. But nothing is like the original experience itself. 

That's probably also why photographs printed out from film are so much more vivid and lively than digital photographs.

Coffeemaker

I once read this article in some old issue of Reader's Digest, by some lady who was given an old-fashioned home ice-cream maker as a wedding present. It was a time when a lot of new, zappy kitchen appliances were getting made, and it was a fad to gift things like that, so this particular gift occasioned some surprise to the lady. The old couple who were giving it smiled at the newlyweds' ill-disguised surprise, and told them that it would come in handy one day.

Well, the young couple settled down, and soon their life took the fast lane. Work pressures, kids, strain on their marital relationship. One fine day, when things were getting pretty hot, and everyone was sitting tired and stressed, the woman remembered the yet-unopened wedding present. She tossed up the idea. Everyone was surprised, but they pulled out the ice-cream maker, and started working it, putting together the ingredients, mixing up everything, and cooling the thing in the end. No modern day conveniences there. It was a lengthy process, and took a lot of effort, but it created space for some laughter and some family bonding. It brought a smile back to everyone, and a feeling as sweet as the ice-cream that they finally got to eat. It was a stress-buster. The couple then understood the wisdom of the older couple who had gifted them that ice-cream maker. And once secure in the stability of their marriage, they started to make the same gift to other newly married couples.

Now this story has nothing to do with my coffeemaker, which is about as modern and as functional as any other that you can buy nowadays. It was not a wedding present by some wise person in the hope that it would one day be instrumental in teaching me any valuable lessons about slowing down; it was a birthday gift from my aunt and uncle, in the hope of allowing me some nice modern convenience to save time. It's true I didn't pull it out the moment I got home, but I'm only two months older than I was when I got the thing. And I haven't had to make any great, relaxed efforts to prepare the ingredients; all it takes is cold water and the coffee grounds. I was just thinking of the Reader's Digest story, that's all. This coffeemaker has a different destiny than that ice-cream maker.

I have never brewed coffee for myself before. It was made for me at the local stall outside my undergraduate college, and I paid for every cup that I drank. It was made by a guy who made his living selling tea, coffee and cigarettes day in and day out at that stall, a complete professional in the trade of streetside beverage, a person who knew how to brew the thing properly. I've had the miserable excuse for cold coffee that these modern day coffee bars are fond of dishing out to rich kids who have money to burn on something that doesn't deserve the greens being spent on it. I've never drunk coffee at home; my mother makes it for herself the old fashioned way - heat the water, add the coffee, add the milk and sugar. I've never even participated in the making of it. This was certainly a first time experience, brewing my own coffee, even though it was out of such a convenient appliance.

The thing looks very pretty, very classy, a lovely white coloured thing, sitting on my kitchen counter. I don't know how much it cost, how good a model it is compared with other models of coffeemakers, I don't how how this brand compares with other brands of coffeemakers. Hell, I don't even know whether other coffeemakers differ from this one in any essential detail of structure or mechanism. I just know that this one worked properly the first time I brewed coffee in it today.

I'm no expert on coffee either. I don't know the different kinds of coffee, or the different ways to brew it. I have no clue regarding the differences in flavour depending on where the coffee beans have been grown, or the different flavours that can be achieved by addition of extra ingredients. I know nothing of the differences in price between the various brands that market coffee. I'm not quite sure, even at this point, what the difference is between the coffee powder used to make coffee in the pan over the gas stove and the coffee grounds that are put into the filter of the coffeemaker. I just know nice, strong-tasting coffee when I drink it.

I brewed coffee in my coffeemaker today, and it was the first time for both, coffeemaking, and using a coffeemaker. I did just about everything wrong that could be done. I put in too much water. I forgot the milk and sugar. And I miscalculated the time it would take to brew the coffee, so I ended up having it right after a heavy lunch. It was essentially a strong, black, watery brew. But guess what? It was still fun.

What does your living room say about you?

There was a very nice young man at my door today; he lives in my building and he's a student with a photography major. He was doing a project of some kind, which involved taking impromptu shots of the living rooms of different people, and he wanted to know if I would allow him to photograph mine. I couldn't see any serious objection to it, so I agreed, and he was one delightful guy.

He came about an hour later with his equipment: a huge camera, using 70 mm film, a light meter, and a studio light on a tripod stand. He set up the light, and showed us how the light meter works. He took different shots and angles of the room, talking about his equipment, what he does, and asking about what we do. He talked about his stay in Paris, and how energizing and humbling an experience it was, to realize how large the world was, because Americans usually grow up thinking that America is the end of the world. There wasn't a single silent moment. His excitement and his love for what he does was palpable in every word he spoke.

It's always something new for Indians, to meet such people who are, as we put it, "always excited", because we as a people are so reserved in our manner. We seem to believe in keeping our emotions to ourselves, something that has come from a couple of centuries of British rule, no doubt, because those people are the last word in reserve of manner. I used to be quite a 'hyperactive' individual myself, but years of exile in a land of 'dull' people have worn me out, enough that it's somewhat of a wake up call when I see such an 'excited' individual. They are just so much more expressive than we are.

His project got me thinking too. I don't exactly know how he's putting it together, but the immediate vision that appeared to my mind when he mentioned his project was one of a huge collage, on a white background, of several different photographs of different living rooms, each photograph having on the back of it, a short precise description of the people whose living room it was. It got me thinking. If someone were to see my living room, or photos of it, without ever having met me or knowing anything about me, what conclusion would they come to?

I vaguely remember something of this nature being talked about by that wonderful young writer Malcolm Gladwell in his book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. It was something to do with how much you could learn about someone by spending just ten minutes in their bedroom, compared with how much you could learn by going out with them for lunch everyday for a month (or something of the kind. I don't have the book at hand, so I don't have exact details). And that's a great book by the way, definitely worth a read (several, actually), and worth buying.

Of course, there are two views you can take of anything. The same thing might suggest a positive trait to one mind and a negative one to another. My living room is something like this. One half of the room is completely clear. And by clear, I mean that there is nothing but the carpet, and the internet modem and router, and associated wires. Occasionally you might find a couple of laptops and phone chargers lying the corner, somewhat out of the way. The other half is complete chaos. There are three tables, black ebony wood, standing against the three walls. Each table has a set of built in shelves, stacked with various things including textbooks, stationery, CDs, bags, flash drives, portable hard disks and other things which are good to keep handy. The tabletops themselves, usually have books and papers scattered on them, cleared up only when the table is actually used for writing or studying.

There is a chair to each table, and occasionally there may be a jacket lying on a chair. There is a printer in one corner, covered by a cloth except when in use, and its power cord and USB cable are within sight. The printer's box, as well as that of one of the laptops is also in the same corner, albeit not very neatly arranged. There are also various bags, but no guesses as to the contents. A laptop bag in the same place reclines against my table, which is located on one side of this corner.

The shelves of my own table also include, apart from what has already been mentioned, books for general reading, the college academic catalogue, stacks of coins, an i-Pod charger, a point-and-shoot camera and its USB cable, and binders containing class notes. The top of my table usually carries a mug with a steel spoon, some tissues, my i-Pod, phone, laptop, spectacles, a four-foot long pair of tube-lights in their holder, a couple of hair accessories, my contact lenses' pouch and cleaning solution, and several sheets of paper containing scratch work. If I'm at home, add a flexible binder containing the notes of the day's classes, and maybe my set of house keys too. My chair may also hold a towel, a pair of jeans or shorts, or a t-shirt, apart from the jacket.

So what does such a vision suggest to you? Of course, one can't escape the clues that lead to the conclusion of a student-run household - the textbooks are the biggest giveaway, as are the abundance of filler paper and class notes. Of course, this is my place, so nothing would strike me about it, except that it's familiar and it's normal... but you, oh reader, are not constrained thus... but perhaps I can ask questions to guide thinking?

What ideas do the following things inspire, for a start?

• One half of the room is clear, and the other cluttered. 
• Each person has a different number of books - one person has very few while another has nothing but books.
• One table has an excess of scratch paper.
• There are no other photos or personal memoirs on any table.
• One table has what looks like a personal diary.
• One table has a plate with bread crumbs on it, next to several pages written and initialed in very neat handwriting.
• The various clothes lying on the chairs.

What impression do these facts give you, when you consider them separately, and then when you consider them together? You see? It's really hard to generalize. And yet - "Same story, different versions, and all are true." - Tia Dalma, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest