Playing with electrons

I often wonder how the world will be, a hundred years from now. How will technologies evolve by then, and what kind of fundamental scientific breakthroughs will happen by 2121? For sure, there will be tectonic changes in socio-economic, climatic, cultural and political landscapes of the world in a century which will be very much interconnected to technological & scientific changes.  One of the strongest reasons I wish to live long is to be able to see what changes the future will bring about in technology, and to witness the remarkable growth of humankind in its pursuit of scientific truths. When I die, I will miss out on all the fascinating discoveries and inventions that await humankind - this is what I sometimes feel sad about. But, we can't live forever. So, no point lamenting it. Good God! I always veer toward a discussion on 'death'! No, let me quickly swerve away from this but before that, I must admit that I sincerely do not wish to live for another 500 years ev...

There is no denying the fact that 'death' is a gloomy and depressing topic for almost all of us, and especially during these ridiculously difficult times of pandemic, it is the last thing any of us would want to read or hear about. My intent is not to write about something depressing or pertaining to covid in any way. It's about imagining one's own death, and I've done this many times, years before any pandemic started.  I read somewhere that preparing for death or rather thinking about one's own death helps one live a more calibrated, meaningful and satisfying life.It helps us truly understand the value of 'time', and enables us to appreciate things like love and affection, and the importance of enjoying the seemingly insignificant yet beautiful things in our daily existence which otherwise slip off our notice due to our busy life or because we take such things for granted. Taking one's kid for a walk or having a cup of tea and biscuit with one'...

  During my 10+2 years which ran from July 2002 to March 2004, we had a very interesting person as our chemistry teacher. He would speak less than any average person, and would speak in a soft voice while teaching, a voice that almost bordered on being unclear. But if you would listen to him carefully, you'd absorb some of the finest chemistry lectures. Back in those days, we had to study chemical thermodynamics, kinetics, a bunch of organic chemistry stuff, gas laws and what not. Quite a few students would fall asleep in his class or not pay much attention, given his style of teaching. And if you did pay attention, you would easily learn enough to score very well in the board exams.  His name was Ajay Sahu. His surname notwithstanding, he was out and out an Assamese person, and probably wrote better Assamese than I did! He was bachelor when we were in our 11th standard, and lived in a tiny room of a paying guest or a boys' hostel where he would conduct his tuition* classes in...

 (I wrote this a couple of years back for a sci-fi competition, and no surprises for guessing that it didn't get shortlisted, given its cliched theme. There was a word limit; hence the narrative runs incoherently fast.) Dreamy memories gave an eerie vibe of a simulated reality when I regained my senses after an indefinite time. Two men and a woman in black aprons surrounded me as I sat on a metallic chair in a rather dull room with minimal furniture. They seemed weird because they appeared to be naked but for a transparent wrapping beneath their aprons, and were middle aged, with narrow eyes and small mouths, bald and featureless. They introduced themselves as Dave, Pete and Kiara. I couldn’t recall how I arrived there, and when. I couldn't tell where I was. They looked at me curiously, with anticipation. As my memories started trickling, I narrated my story – to check my sanity and to satisfy their curiosity. I, Agniv, an Indian astronaut, Vyomanaut to be precise, took of...

The mind is so occupied by the news, thoughts and anxiety surrounding the all-pervading covid-19 pandemic that it is almost impossible to think of anything else these days, much less feel the enthusiasm to write about anything. It's like the background noise murmuring in the brain, but this noise is growing so much in magnitude every day that it's starting to corrupt the signals! Every phone call, every little chat, every channel in the TV, every social media post - is all about Covid now, mostly. The brain is saturated, tired and worried by this shit of a pandemic.  And I am lucky. Super lucky. Many of us are super lucky, in fact. We aren't the front-line workers battling this pandemic - we aren't the nurses & doctors, the house-keeping and cleaning staff, the ambulance drivers and the ward guys who work in the hospital and who not only face immense risk to their lives and health but also are working at their breaking point, rendering the noblest service to humanki...

 As India is battling a brutal humanitarian crisis, any adjective such as 'pathetic', 'abysmal', 'horrible', 'awful', 'catastrophic' or any such word, falls short to describe the misery that has befallen upon our society. Each moment is filled with uncertainty, with fear. Fear of us being that person in the newspaper or TV who's sobbing beside a dead body of their loved one, or of someone in a PPE kit lighting the funeral pyre in a crowded crematorium. Or worse, the fear of waiting for a loved one (struggling for oxygen) to die. This fear is amplified when your loved ones aren't with you, but thousands of kilometers apart.  The front page of the Hindu  (to which I subscribe, in print) is filled with only  covid-related news. Every day. The forwards in Whatsapp, the video clips in Twitter, the photos in the news - they only reinforce my belief that the God of Death is himself roaming on the streets. His soldiers are everywhere in India, mo...

(I wrote parts of it in February, parts of it in March, and the last part in April. So, when I say 'last month', it may mean Jan/Feb/March! As usual, grammatical bugs & typos may please be excused.) Moran is a small town in Assam, split between Sibsagar and Dibrugarh districts. It lies on the primary national highway NH-37 that runs through the state of Assam like its spinal cord.  About a month back, in the soft sunshine of a late February morning at Moran, as I was inclining against a white Toyota Innova decorated with flowers, an elderly person in his 60s approached me in his rather simple attire. I was part of a bride's envoy that was cruising between two districts separated by 7 hours' of road trip on either side of the mighty Brahmaputra, the bride in this case being my (cousin) sister. She was going to be dropped off at her in-law's place, a classic 'bride adieu' trip in our culture. The envoy had stopped at Moran to get tea and snacks, and our cu...