So finally it has come to be. The Aprotim Mazumder’s blogspot. I’m tempted to put a few nice adjectives before that name – for every guy covertly thinks himself to be a whale of a guy, after all, and add to that a few half-sincere admiring quips from fellow beings, and you’d have egos the size of a Zeppelin, and as dangerous and vulnerable. But then one has to live upto those unsaid (or said in narrow circles) adjectives, and then (and only then) vanity can just about become someone - it becomes only those with reason to be vain. Otherwise it’s always faintly ridiculous, verging on the pathetic. So really, that article ‘the’ in the ‘The Aprotim Mazumder’s blogspot’ is for the blogspot – the author hasn’t come to deserve it yet.

Okay, this is getting to be a bit scary - this wasn’t supposed to be an account of ill-veiled Modesty scampering about topless in one of those see-through Arabian Night baggy pajamas. So let us move on, lest we get stuck at the very door like the proverbial Lucknavi nawabs. The first blog, I suppose should primarily be a little bit of history, and a whole lot of apologies and caveats about why it came to be – pretty much like the preface to a book. Why this need to add to the cacophony of voices in the cyberspace, and to impose on the leisures and inclinations of unsuspecting individuals?

Well, up till now, I have resisted the temptation. Over the past couple of years, a few friends have at times told me that I should blog – but somehow I’ve hehe-d it away, or mumbled about work, or something. The reasons are not far to seek. One obvious one is that I’m decidedly old-world (in fact, and uncle of mine once told me that I was born about a century-and-half later than when I should’ve been) – and with that comes a certain overtly displayed macho disdain for all things soft – from toys to Word-files. The written word, as opposed to the keyboard-typed word. The smell of new-print, and the fusty smell of old-paper, against the sterile, indifferent, strictly non-aromatic computer screens. And for me, to borrow from a friend, Latex is something that one wears, and not anything that one writes on (the idea! – give me papyrus anyday!). So I come to this game too, late. Like when all my friends were getting their cell phones sometime like 2002, I’d said with some disdain, “You…people so involved in your little blue/green screens that you fail to notice the world – is it nice being so…so…accessible? Don’t you think it’s an infringement of your privacy?” Then sure enough I had mine by early 2003, and admittedly it’s a damned useful device. So the latest ‘in’ thing for the cultured thinking man…um, person of today is to have a blogspot, and of course most would be notoriously rotten. Still, that’s no reason to stay away. Hee, hee! Not so much because it is 'in', but for it like the cell phone might be useful (at least to me, the world at large, is capable of much better!)

Two is that I’m reasonably lazy. Sometimes I’m overworked, and can’t think of much else. Sometimes I’m comfortably in love – when I dress up, skip down the canteen path, and am generally nice to people (usually though most don’t even vaguely exist for me - I guess that bit’s true for everybody) – but then also I don’t think – I just sigh, and work like an ant. When you get too involved with yourself and looks and watches and cars, there’s little else you can do, right? And while it can really be inspiring and productive, the day-to-day upkeep of love is very material. It’s the lows that count for anything worthwhile. At other times my muse runs dry. These two are my eigen states where I spend a lot of my time. And friends have their own demands on one’s time – and while I tremendously enjoy drinking myself silly in good company, I don’t think much even then – though with the caveat that some important realizations of my life has come in a drunken haze – for though I don’t do anything much more entertaining than laugh a lot and act a little crazier than usual under the influence of alcohol, but because you’re not actively suppressing your subconscious, great thoughts can dawn on you, which’ll last beyond the hangover. But mostly it just knocks you out silly, and suppresses thought in all forms – so it’s not all that great! It’s rotten not to be in the full possession of your faculties. (For the younger readers – it’s really bad for your health – moderation is strictly advised.) But great literature is always born of suffering – so only when I’m in a dark mood, moping, and acting irritable and distracted, that I do anything effective. That’s often a metastable state that I get caught into. People squawk for the radio on the bus – 91, 93.3 MHz, Bangalore - I think it’s a way of keeping from thinking…some cheap heady tune, something to latch onto, something to get you ‘comfortably numb’. I’m not better than anyone in this regard. It’s like soma from BNW, you know – I like it, I do it – but in the full glory of my faculties, or at the other end, when I’m sleepy, I hate it!!!

I should set some basic rules for this blogspot. Some people use it as diaries – but the details of my pretty sedentary existence (passaged cells, attended bad talk, set up time with boss to work on paper, avoided going to school reunion…), I have a feeling might not be of the greatest interest to the public at large – apart from a few of my friends, who take interest even in that – God bless ‘em! Otherwise it usually is a patch where people are supposed to reveal their ‘innermost thoughts’! Scary, huh? ;-) But I think I can manage a little bit public displays of philosophy even without going into the sanctum sanctorum, as they say when describing Hindu temples in guide-books. Forever, I’ve believed that most people are not as stupid or insensitive or macho as they act – they deserve to be told! And while I might be underqualified, I see that I have managed to talk with a Marquez-like distant objectivity about things like Love. We can afford to ponder these things without details which you might drool for, or loathe. I think I can do it, and I’d like it if you’d listen, and tell me of your thoughts. This is the Big Picture place. (I had started to write this with some entirely different ideas…but I have to go now...so I’ll save up the real Big-picture bit for the next session. Why the name – I’ll tell you in short – it’s because I lacked inspiration totally when this profile was created last night, and so I sort of picked it off a lab-poster hanging before me– but now I can write a short discourse on that – maybe I will in the next blog.)

So, it still will be two years before I’m through with my PhD (I think!!) – and football matches in NCBS are becoming too few and too far-spaced for me to air my ‘public-philosophy’. I do not really believe that I’ll become blunt without practice, for am alive, and that’d provide enough inspiration. But I just might forget to suffer, and to live. So I started this. At least, I believe that this’ll be a more productive way of eating up NCBS bandwidth than Orkutting – so in a way, this is to counter that.

Hence this blogspot.