During the pre-historic times of ice age before the discovery of fire, before the evolution of homo-sapiens, the Indian peninsula has just struck the Asian continent a few thousand years ago and the Himalayan mountains are still starting to emerge from the ocean depths. Owing to their lesser heights they are rich in flora and fauna. The crevices which are incompletely formed caves of the great mountains are housed by the then intelligent species of the planet. Still having not discovered the benefits of social living each of the creatures live independently alone in the dark caves. These creatures equipped with their superior intelligence and strength are particularly hostile not only to the other species but also to the members of the same species. Unlike the creatures now they were particularly strong and sturdy and easily lived for over a thousand years. They began to notice the changing temperature levels as the mountains grew taller and as it got more and more cooler they are delving more and more deeper into the caves, into the darkness and ignorance!

In one of those unenlightened caves lived a member of the species who is relatively strong and intelligent. He wakes up when there is light in his cave reflected off the slopes of the nearby hills and when feels the warmth of the light. His eyebrows are evolving to be thinner and there is much lesser hair now compared to a hundred years back to detect the slightest presence of light. Moving away the fur of the animals he was enrolled in to protect himself from the himalayan nights he walks out of the cave. Probably he is the only one who is a biped. He discovered he could walk on two legs some three hundred years back. Members of other species who still move on four legs are immediately scared and intimated in his presence. All of them are ape-looking and the most feared predators in the surrounding region. Walking out of the distorted crooked cave is an arduous task, it would take a professional trekker a day to come out of those ridges and grooves. Driven by his instinct to take food he hunts for anything that is edible. The last three hundred years as he was a biped, he has been inclined to survive on snow pumas and sabretooths which are really ferocius, difficult to hunt and are tasty henceforth. Deers and bisons are easy kills he thought. As he grew older, his strength and agility grew but unlike earlier he was preferring the easy kills now. Even though his instincts urged him to hunt in the higher altitudes where more wilder animals lived, he was not listening to them... for no reason apparently.

As he became less and less hostile he was having more and more idle times, and ample amounts to think. He used to spend days beside the ponds in the mountains staring at it. When he was younger he used to go there to quench his thirst although he never understood what thirst was. Owing to the less developed brains the species had very less memory, they cannot remember the details of incidents which have happened a week ago. So practically they have a weeks' memories which makes them a week old. Their age is just one week. But he could remember much more, more than what all other members of the species could remember together. He didnt have to learn anything from the beginning, so unlike other members who moved away from the forming caves to the lower altitudes he stayed. He knew that he was seeing lesser members of the species in the outside every decade. He never hunted them for he saw they resembled himself, nevertheless they ran away at his sight. He assumed the caves were empty but never ventured into them. In some caves he thought he saw there was some light coming from within. He did try to delve into the cave, but as he was advancing more into the cave it was getting more and more cooler. This confused him as he associated warmth with light. So he never ventured into the other caves.

As he was spending more and more time in his own cave, in the darkness, his mind started to evolve and think. He would stare into the darkness and his neurons would show him all the memories of his long life. He understood the most abstract quantities. He measured the duration by saving the water dripping from the walls of the cave into a leaf carefully placed amidst rocks. When he drank the water, the quantity was a measure of the duration he thought. Although he never learned to count. He observed the periodicity in the snow storms and hence he would take precautions not to go out. But immediately after a snow storm he would go out to hunt and bring all he could. So he managed to stay in the cave during the storms and live longer than other members. Once there was a storm and he stayed incaves(:P) as usual... but little did he know this storm was going to change the fate of his life and the life of his further generations, thereby the face of the entire planet.

.. .. .. To be contd!

dark knight

Darkness seems all simple. As scientists have predicted with light come Photons, and as they have failed to acknowledge come along a few consequences. In darkness one need not mature, one need not evolve.. it is enough if he just survives. The advent of light changed everything.. Over survival, the knight has to mature now, he has to prove he is a different person every second, atleast to his own conscience, for we believe the sole purpose of our presence is To mature and evolve. May be with every second that passes, we are devolving. The process of devolution, it is not stopping with us, it has its roots intertwined with that of macrocosm. So we may have to evolve just to stop degrading , let alone suppurate.

If only

If only I had a reason...

If only I could alienate myself...

If only I had a camera...

If only I could dive into the depths of the ocean and hide...

If only I could hunt down the fears of my mind..

If only I had a pigeon as a pet...

If only I could go and visit any place at the twinkle of an eye and thought of a mind...

If only I could convince all Pakistanis and Indians and unite them with us and build a new unified India...

If only I could rise above myself and spectate..

If only I could become invisible...

If only I could fly above Himalayas...

If only I could time travel to the so called golden ages in the Indian epics...

If only I could set some things straight...

If only I could see through the knots and understand the meaning....

If only I could present my girl friend with a flower that bossoms only in the presence of true love...

If only I could convince myself...

If only I could smoke out all my desires...

If only I could fly in the space and find people like me...

If only I could smile when I see a tsunami...

If only I could run down a cheetah...

If only I could show Michael Jordan the new way to dunk...

If only I could animate my mind and let it loose...

If only I could bring a smile on an innocent face...

If only I could change this...

If only I could let it go...

If only I could meet Mahatma, Vivekananda, sankaracharya...

If only I could stop dreaming and wake up...

63

So what does 63 mean.. Is it mere 3 in the units place and 6 in the tens place. Well 63 alone doesnt make any sense.. a few zeros trailing make it a million or a billion. May be its the number of those casualties who did not know that they are about to be eaten by a virus, a tiny speck which cannot be seen except under an electron microscope and is as dangerous as an atom bomb. Dont worry the actual number of casualities isnt that huge..
Ironically.. it is the age of our country!! yes it is.. It has been 63 years since the Indians were made autonomous. What did we do in these 63 years? Arent we developed yet?? What should be the measure of the development of a country. Is it the number of people able to afford all the luxuries and comfortably grow dumb enough to forget the basic facts about their own country.. or Is it the degree of numbness that grows day by day which is turned into hatred for some other community or country?? No definitely not... Or is it the ability to control all other nations in the world and rule them with the fear that the single brink of an eye would turn them into a pile of ash. Is it the number of sophisticated airships, advanced submarines and nuclear ships lurking in the waters of other countries just waiting for a radio signal ? 

 Definitely not.. Lets try to define development.  The reason we are here alive is the mother nature let us. So one of the factors pertaining to development would be how close we are to the mother nature.. Indians dont have a situation to buy the basic things for the sustenance of life.. air and water.. Thanks to the advent of development and globalisation when many people are cutting themselves from the external world sitting in their airconditioned rooms not caring about the vast amounts of carbon gases they are releasing on others who are apparently unable to  afford them.. But the thing we are overlooking is when we cross the thin line, Mother Nature takes it by force.. Dec 26 stands an example when tsunami struck at the most unexpected places and destroyed the human habitat. 

 Again it is not the number of countries that nation puts a check on. It is the number of factors unseen to the human eye but felt even by the smallest kid in the country-hunger. Unemployment, Corruption, Accountability are other things that our country has to wage war on. Last and most important of all it is the confidence of the people that the country should strive to protect, not the territorial boundaries.