Twenty five thousand lines later

As first year bachhas in IUCAA, we were ragged by the seniors - many of them looking pretty menacing for people who recently had bachhas of their own - should be glowing with fatherly pride you'd imagine - not these guys. One of them (later on I learnt his name, Tarun Saini) asked me to sing out a paper on Quantum Mechanics - I don't know if you have ever done that - but it is hard to do justice to a song that goes 'The wavefunction of the hydrogen atom ...'. Not lyrical enough. Someone quipped - he is like Jatush - ghazal singer.

That is how I met Jatush - shared an office and room with.

I should tell you then - the end of the story now - he died violently in Italy last week. Twenty five thousand lines of C code later. Ghazal singer. C programmer. Shy dancer. Friend. A Jatush shaped hole in the Universe.

And yet we must forget ....
Those who knew
what was going on here
must give way to
those who know little.
And less than little.
And finally as little as nothing.

In the grass which has overgrown
reasons and causes,
someone must be stretched out
blade of grass in his mouth
gazing at the clouds.

- Szymborska, 'The end and the beginning'.

25 is too young to die. May his parents find the strength to bear his loss.

The Astronomer

In the shadow of the temple my friend and I saw a blind man sitting alone. And my friend said, "Behold the wisest man of our land." Then I left my friend and approached the blind man and greeted him. And we conversed.

After a while I said, "Forgive my question, but since when hast thou been blind?" "From my birth," he answered. Said I, "And what path of wisdom followest thou?" Said he, "I am an astronomer."

Then he placed his hand upon his breast, saying,
"I watch all these suns and moons and stars."

- Gibran