The Square Root of Two

All real numbers are irrational

Photo: Madwell

All real numbers are irrational

Everything that is real is irrational. I am real that is why I am irrational. We live in the society of hypocrites who live artificial life, and entails be real. I am so sorry; I am not one of you. Love me or hate me, better hate me. I am not worthy of your love. After all, you are part of them-a hypocrite.

I met her first time in the library. Books are my only passion. There was no rationale in her being there. She was beautiful, and not in the ordinary way. She had divine beauty, if you can forgive me for using the word divine. Living with mortals sometime, I may think like them, even though in reality I am immortal.

"Love at first sight" how idiotic and irrational. What could be the rational in falling in love at first sight? Very illogical. When I was fully confident, I decided I am in love.

I was looking at the signboard of genre above Almira of books. It was Philosophy. All the more irrational and hence better. A divine beauty in search of Philosophy. I took the book she had put down. "Marriages and Morals", by Bertrand Russell. I was looking at the book and smiled at her. She was offended. Offended girls look more beautiful. I bowed to her. She ignored.

So once again, I find myself in love. Nothing is more irrational than love. Even life which I have always been so severely condemned may have some meaning, as the Buddha and of his like claim, but love, no they never said it has some meaning. The buddha said "unfathomably deep, deep like a fish course in water is the character of women". Can there be more degrading than this. If you say this about the woman you cannot say anything about falling in love with a woman who has no character.

Yes, saying that the character of a woman is like a fish course in deep water is like saying they have no character at all, and to fall in love with them would be a mere foolishness. No rational man would ever do it.

Moreover, you say love is blind. It means it makes you blind, and how something that causes blindness could be a rational, and an affected person who goes blind would become irrational.

Love has no criterion of beauty and ugly, rich or poor, old and young, it is so irrational a thing that people are ready to accept any nonsense in the name of love.

I loved this irrationality about love, there are not any limits, with whom, where, why, how many times, there are no rules.

Being irrational man, I fell in love many times.

This girl in the library I fell in love with is somewhere on my long list, since I have forgotten the count.

Not only love, but also marriage is irrational. Human is polygamous by nature. By marriage people create a family and pass on their fortune to them, thus rich becomes richer and a poor, poorer. At least there are laws about marriage, but love has no law to be subject to. The society is more irrational than any individual is.

I have a great condemnation of society in my heart. Society has good reason to be irrational, but nature has no reason to be irrational.

Society can permit your falling in love many times, though it cancels your driving license if you break traffic rules even few times. Nevertheless, how do you justify producing billions of sperms just to fertilize an egg. That is simply stupid. What a sheer wastage of life force. No theory of probability can justify it.

However, I always take advantage of probability theory while proposing a girl. Every fifth girl has always accepted my proposal. This one was fifth. Let us see.

The girl walked up to me.

"Can you suggest me a good book on existentialism" Her eyes were like a lake I would love to swim. Though I don't know swimming. May be I will be drowned and died. Will she come over to funeral?

Sure, I would have embraced her, at any other place. Time is essence. The time between my decision to propose and making a proposal is sometimes in a nanosecond.

"Read Notes, from underground by Dostoevsky".

Is it in this library?

It was. I have stolen it. I was prepared to speak the truth. Why truth? I asked many wise people. They are confused. I think the truth is irrational. It has created more chaos than harmony. Suppose all husbands start speaking the truth about their extramarital affairs, how much hurt and agony they would create. All offenders if speak truth, there will be no place in jails. A lie saves so many lives. I propagate lie.

"No, this library has modest taste in philosophy. If you want I can lend you one".

"How"?

"Come to my house, it's not far."

It was my fifth proposal in last one week. I propose only on weekdays. I enjoy my weekends.

She agreed.

We were walking.

"Name"

"Urva"

I looked at her.

"Suits you"

"How"

"Everything is excessive" I looked at her bosom.

She was red.

"What's your name" She distracted.

"Vijay"

She looked at me and said" Tower of Victory"

"Would you climb?"

She was red again.

 All girls are equally fool or wise. Make a yardstick or parameter as to what a girl of a particular age should know. Suppose a girl of eighteen should know literature, movies, driving, dress up, make up, music, cooking, stitching, embroidery, mopping, swapping etc. Besides being at least average in studies. Apply research methodology of mean, mode and median, all girls will get an equal number. Every beautiful girl knows she is beautiful. Every girl who knows she is not beautiful creates an image of her beautiful self.

So if you appreciate them it always conforms to her view.

The provision of Experimental Error in Research Methodology makes it irrational exercise. Whatever may be the dependent and independent variable of beauty of a girl, if beauty is in the eye of the beholder it makes beauty dependent on extraneous variable. Which will be an experimental error and whatever conclusion you will draw will be erroneous and irrational? To protect results from extraneous variable we do randomization. It is like being irrational to rationalize.

Out of my habit of analyzing the data, I drew curves for events from the first meeting with the girl to break up. Surprisingly, in most of the cases it is a normal curve without any skewness. I always avoid skewness. I do not want to postpone my expression of desire if I like a girl, and once my object achieved or not, if the relationship is dead weight, I get rid of it earliest possible. Most of the time both of us feels relieved by termination of the relationship. I create such circumstances. If we go to have to depart, let us depart as friends with some sweet memories. It's my motto.

Though I am mesokurtic and like the humpedness of the curve. I wish to enjoy my relationship for a reasonable time once it reaches its peak. It is like a bell in the temple. That is my best time in a relationship with a girl.

When we were walking, a car stopped near us. It was Audi and my friend Ravi Shankar was driving. My all friends are poor only Ravi Shankar is rich. Usually I dislike rich people. Rich people are like lepers. They are so obvious. Being rich is their solitary quality. They are very proud of all those things for which they should be ashamed of. Vulgarity is their passion and sarcasm is their wit. For me they are 'untouchable'. Since I have been very popular, they always envied me and searched for an opportunity to make me look down. They never got it.

Ravi was also one of the stereotypes. But he had certain qualities for which I liked him. He behaved differently with me. He sought my advice in his love affairs. His taste in art and culture was slightly more refined.

He asked whether we want a lift. I looked at Urva. The expression on her face was of consent. Ravi took us to my home. I did not request him inside.

I lived in a small house, with a tiny garden in front and two servants who lived in back out houses. They were father and son. Father cooked food for all of us son cleaned house and ran errands. My house was decorated with excellent aesthetic sense. Partly it was the contribution of my all past girlfriends. They always attempted to regulate my life by arranging the things in order of their choice. Some preferred books in drawing room other in the bedroom. I obliged them by permitting to interfere.

The peasants live a rational life. They do physical labor to earn money and fulfill their bodily needs. They do not sell their mind. To sell mind just to quench your physiological need is just one of the most stupid things. Not only you sell your mind, but also the mind becomes a garbage bin by collecting wasteful information, which does not play any role in improving life. On the contrary, mind becomes conditioned and later by the time you realize the wastefulness of life you were living some sage tells you to unlearn and make your mind unconditional. So I do not learn anything which later I will be required to unlearn.

There was silence. We were walking leisurely when I asked

"You know 2+2=5"

"Yes, I do fuzzy math."

"You know the square root of two plus square root of two is equivalent to one."

"Yes, the sum of two irrational numbers could be a rational number. However, why are you asking?"

"Are you irrational?"

"Yes, I am. No girl would go to the house of a boy without knowing anything about him."

"Are we not complimentary to each other?"

"You mean biologically or mentally."

"Both."

It is still too early for me to decide.

I have made my mind. It is either you or none.

What is the logic?

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©  Vipin Behari Goyal

Excerpt from a forthcoming book

Soulmates at Crossroads

Men and women -- even man and wife are foreigners. ~ Mark Twain

cc at crossroads

Dear Ⓟ

You don’t conceal your mind. Not only me who has spent his life with you, but anybody would know about your feelings. You don’t say it in words, but everything is apparent by your gestures. And you dislike when any woman tries to be intimate with me. You have shown your attitude to such woman and frankly speaking, they found no reason to displease you. You are so cordial and submissive that nobody likes to hurt you for no reason. You demarcate your possessions precisely. I hope you remember the Italian girl Giovanna who was tactfully put off by you.

How much time is required when two persons living under the same roof would understand each other? It seems half century is not enough. The bond changes with time. Infatuation, emotions, passions and social-moral bonds traverse through different level of the psyche and consciousness on the path of marriage. When we reach to a conclusion, something happens to shake the foundation of our belief. We are left flabbergasted. I never claimed that I understand you, but at the same time, you were no stranger to me. Simplicity is a dangerous weapon. Innocents have hurt more people than crooks.

What is the saturation point of love? What is the beginning, middle and end of it? I do not know. Nor can I classify my certain emotions as love. I open my heart to every good listener. I love telling stories with wit, sarcasm and humor. I laugh heartily. I earn admiration or sympathy at my will. A negative catalyst can stop this chemical reaction at any time. Why not enjoy the ride while on it?

We were not sure about the destination when we began our journey. Retrospectively, I have no reason to doubt that everything happened for some reason. Some lessons were cheap, others were trifle at great prices. You can’t learn every lesson at the right price. Life is not mathematics, nor it is a business. I found you in a labyrinth and thought you too were lost like me, but now I realize a pattern in it. We spent our life in the labyrinth, but the passage appeared new every time. So I say benefit of experience is limited. Even in the same situation, same option would give different results. Boredom was kept away by the newness in the appearance of the passage, but weariness found its way into the soul. You were cheerful and I was melancholic when we reached to the opening of the labyrinth. May be I had started enjoying the confusions it offered. Or maybe I enjoyed your company in the solitude.

I asked CC what does she think about our relationship. To be precise I asked her, “Do you think I love P_.” You know what was her answer. She said “I see there is respect”. Then she pondered, got perplexed and nodded her head vigorously. She wanted to say something specific, but was hesitant. Ultimately, she said, “Don’t ask me such question, I am confused”. I wanted her opinion since she was good at analysis. I have never asked this question to anybody else, including myself. She has been on her own in this wide, wild world since her early teens. She got her education in the school of the world, which even the best universities do not teach.

If love does not become respect with the passage of time, it is lost. When passions are turned into embers, the companionship keeps the fire alive. Her observation was perfect. Love is not a possession. Love is freedom from bondage. Sometimes I feel like a cage-bird, but I am as addicted to cage as I was to the labyrinth. The security and care are my rewards. Adolescent crisis, Mid-Life crisis and Later-Life crisis is caused by a shift in roles. At the junction you have to play two roles. The commitment to role playing also strengthened our relationship.

It is hard to understand why a man would drop his wife for another younger woman, especially when he is the father of her children. The woman who gave him moral support during his early struggles in career, is deprived of the fruits of his success. He makes financial provisions for his wife and children, but has no time to share emotions with them. I think it is a crime, not only against his wife and children, but against the entire humanity. You cannot lust like animals, when you are supposed to act humane. The sufferings of women are universal. It needs no language, to communicate. They just know when they meet. Why a happy woman should feel guilty for the sufferings of another woman? Because she knows her happiness is temporary.

CC grew up under the cries and moans of her mother. She grew up fighting her insecurities. She loved her father. He had all those qualities, which made her proud of him. In a way, she was of opinion that it was the fault of her mother that she could not keep him happy and contended. She was scared to live life of her mother, so she became melancholic, while her own spirit wanted to be cheerful. So she escaped. Her whole journey is an escape. But she is not running away from a place or people, she is running away from her own self. That is not easy. The past haunts until you decide to confront it. Face to face. It tormented her and made her cry, but she cried on her own, like a brave girl. I hate people who need a shoulder to cry.

CC shared many things with me, which I can’t share with you. That would be a breach of trust. Once, after an intimate conversation she said "I think I should not have told you these things. This is usually shared between two women.” I was happy that she talked with me as she would talk to a woman. If I have that much feminine in me, then my soul can dance in ecstasy.

You like normal, decent people, because you live a normal decent life. You shove the things under the carpet. I appreciate this kind of life. You are like an anchor to my comfort zone. When my ship is on the High Seas, it faces the storm bravely. You are my strength. I falter, but I falter to rise again with more determination. Every war has made me stronger and indefatigable.

After CC, Jenny came. Being Asian she had better adaptations. She had locked her past and had thrown the keys in the ocean. (She lived on a yacht as crew). She is ambitious and cannot afford to be emotional. Every traveler has his own search; they find glimpses of it in our home. We live a museum life. Jenny did not find anything interesting in our home. My conversation with her was many times sarcastic. She was hurt by my remarks about her small boobs. She had laughed and pulled her T Shirt forward and peeked inside as if to confirm. I love when people can take even a silly joke in spirit.

You might be bored by now; I will tell you more in my next letter.

Yours

VBG

Letter 1 

Letter 2

Letter 3
Letter 5

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©  Vipin Behari Goyal

So It Was Not A Goodbye

                              The Divine Experiment

Photo By CC: Void To Void

C_C,

Every end has a new beginning. I bid you a farewell. Thought, you will be lost in the mist and clouds of Himalayan Valley, and the world beyond that. We have departed never to meet again. Though this thought was depressing, but I had reconciled with it. I never look back, nor do I chase shadows. I just keep on walking in the opposite direction until everything stops making sense. I have deliberately separated your initials by a space, a void or rather a subtle void in between your initials. You are an illusion and reality at the same time. Once you were a reality, now you are an illusion.

I said to you few shocking things. Whatever I told you, my intentions were good. A man needs to be judged by intentions. My intention was to heal a bruised soul. A pure and divine soul, which was a victim of the callous world. Tears wash the stains of the soul. You said ‘you learned from me’, and you know what ‘I unlearned from you’. My learning had made me complicated, dubious and rational, which consumed my vital forces. Then I met you, a breath of fresh air. At first sight, I felt no vibration. You appeared just like any other Western girl looking for the solution of personal riddles in the mystic land. There is special providence in the fall of Sparrow (Shakespeare). The fresh air had touched my skin to penetrate deep and affect my psyche. I started unlearning. Will you be surprised if I tell you that now I am on the path of simplicity, faith and intuition. My intellect has deceived me. Now I need to ensure that intellect  was the real cause of my void.

Respect is not important. You always need a reason to respect somebody. But you can love anybody without a reason. Learning weaved a web around the senses and reduces perception. Love is that magic which breaks the talisman of flesh and makes you see things with feelings. That kind of unconditional love, a panacea of all suffering, evaporates like camphor in the heat of a ruthless world. You have hidden that love in the secret crevices of your heart and sometimes it overflows and soaks a deprived soul, just like an aimless drifting cloud of valley soaks a wanderer for nothing.

You need not to be grateful to anybody. Rather, people should be grateful to you for being around. As I am. If people are disappointed in you, it is their problem. They are greedy and want more, while you have already given more than they deserve. Forgive and forget them. They are normal selfish people who value a thing only when it has slipped out of their hand.

You wrote, “Also, some things you said..maybe I should have said something and I didn’t”. That makes you more beautiful as a person and as a human being. In these two dots followed by ‘maybe’ is the secret of the universe. This kind of silent conversation is the strength of any relationship. It is good to leave things unsaid. Conscience doesn’t permit us to be judgmental.

You are warm, as warm as cozy blanket you are wrapped up in the valley of Himalaya, right now. I would pity the person who does not find you warm. Why should you bother for such kind of insensitive person?

This whole gambit is no experiment. It is a divine plan. We cannot always make things happen. Sometimes they just do happen to us. Your smile is very precious CC, smile if it makes you happy to think that the entire episode was an experiment, but rest assured it was a divine experiment.

Ciao

VBG

Letter  1 

Letter  3
Letter 4
Letter 5

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©  Vipin Behari Goyal

Metamorphosis Retold

Molly is a Pretty Cockroach

Pixabay

                   Franz Kafka’s story “The Metamorphosis” begins like this “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was lying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his dome like brown belly divided into stiff arched segments …”. 

                   He surely was talking about the metamorphosis of the main character into a cockroach. One fine morning - the author does not admit it to be fine for obvious reasons - the main character Gregor Samsa was metamorphosed into a cockroach. The universally accepted definition of metamorphosis is “the process of transformation from an immature form to an adult form in two or more distinct stages(in an insect or amphibian)”. The author seems to be of opinion that Gregor Samsa was immature,who by metamorphosis is transformed into a cockroach, which is an ‘adult form’ of ‘human form’. Well, there is no need to feel offended.

                   Look at this single cell lowest creature in the animal kingdom called Amoeba. It performs all the functions of eating, walking, sleeping and reproducing by his single cell body. His all acts are precisely balanced. He would develop limbs (Pseudopodia) depending on the distance it wants to walk. He would reproduce when his security is in danger. The process is amazingly simple and unemotional. Obviously, he has a thinking mind. Human beings are a complex structure of 37.2 trillion cells to perform all these functions. To complicate it further, he has a mind filled with ego, emotions and logic.

                 Critics search for metaphors, simile, satire and symbols even in simple prose written with honest intentions. Therefore, they presume that human life is reduced to an insect for the people living in ghettos. Let us not forget that Kafka was a Jew and was brought up by a father who was a strict disciplinarian. How low somebody can make you feel? A worm? An insect?

While T. S. Eliot in “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” says 

                   “And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall” . 

                   There is a lot of difference in feeling like a worm and feeling like an insect.The cockroach is now a beautiful teenage girl, with all habits of her original form. Let us call her Molly. As a cockroach she lived in a deserted house because it was safe for inhabitation. She knew human beings despised them a lot and are always well prepared to kill them on first sight. She felt safe and healthy to live in this deserted apartment. Nobody bothered her here and she could live a solitary life wandering in the whole big apartment.

                   The female cockroach Molly use to live in a nearby junk house. She was a member of a big community there. The Relationship was not important. Nobody cared for blood relations. Any grown up could mate with anyone. She was teenage considering her life span to be 1.5 years. “Calling position”(to invite males to copulate) came very naturally to her and her instincts taught her to spread her wings and expose her membranes and expand genital chambers to ooze pheromone. She was surrounded by male cockroaches flapping their wings. It was a dark night and she could not really know who deposited sperms on her back. Though it doesn’t matter much also.

                   After depositing her ‘egg case’ “Ootheca” safely under warm and damp gutter line of junk store, she had abandoned the junk store, in search of new land. Luckily, the deserted apartment was at a walking distance, for she was always afraid of short flights, which made her conspicuous and vulnerable. She spent a few nights with the feeling 

“I am Monarch of all I survey; My right there is none to dispute” 
~William Cowper: The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk.

                   Molly had a small stomach. The owner of the apartment must have left in a hurry, for there was enough food left all over flat. Molly did not like the food in the kitchen where it was readily available. She preferred to hunt for it from dining table, dustbin, flowerpots and sinks.

                   Molly did not bother to clean the apartment. She slept in soiled bed and walked on dusted floor.Once out of curiosityand ennui, she opened the window. A blow of fresh air hit her nostrils. She squeezed her nose, as she was accustomed to stink aromas only. In the window of the opposite flat, a handsome man was staring at her.

                   She hurriedly closed the window. She was about to move when she saw at the sill another cockroach staring at her with blank eyes. He introduced himself in their cockroach slang. "Hey, I am Gregor Samsa; what are you doing in my flat?”

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©  Vipin Behari Goyal

Wonderful Small Books

                      Does size matters?

             The classification of book as novel, novella, novelette and short story is not an easy job. Reviewers/Editors/Critiques classify randomly and seldom bother to follow international standard. Some literary guild had been doing the exercise but they also do not have universal acceptance. 

              If we say that the novella is written with a satirical, moral or educational nature and purpose, it would be a gross generalization and the very object of the author could be defeated by such blatant categorization. Or a story may even have the ingredient of a novel like multiple characters, sub-plots, conflicts and twists, and all novels are also ultimately a story.

              "The Science Fiction" and "Fantasy Writers of America" specifies word lengths for each category of its Nebula award categories: Novel over 40,000 words, Novella 17,500 to 40,000 words, Novelette 7,500 to 17,500 words, Short Story under 7,500 words.

             How the words would be counted, is also not defined. There are different opinions and "different word counting programs may give varying results, depending on the text segmentation rule details, and on whether words outside the main text (such as footnotes, endnotes, or hidden text) are counted. But the behavior of most major word processing applications is broadly similar" as endorsed by Wiki.

           A reader, however remains unaffected by such jugglery and is straightforward in judging the true value of the books. Some, such books which are though small in word count, but have influenced the life or thought process of millions of people are listed here. If by chance we have over passed any of them earlier this is the high time to pick it now.

1. Jonathan Livingstone Seagull by Richard Bach is a book that teaches self -perfection, how to be true to yourself and keep working on love. It is motivational, life changing book, if taken seriously.

2. Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky is a book from which many theories of Philosophies have emerged and also a paradigm shift in many existing philosophies has occurred. The description of mental state when one enjoys sufferings and conscious inertia makes this book as a masterpiece.

3.  The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery is most-read, most-translated book of the world. The book has been tagged in the category of "Children's Book" would sure leave every mature wondering about the strangeness and logistics of the adult world.

4. Who moved my cheese? By Spencer Johnson would change how you perceive the changes that are taking place in your life. It is written like a fable which has maximum appeal for the human psyche.

5. Self-reliance by R.W. Emerson  is a book of essay. You may have to re-read to grasp the depiction of self worth by trusting your own self.

6. The old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway can be put at the top of the list, if this matters at all. There are very few books in the world that would touch your heart and mind both equally. Moreover who would not honor the struggle of old man and also would feel honored in doing so.

             This list would grow if you can add few books of your choice in the comments.