Unruled Notebook

The First Harmonic Guru (FHG, for clarity) is one of those who survived the Great Blackout. FHG is also known as Brahma to the readers of Hindu newspaper (Hindus, for short), Brahma-ji to Vedic Scientists and Baba-ji to Rajini-ji.In the years of the power blackout, nobody had anything useful to do and so they in general, were pleased to live with the inertia of mental garbage they have collected over time. They still watched TV in their minds, without switching it on, in front of them. They strained to hear the music from their powerless stereos, as they have long since stopped listening, and were pleased with their musical mental noise. Many contributed white noises like “hi”, “Yu Kno”, “Hmm”, “I dunno”, “Oh”, “Aw”, while some talked with it. Nobody spoke.

Life, in general, moved. Some believed, forward.

Some prevailing religions called this the Brahma of Unhappiness, but most aliens with helmets and antennas who visited in UFOs to get sexual favors from the so called Americans, observed it as the Unbreakable Signs of collective nonchalance normal among the Sixth Sense. Shyamalan agreed. So did Brahma.

FHG, once a professional bum, became jobless and listless. So FHG did years of meditation in front of a TV screen, sitting on a potato couch with liquid thorns, without much food. Once every year, for D-Vine Intervention, he ate some couch and drank some thorns. After some years, on a lark, he spread the couch on a swing executing simple harmonic motion over a green, pseudo vector field and sat on it to continue the meditation. The color of the field need not bother us here, as the vectors, although pseudo, nevertheless, came in many colors. In this particular field for instance, they were in blue and yellow, the mixture giving a general impression of green fields.

By the way, vectors, after a much-debated International Conference on Topology, are the universal names given to crops that once grew ozra sativa. This was because of a minor confusion at the hotel, where both the agriculturists and mathematicians held research conferences on the same dates, unfortunately, under the same topic. Once the mistake was realized, much tensors and pests were exchanged and many mathematicians changed coordinates in shame. Some went to Mumbai while others adapted to the curvilinear. The agriculturists, for their part, re-christened officially, brand names like IR-8 and IR-20 as 5 x 6 = 8 and 5 x 6 = 20. Literate in Tamil (Tamizh when written in Tamil) learnt their math bad by reading these equations. The agriculturists culled the profit as the shop owners made the aforementioned buyers pay more five rupee notes than is necessary for the purchase of an 8-rupee bag of rice.

Soon however, the jealous politicians, who doubled as educationist, found a remedy. They recognized internationally recognized institutes based in Tamil Nadu, already taught branches of sciences dealing with vectors and fields. The name can remain the same just the subjects need to be changed. So a major revamp of the education was suggested, planned and executed, all in precise abandon.

For instance, the Chennai based Injun Institute of Technology advertised specialized vector field courses that taught how to differentiate entire vector fields from pests and how to integrate two vector fields without water. Landlords recruited these IIT graduates to take care of their vector fields and maximized their profit, as these graduates knew how to differentiate under the integral sign. The government for their part, offered free loans (oxymoron?) to learn more on pseudo vector fields, immaterial of their color. Some self-financed institutions offered Vibgyor degrees with special discounts for students who could take more than one color at the same time.

Overall, Tamil Nadu, following the Gandhi way, went for its villages with lots of vector fields. It became prosperous as colors thrived and vectors grew.

However, disharmony persisted in the minds of the people.

That brings us back to the FHG swinging over the field, thinking back and forth, his thoughts swinging with the sway of the swing. The vectors looked blue, then green, then yellow, and then green again. He concentrated deeply. Years passed and the couch dilapidated into a bunch of carbohydrates and the thorns sheared to wetness. The TV in front of him diffused away into its pixelesque hell.

Finally, on a fine day, he arrived at harmony. He thought of it this way.

I think, therefore I am. Therefore, I am as I think. If I think I am not, still I am, as I think therefore I am. But as I think I am not, I am not as I think. So I am not, therefore I think. To conclude, I am not, therefore I think, therefore I am…

Thus he realized after many years of swinging, the Simple Harmonic Solution of the Universe, from one extreme to the other, both perceivable but equally absurd. He went on to change his name from Brahma to the First Harmonic Guru, claiming to have descended as a progressive wave out of the Simple Harmonic Guru clan.

The spiritual center of the universe, as he claimed, happened to be where he was sitting on the day of realization, which by the way was the swing. The swing swung over the pseudo vector field, which undulated over the Earth that moved around a particularly dull star, somewhere on the eastern backwaters of a galaxy that rotated in its axis once in about 34000000 earth years and also moved about, receding from other nearby galaxies at a great speed so that, in a few million years the nearby galaxies won’t be as nearby as nearby is today. As to the Earth and its particularly dull star, there were many fights among the dull earthlings as to, which orbited which.

Later they fought more on the circular simple harmony of the orbits. Some Indian thoughts, blamed strongly to the works of Vedic Scientists, claimed the orbital period of the galaxy as close to 38000000 earth years or one manvantara, the lifetime of a Brahma. Some living in far-off places from India that were marked as “here be dragons” in Vedic Maps made by Vedic Scientists, claimed the duration of the earth years in the Indian thoughts were wrong. Some others originating from these far-off places but dubbed “westerners” claimed the dates of the works by the Vedic Scientists were uncertain as they couldn’t find enough carbon.

The westerners themselves couldn’t be damn sure because their calendars, even though had lots of carbon, upon subjected to periodical political whims, frequently missed many days and sometimes, whole months. Most in India who agreed with the numbers also agreed that most of the westerners were stupid. Many others in India disagreed that the Vedic Scientists were from India but still agreed the westerners were stupid. The result of all of this is that the spiritual center of the Universe could never be determined with reasonable accuracy. This provided the missing component of the wonder to the already incomprehensible, resulting in the profound.

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[The name First Harmonic Guru, was a healthy coinage by my friend Srini, for use in a joint venture, which is still shelved inside our grandfather computer. The narration presented above is entirely my toxic concoction - Arunn]