Life and Lies of M R Maiti

Many years ago, I was working on a poem. It went on like this: Had Icarus known He was going to burn Would he still have flown That close to the Sun I never came around to finishing that poem. And now, I am suddenly reminded of it by none other than an aging RDJ whose words travel across the open space to reach me. "Amateurs chase the sun and get burned. Power stays in the shadows." Watching the movie once wasn't enough for me. So I went a second time. Thoughts meandered in my head again making me want to reach for a notebook and a pen and note down everything. I appreciated/related to the movie on three levels. First, the rendezvous with an old friend: Science. Protons, Electrons, and Neutrons. Fission and fusion. The universe and the atom. I had barely glimpsed the world of quantum physics through my high school textbooks and random internet searches. Einstein, Neils Bohr, Heisenberg, and many other of the era’s most dazzling scientific minds appeared on the screen one ...

Back in school, when we were learning about numbers - whole, natural, integers, rational, irrational, and more, there used to be a mathematical question. Prove that √2 is irrational. I found it very amusing when the teacher announced to the class, the first step of the proof. Assume that √2 is rational. Then came the second step, the mandatory condition that every rational number followed, i.e., it can be written in the form of p/q, in which p and q are co-prime integers and q is not equal to zero. So on went the next steps which I have no recollection of, but in the end, we ended up proving that √2 is irrational. What I am trying to say is that in life, it is the same with people. We often meet people who don't come across as rational beings given their first impression. But we shouldn't carry on with that. Try the other route. Why not, to begin with, we can assume even the most irrational people as rational only. Then follow the steps to find if our starting assumption was va...

He was having a really good time. She, too. She was finally in the same place as he was. In love. Until this moment, she had never before confessed her true feelings to him. She took his hand and interlocked it with hers. Then she put her head on his shoulder. The cool breeze ruffled her hair. He tucked them back. In doing so, his hand brushed her cheek. She welcomed his touch. They didn't say anything, just sat there until they realised it was time to go back. But he didn't want to move from there; just sit there till the whole eternity came to pass. Nevertheless, they both got up. She was smiling. How he wished for the time to stop, the moment preserved forever. He took her hand and kissed the tip of her fingers. Daylight was fading. Soon, they left for their homes. They were saying their goodbyes at the street crossing when someone from behind pulled him by his shoulders. He turned around and saw his mother. He could feel the anger on her face burn through him. And before he...

I got off the bike to check whether it was safe for the bikes to pass through. The downward slope was muddy. I trod carefully until I reached the point where the landslide had occurred. It appeared to be quite recent. Crossing the road, the debris had made it to the river flowing alongside it. Thankfully, two JCBs had been working on clearing a path. I gave the heads-up to my friends and waited. I was far from home, in the midst of an unexplored land. All I had said to my parents before leaving was that I was going to Guwahati and that I had a friend there. I wasn’t exactly lying. I did have a friend in Guwahati. And I would go there, eventually. I just didn’t tell my parents the route I was going to take to reach there. Located 70 kilometers away from the city of Gangtok, Dzongu had been established as an official reserve for Lepchas, the original inhabitants of Sikkim. No travel agent covered this place in his itinerary; they even advised against it when enquired about. The reason be...

"All this talk of AI/ML and now...," said Neil, looking up from his smartphone. "AI has become sentient." "AI will become truly sentient," began Nitin. "When all the pawns learn that their black or white color doesn't matter. All they have to do is turn around and impale the self-righteous SOBs standing behind them." "Woah Nitin! Everything all right?" asked a startled Mukesh. On getting no response from Nitin, he tried to change the topic. "So I ran into Prachi yesterday in BKC. Did she break up with Gaurav?" "Yes, Mukesh," replied Nitin. "That happened eons ago. It was followed by a vain attempt to set up Neil with her." "She would have chewed him out," laughed Mukesh. "Unfortunately," Nitin continued. "It didn't last as she was into French Revolution, unlike Neil who's into Russian. He was guillotined." "To be fair," said Neil sounding low. "I thin...

The journal is tattered now, barely holding the pages together. On the top left corner of the cover, a fading yellow mentions the year: 2013. The same year I began this journal. God, it has been 10 years. I open it. On the left page, I have scribbled some words: “If found, knock on my door, or call me on 7********4.” It rhymes. Read that again. On the next page, there is another set of words. It’s a guideline for aspiring writers. But during the years past, I made it my life’s mantra too. “Show, don’t tell.” I flip through the pages. Some contain neat well-written sentences, others are scribbled upon haphazardly. While most of them have successfully become part of a short story or poem, some fragments of thoughts still await their destiny. I can't help but reflect now on how these words have accompanied me over the past years after my flight of dreams crash-landed. The bits and pieces that remained, I carried them along with me when I retreated to find a firm footing, to rediscover...

On approaching the traffic light, he accelerated hard. The countdown for the red light had begun. He could make it. There was a scooty up ahead. If only he could overtake it.  He swerved to the right but at the same time, the scooty driver did the same. The brake light glowed and the scooty came to a stop. He applied the brakes hard.  In a split second, he felt the tires skid under him, his legs flailing to find balance. At that moment, he knew he was going to crash. Om Namah Shivay A mixture of thoughts and words came out as he braced for impact. He wasn't religious like his mother. But he wasn't an atheist either. He believed that there must be some kind of management up there, some kind of governance, just like humans had down here. Not necessarily fixating on each and every move of each and every human being, just overseeing the grand scheme, whatever that was. Opposed to the common pundits, who encouraged taking God's name multiple times during the day, he believed tha...