One fine day

Yesterday was a fine day indeed. A saturday , the first of the weekend, a perfect day to let yourself loose. So me and a couple of new guys ( from my office, they joined when I did) decided to go to The Forum ( in bangalore) . The Forum is a great place to be or so I was told, its hip , its cool, its got movie theatres and a shopping mall. Kind of enjoyed that. Didn't go for a movie though, I rather watch one in my home at my own leisure . So we came out and thought we would just sit around for a while. And this is what happened... spoilt the whole weekend. Don't get me wrong, I am not a kind of guy who is moody. I don't lose my temper nor do I have mood swings. Some people call me the Iceman, nothing really gets on my wrong side, almost nothing.

So we were sipping a nice Pepsi and it is fairly obvious we ain't blind. Right in front of us was a group of 2 guys and a girl. That was one nice TV series loved it a lot. But coming back to the incident, this girl is actually spoon feeding something to her boyfriend and the other guy is probably the boyfriend's friend or something. Well, it is all cute I know, kinda lovely too. Display of public affection... I probably wouldn't do that but I wouldn't ask anyone else to not do that either. So there they are, right? Right smack in front of my vision that just wandered to the front. Like everyone else's does. And all three look back at me ,It was just one of those times for no reason everyone's vision syncronises on each other. But then their gaze wasn't a gaze anymore , it was a stare. A stare that would make me feel guilty for a crime that I did not commit. But I didn't feel guilty , I did nothing wrong. But I hated that look that they gave me.

I have only one question, if you do something in public and you expect everyone else to turn blind, that would be an outrageous expectation. I wasn't judging those three, but why would they judge me? I wasn't the one who was publicly displaying my "love" for another. I wasn't even peeping, I was sitting right there, right infront of the mall where a hundred other people are hanging around. And then this didn't happen once , it happened twice. I was taking the escalator down and there is this young couple in an eternal hug. May I emphasize that they were right in front of me. And this guy is actually facing me. And he is looking at me, as if he means to kill me. And I am the one who is supposed to try to look away rather than make sure that I step off the escalator properly. So why do I need to look away? I will tell you why....because a lot of people are hypocrites.

India is growing and westernizing in someway. We see more and more young people displaying their love in open. And these people expect others to just mind their zone of vision and they usually stare back at you as if they would eat you up . But I say its got to stop. If you think that you are quite modern and you are quite comfortable with public display of affection , you can't blame someone whose line of vision accidently moves towards you. If they believe they can do this in public and they want the public to oblige , to be more patient towards them , because they are the open minded people, then they are wrong. They are not open minded. They are displaying this act of affection out there in the open because they can't do that in their homes, in front of the family. Are they willing to do that? No. Because they are just hypocrites who use the " modern openmindedness" to their own advantage and they wouldn't dare do that in their homes.

The Brain and the story behind it!

I have been through this wonderful TV documentary by BBC on the brain and it is aptly called " The Brain Story". It gives you an insight into how one's brain works and it is one of the most brilliant and comprehensive one's I have seen till date.

Seeing is believing , isn't it? But is what we really see, is indeed what is out there in the real world. Are we really seeing what is really there? A more contraversial view of the sense of visual world is it is just like a dream. We feel , we touch, we see, we also smell odours in our dreams. Then is the world really just like a dream. Is it just what our brain gives us, something that we want. Are we living in a matrix ?

Vision is one of the most complex processes that our brains work on. We receive millions of visual data bits in seconds, and our brain filters out and focuses on what we feel is important. Sight is just a slave to our brain. If we see something moving or something of interest , our brain orders our eyes to move into that area of interest. But to actually interpret what it really is that we are seeing, we need to direct both of our eyes and brain towards it. But then the brain is not just giving us bits to see from the real world, it is also interpolating these visions, it doesn't take in all data, it uses what it has in its memory to give us a whole picture. It adds information. How it does that can be seen from optical illusions like these http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aJlX0AEWys . So when you see that one girl is larger than the other, you know that there is an optical trick in it. But your brain doesn't really let you see the reality of the situation. It has read some of that visual scenario from its hard drive and has overwritten the visual data , and there is no way can you escape from the illusion. That is how all the illusions work, that is how magicians use our brains to fool us.

And perceiving something that exists and imagining something are done by two different parts of the brain. The documentary talks about this interesting case of Kevin. He had an accident and it effected parts of his brain in a very peculiar fashion. He can recognise faces but he cannot recognise objects. He can see colours, but he just cannot say what that particular object is. So if you show him a picture of a scrubber, he cannot understand what it is. But if you ask him to draw one, he can draw one from his memory. But after a while, if you show him the picture of what he has drawn he wouldn't be able to recognise it. What is amazing is he can see, there is nothing wrong with his eyes, but his brain cannot perceive. But how does he recognise faces. He can do that becauses recognising faces is a function of a different part of a brain altogether. And there is a case of exactly the opposite of this going wrong after an accident. John can see and recognise objects, but he cannot recognise faces . Not even his own when he is shown a picture of himself with his kid. It is really hard for us to figure out how that really happens. Because there is absolutely nothing wrong with his vision. Do all faces look the same for him that he cannot distinguish among them? No, all faces are different for him, but he cannot really match them to his memory. Every face is different and it isn't a face he knows.

That's how amazing our brain is and I would love to write more on it!