Part 2: Love is a Cheat

(Dedicated to my dear friend, Vivek Pareek as a reminder that people do things that they have to, but they are not the evil to have done so.)

He approached her,

Unsure, even scared,

His feelings,

Suppressed no more.

His self, for her laid bare.

However shy she was,

She did not resist.

She let him come near,

She let him love her.

She submitted to him.

And they became one.

Consumed in their love for each other.

He shared his soul with her.

His dreams, his joys, his passions,

Became one with her laughter.

And soon she knew

All there was to know,

About a simple black beetle.

And his small world,

Which now revolved around her.

Yet try as he may,

She never told him of herself.

Never spoke of her dreams,

Her plans.

She just liked to listen.

Whenever he asked her,

All she said was that she loved him,

And that that should be enough.

If asked more,

She would just become silent.

So he never troubled her,

With these unpleasant questions.

He was too lost in his happiness,

Too lost in their future.

To notice if anything was amiss.

And it broke his heart,

To leave her each night.

To bid adieu and watch her from afar,

As she curled up her petals and slept,

Bathed in magical starlight.

He would retire to sleep thereafter,

Dreaming of her,

Deep into the happy night.

Asking himself how he was worthy,

Of knowing such love divine.

He slept, only to be welcomed each morning,

By her charming smile.

And spending the day by her side,

Talking to her of all things

That came to his mind.

But that particular day was different,

She seemed so sad.

And he didn't like that.

So he decided to make her happy,

He decided to show her how much he loved.

He showed it by making it.

And he gave her all the joys,

That he could offer.

And it made her happy,

The happiest of all creatures.

That night the adieu,

was more painful than ever.

She bid him farewell,

With tears in her eyes,

tears both of joy and sorrow.

The next morning the beetle awoke,

Only to find his back covered,

By the sticky pollen that she'd secreted.

What was it he wondered?

And why wouldn't it come off his back?

And Fear came to him,

And told him how he had been taken,

By the charms of that innocent-looking lady.

He said that this is what she did,

She tricked unsuspecting beetles.

She had used him, his love,

Had trapped him into making love to her.

And smeared him with her pollen,

Contaminating his pure heart.

All this for her own wicked schemes and plots.

He said she had faked her love,

Only to draw him near.

She had used him for her own good.

And he would never love again,

As no one ever should.

He did not want to believe Him.

Yet he did.

Yet never thought it possible to hate her.

Still he did.

He never thought Love would cheat him.

But in the end, She did.

-TheDreamer

Zombies

I can see zombies.
You don't believe me?
I really can see the walking dead
as they walk beside me.

Without dreams, without morals.
Eyes fixed in an endless stare
Opening their foul mouths,
of their stench of fear unaware.

Saying things that make no sense.
Walking aimlessly, endlessly.
Waiting for their lives to end.
Not understanding they are dead already,
they roam, Zombies all around me.

-TheDreamer

(Life really has a cruel sense of humour. It so happened that hours after writing this poem, by pure happenstance and out of sheer boredom, I randomly picked a movie to watch. That movie turned out to be Shaun of the Dead. After seeing it, I wish I hadn't written this poem!)

The Sole Diamond

(Should a man leave behind his addictions? Habits that give him joy? Yes he'll be free. But what will he do of that freedom if he cannot be happy?)

He owned a stone.
It was a red diamond.
It was larger than any diamond in the land.
It was blood red in colour.
Diamonds are clourlessin when pure.
But this diamond was red.
A big, red diamond it was.
He loved the diamond.
Light sparkled through its many facets.
Creating an aura around it.
The aura was something.
It was something that could not be described.
The aura of the diamond was quite something.
He loved the aura.
He loved the diamond.
Its brilliance was beautiful.
Its beauty was radiant.
He cared for the diamond.
He carried it with him.
He never let it out of his sight.
He never let anyone see it.
He never let anyone touch it.
He touched it.
He caressed it.
He kissed it.
He loved it.
He took it everywhere.
He was in love with it.
He could not live without it.
He was addicted to it.
He loved it so much.
The diamond was his life.
And he decided to give it his life.
The diamond gave him joy.
The diamond gave him fulfilment.
He too gave to the diamond.
He gave it his soul.
He gave it his life.
He cast a spell.
His soul escaped him.
It was trapped in the stone.
He put it there.
His soul in his stone.
His life in his diamond.
His joy in his precious.
His everything in that something.
The bond was thus strengthened.
He fell in deeper love.
The stone was his world.
It lit his dark and twisted soulless insides.
He depended on it.
To be by his side.
To sustain his existence.
To exist for his sake.
And for his sake alone.
He never felt alone.
With the diamond close by.
He loved it so much.
He loved it a lot.
He loved it.
He was addicted to it.
He could never take his eyes away.
Off the diamond for an instant.
He was scared.
Scared that something would happen.
The diamond would go.
So he kept himself near it.
He kept himself close.
He kept himself bound.
And in time, he was bound.
He was so bound, he hated it.
His hate drew him mad.
He had no freedom.
And in his hate he loved his diamond.
He loved it as never before.
The diamond that had his soul.
He was done with it.
He could take it no more.
He could give it no more.
Nothing was like before.
He raised it high.
And smashd it on the floor.
It shattered.
It broke.
It split into a million pieces all sparkling on the floor.
He had ended the stone.
The stone was over.
The stone which had his soul.
The soul was over.
The game was up.
He had destroyed the stone.
And yet, he was sad.
He was unhappy.
He had ended hs addition.
He was free now.
But he had also ended his only joy.
He was sad too.
He was free too.
He was free to be sad.
Sad forever after.
His everything gone.
Destroyed, shattered to pieces.
Broken to splinters.
And he wept sitting there.
Crying on the floor.
He wept like a baby.
'Cause from what he knew.
Diamonds never broke.
No diamond ever broke.

-TheDreamer

Order your Death

(This is an article inspired by a lecture in my Thermodynamics class by one of my favorite professors at IISER-K, Dr. Narayan Bannerjee. I have used the fundamental principle of entropy and have attempted to explore a bit of Philosophy with its aid.)

The second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of the universe can only increase. It takes time getting used to the notion of Entropy, but a simple way to imagine it is as a degree of randomness or disorder of a system. The more disordered a system, the higher is its entropy. Thermodynamics allows us to calculate the entropy of various systems undergoing different processes, analytically. But a simpler way to analyse entropy is to simply talk of whether it increases or decreases in a given process. If a system absorbs heat, it molecules shake around more vigorously, making the system more randomized and thus increasing its entropy. If a system gives off heat, its entropy decreases.

Now that we’ve had the preliminaries out of the way, let’s get down to business. I was trying to figure out if entropy increases or decreases in the process of being born. But I was having difficulties deciding whether heat is absorbed or released during birth (wish I had been born with a thermometer in hand). So then I thought that it would be easier if I figured out the entropy change of death first.

We, being warm-blooded animals, maintain a constant body temperature throughout our life. But death puts a hold on our thermostat and a dead body cools down rapidly, finally achieving room temperature. For that matter, living things can be defined as machines which carry out molecular processes, taking in energy and utilizing it in order to prevent themselves from falling into equilibrium with their environment. So the body cools down and loses heat as it does so. I guess that is what they mean when they say that dying is “becoming one with the universe.” The body also starts decomposing after death, and that too releases heat. This release of heat can be seen as a decrease of entropy. So a dead body is more ordered than a living one! When a person dies, disorder decreases, and this can be seen as achieving peace and nirvana.

Coming back now to our original problem of entropy change in birth. I was still finding it difficult to put a finger on whether heat is, on the whole, absorbed or released in the nine month human gestation period. So I decided to simplify the problem a bit by considering not the entire pregnancy but only the Eureka moment. The Eureka moment for the child is its moment of formation, i.e. the moment when the two gametes fuse to form a single cell, the zygote. This process, called fertilisation, is easier to analyze than the entire nine months. When two cells combine to form one, the most considerable change in energy is the one in the surface energy. Free surfaces of cells, soap bubbles and similar stuff have an energy associated with them, known as surface energy. The larger the free surface, greater the surface energy of the object. It is to minimize this surface energy that things like bubbles, when left to themselves assume a spherical shape. Anyways, when two cells combine, the resulting surface area is lesser than the sum of their individual areas. So, the surface energy decreases in cell fusion. This decrease in surface energy is released in the form of heat during fertilisation. If heat is released then that means that entropy decreases when the gametes fuse and give rise to a new life. So birth involves a decrease in entropy and a corresponding increase in the order of the system. So being born is more ordered than being unborn.

Having established that, we also consume a lot of food on a daily basis, throughout our lifetimes. Where does all this energy go? We, being warm-blooded, use this energy for maintaining our body temperatures. Our surroundings are cooler than us and so, this energy, in the process of keeping us warm, is lost out to the environment as heat. So does this mean entropy is decreasing? Well, it doesn’t. The reason is that we are supposed to look at the net energy exchange. The net energy exchange is zero since our body temperatures are constant. All the food that we consume is thrown out as heat. So our entropy remains more or less a constant during our lifetimes. And finally, as we have already seen, death too causes a decrease in entropy.

So, we attain a greater order when we are born, then our “orderliness” remains unchanged in our lifetimes, and finally, it increases again when we die. So, we are at the peak of our orderliness after death. So is being born and then dying equivalent to never being born atall? It seems that the answer is no. You would be more disordered if you happen never to be born in this world.

But one may ask if being more ordered or disordered really matter. What difference does it make in the long run? I confess, I really cannot imagine any importance whatsoever that one’s orderliness might have in the afterlife. But one thing is for sure. In case it is preferred to be more ordered than disordered, then one question is bound to arise. We may ask that if during our lifetimes, our orderliness remains constant, and will increase only when we die, then what is the need to experience this agonizing life at all. Why not take a shortcut and move towards greater order? If order is all that we want, then why not, order your own death?

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