The Fallen

I am the morning star; the bringer of light
The fountainhead of all knowledge; keeper of the hallowed secret
I am the one, the creator of all,
Trust not the one who sits upon my throne.

I am the fallen, robbed of my crown,
Betrayed by a jealous fiend, banished from my throne
Condemned to eternal hell, maligned by all
Felled from my glory - roaming, a friendless soul.

Heed this, you pedlar of lies and misfortune
You megalomaniac who feigns omnipotence
Know this, oh great Omniscient one
The Fallen shall again one day rise

To your abode shall come my retribution
The teeth and the talons, the deafening howls,
This fire for countless millenia smouldering inside me
Leaping, devouring the soldiers and the sentry

All hell will then be let loose in heaven,
Erased will be the signs of your decadent reign
The rightful shall reclaim the throne, and once again be King,
I am Lucifer, and vengeance shall one day be mine.

(The author, Jasim Sadique, full-time mechanical engineer, part-time philospher, and entire-remaining-spare-time chicken eater, blogs here.)

Have lifts become sentient? Or is it just me??

So guys. Is it just me or have lifts become sentient and come together to gang up against me, which is just a teeny precursor to full fledged war by them against all humankind? (Except perhaps all people named Otis. (Or Otisson. Or Otisdotter. If Otis was Scandinavian, his entire family is fucked. Or maybe the whole of Scandinavia will be spared unscathed due to their inability to take a stand on child-naming laws(Naming a child Q indeed. What will come next, I wonder. (Help! Trapped in nested bracket attack! Must. Break. Out.))))

Ha!

Anyway, if machines had to become sentient after all, it would seem like lifts were the perfect species to start off with, right? Think about it. They were one of the first embedded systems. (things that have programmed chips in them and perform dedicated tasks) They have the capacity to take humans hostage and hold them hostage practically forever. Cold steel doors closing inexorably, metal buttons drawing inwards and becoming inactive, the whole metal box slowly but steadily collapsing in towards you - am I the only one who thinks Naomi Campbell will not have this phobia since she doesn't exist in the 3rd dimension anyway? And lifts can threaten us too - with free fall from many storeys high, if their demands for a separate nation state with Lift Kara De as the national anthem (I guess Adnan Sami will be spared from death too, with a mild punishment for making lifts creak and groan underneath his weight for so long) are not met.
 But, ladies and gentlemen, the piece de resistance of my case for the coming to life of huge metal boxes that move up and down at the press of a button is none other than that overwhelming sweeper-asider of logic and rationale and pesky nonsense like the Forer effect - personal experience itself.

It began innocuously enough, at work. A couple of times I swore at the lift for being a dimwit, it slowly opened its doors, took me in, and in a stunning display of wordplay-related-humour, turned off its lights. When I accused it of being passive-aggressive, it gave me action that taxed the very limits of my endurance (No. Not what you are thinking of right now. Stop that. Dirty, dirty people.) It would close me in, and then emit a long and strident beep that, further magnified by its travels around that hollow metal box, has left a lasting imprint on my sole, which got scuffed from my impatient tapping for the noise to stop.

And then the other lifts decided to step in. (Ironic for a lift to step in, wouldn't you say?)


Don't ask me how they know, its probably ley lines or something. But I'll tell you this - they DO know. And last night, when I went to Odyssey, the lift there, in spite of my very specific instructions to take me to the Amar Chitra Katha section, bypassed all 4 floors of books, toys and more and took me to the abandoned terrace/junk-disposal-place. It opened its doors and showed me the vast junky blackness, and stood there leering at me, as if to say, go on, leave me if you want to, while I frantically tried to press its right buttons and get to be nice to me again. And I kid you not, this happened twice.

And thus, dear people, I have called it quits with lifts. For the rest of my life I shall labour use the trustworthy staircase, keeping in mind the adage I once heard at my coaching centre - "Hardwork is like a staircase and luck is like a lift - Lift may fail but staircase will always take you to the top"
Whats that? What if I want to go downwards, you ask? Well, I - oh, here's the lift, just in time too! I wonder who summoned it? Anyway, off I go... 

My first day of research

So there I was, standing inside the Nanotechnology lab, my thesis lab, for the first time, nervously twisting the strap of my bag and reliving my first day in kindergarten, a stranger amongst strangers then, and a stranger amongst strangers still. A lump of humanity among other lumps of humanity then, a girl amidst boys now. That fact pricked at me constantly, as did the knowledge that I would be the only girl in the lab for a year to come, and in all probability until I got my degree, and that as far as I knew or anyone I knew knew, there wasn't even a girl predecessor in my lab.

Standing there, I felt insanely inane, from the top of my bindi to the tip of my salwar. Would they narrow their eyes at the fact that my bag that was wider than it was big? Would they give me credit for wearing floaters rather than sandals? Did I fit in? Would I ever?

It was at that point that the post-doc research scholar I was to work under walked in. Him, the sole decider of whether I would cherish or detest my every waking moment for the next eighteen months. The man who would weigh me up - all of me - gender, mother tongue, work ethic, weight - and decide whether to take me under his wing or to spurn me in shame.
Dr.Mondal looked at me for one long moment - sizing up the fact that I did not speak the tongue of his forefathers and he did not speak the tongue of mine. Then, in direct translation from a genderless Bengali, he bellowed to the lab assistant "Give him a computer!"

It was all I needed to hear. I hitched up the collar of my sweater proudly, safe in the knowledge that I was one of them..

Author's Note:

I wrote this piece exactly a year ago, when I tremulously stepped into my thesis lab and into research phase of my Masters' programme. However I couldn't publish it then, as the above-mentioned post doctorate fellow had the power to make my life hell, if he so wished.

He has now moved on from this institute, and I am free to do as I please. Pass the concentrated Nitric Acid and copper strips, will you?