CHASE THE SUN

The morning Sun rose majestically behind the hills surrounding the Shillong city. Soon enough it started its upward trajectory and spread its warmth into the city. The capital of Meghalaya, Shillong, lies on the eastern part of the state. Perched at an altitude of 1,520 meters (4,990 feet) above sea level, the city stretches for about 6 km on an elevated tract. It is situated on a plateau bound on the north by the Umiam gorge, on the northwest by the great mass of the Diengiei Hills that rise up to a height of 1,823 meters (6077 ft.) above sea level, and on the northeast by the hills of the Assam valley. The Umshyrpi and the Umkhra rivers, which finally merge and form the Umiam River, water it.

The majestic Sun was in all its glory when we reached the Laitkor Ground to participate in an exhibition. The tents were neatly laid out and soon enough our team had set up its wares for the visitors who would be streaming to witness the technological robotic wonders. The curiosity of humans is unlimited and so is their question forming abilities. Humans can question any concept, design and product. In a crowd, this ability gives an unusual kick to some humans who want to be seen as one above the rest. This ability marks them out and it sets the brain into a thinking mode as the debate rages to prove the concept. Of course, it is these questions which also become a key proponent of the marketing concepts as new trends emerge out of such debates. We got engrossed with many such humans and took our technological concepts and products into their hearts and minds through deft answers to their questions.

Oblivious of the humans spread all over the ground, the grand Sun was now about to reach its zenith. The ground had been watered in the morning and the heat of the Sun had by now dried the soil. Dust was now ready to get into its action. As the Sun kept on its relentless pounding with no cloud cover, the wind picked up from the adjoining heights and descended into the ground, the dust married the wind and soon enough we saw a whirlwind rising from the centre of the Ground where a stage had been rigged up. The stage provided the perfect partner for the coupled heat, wind and dust and the obstruction provided by the stage twined the wind into a Whirlwind. The Whirlwind is a weather phenomenon in which a vortex of wind (a vertically oriented rotating column of air) forms due to instabilities and turbulence created by heating and flow (current) gradients. Whirlwinds occur all over the world and in any season and the Helicopter pilots flying in the North East of India will vouch for this phenomenon.

The Sun was hitting its zenith, the Whirlwind kicked the dust into a dark pattern and now it needed a way out of the ground. As we watched in awe and looked for our cameras to capture the action, the Whirlwind did a starboard (right) turn and leapt straight towards our tent. Before we could utter Jack Sparrow, the whirlwind uprooted the big tent and churned it all around us. Our equipment and laptops flew with the plastic tables and we were now gasping for air as the tent and the equipments flew, hit each other and rolled on the ground. This part of the ground was turned into shambles and the wind gave out an eerie whistle as its eye crossed us. We gave up inside its fury and just tried to save our heads as the metals came down.

The dust devil soon met its bête noire in a small opening of a wall and died. The funnel collapsed and the dust fell down into the mother Earth. The rescuers salvaged us from the mangled tent and the operations to re-settle began. Soon enough, we were back into action and the only specks of dust were left inside the exposed hair. Our robust equipment withstood the tirade of the whirlwind and was back into the performance. We had become the cynosure of the arena as everyone came to seek our welfare and the performing robots stole their imaginations. The show went on and the Sun started its descent behind the westerly hills. The Chief Guest had seen the action unfolding and he walked towards us as the crowd thinned out. He had keenly observed the rugged pattern displayed by the robotic equipment and the humanoid component. Our team got thumbs up from him for bravely withstanding the onslaught of the whirlwind as we and our robots stood their ground.

Whirlwinds are an interesting phenomenon. Most of us have only heard about them or have seen them unfolding at a distance. We got the first hand experience of standing in its way and facing its fury. The initial battering was tough as dust and associated particles hit us like projectiles. The middle of the whirlwind was cold and silent and then the tail came down to churn the metal and the material. All this while, the Sun kept on moving towards its zenith and kept pushing the mercury to small notches higher. The whirlwind died almost as soon as it rose and left no trace of its existence.

The episode left me thinking about the whirlwinds in our lives. Everything around us seems like a song and a stage is set. As we move towards the stage of life, the wind starts churning the dust around it. Soon enough a whirlwind runs towards the hapless humans and crushes anything that comes its way-including well thought out dreams!! The swirling winds assume the dimensions of time and all that one can do is to wait to let the barrage pass away. Standing tall in the troughs of times is a hallmark of fighters. The whirlwind of time has no dimension. The fighter awakes at the first light to begin his journey. The Sun needs a chase as the darkness is destined to follow as the Sun dips. The lurking whirlwind needs just the right amount of heat, wind and dry dust to kick up its fury. The whistling whirlwind has no direction and it unleashes its might to anything that comes its way before dying down.

The Sun has its own share of flares and it is the bearer of all life recognized on this Earth. Its intents cannot be questioned. Sun follows its mundane routine days in and out. Sun is the symbol of life and whirlwinds represent the vagaries of time that the life experiences. The humans have to withstand the brunt of life as the Sun keeps on moving the counts of time. Brave humans stand the onslaught and wait for the whirlwinds to pass away. They collect the remains and build a new future. The new future continues their chase of the Sun and in turn the time. Those who give up keep on lamenting and repenting and their chase of the Sun and time ends as they refuse to stand after the barrage of the whirlwind.

Life is a great bet and at each stage the stakes keep increasing. The rising stakes are easier to fall as life encounters whirlwinds. The Sun needs a chase and the fighter collects his stakes, builds the life and continues the chase to live the life. So, keep chasing the Sun and take the challenges head on. The whirlwinds are just a phenomenon and do not last forever. The rising Sun demands chase. So, get up and get moving- do not let the chase die down.

   

WHO AM I?

Life is a funny bet-you win some and you lose some. In the end, humans cannot keep a score and give up on the bet. It is at the fag end of their lives that the humans end up auditing their lives, its bets and the one question that keeps haunting them is- Who Am I? This is a stage where the child inside humans returns again and many crave for a re-run as they finally discover as to who they actually are!! Fortunately, in the scheme of life there is no reset button and majority of humans rue their lost times and opportunities to attain the glory that was theirs for the taking.

25 June 1983, India had reached the Cricket World Cup finals at the Mecca of the game- The Lords. The pitch curator had nothing to lose as the host team England was already out of the finals and he left a grassy pitch for an encounter which was proclaimed to be an one sided affair. The mighty West Indians were just supposed to steamroll the meek Indians and pick up their 3^rd World Cup Trophy. The Indians had nothing to lose and they began with losing the toss as well. The bespectacled West Indian Captain Clive Lloyd has had a look at the grassy pitch and he called out his bowlers to have a go at the motley Indians.

The Indian Captain Kapil Dev was young but daredevil at heart. As he came back to send his openers out to face the mighty West Indian bowlers, he said, “Good luck boys, let us enjoy the game!”. How true it turned out to be!! The Indian team was reduced to 161 for the loss of 9 wickets and the gutsy Syed Kirmani hung out with an unsung Balvinder Singh Sandhu. Sandhu dug in his heels and the score reached 183 before Kirmani lost his stumps to the giant Michael Holding.

The Indians huddled together and the dressing room conversation was led by the Captain Kapil Dev. It is said that Kapil just told his boys to make the West Indians fight for each run and 10 good deliveries which can bowl them out. Kapil’s men knew that it was a unparalleled moment in their respective lives and each one gave his heart out to christen themselves from the Indian Cricket Team to the Kapil’s Devils. They had got the answer as to Who They Were or simply each one of them achieved the answer to the eternal question- Who Am I? Sandhu got Greenidge with a peach of a delivery, Kapil ran 20 yards back to take an unimaginable catch of Viv Richards and the wobbly Mohinder Amarnath gobbled up the West Indian lower order to stitch a historic win. The banter of West Indian fans reduced to a hush and the journalists in the ground had a tough time as they had to shed their crafted West Indian victory story into a new thought process. The 11 Indians shook up the entire Nation out of its slumber and achieved a forever “Hall of Fame” image. These men knew who they were and their lives were fulfilled forever as they entered their names into the life’s register forever as achievers.

Neil Armstrong was the first man to have stepped on moon. A look at Neil’s life reveals that he was an aerospace engineer, naval aviator, test pilot and an university professor. Before becoming an astronaut, Armstrong was an officer in the U.S. Navy and served in the Korean War. After the war, he earned his bachelor's degree at Purdue University and served as a test pilot at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics High-Speed Flight Station, now known as the Dryden Flight Research Center, where he logged over 900 flights. He later completed graduate studies at the University of Southern California.

A participant in the U.S. Air Force's Man in Space Soonest and X-20 Dyna-Soar human spaceflight programs, Armstrong joined the NASA Astronaut Corps in 1962. He made his first space flight, as command pilot of Gemini 8, in 1966 and thus becoming NASA's first civilian astronaut to fly in space. On this mission, he performed the first docking of two spacecraft, with pilot David Scott.

Armstrong's second and last spaceflight was as mission commander of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, in July 1969. On this mission, Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descended to the lunar surface and spent two and a half hours exploring, while Michael Collins remained in lunar orbit in the Command Module. Along with Collins and Aldrin, Armstrong was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Richard Nixon; President Jimmy Carter presented Armstrong the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1978; he and his former crew-mates received the Congressional Gold Medal in 2009.

During his life after the space odyssey, Neil would have received unmatched attention. He would have traveled and met scores of humans, each one of whom would have just looked at him with great awe and pride. A mere shake of his hand and a feeling of rejuvenation would have criss-crossed the minds. Neil Armstrong definitely would have got the answer to the proverbial question- Who Am I? He had to clear many qualification examinations to be the first human to step on the Moon along with Buzz Aldrin. Did he ever know that after him and Buzz, there would a phenomenal gap which many astronauts are still dreaming to fill up!! The bar of achievements keeps on increasing to gain an insight into the question- Who Am I?

Almost all humans have the ability to decipher the “Who Am I?” conundrum. The strengths and weaknesses play a game in the mind and the battle is more or less won if the correct choices are exercised. The external factors too play a key role in the exercising of choices of the human mind. Humans can break all barriers if the odds are against them and it is only when they give up that the battles are lost. A streaker generates raw courage to storm the play field. So does an astronaut who just counts his nerves before stepping out his gravity less environment to take a space walk. A pilot encounters vagaries of G forces to carry out a breathtaking spiral as fuel ignites his engines at his command. A soldier picks up his gun and meets the enemy head on to live or let die. A student works hard to scale his aim. The examples are numerous and galore as humans stretch out in their quest to find the answer to their own “Who Am I” quests.

Life can never be a bed of rose. Each human has to go through its vagaries and the World strives on its inherent chaos. This inherent chaos in the World is a direct outcome of the varied solutions that humans generate to achieve their respective answers to the “Who Am I” theory. Someone has rightly said that time is a good healer. But the corollary is also true that time is a bad beautician. The earlier the humans achieve their answers to the “Who Am I” quest, the better they can deal with the speed at which time turns their lives around.

Herbert Spencer coined the phrase “Survival of the Fittest” in his Principles of Biology (1864), in which he drew parallels between his own economic theories and Darwin's biological ones, writing, "This survival of the fittest, which I have here sought to express in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. Darwin has called 'natural selection', or the preservation of favored races in the struggle for life." In their quest for “Who Am I”, some humans outrun the others as their aims keep on making them carry out deft maneuvers. Their lives are pacy, hectic, exciting and do have a tendency to taper off towards the biological end. On the contrary, the humans who do not reach the conclusion of their “Who Am I”, lead a tapered life from the start to the beginning. Their aims wander far and wide and in the end they get the tag of “also ran” albeit for some distance.

The one good delivery of Balvinder Singh Sandhu, that running catch of Kapil Dev, the wobbly action of Mohinder Amarnath and the first step on the lunar surface by Neil Armstrong are all some points of life where these humans got their answers to their “Who Am I” question. We all can keep scourging our lives in oblivion, reach somewhere, make no one happy and keep us away from attaining our respective “Who Am I?” answers. All through our lives, we can keep supporting other’s quests for their own answers to the “Who Am I”- that is what human life is all about. But all that we need to find is – Who Am I?

Have you found your answer?