Author Archives: Arun

In retrospect, now I consider myself a romantic ever-imaginative artist who chose to become a chip-designer for the thrill in it.

A chip is a combination of silicon with embedded logic that works on a series of guided electric pulses running from one point to another within it. It’s rigid, limited and yet time-consuming to design and build… making innovation all the more difficult.

However, the artist in me still imagines in unbounded space and dreams of improvements to the chip (among other things). Often they seem outright ridiculous or over-ambitious. Then I sit down with a pencil and one of my son’s old notebooks and focus to bring order into the chaos – design things no one may have attempted before (in the context of my area of technical expertise).

It’s not about a patent or the money or showing-off my capabilities, it’s about the satisfaction in making something new.

Think of Dali’s surreal paintings and Queen’s flamboyant music. I would exchange my life in return for the capacity to compose one “You Take My Breath Away” or paint one “The Persistence of Memory”. How much satisfaction would those creations have brought to the creators? Would material rewards matter? They just created because they savoured the joy of creation.

And remember Michelangelo striking Moses’ knee with a hammer close to completion and exclaiming “Now, speak!”?

As usual, I will descend steadily in the sad strings of the violin, drink to your dreamy eyes as long as I can resist the oblivion I wish to get lost in. I know you won’t let me into your pain and perhaps I’ve learnt not to care anymore. I can no longer remember the last time you paused to ask how I am doing. Nowadays the indifference is mutual. Not that I’ve lost a flavour of myself… you must have been a dream in my vulnerable solitude. Not that I mourn your absence… I’ve been alone all along.

When you worry in vain like a mute caged bird… and you realise you can only hope for the best, wish things would turn around but you don’t have the right to ask or know.

Each time I say goodbye my heart breaks into a million pieces. I tell a cliché joke, feign a smile and don’t turn back lest the sadness in my eyes turns you gloomier. And with each receding footstep I strive to prepare myself to repeat it.

What’s the point of music if it can’t reach and illuminate man’s darkest depths?

The reason I go on a trip each year is the anonymity. I hardly care about the place or the people or the diversity. All places are unique, all men are predictable. My mind occasionally wanders off to far better places.

Something you yearn for so long that when you get it, it has turned meaningless.

No matter what I hear, I always find my solace in Tagore. My heart overflows in inexplicable joy when it’s Rabindrasangeet, my soul surrenders itself to the overwhelming influence of a power beyond my limited comprehension, my insignificant life offers itself to the prospects of becoming one with the eternity. No wish, no sorrow, no regret left… the irresistible lure of a void that’s complete in itself.

And then there are those days I would crave to be the companion of a Baul or a Fakir and walk into the remotest places in Bengal, where people still remember how to love folk music, live within nature, offer a stranger a lunch or a dinner and a warm corner to sleep at night. I would love to know them, see the smiles in their wrinkled faces despite the hardship in their daily lives.
I design complex systems, but I am ever-jealous of the design in simplicity.

It was a cold drizzling day. I spent most of the time in the balcony working till I realised it’s dark. I stared at the disappearing sky for a while. All of it resembled the widening distance between us. Soon nothing will be left. This old apartment was sealed a few years ago. Someone jumped from the balcony.