He succeeded in upturning meaning and breaking narrative the first time we met. Let’s just say he ‘liberated’ verbal communication from the staid bindings of logic and symmetry. In the manner of Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, Roald Dahl, and Dr. Seuss. Maybe his was a case of the need to indulge in a natural, vibrant, free-flowing kind of expression after the heady throes of having graduated from the straight-laced Indian Institute of Chartered Accountants, Madras.
I talk of my First Mate, who cracked a joke and drew a smile from the serious, earnest academic – me – the first time we met, after our respective parents had approved of an initial meeting via the marriage broker. At that time, 12 years ago, I was nursing a crush on chaos theory…mainly because a dreamboat called Jeff Goldblum had mentioned it in ‘Jurassic Park I’…and also because ‘good’ Indian girls from ‘respectable’ families (I, for example) had been strictly instructed since birth to steer clear of ‘interests’ of a more earthy kind. And so our passions during adolescence and young adulthood were spent upon books or music or sports or art, etc. No Veronica Lodge pursuits here. Anyways, my amateur explorations of chaos theory had been extremely exciting. In vain did I keep trying to find a reason to incorporate its very cool concepts in my thesis. So when the First Mate spouted such nonsense as “a slice of tea and a cup of bread” or “the molar ice caps”, for instance, with a straight face, you can rest assured that I was very taken indeed. Years later, thanks to having had my brains addled by the First Mate's non-linear vibrant expression (and possibly dehydration from not having stopped for tea) I would ask the way to Vaida Male and elicit a fountain of giggles from an affable old Londoner.
Chaos theory had its seed in the non-linear math of Henri Poincare during the early 20th century. Similar expressions of the bizarre have been made in the surrealistic art of Dali, and the irrational anti-logic of Dadaism. As per chaos theory, all systems are said to be in flux – interchangeable between order and chaos. One finds the seeds of order in chaos and vice versa. Language evolves (French as well, in accordance with the stringent measures of the Academie Francaise), with the exception of Latin, the ‘dead’ language. Academic theory keeps changing ever so often after short periods of stagnation. Businesses change in strategy - essential for their survival and evolution. Just as our skin cells are constantly renewing themselves after the old ones slough off, just as trees sprout new leaves, and sharks newly positioned rows of teeth, so also all systems must renew themselves through re-creation.
But neither is all change synchronous, nor linear, nor predictable. We see this while forecasting risks in the equity markets. Systematic risk (market macro-economic risk from unexpected wars/ man-made and natural disasters/ fluctuating exchange rates/ etc) cannot be diversified away and hence must be factored into the risk and return of an investment. Similarly, Lorenz’s ‘butterfly effect’ is also not predictable. The flapping of a butterfly’s wings may set off a series of events in a non-linear system that could or need not result in a tornado. What makes the difference is the set of conditions for the one or the other. Perhaps like the ‘choose the next scene and decide the storyline’ kind of adventure or horror novels that became popular in the 80’s. Or perhaps like the challenging of narrative sequence by such films as ‘Mulholland Drive’. Or like running a simulation in a Statistics class, using a different variable each time. Whatever be the result, the point is that this asynchronous, non-linear, unpredictable metamorphosis is continually taking place within us and in the universe all around us, on different levels. It is a reflection of the creative force of the universe. To quote Dylan Thomas:
I talk of my First Mate, who cracked a joke and drew a smile from the serious, earnest academic – me – the first time we met, after our respective parents had approved of an initial meeting via the marriage broker. At that time, 12 years ago, I was nursing a crush on chaos theory…mainly because a dreamboat called Jeff Goldblum had mentioned it in ‘Jurassic Park I’…and also because ‘good’ Indian girls from ‘respectable’ families (I, for example) had been strictly instructed since birth to steer clear of ‘interests’ of a more earthy kind. And so our passions during adolescence and young adulthood were spent upon books or music or sports or art, etc. No Veronica Lodge pursuits here. Anyways, my amateur explorations of chaos theory had been extremely exciting. In vain did I keep trying to find a reason to incorporate its very cool concepts in my thesis. So when the First Mate spouted such nonsense as “a slice of tea and a cup of bread” or “the molar ice caps”, for instance, with a straight face, you can rest assured that I was very taken indeed. Years later, thanks to having had my brains addled by the First Mate's non-linear vibrant expression (and possibly dehydration from not having stopped for tea) I would ask the way to Vaida Male and elicit a fountain of giggles from an affable old Londoner.
Chaos theory had its seed in the non-linear math of Henri Poincare during the early 20th century. Similar expressions of the bizarre have been made in the surrealistic art of Dali, and the irrational anti-logic of Dadaism. As per chaos theory, all systems are said to be in flux – interchangeable between order and chaos. One finds the seeds of order in chaos and vice versa. Language evolves (French as well, in accordance with the stringent measures of the Academie Francaise), with the exception of Latin, the ‘dead’ language. Academic theory keeps changing ever so often after short periods of stagnation. Businesses change in strategy - essential for their survival and evolution. Just as our skin cells are constantly renewing themselves after the old ones slough off, just as trees sprout new leaves, and sharks newly positioned rows of teeth, so also all systems must renew themselves through re-creation.
But neither is all change synchronous, nor linear, nor predictable. We see this while forecasting risks in the equity markets. Systematic risk (market macro-economic risk from unexpected wars/ man-made and natural disasters/ fluctuating exchange rates/ etc) cannot be diversified away and hence must be factored into the risk and return of an investment. Similarly, Lorenz’s ‘butterfly effect’ is also not predictable. The flapping of a butterfly’s wings may set off a series of events in a non-linear system that could or need not result in a tornado. What makes the difference is the set of conditions for the one or the other. Perhaps like the ‘choose the next scene and decide the storyline’ kind of adventure or horror novels that became popular in the 80’s. Or perhaps like the challenging of narrative sequence by such films as ‘Mulholland Drive’. Or like running a simulation in a Statistics class, using a different variable each time. Whatever be the result, the point is that this asynchronous, non-linear, unpredictable metamorphosis is continually taking place within us and in the universe all around us, on different levels. It is a reflection of the creative force of the universe. To quote Dylan Thomas:
“The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.
The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.”
This creative force of a kind drives my love for my First Mate – his twisting of words, his fearless whittling away at meaning, his dedication to teaching our boys new ways of approaching games/ learning/ situations, his ability to literally meet the land and bend it to his own terms...Taking a bite of my slice of tea, I raise my cup of bread to my crazy First Mate. Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.”
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