Delhi Diaries: 2

So it's been a semester and a half and Delhi has been treating me well. Things have not cooked up much since the last post but yeah I have made a few more acquaintances in this alien land. Lately, I have been introspecting on how my life would have been had I chosen to stay back in Kolkata. More soulful, definitely. But dull, nonetheless. That little adventure in every mundane task, that perpetual feeling of thrill, that feeling of brazen liberty, ah, that's something that makes Delhi worthwhile.

College has been the same though. Those same blunt stares, that alien like treatment and those pitiful eyes all gazing down at me every time I am found perched alone in the ever so cheerful canteen. Its weird how solitude has become such an abstract concept amongst the so called modern college goers. I have lost count of how many times unknown faces have come lingering around asking the same banal questions " why do you always stay alone? " " Don't you get bored?". It's not that I like it all the time of course, this being alone thing, but it has always been like this. I have never been good with people. I could never tolerate the obsequious, loud and showy ones.

I might be perceived as an anomaly in today's generation. A diversion from the stereotypical undergraduates. But awkward as it may sound, I've never been more proud of myself. It's true that I feel terribly lonely at times and burn with jealousy when I see those groups on the lawns happily chortling and breaking into smiles. But every good thing comes with a price right? Moreover it was my own decision to leave behind my city and come to Delhi. My roommate has been such a blessing for me. Perhaps, she is the reason which makes me say that Delhi is good. And my totally unexpected reunion with my high school love has left me spellbound of course. So practically I am left with these three people in Delhi. My only three lifelines. Her, him and HIM.

Watching movies have become an almost quotidian task for me. One or two everyday. Sometimes more but rarely less. Studies had taken a back seat for like a month in between when I had lost my head in the infamous Delhi University fests. In fact I had even invested a tremendous amount of time organizing one at our college without realizing how pointless it all was. Obviously, it ended up to be almost cataclysmic and then I spent the next few days regretting every single second that I wasted.

I also spent a considerable amount of time touring around in Delhi with my beloved boy. Well, you do know what happens when old love is rekindled, don't u? I suppose I have covered every place worth visiting. There have also been midnight parties. Big, fat, ugly ones! I danced like crazy. I got drunk like crazy. I collapsed like crazy. Perks of being 18. Haha. So now summing up everything, I am happy. Things are going as per my wish. I have got three wonderful people by my side. Life's good. 
Till the next time, adios.

Of esoteric forces and invisible rippples!

Of late, Einstein's 'gravitational waves' has created quite some stir in the world of science. And I reckon that its repetitive appearance in news headlines' might have made even the laymen curious. But owing to the utterly pedantic explanations given in the various articles, I suppose they have not been of much help to the non scientific community. So the question still persists, WHAT EXACTLY ARE GRAVITATIONAL WAVES?

To start with let's recall what gravity is. Yes, it's the mysterious force that helps you to walk about on the surface of Earth. To be a bit more precise, it's the force with which everything attracts every other thing with a magnitude, which, in ordinary cases is so less that its effect becomes unnoticeable. Now according to Einstein, there is more to gravity than just this. He, in his general theory of relativity says that gravity is not a force at all! It's just a consequence of the space time curvature, meaning that the dark sea in which all our planets float around is not really shapeless. It's got some particular geometry. And gravity is a result of this geometry. Okay, now try to digest this fact without much speculation.  And according to Einstein, when any mass moves, it leads to a change in this geometry. And this change, people, is communicated throughout the whole universe in the form of waves or ripples. That is what a gravitational wave is. Come on, its not that recondite, is it? Read on.

Now you must be thinking that masses keep moving around all the time so how in the world it took them so long for its detection? You see, these waves are not emitted by all moving masses. That honour just belongs to certain accelerating ones! So even though a lot of ripples trespass earth every single second, their intensity is so less that it's beyond the measuring capacity of our present day detectors. Now it's worth mentioning what actually happens when a gravitational wave passes through a certain region.

If you have ever noticed, when you throw stones in a pond, rippples are seen to emerge from that point and spread out in the form of circular waves and if a cork is placed in their path, it is found to bob up and down. The same happens in the case of gravitational waves. The region through which it passes gets stretched and the region adjacent to that gets strained. This is exactly what was exploited by the LIGO detectors. So there happened to be a massive collision between two binary pulsars( they are just super dense, radiation emitting stars, duh!) billions of light years away. And the emissive gravitational waves contained such a huge amount of energy that even after reaching Earth the strain produced by them fell within the limits of detection of our earth bound detectors!

Now automatically the next question should be, what use are these mysterious ripples of? Now this would require some knowledge of science so I'll just skip the explanations and brief the result. You see, the radiations(EM radiations) that our present day astronomers use for the study of early universe cannot provide them with information about the first few minutes of the Big bang, nor about certain dark, sophisticated, mysterious objects located far far away from us, so gravitational waves now come to their rescue. This is what all that rejoicing was about. Of course, the detection of gravitational waves has paved way for new cutting edge research and it will forever remain one of the greatest scientific milestones in the history of humanity.

Book Review:1

Rebecca

                                                                           -Daphne Du Maurier

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.."
Even after half a century, Daphne DU Maurier's Rebecca continues to win hearts with its captivating plot and unpredictable twists. Originally published in 1938, this book has gained critical acclamation from critics all over the world and has been the recipient of the Anthony award for best novel of the century and the National book award for fiction. It has also been adapted as a movie by Alfred Hitchcock. This book, being a delightful juxtaposition of mystery and romance, has been at the zenith in the field of Gothic literature. The steady growth of suspense and the beautiful narration makes it totally engrossing and unputdownable.

The story kick starts with the heroine dreaming about a visit to Manderley, all deserted and ruined. The author does an excellent job here, describing the bucolic mansion in every bits and pieces, giving it an almost life like image. The plot then regresses back to how it all started. Mr Maximilian De Winter, the landlord of Manderley, was on one of his usual visits to the city of Monte Carlo, Italy. There he had a chance meeting with the snobbish Mrs Van Hoppers and the narrator. The narrator was a paid companion to Mrs Hoppers in relation. To quote from the text, "She is an employer. She's training me to be a thing called a companion, and she pays me ninety pounds a year." The narrator and Mr. De Winter got to know each other very closely in this short interval and by the end of the trip the narrator had landed up with a marriage proposal from 'Maxim' to which she happily consented.

Getting married to Maximilian De Winter was almost a dream come true for her, for now the infamous Manderley belonged to her. The first few days at Manderley were good excepting the cold reception by the housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers. But as said by Maxim, she was an 'extraordinary' character and just a housekeeper by profession so she could be ignored. The narrator's gauche manners were directly in contrast with the royal aura of the place but Mr. De Winter, being an perfect gentleman, never let her feel out of place. Her happiness turned out to be quite ephemeral though. As days passed she got subsumed by the ghost of Rebecca. It was as if her spirit lurked everywhere, in every nook and corner, of the humongous mansion. She realized how Rebecca had set a high standard for the position of the mistress of the house and how she would never be able to live up to it.

The sinister housekeeper was responsible to a great extent for intimating such feelings in her. She always dropped subtle signs indicating that she was no match to the former Mrs De Winter. It was not long before she noticed a marked change in the behavior of Maxim as well. He seldom used to get quiet. He used to stare outside the window blankly , with a lost look in his eyes and a deathlike pallor on his countenance and she knew then that he was thinking of Rebecca. Mrs Danvers'  diabolical intentions got very clear after she made the narrator dress up exactly like Rebecca at a grand ball at Manderley, thus creating a deep chasm between the two De Winters. She further glutted her mind with stories of how much Maxim loved Rebecca, how depressed he was on learning of her death, how he used to 'walk up and down the library' in agony for hours, how he had lost his mirth after her death. The young Mrs De Winter, helpless as she was, believed in all of these false conclusions.

Had it not been for the dramatic turn of events that took place next, their marriage would have been at stake. A diver accidentally chanced upon Rebecca's boat and to everyone's surprise, there lied a body in the boat's cabin. After much inquiry and speculation, Mrs De Winter dawned upon the fact that it was Rebecca's body itself and it was none other than her beloved husband who had murdered her. She then learned of their unsuccessful marriage, the notorious character of the woman adored by all and most importantly the fact that Maxim never loved Rebecca. Even though murder is a treacherous deed, unforgivable by all means, Mrs De Winter stood by her husband through all the odds in an attempt to save him from getting convicted. And even though they succeeded at that, Rebecca won in the end for upon returning at Manderley, they found it on fire. She succeeded in taking away from Maximilian De Winter his only great possession.

Although it's an open ended story, it can be clearly concluded from the circumstances that it was Mrs Danvers who had set the mansion on fire. It is worth noting at this point that the name of the narrator had been taken only once in the entire story which according to me might just be another tool to highlight the fact that even though Rebecca was dead in person, she still remained the true Mrs De Winter in essence. It has also been an outstanding effort on the part of Du Maurier to make the presence of Rebecca felt so deeply at every point of the narrative thus justifying the title. All in all, it is an extraordinary book with an extraordinary theme and extraordinary characters which is sure to keep you enraptured till the very end.