Smells like Teen Spirit

In the book the fifth dimension Sameer gets a thunderous applause for singing the song "Smells like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana....

What made this song one of the all time favourites of rock lovers?

Well it had an ultimate combination to attract fans of different genres

Lovers of classic rock like the Load up on guns... Part.  It starts with good melody in the verses. The beat is the basic rock rhythm.... 

Lovers of psychedelia and progressive rock love the 'Hello Hello' .... Stretch. Well I myself was most impressed by this part first, given my love for Floyd and the likes...

Then the famous chorus "With the lights out..." . Classic tune which is known by all Hard rock Lovers. You call it Grunge, You call it thrash metal, call it anything, but you cannot not like it ! The rhythms known as soul ll to any drum enthusiast would be a pleasure to play 

Any song which has variation in speed and loudness is bound to strike long time chords with the audience. This song is testimony to that

Any other classic songs that would fit into the above description?

Which cities define Urban India?

In the book The Fifth Dimension, Sameer asks the taxi driver in Norway whether he knows India...The Taxi driver replies that he knows Mumbai, Delhi and Pune.
Sameer is surprised that he knows Pune ahead of all the larger cities.... Pune was at best the eight largest city at the time the conversation occurred....

The taxi driver had his own reasons, but seriously which city defines Urban India the most? Which is the best?

Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkatta, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad or Pune?

My vote is Bengaluru at present because of the very cosmopolitian and economically balanced society...

Which one City would you vote to represent India?

Time as the fourth dimension?

In the book, 'the Fifth Dimension', Professor Savarkar speaks about the Fourth and the Fifth Dimensions of Space. Sameer, a first year MBBS student who is listening to him wonders how there could be a fourth dimension in space at all....

The location of anything we see can be explained easily by knowing three dimensions....its position relative to the x, y and z axes.... that is length, breadth and depth.... why should there be a concept of the fourth dimension at all?

The photo above is of a galaxy and gases surrounding a black hole 10 billion light years away....

Therin lies the answer.... We know in which direction the galaxy is..... it can be easily seen is it not?

Wrong! We don't know in which direction it is, but we know which direction it was 10 billion years back..... Light has taken much time to reach here.... We don't know where the galaxy is now... we can only say it was in this position along the x, y and z axes at a particular time 't'.

Although many scientists now believe otherwise, we now realize what a genius Einstein must had been to think out of the box... his concept of space-time as such a simple logic, founded the base of astrophysics.... it also stresses how less we know about our surroundings...

Could Pooja Savarkar be right? Could happenings (not talking about aliens here!) in our surroundings have bearing on the Earth? 

Sing for the moment

Song for the moment

In the book provisionally named as 'The Fifth Dimension', Sameer has different songs playing in the back of his mind in very key occasions of his life

"Its a Beautiful Day'' by Queen played on his mind on the day his proposal to the girl of his choice was accepted.

On the day, he decided that enough was enough with the girl he was still still trying to win over after she had walked out on him, the song by Pink Floyd kept ringing in his brain. . . "I took a heavenly ride throughout the silence, I knew the moment had begun, for killing the past and Coming back to Life"

This happens often to many people doesn't it? More to the musically inclined, but also to to most others.

Can the sporting few name one song that made the rounds in the brain at some time in their life with their spouse/fiancé around? 

(Please do not include old flames)

The one battle that only very few Indians actually have not participated in...

In the book provisionally named as The Fifth Dimension (fiction),  Kapil and Sameer enter into a fight on the cricket field, following which they do not speak for three days. . . Sameer clearly believed that six of his team's batsmen were out due to poor light.... Kapil was sure that he delayed the match to three days later so that they could win.

Before these few days, they had always been best pals... This aggression was clearly unnatural.... 

Both were important members in internationally supported missions in later life..... They were destined to achieve greater roles in future..... But this was one battle they just couldn't downplay.

Which Indian has not passed through this phase? 

Determination, strategy making ability, camaraderie, friendships, enmity, vocabulary (ahem) and reflexes all get enhanced here

Whether extremely rich or poor, every Indian passes through the phase of tough fights on the gully cricket ground atleast once in life.

Please leave your comments....

Friendship: Four types of.....

An eye opening scene from the book The Fifth Dimension.

An important day was over. The day that Sameer had waited eagerly for. The day was one of success for him. 

Sameer decided to celebrate. To party. With only his nearest and dearest friends. Suddenly, he realized that there were only two members who belong to this category. . .

It was 2008, Sameer was nearing 29. He now was a doctor; an internal medicine specialist in a corporate hospital. He probably interacted with fifty different people each day, many of whom were daily acquaintances. He probably had 300 plus friends on Facebook as well.

But whom would he call his best pals? Best friends with whom he could share everything with? Who knew him as much as much he knew himself? Only two people.

He knew them both since the latter part of the 1980s, his early school days.


How many of us fall into this category? We seem to have so many friends everywhere.... but how many of us have to really think when it comes to naming our 'real' best friends?

Friends, as I now believe, could be categorized into:

1. Best friends: (not your party and pub type pals). Friends who will be present everywhere in times of celebration and in times of gloom, and for whom you would be present at the same instances in his or her life.

2. Social friends and party bum chums.: They are the pals to be had fun with. More in number.

3. Professional friends. Many more in number. You probably would have them over for dinner also some times.

4. Old friends lost in the virtual social networks scene only. : Hundreds.... (remember those good days? we used to have great fun? ...where did you say you stay nowadays?)

Please let me know the numbers of people who fall in the first category in your life... I wanna know the average number as a statistic.

Seems Like We have Lived For Generations

Thinking that it may be better to make certain calls from a phone booth, Sameer and Ajay head out of Sameer's house to do so. The scene was in July 2008.

To his absolute astonishment, all the phone booths he knew existed around his house before he had moved to the hostel in 2003 no longer existed. He remembered the location of at least six of them around his house; none existed now. 

The nearest phone was found four kilometers away, and the phone booth owner was absolutely happy to see customers after ages!

The Novel Fifth Dimension Lives through a variety of changes in telecommunication within the lifetime of a person born in the seventies and early eighties

The life of a lower middle class person saw the following changes

1. No communication. Vacation meant no contact with your hometown for days together.

2. Letters: postcards, inlands and foreign land letters. Used to take days often a week to go across

3. Telephone where our mom and dad used to make us note every number we called in a book to check the bill later.

4. Trunk calls.

5. STD (oh boy, too much!)

6. ISD and phone booths to be in touch with near and dear ones

7. Email

8. Mobile chargeable outgoing and incoming.

9. Mobile phones with made to order plans.

10. Chat Messengers.

11. Orkut: sensationalized communication

12. Facebook

13. Whatsapp...

14. Internet based video calling.

Once I rummaged and found a letter written by my uncle in 1985 from Doha to Pune. It had taken seven days for the letter to have reached. My reply to him would have reached seven days later. Shit do I myself belong to some old old generation or what?