Metamorphocyst

Scene1: A few days ago, I came to know that my son loved a song from one of the recent tamil movies – the song is “Vazhai Meenuikkum Vilangu meenuikkum” from the movies Chittiram Pesudadi (which I thought is a pretty decent movie for director who is making his debut). The song itself is in the Gana genre of tamil songs (folksy). My wife had found an internet site from where he could play the song; but he knew if that something were to happen to the network connection, he can hear that song no more. So his goal was to get the song to play on “winamp”, as he calls it. Which implied a download session; and hence my project to download that song started. After googling for the song, after several aborted attempts including a network failure, I could download the song only on the 2^nd day of the project. As I had told him that I had downloaded the song, there was unmitigated joy in him. He was so happy, that he gave me a hug, sat next to me to hear the song out (a couple of times, if I may add, including restarting from the middle of the song again), and doing a sing-along. He was so glad that he could now hear the song regardless of how the network turns out – “its on the winamp”, as far as he was concerned. I looked at him and I could see that he was just overjoyed at that moment; unadulterated joy over a simple thing. Those were so exciting and fulfilling. No grand things. Be excited about one that touches one in away that is not fathomable. A clean refreshing statement on innocence.

Scene2: For the past month or so, I have been thinking of buying a new TV, partly influenced by the fact that one of my friend has bought a 36” Plasma TV; but mostly influenced by the need to have the progressive scan feature on my TV, so that my DVD player that has the feature of progressive scan is compatible with the TV; it gives clearer picture, I was told; and I needed better picture clarity of the DVD movies I would like to watch. So, did my DVD player have the progressive scan feature? It does now, after I replaced the older one, since the older one did not play some of the DVDs well enough. Now that my new player has a feature that cannot be enabled by the existing TV, I’m looking to replace the TV. My existing TV is a 29” model that is working perfectly (well, not so perfectly, but that’s my excuse anyways J ). So, the chain of wanting new things is now on. I wonder if the new TV would lead to connecting my home theatre and finding that I need a sub-woofer, which would perhaps leading to changing the whole speaker set; and perhaps then the upholstery… the possibilities are endless. All for that probable two hours in a week, utmost, of watching a DVD movie…

With human imagination and wants, like I said, possibilities are endless – we have reversed the natural cycle of evolution. We have learned to change from a beautiful butterfly to an ugly moth!!!