Me head's gone to dogs

I observed the passing of time by watching the second hand of my watch move second by second to a minute and then starting all over again. In the background words were being spoken. A few enter my brain through my ears while most reflect away and float around aimlessly. I preferred observing the passing of time than understanding the words uttered by the learned ones, who are learned enough to utter words on immense intelligence. I have come to a phase of my life where intelligence is of little use for me. I prefer the pointlessness of a string of words over profoundness. For example, Facebook threw the following at me yesterday.

How does spider man think of such witty comebacks?

Because with great power comes great response ability

Or for that matter, the following.

Me: Someone we know is possessed by an owl

Friend: Who?

Me: [narrows eyes]

And sometimes something like this.

Today a clown opened a door for me. I thought "Nice jester."

And during desperate times, the following.

What is Neil Armstrong's name in Tamil?

Nila Armstong, obviously.

As silly as the above statements sound, they have an inherent intelligence embedded within. Also, they are not profound enough to make one feel queasy. But for some reason, I find myself surrounded by people spouting statements filled to the brim with profoundness. For years there have been people around me uttering profoundness and I have desperately tried to understand them. But no! In some ways, they are important for evolution and they are in our midst showing kindness to the illiterate by revealing the meaning of life and all other nonsense embedded in it.

At times, I have tried to raise my own thoughts to the profound levels. Regardless of the words I used I found that thoughts remained mundane and ordinary. For a few years, I cheated myself into believing that my thoughts suffered due to my limited vocabulary. A few months back I realized that the problem was not with my vocabulary. My mind refused to move out of the mundane and the lower than mundane levels. Once I saw a dog excreting by the side of a road and I remembered reading an article a few years back, in the BBC, that dogs positioned themselves in the north-south direction when they attempted to defecate. But this dog was not positioned in the north-south direction. I started observing other dogs as they when through the defecation process. None of them were positioned in the north-south direction. As a result, an important question rose in my mind "Who is at fault? Did the publisher of the article pick too small a sample size? Or have the dogs in our country not been taught about defecating by positioning themselves in the north-south direction. As I think about it, I think the latter could be the reason. The dogs in our country too are stuck in the issue of illiteracy. Poor dogs".

You see the problem! My thoughts are stuck at the rear end of a dog. If you notice, the problem is not with vocabulary. I used the word 'defecate' instead of putting it plainly as 'shit'. So the problem is not with the vocabulary. It's the thought! How do I raise myself to profoundness? I am as close to profoundness as humans are to finding extra-terrestrial beings. The only silver lining in this cloud is that people have started mistaking my attempts at profoundness as humour. Every time I utter something profound they find me humorous or sarcastic and laugh their hearts out. They praise my "humour sense" and at times pat my back too. It's a good way to hide my humiliation but I try to hide my pride.

... skip - skip - skip - skip. One hour and 12 minutes since we started. Another God knows how many minutes for this session to end.

A charmer, on whose forehead I see the words profound written in 73 languages has started reading. I can't read all the 73 languages but the few language I can read have made me understand it is all profound and so the remaining 69 language should be referring to profound too. I sigh and look at him with envy. They are six or seven characters around who know everything about everything on this planet. They probably know what my thought was when I was twelve years, three months, two days, seven hour, fourteen minutes and sixteen seconds old. Not that they would be interested to know! The trick is not to let them look straight into your eyes. I usually look at the leaf of a tree that sways behind their head when I talk to them or they talk to me.

... skip - skip - skip - skip...

The issue was deeper than I thought. I was not just disinterested in the conversation but have started imagining that they were conversing on a topic interests me. They seemed to be talking about dogs! Not defecating dogs; even my imagination refuses to bring down their esteem to such depths.

DISCLAIMER: If the reader, if any, believes that I am a dog lover from my constant reference to dogs, I want to make it clear that I am not a dog lover. I don't hate dogs but I am not the type who hugs dogs and bring them home as pets. I remember having a dog at home when I was seven. I did not bring the dog home, my uncle did. I don't think any of the people at home, including the uncle who brought the dog home, were dog lovers either for they named the dog loda loda. It comes from the phrase "yenda loda lodannu satham podre?" ("Why are making the loda loda sound?"). But our roads are filled with dogs and one cannot help notice them and think about them.

To my ears. it seemed that the profound ones were discussing the cause for dogs chasing vehicles. Ehhh! May be not for my ears for ears don't think or understand or reach a conclusion. So it was probably my mind and not my ears. I think the conversation went thus.
"Why do dogs bark at vehicles and chase them?"
"By vehicles do you mean cars or buses or lorries?"
"Mostly cars, but at times vans and a few times buses too."
"OK! It's good to be specific."
"That's true! One has to be specific and not vague."
"Agreed! So do you mean cars or buses or vans or lorries."
"Let us consider cars first."
"Two wheelers too."
"Yes, yes! Two wheelers too. But let us limit our discussion to cars."
"It's dangerous for the rider of a two wheeler than the driver of a car."
"True, true! But let us limit our discussion to cars."
"Eh! What are we discussing?"
"We are trying to discern the reason for dogs barking and chasing cars."
"Which cars?"
"What do you mean 'which cars'?
"Do you mean small cars or mid-sized cars or luxury cars?"
"How is that important? I was only thinking cars."
"No. We cannot generalize. It is better to first look at the specifics before we move to generalization."
"I agree! The specifics might throw up details that we might miss otherwise."
"I have noticed that the dogs tend to focus on the car and not the driver. It does not understand that the driver is controlling the car."
"Hold on! Let us not jump the gun. Let us first decide the area of focus."
"True! We might end up missing the details."
"It is also true that the dogs are not very consistent. Some days they do not bark at a car but on other days they do."
"You mean they do not bark at the same car they had barked earlier."
"Yes! That queer."
"Wait, wait, wait, ..."
"Maybe dogs are moody."
"But hold on ..."
"Cats are moody and not dogs."
"Cats! Cats don't bark!"
"Of course not! Cat meow!"
"Is meow an accepted word in English?"
"Yes it is. Like caw-caw!"
"Caw-caw is not English."
"Wait a minute! Hold on! We are discussing about dogs chasing cars."
"Did we decide on which car? You see we might miss important insights if we do not discuss the specificity of the issue. We should not try to generalize too quickly."

The discussion had turned a corner and come back to where it started. I was hearing Elton John's "Circle of Life" and started to hum the tune. My neighbour stared at me. I asked her the reason for the stare by pulling up one of my eyebrows. She whispered "Your humming is too loud". I was shocked and asked "What! Are you following the discussion?" "Of course I am and you are distracting me. This is an important issue. So you should listen to." I did not consider dogs chasing cars to be an important discussion point but I could not tell her so for I was not sure if they were discussing about dogs and cars. Actually, I had no idea about the topic under discussion. I was stuck in a parallel universe that was truly ridiculous unlike this seriously ridiculous universe. I covered up with a "Hmmm! Aaaaah!" and looked at my watch. It screamed at me "Its five minutes since tea time." I shook my head at the watch. Obviously, it came from the other universe and had no idea about the profound thoughts being discussed. I whispered quite firmly to my watch "You better watch your attitude, watch. Tea is nothing but a hot drink but this conversation is important. They are not talking about dogs chasing cars. The implications of this discussion are important and it is imperative you do not disturb me. It is time you placed your impatience under watch, watch."

Tea time went by and lunch time was not in the distant future and yet the discussion has not come to an end. As a matter of fact the points under consideration were so profound that they have not even started discussing them. I look around the room and see 7.35 people sitting with their hands up in the air in an attempt to put forward their profound thoughts. I looked at the seriousness on their faces and felt the heat of their eagerness. I realized the topic under discussion was important and attempted to listen.
"What if the dog goes too close to the car?"
"Which car are you talking about? Small, midsize, large or luxury?"

I gave up! My mind, that is if I possess one, had gone to dogs and can never achieve anything profound. I looked at my watch and started discussing about the best tea shops in the country with it .