MY CPU CRASHED INTO THE NEYVELI THERMAL STATION ASHPOND

MY CPU CRASHED INTO THE THERMAL STATION ASHPOND
Yes. You heard it right.
The Central Processing Unit (CPU) of my Computer crashed into the Thermal Station Ash Pond.
How? You may ask.
Ok. Here is the story.
I have to go around 100 years back – to the beginning of the 20th century. Yes. I have to. No, don’t stop me, you had asked for it. So to the beginning of the 20th century when Modern English Literature was being created.
Modern English Literature at that time saw several new trends. Writers started experimenting in the background of a shell shocked society which saw the First Great World War (1914-1918).
In sharp contrast to the Romantic age which preceded this era, the beginning of the 20th century saw the revival of stark realism pervading all spheres of life, including literature.
Writers like Ezra Pound, Hume and T.S. Eliot wrote about decay, decadence and destruction more than anything else. “I will show you fear in a handful of dust” famously wrote Eliot. Carrying the baton forward was a writer called – James Joyce. Experimenting being the buzzword, James Joyce took experimentation to the next level. His most famous work was published roughly around 1920 – the famous Novel called ULYSSES. No, it is not to be confused with a poem by the same name composed by Alfred Lord Tennyson, whose lines we might have come across at school. (The most popular line in that poem being – “To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield….” which may ring a bell)
I am talking about ULYSSES the Novel (if it can be called one). The novel, written in an experimental mode, had a bizarre singularity. James Joyce himself had reportedly felt that the novel would keep professors of Literature engaged in debating over what he meant to say! The Novel consisted of roughly 300-400 pages. The biggest unique character about the novel was – the whole novel talks of 1 day in the life of one character, one Mr. Bloom, I think. The second stupendous fact is that the whole novel is all about the thought processes in the mind of this only character. This kind of technique, where an attempt was made to record the plausible flow of thoughts in the mind of a man in 24 hours, was called the “Stream of consciousness”.

Plainly put, “Stream of Consciousness” meant the flow of thoughts that keep streaming into our mind without any real logic or coherence or relation.
Essentially, it is extremely difficult for us to recall our thoughts in their entirety that go through our mind even in the last couple of minutes! And we must have all experienced the way our mind “connects” thoughts that seem illogical and devoid of any sequence.
For example, I see my son just idly kicking the football around, I think of Pele, the footballer, then suddenly it strikes me that Pele was of Black race and that Lincoln had fought for the rights of the Blacks and how I did not know much about Lincoln during school days as our history teacher probably did not deal much with this topic and it was one Mr. Arul Mary Joseph who taught us history and yes, I had seen Mr. Arul Mary Joseph this morning as he lived near my house, but why did the NLC Management not yet allot him a higher Type of Quarters to the Vice-Principal of a school, the NLC Management’s policies were baffling, must find out the logic behind this from the Allotment Section of Township Administration Department and yes, today, someone had asked me to clarify some doubt with the Allotment Section of Township Administration as I was working in the Township Administration Department, who was he?, Yes that newly appointed Graduate Engineering Trainee, of course he was from Andhra, that’s why he had approached me, by the way, this Andhra state seems to be going from bad to worse……….. So many thoughts flowing in probably less than 2 minutes!!! My mind had traversed from my son to Lincoln and to Mr. Arul Mary Joseph and so on and if you asked me to recall these thoughts in the exact sequence that they went through my mind in those 2 minutes, I really would find it extremely difficult to do so.
Keeping track of this stream of consciousness in the mind of a fictitious character is an onerous task indeed and that is what James Joyce attempted. It was a path breaking attempt but of course, did not find much acceptance among common people as the novelty was probably too complicated to be appreciated by the common reading public.
Now, when I was replying to a Mail from my friend, explaining the reason for the delay in sending him a reply, I started to say “My computer crashed”. But I had to be truthful and more specific, so I corrected myself by providing the specific – the problem was with the Central Processing Unit, the CPU, the small fan inside the CPU was not functioning and the computer serviceman had replaced it with a new one.
But this “crash” theory stuck in my mind. I wanted to use the phrase “computer has crashed” as everyone says, fashionably!!! (like it is a fad to say nowadays that the movie “hit the screens”; we used to say “the film released”) So, I finally settled the issue by saying – The CPU of my Computer crashed instead of using the more common colloquial “Computer repair”.
Immediately, the Stream of Consciousness manifested itself.
Somewhere in my sub-conscious mind, “crashed” related itself to a Plane Crash and in turn my mind reasoned that it is common for planes to crash into the ocean…..later, the black boxes are “recovered”, so now, my computer has also crashed into some body of water, and its Black Box, the CPU was “recovered”…..Neyveli had no ocean or sea or river or lake except the Thermal Ash Pond….. so yes, my computer had to “crash somewhere into that Ash Pond…”, the Thermal Ash Pond…………….it’s the Stream of Consciousness, folks…!!!