Unapologetic

A pair of glasses

2012-01-30T01:14:00.002+05:30

Ravi picked up his lunch box from the dining table. It was not the regular steel box, he had been using from the past couple of years. This was a taller variety with three polycarbonate boxes stacked one over the other inside a jacket. Most of his office colleagues carried one of these kinds that promise in flashy advertisements, to keep the food warm. He had earlier never thought of buying one for himself, simply because he never saw the need for one. His lunch was never more than two chapptis and some vegetables, sometimes paranthas and achhar or a humble sandwich which comfortably fit inside the steel box. But, of many things that would change in the years to come, marriage brought about this trivial change also, which honestly he was not much worried about. A taller lunch box could only mean a welcome change in his lunch menu; this brought a slight smile on his face, as he picked it up.

His was an arranged marriage. The eldest son of a Bihari middle class family, he did not have much of a choice. His father had called him two months prior to the wedding and announced the decision on him. As it always was, he had accepted it meekly, without saying much. The only time he had ever asserted his personal choice was in selecting a course during graduation. He was a Commerce graduate, the first in his family; though there were not many in the family tree that could either claim to be a graduate at all. His father was one. A science graduate of the early nineteen sixties and by that merit had also secured a position in one of the state government agricultural firms. This was no mean feat for his father or the family then, and along with a secure job it also helped his father to the top of the hierarchy of the family decision making matrix. “Offcer beta is never wrong,” the family would believe. His father still held to that axiom though Ravi would, sometimes, want to think otherwise. He had accepted the decision of his marriage and choice of bride with a pinch of salt. Not that he was in love with someone else, but he fathomed the idea. The years of being in Delhi had seeded the wish. His office was abuzz with love stories that he thought befitted the silver screen. There was Dubey and his love marriage, a story made of all ingredients that kept Ravi in rapture every time the former narrated it. More than the billet-doux of the story, Ravi would be fascinated with Dubey’s wife, Kriti’s bold and fearless nature. For someone who hailed from a native town in Uttar Pradesh, she had not thought twice before coming to Delhi in the sly to ask Dubey to marry her lest her father married her off to someone else. Ravi was a sucker for such a fearless and care-free spirit and would often dream of a wife like Kriti, sometimes blasphemously fantasising her as his own wife.

He had first met Richa on the day of their engagement which was a month before the actual marriage. She was selected and finalised by his father much before he had called Ravi to announce the decision and of the engagement date. His brother had shared her profile and photograph on mail. He remembers checking the mail long after the office hours lest others would catch him checking a girl’s photograph. He wanted to avoid all queries and discussions in the office regarding his marriage, more so because he had not met his bride to be till now. There were two photographs – one full length and the other, a close up. Obviously it was clicked for the occasion at a studio. She was wearing a saree and was decked up with light jewellery. Wheatish complexion, medium frame the full length photograph did not speak much, except that she was directed to appear coy and demure, as an Indian girl would required to be, especially if one is being clicked as a prospect for a marriage. The close up also came off more like a passport photograph, with her eyes trained direct towards the camera. They were kohled and deep brown as much he could make of reading a girl’s eyes. The nose seemed sharp and there was no smile on her lips. That was all he could make off the photographs and he did not spend much time on it then or even later. If he had an opinion, he either wise could not express. The decision was already taken by his father. The only consolation he drew from the profile was that she was doing her graduation in commerce from a local college. Not much ground for similarities, but he liked the subject. It was of his choice. Ravi had shut down his system and left. He would catch the 7.30 yellow line metro from IFFCO to Rajiv Chowk and then finally the Blue Line to Yamuna Bank. His life was a routine between the blue and yellow lines. Accommodation was cheap at Yamuna Bank and he was grateful to the Delhi Metro that made his travel easy to IFFCO Tokio, Gurgaon, where he worked as an accountant to make a living.

When he had first met her, Ravi could not exchange much conversation with Richa. It was anyway their engagement and though he would have liked some quiet moments with her, maybe speak to her a little and overcome his own shyness, none of all that happens in such an occasion. All one can manage are smiles and perhaps a word or two while the families are guffawing and exchanging greetings as if they have all known each other for generations. He had spoken to her a few times over the phone after the engagement but those could be written off as mere formalities of courtesy. Before long, they were married and Ravi was back to Delhi with his bride. Perhaps it was his hangover of Dubey’s love story and a mental image of a wife like Kriti that built an ice between him and Richa, so much so that even after they came back to Delhi, he would only have intermittent conversations with her. In the days from his engagement to marriage and then the week in Delhi, he had made an opinion of her – She was shy, not an excellent conversationalist and one of those kinds from his village who spent their whole life treating marriage and husband as a social responsibility. He had taken the extra week off without his father’s knowledge. He had planned it for a honey moon to Rajasthan, but had later settled it for a period of stay in Delhi taking Richa for a sight-seeing of the city. They visited all those places in Delhi synonymous for romantic getaways with a futile attempt to loosen up with each other. At the end of the week, after all the metro rides, eating at the stalls of Delhi Haat, ice-creams at India Gate, walks around Purana Qila, getting harassed by the Eunuchs at Lodhi Garden and shopping at various markets of Delhi, nothing had changed. The lunch box was purchased at one of these visits, at Lajpat Nagar and he would use it for the first time today.

He called out to her from the door, “Richa, I am leaving. Keep the doors locked and open only if necessary.” He paused, waiting for her to emerge from the kitchen, where she seemed to be perpetually locked since morning. She came out, wiping her hands against the pallu of her saree and stood in front of him. He looked at her once again, almost a nonchalant reassuring look, maybe expecting that she will change. Her coy nod was the last look he registered as he climbed down the stairs. It was 7:45 am and he had just fifteen minutes to catch the metro. He stopped a cycle rickshaw with a frantic call.

“Metro,” he ordered the rickshawalla.

Through the bumpy ride out of his lane, he began to take mental notes of a checklist of the things to do.

“Drinking water,” he heard himself. On the way he stopped the rickshaw in front of a kirana store and shouted to a boy at the counter, “Raju, please deliver two cans of water to my home.” He paused and thought for a moment and then almost shouted back immediately, “Forget it, I will take it myself in the evening.”

“Hurry,” he goaded the rickshawalla.

He made it in time. There was still two minutes before the metro reached the station. Ravi began to run through his check list again. It was almost after three weeks that he was visiting office and he wanted to be sure that everything was in place. He was in midst of his thoughts when the train entered the station.

He took a corner seat, once inside. He liked the corner seat. Sometimes he could catch a wink or two leaning against the fibre glass. Today, he began to run through his check list again.

“Mr. Gupta’s file,” he thought. He opened his bag and shuffled through the content. After a while he seemed satisfied. Two stations had passed; two more to go before he changed trains at Rajiv Chowk. Of the entire journey, he disliked this part the most. Rajiv Chowk during rush hours was nothing less than a Kumbh Mela. Even the most careful could get lost. He himself was disgusted and lost on the first day of his break journey. Over these three years he still found it difficult. He sighed as the train came to a halt and he made way towards the yellow line to Gurgaon.

He got a corner seat once again. “A lucky day,” he chuckled to himself. Once seated, he returned to his train of thoughts. He thought of his office colleagues and their reaction to his marriage. He was glad that none of them had attended his marriage though as a courtesy he had circulated an invitation a few days before leaving, fingers crossed that no one would want to attend the marriage in a far flung village of his state. Now that he was back they would ask him about his wife, his first night, tease him. He had seen all this happen with other colleagues never expecting that he would be subjected to the same situation some day. He could not talk much about Richa. He hardly knew her yet. Moreover, she would be nothing what he had thought he would have liked in his wife. Maybe, he could make it all up with imaginary stories about her. “That would not be right,” he heard himself saying almost simultaneously with the automated announcement system announcing that the next station is INA. Richa and he had visited INA market when they were at Delhi Haat. In fact it was also his first visit to the market in all these years in Delhi. They had bought some fruits from the market. He was appalled with the rates but had not expressed it to Richa. The same were available much cheaper in their local market.

“Market,” he thought to himself, recalling some items that he had to shop on the way back. She had told him last night that there were some kitchen items required. For a moment he had thought, he could ask her to get it herself, but then refrained from doing so after revisiting the mental image he had made of her.

The Metro was passing through the Qutub Minar station. He glanced out of the window to catch a quick glimpse of the Minar. In all these years he had never been inside the premises. Maybe, the coming weekend he would visit it along with Richa. A lady came and occupied the seat next to him. He squeezed himself little more to the glass fixing his eyes to the floor, stealing glances occasionally at her feet. She wore a red paint on her toes. He tried to recollect what colour Richa was wearing in the wedding. He could not. “Does she wear nail paint at all?” he thought.

Ravi’s thoughts began to numb as the train kept moving one station to the other. He caught a few winks, before he heard the announcement that the next station was IFFCO chowk. He rustled himself casting a quick glance around. The girl with the red nail paint was gone. There was actually no one beside him. The train was much emptier when it stopped at IFFCO chowk. Ravi got down and made way for the exit. It was 9:20 am. He would reach office on time, as usual.

IFFCO Tokio was huge building. An insurance company, the building housed over thousand employees. Ravi’s department was in the ninth floor. As the lift made its way up, he began a quick run through of his things to do at office. He was having a feeling he was forgetting something even as he came out of the lift and entered his office he could not figure out what. Lost in his thoughts he made way to his desk and was greeted by the peon.

“Welcome Sir,” the peon saluted him with a broad smile on his face. Ravi smiled back.

Once at his desk, his colleagues started to throng around him one after the other.

“Congrats, bhai”, “So how was it?”, “Where was the honey-moon?” questions and greetings came in from one and all. He smiled and replied to a few, accepting the greetings warmly. It would be only a short while before everything would settle down. And so it did - fifteen minutes after the initial euphoria, office was back to normal. Ravi sighed. He had already begun to get uncomfortable. After a breather, he began to pull out the files from his bag. He meticulously pulled out his stationary, the keys to his cabinet and then rummaged inside the bag to fish out his glasses. He was long sighted and needed them to read almost anything but to his horror he could not find the pair in his bag. Frantically, he pulled the bag open wide and peered in, but they were not there. He thought for a moment and then struck him what was missing in his check list - his glasses. It must be lying beside their bed where he had left the night before. He cursed himself. No glasses meant no paper work but that is not how his Boss would look at it. In a complete confused state he began to think of excuses. After a moment he thought that it was really not a big issue and he could honestly speak about it to his Boss. “That will be a good idea,” he said to himself and began to walk towards his boss’s cabin. He thought he heard someone calling his name. He turned around to see the peon walking towards him.

“Ravi Sir, Ravi Sir – Is your mobile not working?” he asked.

“My mobile,” Ravi exclaimed, giving him a surprised look. Fearing that he had left the mobile too, he made a frantic check in his pant pockets. He was relieved to find it. It was on a silent mode and there were some six missed calls, the last being from his office itself a few minutes ago.

“Arey Sir, the guard was calling you from the reception,” the peon went on. “Madam is waiting for you at the reception.”

“Madam?” Ravi blurted taking it as a bolt from the blue. “Who, madam?” he asked the peon.

“Sir, your wife,” he replied with the same broad smile on his face.

Ravi had already started to walk towards the reception. “Surely it cannot be,” he thought to himself, unsure, confused. “Richa cannot come so far by herself,” he had already started to walk in a faster pace towards the reception.

At the reception he looked around. There were some sales agents with their clients but seated on the sofa, in a green salwar suit, it was Richa. She stood up and smiled on seeing him. He could not smile back. He was shocked beyond belief. She held out her hand with his glasses inside the case. “You had left it next to the bed and I knew you cannot read a word without it. So..” she trailed her words trying to register his dazed look and an even more dazed smile at her.

He could not say it at that moment but he would do so, much later that he was in love with her and that he loved her pink nail paint. Much later he would also believe “Offcer beta is never wrong.”

Chronicle of a death foretold (and averted?)

2012-01-23T01:06:00.002+05:30

On the day he thought they were going to kill him, Salman Rushdie, got up at some time in the morning to wait for the news-rooms in India to wake up. He’d dreamed that he was not going to a Literature festival in Jaipur, where he was much in demand, and for an instant he was happy in his dream, but when he awoke he felt completely spattered with bird (read – tweet) shit.

Hope Marquez forgives me for borrowing these opening lines (and more so for tweaking them) from one of his classics – Chronicle of a death foretold. But, with all the recent focus (and growing) on Salman Rushdie, I could not help draw a parallel between Marquez’s protagonist in the novel, Santiago Nassar and him. Rushdie, if not in any other way, certainly is a perfect alter ego of Nassar in being a victim of a collective social consciousness. What more, just like everyone in the town knew that Santiago is going to be murdered, each of the esteemed guest and writers in Jaipur Literary Festival knew that the storm was coming moment Rushdie was announced as one of the speakers. For a moment this also seemed like a great politically correct ploy to generate more eye balls for the event. (Is it?) Having said so, when I look at the course of event, from the announcement of the organisers, the immediate uproar, the debates (between the intellectuals/the heathens – almost similar), Rushdie’s regret of absence to the organised sometimes honest and mostly fame piggy-backing support for him and his book-that-shalth-not-be-named, (see footnotes if you have to J) the whole episode seemed to be a chronicle of events foretold with the name Rushdie associated in India – the ‘secular-social-democratic’ state. So, why was the episode not avoided at all by the organisers? Was there an expectation that in a country where religious and minority politics are evergreen agendas will suddenly become tolerant to an issue that was raised 24 years ago? Not if you ask me and not in another 24 years because it is a collective will of the people that refuses to change.

The Vicario brothers never wanted to kill Santiago. They wanted someone to stop them and it is why they pronounced their intention loud. Santiago was murdered by the collective will of the people who considered him guilty on the word of Angela Vicario – the woman who he allegedly ‘perpetuated’. The Fatwa against Rushdie by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini was echoed in unison by many Muslim countries and nearer home by the hardliner Muslim bodies – but that was 1988. Over the years Iran has softened their stand on Rushdie but in India politics remain the same, perhaps even more dispersed and hence the chances of the author making a visit are even lesser. Yet, the esteemed organisers overlook this socio-political development of the country– so it was in the calling that this event makes news.

News it did make – in as well as out of the event allowing everyone and anyone who knew (or did not) anything about the author, Indian democracy and politics to make a statement or an argument, so much so that it also popped in after dinner conversations. If I were Rushdie, I would be careful, because this is what Santiago Nassar did not read into as the sign of his impending death. When people start making opinions based on a collective debate, the outcome could be fatal. There were only a select few who spoke for Nassar, most of others willed his death and so chose to be impotent spectators to the murder. The literary fraternity’s support for Rushdie is the select few and their voices cannot save the author from the slingshots of the bigger mass who in their impotency to such situations only can become willing participants to the attack. In this whole episode some have chosen to blame the government. (Chuckle) That is so easy – makes me feel that I could wake up tomorrow with malaria and blame that the government did not kill the mosquitoes. Seriously, this is lame because not all the security in the world can protect a man whose fate has been foretold by a socio-political history.

I do not suggest that Rushdie should be in hiding or that he should not come to India at all (for God’s sake he does not even need a Visa) but if he chooses to do so then he has to embrace the fate that he has sealed with his book and take a stand. Triggering a debate will only oil the rusty lamp. And if there should be a debate then it should not be whether Rushdie should come to India or not, rather it should be if the issue really affects the lives of the thirteen percent Muslim population in India. The ‘few-good-men-and-women’ who support the author will either wise continue to do so across the mediums. His coming to India or not really should not make the big difference. The real need which this event has actually catalysed is – Can we as Indian’s discard a religious socio-political history and come off as a truly democratic state, where art and its form are not licensed by petty sentiments? Not, if we do not begin to address this in our own social framework and practice democracy of thoughts towards religion and community. Till then we will continue to have these periodic debates that will die almost as soon as a four day festival comes to an end. (Or am I wrong?)

Note: I have only read the following of Rushdie – Haroun and the sea of stories, Midnight’s Children, The Moor’s Last Sigh, Shalimar the Clown, East, West, Fury and hence may have a limited outlook to the debate that all of us are so engrossed in. I could not get hold of the Satanic Verses yet, but I believe someone from JLF might just have smuggled a copy. Pity if after all this, someone has not managed to. J

Conquering fear in the time of love

2012-01-22T03:12:00.002+05:30

Fear springs at the oddest hour and place. The least one would expect is it to be associated with love, yet it goes hand in hand with the latter. If one is or was in love then fear is an association they cannot deny. Love conditions the mind to create an illusory world of expectations, which then becomes the raison-d’etre of love itself; losing it would be losing love in all, being the belief. Now, not that the axiom unconditional love is redundant for such a proposition but that, such a thought hinges on the hypothesis – Nothing is unconditional and love is not an exception.

In the Gita, Lord Krishna makes a reference to maya in Chapter VII, Verse fourteen. He tells Arjun,

“Hard it is

To pierce that veil divine of various shows

Which hideth Me; yet they who worship Me

Pierce it and pass beyond.”

The world is much fascinated by the reference to Maya or a state of illusion, because it is seen as a matrix designed to keep one rooted to the very fragment of being a regular human being. So, to be emotive is to being human, the regular kinds which breathe, live and walk among us - our fellow members of the matrix with no present consciousness to leave the mesh either. Being in or out of love is therefore just another state where we will be subjected to the myriad of emotions binding or separating us from another. Of them all, it is fear that is the most unavoidable. One cannot do with or without it.

As an emotion fear will not willingly be expressed. It is not an emotion credited with the state of being a social being. So, even worse it will lurk inside and metamorphose into more devious emotions. Take an example – A person in love will never willing express if he/she fears that they may lose the one they love. It is a thought unpronounced, lurking inside and making stealthy appearances in the form of doubt, envy, rage and even hatred. Contrary to popular sentiments and belief that love begets such allied emotions it is actually the suppression of fear that stems them. It will be therefore much easier if one expresses the relevant fear rather than letting it be a dormant resident.

It is ok to fear. Our religious mythologies are full of stories of even the Gods expressing fear. In the Christian story, Jesus is supposed to have expressed and conquered fear at the eleventh hour before the day He was crucified. It is only by the expression of fear that one can learn to conquer it and move towards a more unconditional state of love. Expressing the fear that seeds and grow inside your head will allow one to be more forthcoming with the other person. If the fear is of losing the person one loves then one should express it. It immediately arrests the unrest inside the head and paves way for a solution in coming to terms with the fear. In love we keep mulling over such a thought, letting it reside and grow slowly till the time it becomes too overbearing and we pronounce it out in any possible thoughtless way. The condition is worse when one is out of love because then the fear, which has unfortunately manifested itself as true, becomes a physical reality that one may make the mistake (and they do, all the time) of referring to as a recurrent example, jeopardising any chance of being in love again, at all.

Having stated the condition what will be the easy way to conquer fear when in love? The answer is simple and I repeat it again – by admittance. It will not steal away a gallantry award or make you less human. In fact it will make you more so and also (perhaps) becomes one of the catalysts to transcend you to a better state of ‘unconditional love.’ In my own condition, I admit there are many fears lurking inside me but of them all, the fear of being out of love of the one I love is certainly not a case. I have always pronounced it being an expressive person that I am.

Getting Dirty

2012-01-18T00:53:00.006+05:30

In one of the introductory scenes of The Dirty Picture, Vidya Balan in her role as Reshma a.ka. Silk, says to Emran Hashmi playing Abraham, a reticent I-hate-Silk director “Filmein sirf teen cheezon ke wajeh se chalti hai. Entertainment, entertainment, entertainment. Aur main entertainment hoon.” If the dialogue was not a punch enough, the poise with which Vidya delivers it, is a coup-de-grace for the audience. The wink, which I have always felt, no actor had done enough justice to post Madhuri Dixit gets a fresh patronage under Vidya. Throughout the movie Vidya as Silk would enthral the viewers with this signature gesture post delivery of any key dialogue. The wink imparts a new meaning to the dialogues, almost as if it never meant what it was supposed to mean; more often establishing Silk’s symbolic pun at her two faced fans, friends or foes.

In Ishqiya, if a feisty Vidya was a revelation, in this movie, she goes on to establish herself as an unparalleled actor beyond the league of any of her contemporaries. And how - not just by choosing a role that already had character written all over it, not by deciding to get into the skin of the character through a methodist school of acting - putting on weight, smoking or wearing what the character was needed to, but the real achievement lay in the ability to confidently carry the role of a sultry southern seductress who got a raw deal from the industry that created her, adulated her and then let her slip into an oblivion death, ironically only to reprise her much later in this story. Milan Luthria’s choice of subject is a winner and there are no second thoughts about it. What would have been a pity is if this fine script, camera work and cinematography had met incompetent acting - the movie would have met doomsday instantaneously. The real winner therefore is the casting director followed by the actors themselves. Each role have had a glove like fit in its respective actors. Naseruddin Shah as the never ageing, womanising, super-star who has no qualms of ‘tuning’ with every co-actress during the night and then avoiding them with equal nonchalance in the day, does what he does best - act. It is a treat that we are present in an era to see fine actors like Shah present their craft over and over again tirelessly. Bravo.

Tushar Kapoor plays the second fiddle brother to the super star, a role he must have by now gained an excellence over considering the number of such roles he so convincingly plays. I have always argued that he is a fine actor, if only he knew to select his roles. As Ramakant, Tushar does not disappoint - he is the weakling who despite all his good intentions for Silk can never muster the courage to side step society and wed her.

The other male lead - Emran Hashmi is an actor who has really come of age from the only kiss-and-kiss days. One could not miss his stellar performance in Once upon a time in Mumbai (again a Milan Luthria movie). And once again in this movie he does poetic justice to the role of Abraham, Silk’s arch detractor from the beginning and yet ironically perhaps the only one who empathised in the true sense with her predicament. As a character of a director who lives in the arrogance of his film making abilities not believing that cheap ‘sex’ (read – Silk) can actually ever sell movies Emran is more than convincing. The bitter sweet irony is that by the end of it all when Abraham finally meets a commercial success he admits that movies sell only because of three things - ‘entertainment, entertainment and entertainment,’ thereby coming a full circle by quoting the woman he so loved to hate - Silk.

The movie however unabashedly belongs to the character and actor- Silk and Vidya Balan respectively. I have mentioned earlier that the real winner is the casting director and the cherry in the pie of casting is Vidya Balan. It is not my biased interest in Vidya speaking in this section, but if you have watched the movie, you will agree that reprising the role of a character who moves from rags to riches to rags in her own terms, compromising with morality and satiating the hunger for success, she is utterly fantastic from the first to the last shot. A good director can only do as much as set the plot to a perspective but a good actor can take a perspective to new heights. Vidya does exactly this. She defines the role Silk in a quintessential manner leaving an indelible impression on the viewers. People have written about her ability to confidently feature a more than voluptuous character with ease. I shall regard that second to her ability to impart a unique trademark to the character, which will remain with you as a viewer long after you have come out of the cinema halls. Hence, I began talking about the wink. The manner how Vidya delivers it, almost makes me feel as if it’s aimed as a symbolic pun at her critics and detractors who may have written her off for not being the quintessential size zero, hour glass heroine. Oh - she is not all of that and I thank God for this. She is, well, she is ‘entertainment’ ;)

The Dirty Picture certainly qualifies as one of the hundred-movies-to-watch-before-you-die. Don’t Miss it.

The Jalebi Theory

2012-01-01T23:03:00.004+05:30

Come winters and our capital’s streets and markets come alive with the aroma of delectable warm,oily, spicy (or sweet) snacks. And mind you, keeping in sync with the sentiment of the so-large ‘total vageetarian’ community, the ubiquitous and your nearby Aggarawal (both single and double ‘g,’clans) or Nathu halwaiwala, will perforate the evening air with aromatic and definitely mouth watering dishes like the Aloo Tikki (No, Mashed Potato patty is not a close English cousin or synonym), Samosas, Kachori, Moong-Dal-Halwa, Gajar-Ka-halwa, Paneer Tikka, Gulab Jamun and a host of others. If in these evenings you loiter or pass around the market and not caring whether you have a flat six pack tummy or one of those half-globe ones, you cannot deny the temptation to have feasted on these delicacies once or every possible time. It’s just so in our Delhism to not deny these beauties from adorning our big mouths. Top all this with a plate of piping hot jalebis and you are set to feel like a king/queen. If you ask me, in my humble opinion, this sweet twisted dish (hardly actually, if you consider a fermented dough of flour with some essence a dish) is the queen (assuming it to be feminine) of all winter desserts or street snacks. Well, to my assumption's favour, the Jalebi is certainly royal in her appearance and not one of those all-round-or-fluid’ desserts. The saffron colour adds an edge to the royalty and finally there is always a struggle to get your self a plate of her. (Kind of makes it elitist) Besides, like a benevolent royal, the Jalebi, creates a joyous atmosphere for the people consuming it. Don’t believe me - Observe a group or even yourself when you bite into a piece. There is a sense of immense joy, almost as if all your problems have been taken care of as the deep fried and sweetened dough melts in your mouth and the sweet syrup rushes down the gullet ; then you bite into another and another, till the feeling infiltrates your senses like a drug. That is the royal Jalebi for you.

If that was not enough, then one can feel her elitism when one tries to get an audience with her. Like suitors for a marriage, you are given numbers of when will she grace you. The attendant (the sales-boy) will nonchalantly scribble a number on your token slip and call it out almost as nonchalantly. No one messes with the high priestess and if you want her grace, then you weather the wait. In our friendly Agarwal store, I have not seen many refuse the number even though that would sometimes mean an hour long wait. In my own case I would not wait that long for a doctor, but Ms. Jalebi has her own charm and I succumb to it.

In the numerous plates of Jalebi I have consumed all this long, there was this epiphany today. This simple Indian dessert in many ways is also a philosophy of life itself. No, seriously. The ingredients, the shape, the cooking process and then finally tills its consumed, the Jalebi is life incarnate and if you are connoisseur of the dessert as much as I am , then you will agree. Let me elucidate.

Fine wheat flour mixed with butter milk is fermented as the dough for jalebi. Wheat flour is life, butter milk the experience of life and the fermentation is time. (This is not heavy, trust me) One can add saffron and essence to this batter, just as life has its share of emotions, good friends and other elements which ferment along with it. Now, after an overnight of fermentation (not excessive) comes the real cooking. The batter is placed in small quantities inside a muslin pouch which has a small hole. The cook will then artistically make concentric circles of the batter dropping out of the hole into heated oil, where its fried. The boiling oil if you consider can be the trials and tribulations that one’s life is fried in. The shape of the Jalebi is how one’s life is - never a straight line but layers of concentric circles, sometime touching each other and sometimes much dispersed. One can never escape this part regardless of who you are. This is the precedence to the best part, yet to begin. Only after the Jalebi is fried just enough to turn golden brown, that its immersed in a syrup of sugar for a short while, though long enough for it to absorb the sweetness before its served piping on your plate. The same way, life will fry us only enough and give us an opportunity to be dipped in the sweet experiences, which in the long run will be all that matters. And one cannot claim that there are no sweet experiences in one’s life - that will be saying one did not live at all. Better still, look at this way that despite all the fermentation and frying, its the taste of the Jalebi that lingers in your mouth, the joy that it brings in consuming it. So, if one can treat life as an experience through which we can bring joy to others and remain as a sweet memory, one has just Jalebied oneself. Profound - Not exactly, but what the heck, it was a thought and I take the pride of coining this as the Jalebi theory - something I wish 2012 to live by. Next time you gorge on a Jalebi, do not think of the calories; think of it as a learning of life, a bodhta. If that is heavy duty, then just consume it for the sake that it sweetens your taste buds.

Wishing all you readers a Jalebi of time in 2012. Share this with all and spread the Jalebi theory. :)

Note: Photo courtesy - indianimages.com

The Rabbit Hole

2011-12-30T00:58:00.002+05:30

The year is 364 days old. Without wanting to sound very philosophical, come to think of it, even I am older by the same number of calendar days. It has been quiet a year - 2011. Like most of the years since I have started working, the days seem to have passed away quicker. Then again, I know this well, its not time that has picked up pace but my lifestyle. I do not know if this is a boon or a bane - an introspection left for my forties; no careless pondering on this for now.

2011 was the Chinese year of the rabbit. (2010 was the year of tiger, ironically) Rabbits, for me have always been far from being a romantic, furry, timid animal. The earliest fictional imagery, I can recollect of a rabbit, is that of the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland, always in a paucity of time, running late, incoherent yet wise. This perhaps is a perfect analogy for my ‘year of the rabbit’ -(read the mad hatter) Take a dive into a few thought provoking milestones of my journey into the rabbit hole this year.

Friends: This is has been a discovery this year. Well, isn’t this always in a year, you may wonder? Yes, it is, but live my life and age and you will understand why the impulse to write about this topic at the beginning. This year, I earned friends. In the past years I have made and lost friends, but have earned few. Earning friendship is a difficult and patient process. Every individual is different and the bond of friendship recognises this subtle thread that actually binds us together. The ‘rabbit year’ nourished such individuals in my life and I am grateful. It will be futile to talk about them, but if they choose to read (few even complain of my ‘exorbitantly expensive’ english) they well know who they are. My sincere wish that all of you get such friends in years to come and in case you all consider me one such, I will be much honoured and be willing to traverse the journey of life with you as far as possible.

Wife: Simmi and I are now a whole one year and nine months married. It has been a very fulfilling journey till now. Not that we did not or do not have our share of problems. We have had some bitter arguments and fights regarding the most trivial of issues. Yet, we are thankful that we did pick up those arguments and will perhaps continue to do so, because it helps cleanse the system of its unending list of daily frustrations of life, which we often tend to unleash on the easiest prey available to us - the one we love the most. In the course of our some very childish whims and arguments, I have come to realise that none but her would have ever tolerated such temperament of mine. She has over this period of togetherness, helped me to be myself, san pretensions and what more, loved me more for being so. I cannot be more grateful for that and maybe will smile next time we pick up a fight. The year also helped me realise her resoluteness and commitment to my family, when she decided to quit her job and be with my mom to take care of her. I was and still am amazed at her sacrifice, so just saying that ‘I am proud of her’ would be an understatement. Here is secret - Husbands/Men harbour an ambition of having model wife/girlfriends. If you ask me, the rabbit fulfilled my ambition this year.

Writing: This year, I re-discovered this passion. I always wanted to be a writer. It has been an undefeated passion for a long time since, I first wrote a verse in school, followed by some unlimited skits, short stories, essays and then came the years of the blank canvas. To write, I needed to read, to read I needed to discuss, debate, understand, observe and all this while the wheel was often missing some spoke or the other to complete a cycle. The year gifted me with a surreal mentor who completed the picture, dawning a new phase in me. With soulful mentor-ship, I also owe it to the social media revolution, which opened a new direct relationship between the writer and the reader. Factoring all these conditions the journey is well begun and I cross my fingers that I scurry to my destination steadily and not in a race with the tortoise.

Travel: I cannot claim to be a traveller, even though it is a passion. Or, lets put it this way I have not given into the real passion of being a traveller though there were some adventurous steps taken towards it. For the first time (quiet an achievement) I traveled abroad, albeit to only a neigbouring country - Sri Lanka. This was with friends and for cricket, so most of it gets censored in description. However, Lanka was fun - the highlight of the journey - I lost my camera on the first day.

Closer home, there was this road trip to Amritsar, again with friends. Great experience and place - the highlight of the journey - I bought a high end point-and-shoot camera. Then there was an office trip to Naukuchiataal, my holiday with Simmi down south to Bangalore, Hoggenakal and Coorg. In between all this there were two annual trips to home at Shillong or Guwahati, where most of the time, I was either busy repairing or having something repaired among the other lists of things that a dutiful-twelve-day-a-year-visiting son has to fulfill. Home can never be a travel destination, if you wear my shoes, that is.

Cricket: How could I miss this. I lived through all possible superstitions watching the India-Sri Lanka World Cup final in my own living room. The rabbit had a mixed bag for the Indian kookaburras. Winning the world cup is definitely a high point for a long long time, but the England series had exorcised my feeling for Cricket completely. I am now a far less passionate follower of Indian cricket, but deep inside, the heart beats, still race faster, every time a match is positioned on the razor’s edge. Like today, I was cursing and cussing the Indian team all over twitter when the buggers conceded the first test to Australia. Did, I say I was ‘less passionate?’

I guess, this is too small a list of events to summarise my 364 days, but like the mad hatter, I too am running late for the bed. Few milestones like Sleep, Movies, Reading, Cooking remain and should find place duly but only after I finish doing what I want to do now.

So where did the rabbit hole lead me to? Think, did I not answer that already. ;)

You will see more of me this year but before that gear yourself for 2012 - to ‘train a dragon’. You need skill and faith. Wishing you all ample of it, Happy New Year.

Before Sunday

2011-12-09T21:16:00.005+05:30

Author note: "Of the writing exercises that I indulge in, one of my favourite is flash fiction. While most of you have read my poetry and encouraged me to explore the craft more, writing short (flash) fiction is another craft I am exploring. Writing fiction in less than a 1000 words is a difficult exercise, which I have come to realise over the first few attempts because as a writer, the first desire is to write everything and anything, in fear that one might miss out on details. However I have realised that we cannot undercut the role of you, the reader, who is intelligent and have the great ability to visualise. So, shorter sentences, simpler words and tighter plots are difficult and I have tried in what you will read below. There are lot of aspects that have gone in the writing of this story, one of which is staying awake when I should have been sleeping, but guess the fruit of creativity is more tempting than the curse it brings with it. Hope you all love the story and please do share your opinions. They help me to write better for you. Thanks again"

I knew it was Monday. I always knew Mondays. They are the busiest and somehow brighter, if you compare it to the lazy Sundays. I love Sunday and I have nothing against Monday either. For a four year old, week days really did not matter much anyway. Week days were important for the elders. They behaved differently on different days and over these young years I have almost come to map the patterns of the ones in my home.

Tuesdays and Wednesdays were almost the same as Mondays. One of them would rouse early, almost sleep walking to the kitchen or the bathroom. The lights of the living room would be lit. In summers, the curtains would be pulled open and bright sun light would eagerly split through the tall windows, resting here and there, lazily changing shapes and positions during the day. Thursdays, the ritual would be almost the same with a slight delay, which I understood led to the louder than usual crescendo of shouting and screaming, doors closing loudly, frantic noises in the kitchen of pots and pans clattering almost as if someone was trying to do voodoo. In between this chaos, one of them would take out a moment to smile at me and speak briefly. I would try to converse, but I am a little slow and they were always so impatient between Mondays to Thursdays. Sometimes they would actually pick up a fight over the time lost over me on these days. I feel guilty and sullen when this happens but always seem to forget it the next day.

Fridays would always arrive with a strange excitement cutting through the air. The best days are when one of them would play music even before the curtains would be pulled open. Over the next few hours, he would hum to the bathroom, dilly dally deliberately till she pushed him in, he struggling playfully. He would sometimes, pull her inside and I would hear her shouting, “No, Rahul, not now,” her protests and pitch oscillating between laughs and verbal struggles. Then it would get quieter, till a while after the lull (the music would be the loudest then) she would rush out of the door wrapped in a towel and he would keep calling out to her.

“Suits you right,” she would shout back, giggling, humming the tune of the song.

“Roshni, please, yaar,” he would keep shouting, his voice getting louder and impatient while she silently would wait outside the bathroom door, smiling to herself till he almost sounded desperate. She would then gently knock at the door and once slightly parted, she would walk inside, only to run out again giggling. A moment later he would follow, laughing and before you know, over the chase, which I also try and join, they would end up cuddling and hugging me. I feel very warm when they hug me and on Fridays, I always get the longer hugs than the usual.

I loved Fridays, as long as they would not return home late. It was not the late part that upsets me. If they were late, it meant more screaming, shouting, doors banging, pots clattering at night.

“Go to hell,” I heard him once shout.

“Fuck you,” she had once retorted “You had a nerve to behave like that in front of my friends”

I could never understand these conversations which seem to have begun even before they enter the room and then continues to the bedroom followed by eerie silence. The silence would often extend to the afternoon of the Saturday. Then, some friends would visit in the evening and they would behave as if nothing happened. There would be music, laughter and I would again suddenly be the centre of distracted conversations. I would be cuddled, hugged, fed made to forget the evening of the day before once again. Sometimes I get mixed up with the patterns of Saturday evenings and Friday mornings, but you can’t blame me for this, can you?

Sundays were lazy, very lazy. We would all sleep till late. In winters, sometimes, this would stretch to afternoons. I never complained (even though it meant lying on the bed) because this meant a lot of cuddling. I would slip between them and over half wake state they would take turns to talk to me, showering me with fond sweet nothings. If you ask me, I would love if time could freeze on Sunday mornings, but I could not compromise the visit to the park in the evening, the drive to the mall and the ice cream at India Gate. By the end of the day, everything would be sundry, lazy and beautiful, just like the setting sun they both loved to spend time watching, murmuring apologies and stealing kisses against the crimson sky. I loved Sunday evenings almost as much as Friday mornings.

But it was, Mondays I knew most. You cannot miss Mondays. They are the busiest and somehow even brightest, if you compare it to the lazy Sundays.

“Honey, I am taking Mojo out for his walk,” he shouted.

“Don’t be late,” she shouted back.

“Here, Mojo,” he ushered towards me as I happily wagged my tail. The week had begun and there are six more days to go before Sunday.

Listen

2011-12-01T10:37:00.001+05:30

the poet is dead.

Died a silent death

when

you and I were writing prose

by the shores of the windy sea.

The sand,

picked on us

the poet,

by the rocks.

We scribbled, drew paragraphs plenty

the poet etched,

one

word

time

In the high tide,

we swam with the waves

hit the rocks

held on to them

when we were pulled away.

The poet

swam in deep sea;

never came back for tea.

III

Father,

why does my castle not stay?

Son,

its made of sand and clay.

Father

what does, this rock say

Son, it says

One

word

time

Life

does

not

always

rhyme.

For Me...

2010-09-05T00:41:00.001+05:30

adhigatya guroH GYAnaM chhAtrebhyo vitaranti ye |

vidyA vAtsalya nidhayaH shikshakA mama daivataM ||

For me,

When the tortoise beat the hare,

when the gulmohar tree bloomed on papyrus,

when the single lines formed shapes,

when letters formed words lesser known,

when two and two added as four,

when the ball made its way into the goal,

when the smiles made way for the tears,

For me, you were there!

For me,

When the dress changed from grey to colours,

when books made way for notes,

when benches were counted from behind,

when time was measured with a P or an A,

when I grew and outgrew,

when I stole minutes in seconds to write verse in prose,

when i became a lower notation,

For me, you were there!

For me,

When i chose a system away from a system,

when i spoke of what should have been, and not,

when i carried unfulfilled dreams,

when i found many you's in many me's,

when i watered the forbidden desires,

when i rose and fell, and fell,

when darkness made way to light,

For me, you were there!

In my poetry,

In my soul,

In me, you all were there;

in each form,

same shape,

just a different octate, a different sestet!

For you, my own -

Om Gurur Brahma Gurur Vishnuh |

Gurur Devo Maheshawarah ||

Gurureva param brahma |

Tasmai Shri Gurave Namah ||

To Deuta (Dad), Maa, Bro Dsouza, Mr. Middlecourt, Mrs. Krishnakali, Sutapa ma'm, Krishnamurthy ma'm, Sunil Sir, Dr. Ratan, Rahul Sapra, Sumit Pillai, Namit, Shaheen Jehani, Himanshu Gautam, Arvind Joshi

The Poem - Generations old!

2010-08-08T00:07:00.008+05:30

There was a first

and they were his words.

The other listened

patiently, sometimes

slept with eyes wide open.

In between punctuations,

gargles of alcohol,

a few nature's calls

and some verses blank,

The other would be seated,

seats below,

a meter below the meter

An old saying ran in the village

"Distance from the first always safer"

The first would recite,

pause;

The other would clap,

release a few audible excites.

Scratch his head,

Sometimes the groin,

Looks at the sun

when he came - was a red ball,

now - a bright ball,

when he will leave - in the sky a different ball.

His father had done the same,

So had the father's father.

Generations of practice,

Taught the survival in the game.

His son -

young and naive.

In the distance squatted,

played five on five.

Bought along to observe,

In years will have to learn,

Earn,

the family's morsel of bread,

Safe keep the land,

and all other fears that they dread!

The first would rise,

the other followed.

The first sighed,

the other sheepishly smiled.

The first burped,

the other gulped.

The first moved away,

Two hands on two men,

The alcohol must have been strong,

The other picks up his child,

Sleeping on the grass,

mud on his hide,

worms sleeping by his side.

On the way back, his questions galore -

"Baba - what did you hear today?"

The other would cradle him closer

"Poetry, my son, everyday!"

"Was I there in it?"

another question,

another silence from the other.

Many pauses later,

"No, my son, not you nor grand pa or me was in it!"

Patterns

2010-08-01T16:11:00.001+05:30

I woke up next to her. The room was dark with faint streaks of street light sneaking past the curtains. Light always manages to surreptitiously make way into the dark corners. All it requires is a small crack, a gap, an inconsequential crevice or even a brief parting. As I sat on the edge of the bed, I deliberately parted the curtain to allow the smooth operator to sneak into the room willingly and sate it’s curiosity to explore dark corners. Dressed in yellow, drawing patterns of the window grill over my face in soft shadows, settling comfortably on the floor, a few of its rays carelessly lay on the bed next to me, flirting silently with my presence. I looked outside. The road that overlooked the window lay bare and my eyes could trace its unending horizon, adorned with numerous street lamps that seemed to coalesce into the dark sky as stars in the distant horizon. I shifted my gaze on the bed where she was lying, unaware, oblivious of the spectacle and my state of mind. The bed stead hugged her tracing the contours of her body. It seemed to be gazing back at me, teasing me at the proximity it seemed to be enjoying with her naked body. I let out a sigh and shifted my gaze back on the road and thought about the night, which was only a few hours old.

Our kisses were always very passionate. From gentle brushes to passionately crushing each other, our lips seemed to have a life of their own. For a few brief moment we would pause, the air echoing with our heavy breathing, look into each other’s eyes and then as if the wait has been itself too long, the lips would lock themselves again. Hands would prowl, pushing, pulling, and tugging at anything that would try and come between our skins. In between all this she would laugh when I bury myself on her neck, but that would be momentary. The bed would take the brunt of our wrestle; cotton, silk and sometimes satin crushed under our bodies. For those minutes everything seems to be secondary – time, the mobile phone ringing, the music, the candles that would never be lit and many other things that would be our concern when we would be two different individuals. Sometimes there would be questions in my mind but would be exorcised as quickly as they would conjure under the pulpit of the passion. I would laugh, sometimes smile and be in a state of stupor; she would winch, bite her lips, close her eyes, clench her fists, claw my back and seconds later everything would come to an abrupt end, the room would be filled with an eerie silence, sometimes punctured by hoarse whispers of her “love you.”

It was no different today. I kept lying on the bed, knowing what would come next. She crawled herself to my bare chest, kissed it and caressed the hair on it, she so much loved. I ran my hands through her tresses, carefully separating a few strands falling over her eyes. I wanted to see her eyes but like always her face would be buried inside me. I pulled myself back a little allowing her more room to rest her head on. My ears were slowly registering the various sounds around us now. Reality was near and I kept playing with her hair, hoping feverishly that she would fall asleep and silence would be the last conversation before we woke up again. For a long while she lay still and I strained my neck a little to see if she had slept. And then she spoke, her voice feeble but seemed to echo in my ears – “You took her name again today. You loved her a lot, na?”

I knew the question; I have heard it many times in the last few months. The past always caught up with me. “Perhaps, I can out run it someday,” I thought to myself as I looked out of the window. I could still see the road and the lights plastered unto the canvas. Nothing seemed to have changed from when I woke up till now. Time, Yes, time has passed but nothing else has changed. The light was still searching for other crevices and every time it has managed to find a presence in my room through the curtains. I looked at her on the bed. I made way back on the bed cuddling closer to her. The curtains – I left them open. I can’t fight the light anyway.

Broken

2010-07-25T22:34:00.005+05:30

I broke down today

Over the thread of joy that lay barren

On my war struck heart's ground

Tears dried up inside

There were so many things to hide

Some mountains built of mole hills

Some rivers of rain drops

Some flowers strewn in between rides

to nowhere but the path inside

All along I knew - 'This is just a dream'

So was She

many years ago

When she walked away from my arms to another

And life had never been the same

Till I found my thread of joy

Over one drunk state of life

I hollered

The unsaid was heard

That was it

The dream began

And amongst all the nothingness

Little did I know

I had grown young

and the hardened heart tender

Unconditional

Unperturbed

but it was not to be

Every dream wakes to reality

I woke up a

morning with the essence of the thread of joy

Breaking to pieces

And I collect the shards of memories

Not weaker

but stronger

Because I have a promise to keep

To be where I have been left

with the same smile

the same spirit

the same heart

Tender

Young

Never ageing in the day or dark!

The first draft came from the heart... I will not say anything more. I have no punctuations left...

2010-07-20T18:58:00.002+05:30

Today anger overtook love,

Temperament assaulted patience,

Love stood where it was.

It does not know to fight back,

So it decided to wait,

Where it stood!

Anger is volatile,

Love eternal.

So it stood under the tree

Waiting!

:) Sigh!!! I guess I have grown with time!!!

An Absent Presence!

2010-07-12T14:40:00.001+05:30

In a moment fraught with your lingering presence

I miss the absence

Time would never be the same

But, yet it moves,

Dragging the moments,

With the pace,

I cannot keep up with.

So I wait under your shadow,

Waiting for everything to stand still.

Watch time pass by,

Waiting for the unheard emotion of the heart,

To pronounce the unpronounced,

To see the unseen!

All for a moment fraught with your presence,

Where I can feel the absence,

Of everything else but you!

Birth

2010-06-21T23:36:00.004+05:30

I had written this a long time back - the good old way on paper. This was the time when I was reading a lot on the stream of consciousness technique in literature, popularised by Henry James and the other favourite of mine, Virginia Woolfe. In college we were being taught Woolfe's Mrs. Dalloway and every page of the book was an experience I can still relish. Some of my friends said that I was literally seduced by her, and I would not disagree. I still am and never fail to miss on reading something about or by her whenever possible. Those bohemian college days were fun and amidst the stupor of literary liquor, the fertile mind would conceive something or the other. This story was a result of one such night. Today, I am re-writing it and hope to carry the original flavour but the excitement of doing so is much more than what the result would be.

She nervously read her appointment receipt. This was the tenth time that she was doing so and perhaps would do so a few more times before the clock reads 3.30 pm.

"3,30 pm, " she thought to herself, "is the appointment and she could not be late." She was known for procrastinating. Everything could wait for her. Life was fun and so was she. “There will always be a time for everything," she would announce loud to anyone who tried to talk to her about it. Sometime she would laugh it off. Her laugh was mesmerising. It never failed to disarm her detractors and like always leave many men in the room smiling to themselves, secretly wishing her in their lives.

The waiting room had two other ladies. She tried not to meet their eyes but would secretly steal a look at them. Both of them carried a happy anticipation on their face. This would make her more nervous and, she would continue to read the appointment receipt and steal glances at the hands of the big round clock that was hung on the wall. It seemed very still and discomforted her. She would shift her gaze occasionally at the water dispenser in the hallway and watch the bubbles rise up in the canister every time someone would fetch out a glass of water.

He looked around in the room for the bottle of water. She usually would leave it beside his bed knowing that it would be first thing he would reach out for in a half awake and half sleep state. Today, it was not there and finally after groping for a while, he lazily rose from the bed and looked at his watch - "3.30," it read.

"3.30," she looked at the clock on the wall and then looked at her wrist. She was not wearing her watch today but that did not matter now. It was 3.30 and she was still waiting for her turn. She looked at her receipt again to reconfirm and then rose nervously trying to smoothen the crease of her dress. She loved dressing for any occasion but did not have time for the same today. Dress did not matter here, grit does. She walked towards the receptionist who was busy on the phone, deftly moving her fingers on the keyboard of the computer at the same time. She cleared her throat to announce her presence.

"Please proceed," the receptionist told her. She let out a sigh of relief knowing that she was not late today. She did not need directions to the place. She was here earlier and quickly found herself the room. She read the board outside the door like the previous time - "Sonia Singh, Snr. Gynecologist". "Nothing changes," she thought, “nothing at all”. She knocked at the door.

He heard a knock at the door and rushed to open it. It was the colony guard asking for the monthly wage. He refused yet again – “Come next week.” He was anticipating her at the door and he would not want to waste time on anyone else. The room was stale with smoke but he was not bothered. He would sometimes move to the window and look out of it through the smudged panes. The street below with all the cars, cycles, rickshaws, thelas and people seemed a contrast of his room, which never bore a busy look. Lazy, maybe but busy never. She loved it that way and he smiled to himself thinking of how she would announce that even an alert sentry would fall asleep in the room.

She smiled at the doctor. This was the first time she did so. The doctor smiled back and suddenly she was not nervous anymore. She knew what she wanted to hear and she knew what to do. “So,” the doctor spoke raising her eyes from a series of report, “are you serious on your decision”

“Yes, I am,” she spoke. She looked into the doctor’s eyes. The doctor smiled and asked to her lie down. “It will be a routine check up,” the doctor said, “don’t worry.” She was not worried, just a little amazed at the decision that had materialized in her head. She asked for a glass of water.

He hated the morning after dehydrated feeling. “I must stop drinking so much,” he thought to himself. He has been promising the same thing from a long time -sometimes to her and sometimes to himself. Each time he fails miserably, the same way he has been treated in his pursuit for a new job. Jobless, married and living on his wife’s income was not easy. He hated to think himself as a chauvinist but the ‘man’ in him roared at times and he succumbed to the lure of liquor so easily then. He vaguely remembered that she wanted to tell him something yesterday. “What was it?” he thought. “Did she tell me where she will be going today?” he pondered

She had not told him about her visit. “He must be anxious,” she thought. She was out on the streets. The din of the traffic was deafening. “Careful,” she told herself, to calm the excitement to reach home. She passed by a McDonalds and quickly stole a glance at her reflection on the window. She looked like one of the ladies in the room earlier – the glow of anticipation not hidden on her face anymore. She smiled and moved towards the crossing and patiently waited for the traffic signal to turn red.

She still was thinking of her decision at the signal. “This is it.” She told herself continuously, “There is no turning back now.” She took a deep breath and looked at the traffic signal and then at the other side of the road. There was only one woman waiting to cross over. “She looks so happy and bright,” she thought to herself, looking at the woman. The traffic signal turned red and the vehicles came to a screeching halt.

He could see the streets from the window and he kept waiting beside it looking at the traffic signals change colours. “She should be home soon,” he thought and looked at the clock on the table. “4.40,” it read.

“4.40,” he spoke aloud, nervously looking at the table searching for a note or anything that would tell him where she was. He cursed his addiction yet again and lit a cigarette when he heard the knock on the door.

“This is it,” he thought as he rushed to open the door.

“This is it,” she thought as she waited for the door to open.

He gave a knowing smile and ushered her in. The time read 4.45 and everything seemed to stand still when she spoke. He heard her patiently and slowly moved towards her. She kept looking at his eyes.

He thought for a while and then stole his eyes away from her and moved to the window, to blow out the smoke. The window made a strange noise when he yanked it open. Her eyes kept following him waiting for him to break the pregnant pause that had suddenly become more eerie than the room itself.

He smiled and held her tight in his arms. He was numb with a feeling that only he could understand.
She held him and felt the warmth in his shoulders, “Things would be ok,” she knew it.
He loosened her slightly and looked into her eyes while still holding her fragilely in his arms. The gaze was long drawn and she went limp when his breath got closer and spontaneously her eyes closed and lips parted. She could feel him get closer to her lips and was surprised when he passed by and cleared his throat to speak to her ears

“Abort it,” he spoke.
She stood transfixed for the moment, listless and stunned. Her mind re-winded to the clinic, to the knock at the doctor’s door, to the decision, to the exit she had made, to the street, to the crossing, to the woman who stood on the other side of the crossing – “How happy she looked,” she thought before slumping on the floor.

“So,” she spoke as she curled naked to the other side and he held her from behind – “Boy or Girl?”
“Girl,” he answered, nuzzling his head deeper into her nape and his hands tighter into her stomach.

A borrowed Wish

2009-09-17T13:24:00.002+05:30

I read it... I loved it... Sorry but I have borrowed it....

A wish like the morning dew upon the cold palm
Like the effervescent laugh on the lips of a three-year old
Like the silence between the naked lovers sitting by the window
Like the cluster of stars hovering above the crowded head
Like the eyes that glisten with hunger and shamelessness,
Like the madness of a vagabond venturing into the unknown, knowingly
Like the windy night removing the peels of sorrow… slowly
Like You and I, torn and apart, forming a coherent whole
Like the wish itself, born in the mind, nursed in the heart and never told
Like love, surpassing the boundaries of the known, traversing the limitless possibilities with that one wish…

One could not say this better.... Sigh!!!

Of the Head and the Heart

2009-08-16T02:30:00.000+05:30

Before these first letters and words made into this space, I have written and keyed the back space key on my keyboard more than once. The indecisiveness was again between writing prose or verse and I know where this is coming from. I am in midst of a waging battle between the head and heart. This is not a new feeling but this time the sentiments are overpowering and it is exhausting me. The feeling is similar to the that of an athlete, running the last mile, the finishing line in site. But, I know that I am no athlete this time. I am just the road on which the race is being run.
The body, I realise, is strangely only a shell to the two imperialists-the head and the heart. It responds to commands that they order. When there is a truce between them the body is the happiest of all. Lest the imperialists decide to conquer each other, may hem break loose and so is my state right now.
So what is the bone of contention this time? If you ask me, I will not be able to define it just now, because as much the heart wants to disclose, the head wants to hide. Thus, my expressions are incoherent and yet in midst of it there may be a meaning, an elixir to calm the furnace that burns inside me, taking away pieces of me in each blow that one strikes to another. I write tonight, not because, I want to express, but because I wish to find myself in these words, lest all is wiped out in this war. Tonight, I write for myself.
There are photographs hung up on the wall that stare back at me and then there are photographs in my head (or is it the heart?) that stare into me. Each one has its own space and each one have stories with it. The stories are sometime simple tales and sometime part of an epic that I feel I live in. Our lives indeed are no less than an epic. Each story has another associated with it. Each moment is fraught with heroism and malice, love and hatred, betrayal and loyalty. The list would be endless. What happens when all these stories demand an ending. It is then that battle becomes inevitable. My stories today demand an ending and the head and the heart have different scripts in mind.
If the bard said "To be or not to be" is an eternal question, his postulation was not far from the truth that mortal beings have to go through. Yes, I generalise my state with everyone because at this moment I would feel a bit more secure if I were to feel that the state that I am in, is not something that I am waging alone. I have realised that we do not fear driving a moment to its truth, we fear the consequence of it. Hence we hold back and let out exasperated sighs speaking of it all someday (if ever) over intoxicated states and the more enterprising yet cowardly lot like me, would express it subtly with words that other would find hard to understand.
I have feared driving many decisions to their moments of truth and tonight they all come out of the closet and stare at me. It is not they want me to act on it but my heart renders in pain seeing their state and revolts against the head who push them back inside the closet. Of all these, one such decision is what my heart would not allow to be shoved back into the closet. So the battle.
Fools, I say. In the battle that you both ensue, the moments and memories around the decision is getting ravaged and raped. Stop it, I say. Let me survive with those moments and memories because if they die, I die with them. Understand that it is the memories in the head that lead to the moments that reside in the heart. One cannot survive without the other. And the decision... Know this, as I did a moment ago when I heard it:

Zarre Zarre Mein Usi Ka Noor Hai
Jhak Khud Mein Woh Na Tujhse Door Hai
Ishq Hai Usse To Sab Se Ishq Kar
Ishq Hai Usse, To Sab Se Ishq Kar
Is Ibadat Ka Yehi Dastoor Hai

Amen.

Silence

2009-05-08T01:29:00.001+05:30

You and I
have a silence that
speaks of us.
A silence that measures
our thoughts,
our memories,
in a single moment of a lull.

You and I
have a silence that is
sometimes loud,
sometimes silent,
sometimes not at all.
Like a secret
known to you and me,
whispered to our ears
by our eyes.

You and I
have a silence that
undresses the noise between us,
bares our naked soul,
revealing,
like the way it always was.

You and I
live this silence,
long after the phone line is cut.
A Silence that speaks
Of all that remains
You in me
and I in you.

Inert

2009-04-01T13:26:00.001+05:30

I have this very strange feeling since morning today. No matter how hard I am trying to define the feeling, I am just unable to do so. It is almost like as if I am been etherized, made inert. Every conversation that I am indulging in seems mindless and all that seems to be echoing in my mind is a drone of some thoughts, which I yet again have no idea of. If you ask me, it almost feels as if the whole universe has boiled down many questions on to me and I do not know which one to answer.

I am asking myself if this feeling actually erupted with the first chapter that I began to read of Milan Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being." The philosophy he propounds is interesting -

The heaviest of burdens is simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into new heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?

I understand this thought but I cannot relate it to my condition. Is it weight that burdens me or is it the mere absence of any that is managing to create these strange confabulations? My guess is that, it cannot be the absence of a burden. Rather, it is confluence of many 'weights' that is creating this condition in me.

Simmi and I will be distanced even further, now with me shifting to Dwarka. There is a piece of news regarding my professional growth that I have been waiting for since sometime and the anxiety of both seems to be the root cause of this inertness. Along with this and so many other thoughts that I seem to be effortlessly indulging myself in, this condition refuses to budge. Permit me to Sigh. It helps. Every pause helps, but only momentarily. Grrrrrrr!!! Oh so Prufrockian!!!

...And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me.
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

Saints are Sinners Who don't give up!!!

2009-03-31T15:25:00.002+05:30

Thu, Nov 6, 2008 at 11:55 AM: Simmi had this status on her gtalk and it swept me off my feet. When I first read it, I thought that she had picked this line as a random thought from Jhumpa Lahiri's "Unaccustomed Earth" which she has been reading for sometime now. I gave the line a thought and though it intrigued me, I failed to arrive at a concrete or even abstract meaning to the same. I requested her to explain it to me and from that moment on when she did so, I am in a complete awe of the statement. I will try my level best to rephrase the conversation that we have had online and later on phone to share my ecstacy and mental orgasm:

Me: Tell me na what it implies

Simmi: Wait

(after 2 minutes of innocuous prodding)

Simmi: Saints are sinners, because they refuse to give up on their ideals...

Me: ? (I was wondering if she had read anything Marxist recently)

Simmi: Look, how do you define a sin is inconsequential. What matter is, that saints in their attempt to correct and do things right and in doing so they end up 'sinning' in expecting a result. Expectation is a want, in many ways a sin. The true form of duty should not hinge on expectation or result, but only on duty. So many saints in succumbing to expectations, become 'sinners'... (pause)

Me: Go on... ( I was not convinced. If a person expects, then he cannot be a saint, is what I thought!! But I knew that she had more to this, than just that)

Simmi: Saints also have a will to never give up... They will fight for a cause because they expect the change, which for all probability might be for the best of mankind,... but they fight because they expect a change and in doing so they succumb to it as a temptation. (I was sniffing a philosophy of Gita in it)... I shall discuss this with you further when we talk. Got to run now.

Me: K... Hmmmm

I was still thinking...

We could never proceed with this conversation, but I bet there was more to this. My verdict - "I liked the conversation"

Midnight Verse!!!

2008-12-27T00:40:00.002+05:30

Amidst a cloud of smoke,
The butt end of memories
Choke in my throat.
Coughs cease, my eyes gasp,
and the lungs need air.
I rush out (like always),
Leave the smoke behind
Carry the choke,
Adam's apple,
Eve's love.
The cycle is vicious.

As the moon sets,
and dim stars spangle the sky
I light yet another.
Inhale the smoke,
A half intermittent cough,
The butt of memories still remain,
Addiction?
Nay, " Its Life, I tell myself"

Burn Fat Faster and Better!!!

2008-12-11T11:46:00.005+05:30

The article below my friends is worth a read for the serious weight loss aspirants. I came across it in a site www.mensxpert.com who in turn have ripped it off from Divine Caroline. (Gee!!! Plagiarism.. But I prefer to keep a safe distance from it and so the due credits) The article is about the top myths that need to be burst in a weight loss regime and I so much agree with it. I have lived through some of the myths in my weight loss program and have realised its futility. Thus it will be worth while for you to understand these 11 myths and then avoid practicing it!!!!

" Come on, you’ve heard them. Even people who don’t work out have heard most of them. I’m talking about statements like:

· People who play sports like golf, baseball or basketball shouldn’t lift weights because it will make them slow and tight.
· The thingamajig is the best exercise for giving you those washboard abs.
· You should lose the bulk of your weight before you start to weight train.
· I lift weights using high reps to shape and tone my muscles.
· Eating a diet high in fat will make me fat.

It goes on and on. It just boggles my mind that I still hear and read this stuff and it’s almost 2010. As a matter of fact, I was in the gym last night going through a chest routine when I overheard a so-called personal trainer telling a woman that in order for her to get to see her abs she would have to change her routine. He continued to tell her she needed to perform at least 30 to 50 reps every set for four sets and use four different exercises for every body part. Thank God I didn’t hear what he had to say about diet and cardio, because I probably would’ve lost it right there. Instead, I kept my composure and very nicely introduced myself to the woman and told her in not so many words that he was so full of it, his eyes were brown, and that I would be glad to help her with any questions.

Unfortunately, many personal trainers, local muscle-head know-it-alls, and of course the media, are the biggest perpetuators of training and nutritional myths. And what’s more unfortunate, this is where most people -- like you -- get their information.

The hard part is that some myths have been around for so long they are accepted as gospel. My part is done. I’ve written this “book” that contains everything you need to know to positively change your body. You need to do your part and open your mind. Some of what you are about to learn goes against the grain, so to speak. The information you’re about to absorb is nothing like what will sell a ThighMaster®. I refuse to offer gimmicks or embellish to hook you in. I offer the truth, which sells itself because it works for the long haul.

So here you are facing a fork in the road. Which direction are you going to go? The fact that you’re reading this tells me you are self-motivated. It tells me, after a lot of back and forth, you’ve made the decision to move in the right direction to change the way you look and feel.

It’s imperative that if you’ve made the decision to become healthier and stronger, you need to forget everything you’ve heard about diet and exercise. I am asking for a clean slate. Forget about all the sensational fitness and nutritional theories you’ve heard over the years. Read the following as a major first step toward your goal.

Myth 1:Training your abs using the right machines or exercises will give you the washboard abs you want.
Now, I’m only going to say this once. Ready? You can do abs until you’re blue in the face. I don’t care if you do 1,000 sit ups three times a day -- if you don’t get rid of the fat covering the abdominal wall you’re not going to see didly squat. There is no magical exercise or combination of exercises that will give you abs.

Remember there is no such thing as spot reduction. This is so important I must repeat it. There is no such thing as spot reduction. How fast and where we lose our body fat is genetically programmed, and the only way to lose body fat is to eat correctly. Or you can have it sucked out, which I only recommend as a last resort.

Myth 2: You should lose weight before you begin weight training or you’ll just bulk up.
This is another one I’ve been hearing since my early days in the gym at the Lorain (Ohio) YMCA. That was 25 years ago. (WOW! Man, time flies.) Anyway, lifting weights is exactly what you want to do if you’re overweight. As a matter of fact, if you had to choose only one type of exercise, weight training would be it by a long shot. Some of you are asking, “What about cardio?”

It’s muscle that drives the metabolism. The less muscle we have, the slower our metabolism and vice versa. The only way to preserve or build muscle, which is what you really want and need to stay strong and get lean, is through weight training.

Myth 3: The best way to lose fat is to do cardio.

Screw cardio!

Now don’t get me wrong, walking or jogging around the block or on a treadmill is better than nothing. But I’m not -- and you shouldn’t be -- concerned with what’s better than nothing. I personally am not concerned about being average. If you’re going to put the time in, use it wisely.

Have you been to any one of the gyms across this country? What percentage of people who perform cardio are lean? How many people that you see performing cardio on a regular basis make gains, and better still, keep them?

There are three things to keep in mind about cardio when trying to get leaner. One is that it doesn’t build muscle. Two, it doesn’t preserve muscle while losing weight. Both are extremely important if your goal is not only to get leaner, but to stay that way. As we lose weight the body does not discriminate where the weight comes from. We lose muscle along with fat, especially on a low calorie diet. And performing cardio accentuates this phenomenon.

Lastly, unless you enjoy cardiovascular training, it’s just not worth the time. The work to benefit ratio is dismal to say the least. Unless you’re willing to bust your butt and perform 60 to 90 minutes of cardio a day, which will hinder your muscle building capacity, cardio is not worth it.

If you do nothing but diet and cardio, you may lose some weight, but your results will be less than expected. Your appearance and overall shape will stay the same. If you have excess fat around your butt and narrow shoulders, your proportion will remain. This is not improvement to me, and if it is to you, you’re going down the wrong road.

The best and only form of exercise for reshaping and improving your health is progressive weight training.

Myth 4: If you want to shape and tone your muscles you should do high reps.

There are two myths contained in the statement above. Let’s take them on one at a time, shall we? It’s still a widespread common misconception that certain exercises are considered shaping exercises. One of the most common is the preacher curl. It was, and still is, widely accepted that preacher curls helped build the bottom half of the bicep. This was welcome news to those who have short bicep muscle bellies. Unfortunately, it is physiologically impossible to change the shape of any muscle on our bodies. If it were, don’t you think we all would be doing it? And if we were all doing it, wouldn’t our physiques look very similar?

If you have small flat glute muscles when you start training, you’re going to have smaller, flatter glutes than most, 20 years of training later. If you have narrow triceps, they’re always going to be on the narrow side. If you have high, thin calf muscles, you are always going to have high calf muscles that are on the thin side. This not meant to discourage you but to encourage realistic goals. You can always add size and a more positive appearance. But getting your muscles to change shape is simply not going to happen.

“I want to make my muscles look more tone so I’m doing more reps. I don’t want to be big, I just want to be more tone.” First of all, if a guy ever says that, he needs to be slapped and have his estrogen levels checked. A man who would say “I want to look more tone” is also taking a Pilate’s class with a guy named Bruce, has track lighting and wears eye liner. Just kidding. I know a Bruce who has track lighting and he’s as masculine as they come. Very simply, performing 12 reps instead of six to eight per set will have no noticeable effect on the amount of fat you burn.

Secondly, and more importantly, the tonus of muscle has nothing to do with its appearance. One can appear more “cut,” more “shredded,” more “defined,” but it is impossible to appear more tone. Muscle tone is the amount of tension a muscle exerts at rest.

Myth 5: I’m not sore today so I must not have had a good workout yesterday.

The fact that one is sore the days following a workout shows they probably had a good workout. However, not being sore the days following a workout has no correlation with whether or not you had a good workout. The factor you should be paying attention to is the intensity level. Were your sets done with 100 percent intensity, meaning, did you take your working sets to failure using proper form? Another factor is productivity. Did you make any gains? Did you increase in the amount of weight you used, or did you increase the number of reps with a particular weight? How you felt while training is another factor. Did you feel sluggish or did you feel energized and ready to push it? Post workout soreness is just one of several symptoms of a good workout.

Don’t worry if you’re not sore. Pay attention to your intensity levels, productivity and how you feel. If any of these factors are lacking, you may need to change your routine. Chances are you’re over-training.

Myth 6: Eating a diet high in protein is unhealthy and will damage your kidneys and liver.

Thank God this one isn’t quite as common as it once was, but it’s such a classic I had to include it.
There is not one study to support the myth above. I dare anyone to show one study that supports the myth that a diet high in protein will harm the liver, kidneys or is unhealthy in any way to a healthy individual. You will find, however, a mound of evidence supporting higher protein diets. Protein has a whole host of positive effects.

Protein repairs and maintains everything in our bodies from hormones to muscles. Proteins are made up of building blocks called amino acids. There are eight essential amino acids. Essential means we have to ingest these for survival because our bodies cannot manufacture them. If your protein intake is low, your body will get the essential amino acids it needs from your own muscle tissue. This is a big reason why wacko vegetarians, especially vegans, have a much lower percentage of muscle, on average, than meat-and-fish-eating humans. The lack of quality protein also makes it harder for them to gain muscle in the gym. Not only are they not getting enough protein, they also lack in the quality of protein, unless they supplement with quality protein powders. Vegans are extremists and there is no hope. At least a vegetarian can get quality supplements from dairy products. Vegans must resort to eating garbage soy protein powders and tofu. To each his own.

Now for all you thin-skinned readers: I’m talking about optimizing your body’s ability to get lean, healthy and more muscular. I’m not saying being a vegetarian will make you unhealthy. I’m saying it’s not the most advantageous way to go. Vegans are another story. This way of eating is unhealthy. Without supplements, a vegan could not survive. It’s impossible to ingest all the essential nutrients one needs through plant sources only. This lifestyle, flies in the face of science and physiology, and I will not condone it.

Myth 7: Eating more protein will make me fat.

We are simply made to eat protein. Why anyone would consciously eat a diet low in protein is beyond me. Although, with so much misinformation out there I guess it’s understandable.

However, not only do you need to consume protein, it needs to be high quality and in adequate amounts. I recommend one gram per pound of body weight. However, if you train with 100 percent intensity (which is how you should train), you need upwards of 1.5 grams per pound. At the very least you should consume a portion of protein with every meal. Don’t worry; eating more protein will not make you fat.

Protein, in and of itself, has little to do with getting fat, and has nothing to do with being unhealthy. You see, a calorie is not a calorie. A calorie of a carbohydrate does not equate to a calorie of protein when being metabolized in our bodies. Protein calories are not likely to be stored as fat, as compared to carbs. This is mainly due to the fact that proteins require a lot of energy to metabolize and assimilate. And as an added bonus, protein lowers the glycemic index of other foods. This helps to ensure your pancreas secretes small amounts of insulin, which is the fat storage hormone. The higher your insulin levels, the more fat you’re going to store.

To put it quite simply, if you do not consume enough protein you will not only put a halt to your efforts to have a leaner, more muscular body, you can actually lose some of the muscle you’re working so hard to get.

Myth 8: Strictly reducing calories is the key to losing body fat.

One of the biggest errors one can make is eating only once or twice per day. Our bodies adapt to any stress placed upon it, and are programmed through tens of thousands of years for survival. When we restrict the amount of food we eat, our bodies will respond by reducing the rate at which we burn fat. It doesn’t matter that you’re eating a burger with fries and a soft drink for dinner; by not eating at regular intervals your body kicks into starvation mode and readily stores fat.

It becomes a vicious cycle. You want to lose weight so you cut back on the amount of food, which for most means eating fewer times per day. Your body responds by slowing its metabolism, an automatic survival mechanism.

You lose weight at first, which is both fat and muscle, and eventually hit a plateau. Muscle drives the metabolism. It’s what burns fat as fuel. The less you have, the less fat you burn.
And if losing muscle and feeling crappy weren’t enough, you are continuously hungry and eventually fall off the wagon. Now you’re eating more with less muscle and a slower metabolism. Your body is now a much less efficient fat-burning machine. Now you can eat less than when you started and still gain weight.

The weight you gain when you start eating again (and you will start eating again), will be even greater than when you started your crash diet. Sounds ridiculous doesn’t it? But many people do it over and over.

What needs to be done is to eat whole nutritious meals at least four times per day. You need to establish new eating habits, and this may take a few months to feel comfortable. Eating in this way will ensure a faster metabolism, higher energy levels, less hunger and a better outlook.

Myth 9: Strength training is too dangerous and will stunt the growth of children.

I have an 11-year-old daughter. She has already been involved with sports for five years. These days, if a child doesn’t start playing sports in the primary grades, they are going to be behind. Parents do not hesitate to enroll their young children in sports like soccer, basketball, gymnastics, football and others. These children are placed in uncontrolled environments where there is running, tripping, colliding, changing directions at high speed, twisting and a whole host of other forces being applied to their little bodies. But God forbid you put your child on a strength training routine, which is in a totally controlled environment!

Some children play two, three or more sports per year. These same parents I talk to in the gym would never consider putting their child on a strength training routine. The above myth is the main reason I hear from parents.

To the contrary of what many parents fear, numerous studies show the benefits of strength training, including: increased bone density and development, injury prevention, and improved athletic performance. These far outweigh the dangers that parents worry so much about. So do your kids a favor and get them interested in fitness early.

Myth 10: After 96 hours of not training, a muscle will start to lose its size and strength.

The first component of a training program that should be given consideration is training frequency. How often can -- or more importantly -- should I train per week? Optimum recovery time between training sessions is essential if one is going to continue to make progress. Training frequency, determined by an individual’s recovery ability, is often a forgotten part of most training protocols.

Don’t be so concerned with how many training sessions you can handle per week. Be more concerned about the optimal amount. More is not always better. There is no reason in going to the gym if you’re not going to make progress. In every workout, if you trained properly and have fully recovered, you should be able to add some weight or do an extra reps.

The ability to recover from workouts is genetically predetermined. Some individuals can handle a high volume and frequency of training, and others can handle only minimal amounts. You need to determine the frequency at which you should train your body parts; this is done by keeping a detailed training journal of your workouts. How do you know where to go, if you don’t know where you’ve been?

If you aren’t making progress, your workout needs to be adjusted. The average individual on a three or four day split routine, training with 100 percent intensity, will need between six and eight days off before training the same body part. I personally train each body part three times per month.

Myth 11: Athletes or weekend warriors who play sports like golf, baseball, boxing, soccer, hockey and basketball shouldn’t lift weights because it will make them slow and tight.

Why in the world should a person who plays golf weight train? Sports involving swinging, sprinting, jumping, swimming, throwing, kicking or punching are affected by the ratio of the strength of the muscles involved in the movement, to the mass of those body parts. To put it simply, if a soccer player trains properly and increases his strength 15 percent over a six-month period, and his mass remains relatively the same, his ability to accelerate is increased. The stronger a boxer becomes while maintaining a constant body mass, the faster and harder he’ll be able to punch.

Now as far as athletes becoming tight, research has shown that full range progressive resistance training is a great way to develop functional flexibility. Individuals who weight train properly, but don’t stretch, are more flexible than individuals who don’t train or stretch.

In short, as with people not involved in sports, weight training will not make athletes tight or slow -- it will make them better."

A light story... (Heavily loaded)

2008-09-11T15:54:00.003+05:30

Remember, my earlier post on Aug 25 Fat Boy Slim where I vowed to touch a 70 kg from the... ahem 89 kg that I so graciously had managed to accumulate over the years of adopting Charvak's principle - Eat, Drink and Merry!!! Well all the merriment, drinking and eating principle were now to take a toss once the mission began. For all unknown conditions I was able to get on to a work out mode only a month after I had written the first post. (Sigh!!! I know)
Losing weight my friends, is never an easy task and I will not make it sound simple either. (Lest it may discount all the 'Oooohs' and 'Aaahs', 'Really' that I happily manage to generate nowadays when I tell wannabe's of my weight loss story) It is not rocket science either. It is actually more to do with the mind and the motivation that you may receive from yourself in wanting to lose weight. The funda is simple - Regulate your diet, Plan and follow a workout and bingo the process begins. But before one actually begins the mission, what is very important is the need to read literature on nutrition, diet and work-out. I did exactly that. There is no dearth of it in net or also if you decide to pick up some good magazines like "Men's Health", "Prevention" (and this has nothing to do with the fact that I have worked with the India Today Group) What I write now on is no prescribed formula, but something which I have practsised and managed to achieve results over 11 months.

Mantra 1: Know your body!!!

It is very important that you understand your own body and that does not mean standing in front of a mirror and groping yourself and the unwanted layers that might now be hanging from all the wrong places. ;) Understanding one's own body is a lot to do with the kind of life that you might have led prior to accumulating the layers and also the kind of life that you might be leading right now. In my case, the retrospective was of an athlete, relentlessly in the basketball court or if not then perhaps dancing at a friends party with two left feet. And then, I completed my MA and MBA, lost perspective of life and a girlfriend, tasted and got addicted to alcohol, suffered from attention seeking disorder and hence got drunk and loved to create a scene (all puns intended) and then before I realised the weighing scale was reading 78 kgs in 2005. I thought that job would change all this but I was wrong, and this is something you also need to realise. Working a sedantry or even a field job does nothing but adds many gms to you, because lifestyle becomes your nemesis. We earn, so we indulge; We indulge, So we get tired; We get tired; So we drink; We drink, so we have fun... Its a viscious cycle my friend, very viscious. And its almost the same story for everyone who has gained weight. (Drinking is supplemented with good food for both alcoholics and also who refuse to drink) So when, I decided that I need to shed weight, the first thing was to introspect my lifestyle and in turn my body. When I did this, it is then that I realised that instead of actually pampering my body, I was abusing it. Late nights, sedantry work style and more over the many empty bottles of alcohol and beer in my cupboard were a clear indication of why I had been bloating. And when I joined Music Today, the weighing scale read 89kgs. I stopped weighing myself and started to laugh off the smirks and remarks on my paunch, but every day I stood infront of the mirror wishing for a new day.

Next: Mantra 2: Stop Wishing and Act!!!

Back!!!

2008-09-06T11:03:00.002+05:30

Yes, I am back, like all the other times. And as a hard working lazy individual I am shameless enough not to offer any excuses for being away for so long. Smug!!!

I watched Rock On last week and have to definitely write about it. Nikhat Kazmi, in his review remarked that the Indian Film has come of age and I could not agree with him more. Some couple of years ago when I was watching the acronym'ised' movies directed by the 'Oh-so-exclusive-touch-me-not-delicate-creative-metrosexual-directors' (O.S.E.T.M.N.D.C.M.D... Pun intended), I thought that we will never get to see a Good Will Hunting, Amadeus or even a Forest Gumps in Bollywood. But, I am wrong and as if to ward off my fear, Bollywood of late has provided me some great mental orgasms in the multiplex. Small budgets, new faces, young directors, realistic, hard hitting and more importantly entertaining movies have been churned out. Last year it was Big-B starrer "Cheeni Kum", Anurag's "Black Friday" and the inimitable "Bheja Fry". The list is small but yet very heart warming since the movies managed to bridge the gap and stigma between words like cross-over, off-beat and mass. This year, Whoa!! Look what we have. In the early months we had "Taare Zameen Par," Rajat's "Mithya", Rajat Kumar Gupta's "Aamir"(This was a real good one) and now we have Abhishek Kapoor's "Rock On"

In my ratings "Rock On" takes the cherry till now. Fast moving, it yet carries its own mellow pace reflecting the psyche of friendship and the anguish in shying away from one's dream. Farhan must have a penchant for friendship (though in the industry he is shy and reclusive) because post "Dil Chahta Hai", this is his second movie in the same lineage. But we dont care. Rock On is a step ahead of DCH because it is about the need to reclaim you life, if you have lost it in the alleys of 'investment banking' and 'mundane daily life'. The plot is simple and even if you are not a rocker/musician, you will still feel that its a slice of your urban life. This is what makes the movie memorable. We all have or are living the lives of Farhan, Arjun, Luke, Purab, Prachi and Shahana.

The plot interweaves with heart warming poignancy that each character experiences in staying away from something that they much love. And its not the men alone who suffer this deliberation. Rock On also introduces us Prachi Desai, who in her very quiet role emerges as a clear winner as the doting and yet frustrated wife of a husband who treats her with as much inertness as he would do with the stocks he advises about to his clients as an investment banker. The other woman in the movie Shahana Goswami's performance is equally stellar as a wife to an embittered guitarist, Arjun Rampal, handling the latter's fishery business. Each of the characters' story however does not strain the fabric of the primary plot of the battle that they engage in the compromise/s they have made. I guess we all fight this battle and hence Rock On relates to us.

In performances, Arjun Rampal is my pick of the lot. He eases through his character as an embittered guitarist who bravely tries to accept his marraige to Shahana and the compromise that he makes in refusing to play guitar in marraiges because he knows he is made for the stage. He is made for doing "Magik"

Go watch the movie because, words fail me in expressing how good is it. Rock On will be incomplete without a standing applause for Shankar Ehsan and Loy's soul stirring music, which is made even better with Farhan's rustic but fresh voice. To sum up I will borrow a paragraph from Subhas Jha's review, which so aptly sums up the movie "A large number of our films are about life. Some are about music. Seldom has a film blended the music of life into the fabric of a film with such seamless expertise. Rock On!! is that rarity where every component character and episode falls into place with fluent virility."

Indeed Subhas, cant agree more.

The Pawnbroker

2008-04-19T21:37:00.001+05:30

And here I am,

Of Flesh, blood and bones,
Mind - No, that is locked with the pawnbroker
who,Some say is ethereal
I only know that he lives above the real.
Never mind, but He has what I owe to all.
In my last conversation with Him,
(More an argument if I am to believe)
He levied a heavy interest,
And I had to give away some memories as a fee.
Indeed a hard bargainer
is He-
I have heard some old folks say this.
Now I know;
My Mind, Oh! Yes, My Mind is with Him you see.
Few more years,
perhaps,
Sigh!
My Mind - hope I shall get back from Him,
But not all memories shall I give away
only for my Mind's interest and fee!
Some I shall hold to relish and set my soul free.

Movies

2008-03-08T10:18:00.007+05:30

It's been sometime that I have been wanting to write about some movies , I have watched recently. It actually began with Taare Zameen Par, a movie I ended up watching three times and not once felt let down. TZP deserves a complete entry and not just a few words of appreciation. That I will soon. But for now it's the other flicks I shall opine of. (Gee!! I sound like an English critic of the 18th century)

Om Shanti Om- What's this doing here? Well my friends I watched the movie. Found it to be ridiculously stupid without much of a plot and yet was guilty of wearing a smile of a satisfied mind at the end of the movie. Sigh! I am, at the end of the day, a masala greedy, spicy curry loving Indian. OSO had it all and hence the guilt of satisfaction. If the infamous adage that "Sex and Sharukh sells" is to be proved true, believe me it does not need much but a small sting op on the people who shrieked (six pack) and laughed (include me also) at the slapstick and cliched humour of the movie. In retrospect today I guess the kudos should go to Farah and Sharukh for providing what the Indian mass required- the daily dose of spice with a pinch of salt. I will not delve into the plot or characters but will certainly pick up Vishal and Shekhar for being inspired by The Phantom of the Opera for the climax song. When the song began I was racking my brain to identify the familiarity of the tune. Bingo! the ambience gave it away- Phantom of the Opera. Inspired- My good friends- Well a long time since the Musu musu haasi inspiration.
OSO gets ***1/2 (which implies watch it at least once)

Jodha Akbar - Aha! Opulence has a new name- Ashutosh Gowrikar. Mr. Gowrikar's tryst with magnitude after Lagaan is on a different scale of history and fiction. Lagaan was fiction against the canvas of history. It did not pick on any character, living or dead and hence escaped the ire of a reticent and politicized public. Swadesh was completely based on history with shades of fiction, but the protagonist was not someone who occupied the mind of the public and hence the movie escaped public display of affection of any sorts. (Oh Yes! the pun is completely intended). Jodha Akbar is a tryst with history and an attempt to recreate the missing strands of an association so less talked about, yet by far a very important association that went on to shape a political dream of an emperor. If Akbar married Jodha as a part of a political alliance, then all Haider Ali and Gowrikar tries to do, is to provide a fictional element of a love story that by all possibilities may have bloomed in the courts of the Mughal empire. If we question this tale of love then I guess we must question the tales of all the iconic lovers like Laila-Majnu, Heer-Ranja who like this tale also is a perhaps only a song of the wandering minstrel. However, history does suggest that there was an emperor Akbar and indeed there was a princess Jodha bai. Then, Jodha Akbar is indeed a great tale featured by AG on the silver screen. The canvas of the movie is opulent and so is the performance of Hrithik Roshan as Akbar and Aishwarya Rai as Jodha. What struck me was the restrain of expression in love and the pine between the characters, which was very well executed by Hrithik and Aish. Keep in mind that the movie is 4 hour long and yet I did not notice the audience being bored. Keep away from what 'professional critics' of the movie have to say. You must watch it for the sheer grandeur and performance of all involved- from actors, director to the cinematographer.
**** (beat this Mr. Kazhmi)

Ok Next to follow are the following Elizabeth-The Golden Age, No Country for Old Men, The Bourne Ultimatum. Keep reading this space for more

Change

2008-03-07T23:36:00.003+05:30

Have any one of you read Benjamin Holt's The Tao of Pooh?(try following the link and you will get some bytes) I guess you should read it. Not that it will help you achieve instant nirvana or sorts, but it certainly will make you feel better if you face some unexplainable condition or to put it more simply if you feel that your heart and head are going different places. No prizes for guessing that, yes, your truly is in such a situation. Sigh!!!

Change is difficult. As human being we have a very enviable quality of adapting, so says our texts of biology and sociology. Ask me, indeed we do but perhaps not well adapted to accept a change as easily as other animals. And tell you what, it all boils down, very ironically to the very quality which differentiates us from animals- Reason and Emotion. Because we can reason we manage to emote and resist a change. (Well, most of the time we do). I am in the threshold of change right now. I have a new job, a new place, a new location and new people. The transition is easy when I reason with my career graph and pocket in mind. It definitely is difficult when I think of the friends I am now going to be less associated with. It is even more difficult when I realise that lunch hours will be in a different place with different people. Yes, the logic says that I'll get used to this but somehow this time my emotions are not giving in easily. The transition from DIREM to Music Today was easy owing to the fact that I was somehow prepared for it from sometime but, from MT to somewhere else- I guess it happened a little to soon and caught my emotions off-guard. My father changed his job only once to join from Cotton College to a University. 35 years and only one change. Me-Two years and two changes. What should you call it? Inconsistency, aspiration or plain struggle to survive the rat race as the best rat perhaps. I'll select the latter but wish I could change the rat bit, because rats should not be emotional and I am. I will miss my friends here. Music Today/Business Today seemed to me like a pulpit of energy where I felt like an electron. Guess electrons do not make much difference but they do create energy and I did manage to do that, only because I had lots of friends to receive and give back in return. Now I'll miss all this and I am resorting to Pooh to sort my dilemma. Well, he did to some extent...

"Rabbit's clever," said Pooh thoughtfully.

"Yes,"said Piglet, "Rabit's clever."

"And he has Brain."

"Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit has Brain."

There was a long silence.

"I suppose," said Pooh, "that that's why he never understands anything."

There we go.. you see, I guess I do not need to understand and only feel happy that I'll miss them because I cherish them. Oh Yes, I do!!!

In lack of a muse

2008-02-22T13:59:00.003+05:30

I guess we all have muses-anything that will inspire us to create ideas, dreams, prose,verse, furniture, and almost anything else under the sun which is as good old Plato would refer to as something "twice removed from reality." A few days ago I asked Venkat (my colleague/friend and someone gifted with the exquisite ability to translate the most mundane thoughts into beautiful woven prose/verse. Read his blog here) why wasn't he writing. "I need a muse, dude," pat came his reply. For a moment, a while back I was also in search of a muse and while I kept asking friends to throw topics at me to write about (yeah, I know that is not the ideal way always), it struck me suddenly when Preetika asked me to write about anything around me - the pens, bottles, paper cups, a white board etc., to write about the different muses that inspire people from different walks of life.

Let's begin with a workaholic whose muse I presume would be performance, work, achievement, money or maybe none of the any. The workaholic could choose to work also to keep away from home, a nagging wife/husband, or maybe to be close to someone he/she likes in the office. In the same way for some, the comfort of the office in a hot summer night could also be a temporary muse to work. Well that is a good number of muses to begin with.

What would be then the muse of a cobbler or to reduce our set into a more generic term the menial workers who make their living with their day's efforts. I guess, in this case survival is the most potent muse. Self respect will also be a close second since these are people who labour to earn and thankfully do not beg. Ironically, beggars whose muse is to also to survive, seek a completely different medium to do so. Ah! so a common muse could have different sets of inspirations to perform completely different actions. So is Muse relative?

A lover's muse is what I believe is most consistent. Love alone is the muse that will define his/her relationship with the other. And when I refer to love here, it obviously is the genuine kinds and not the fritter of types. When someone is in love you will find reflection of the muse in everything/everywhere that the person does. I can feel it in Venkat's verse, Sameer's attitude, Preetika's rue, Pooja's smses, Simmi's calls and more so in my own response to songs that touch my heart. Sigh! in the last few lines I felt it again.

I should sign off with the writer's muse, who, I agree with many other wise men, is everybody/everything and their individual muse.

"Autorickshaw Diaries"

2008-01-28T21:16:00.000+05:30

It is a little scary for me to pubish my thoughts, now that I have not been able to fulfill many of them. It's been like ages since when I last expressed in this space without having the paucity of time or patience. Excuses, however do not sate the hunger to express and of late Simmi has been all ears to my thoughts. But sincerely wish I could take a holiday and punch the feelings into words for all to read. Sigh!

Well to begin with there is something I have termed as "Autorickshaw Diaries" which occupies my mind most of the time (ofcourse that is when it is not occupied with the myriad other confusion and confabulations that determine my life presently). A.D. would be my attempt to describe the urban jungle as I have seen and felt it in these 11 years of stay in Delhi. Valiant try- Yes indeed and will need time for me to complete. Watch out for this space it will be coming soon!!!

Oh yes!!! Check out the video bar on the right hand side of my blog. (You'll need to scroll down a lil,, yes!!) Youtube is cool!!!

Cheers!

Love...

2008-01-28T21:05:00.000+05:30

A very short verse to love...

I did not feel you,
when plentitude surrounded me.
I did not feel you
when I searched for you.
Now,
when you touched me
unaware,
oblivious,
unexpected,
I do not have to look around,
I see you in in everything
I see you in me.
Indeed,
indescribable you are
As all have called thee!!!

Oh!! So much in love and so much to tell about the feeling that now also belongs to me.

Does it need one... I refuse to give one!!!

2007-11-28T19:50:00.000+05:30

I wish I could define an excuse which explains in a single word of how busy I have been. My mind has been goading me and there is so much I want to write about but time just does not seem to be grateful to me. Even now I try to grasp with what should I write about. I guess I just want to write a verse... The metaphors and the meanings may be personal and may not even explain to the layman what I mean, but I want a catharsis and only this verse will help me to do it...

Sold out is my show,
The actors have made their bow,
Men and women clapped,
They cried and they laughed,
Some snickered,
Some bickered,
But they stayed through it all.
My show is sold out.
And I am left on the stage.
Where is my part-
The role I designed,
the role that sets me apart.
When the audience is gone,
Who shall I play it for?
The lights are off,
The stage is dark,
Who shall say now-
My show was a sold out.
When they leave the hall
I play the best part of all,
I play my self
And only one shall see me now,
My mirror on the wall,
To me, my show will again be a sold out.

58 days

2007-11-10T10:04:00.000+05:30

58 days without any posts-No it's not loss of interest or lack of creative juices. In fact the 58 days have been a period without any lazy Sundays or for that matter any lazy day. New assignments at job, a promotion, a trip to home, two Grishams, shedding around 10 kg of weight, search for a new place to stay, conflict of head and heart, news of Dad's health, unprecedented expenses, Diwali celebration and today an early morning where the 58 days of memories boiling in the cauldron of the restless mind wants to release on the screen. If I got down to weave all my recent experiences the result would be perhaps an interesting novel. OK if not interesting, a bad-seller none-the-less at least a novel.

Exposition for such a long narrative is always a problem. I guess I can begin with Grisham since reading is something I would otherwise be doing all the time, if I was a lucky 'rich unemployed son-of-an-industrialist-with-3-contributing workaholic elder-sibling' (The lack of English terms to describe crazy imagination has been always appalling.)

John Grisham- I was hooked onto him when I read into him for the first time in "The Runaway Jury". Unlike Sheldon's dramas and thrillers, that would rightfully do well as a Hollywood flick, Grisham's novels retain a classic touch of a slow narrative which, I find appealing. The protagonists of his novels are contemplative and ironically dispose themselves very well in a delayed narrative that begs the readers to follow each line as the author would want it to. Read "The Chamber" and you will understand what I mean. A few months ago I had picked up an omnibus of two of his recent novels- "The Brethren" and "A Painted House." A trip to hometown meant that I could relish the investment over the journey and stay. I began with "The Brethren." Divulging very less of the plot, I will simply rate the novel a 5 out of 10, because though a very interesting thriller, I found it as a run-of-the-mill stuff. Scheming judges, a US Presidential candidate, an intelligent and crippled CIA director, an unusual secret and a very well devised scam-perfect ingredients for the Hollywood flick(I checked on the net and as of now no news of any producers wanting to produce it. Maybe someone should read this blog!!!)

It is "A Painted House" that managed to stimulate me into an intellectual orgasm. This is not the usual Grisham-"A Painted House" is perhaps Grisham's attempt of a memorable Classic that would one day qualify for literary interests. Set in the Southern US city of Arankasas in 1952, the novel is a pale but firm shadow of two of my favourite classics- George Eliot's "The Mill on the Floss" and Harper's " To Kill a Mocking Bird" I don't know if the latter classics were revolving in his mind, but I were him it certainly would. Unlike his other novels, "A Painted House" has a narrative of a young 10 year old-Luke Chandler and his decriptive experiences gloss the tense, deep rooted worries that occupy the adult mind. At the same time Grisham manages to unfold the topical issues of the state and its inhabitants during the era. The cotton plantations, the look-out for labour, the Mexicans, the impending threat of weather and floods of the great Mississippi, the worries and orthodox views of farmers vis-a-vis farming versus working in the city etc are issues that blend very effectively with personal issues like being educated in the city, a child's outlook to the fragmentation of Christianity, adolescence and the love of baseball through the eyes of the ten year old Chandler. And to envelop everything, the icing in the cake is the metaphor of a house being painted. What Grisham manges to do int this novel, is to take the readers into a world which is real. For instance the worry of families whose relatives were part of the great American Vietnam mission and the fierce support for every body's personal baseball favourite teams is in the pulpit of the narrative. Read the novel, not because of the beautiful things I have written, but because it will stimulate you, keep you alert-much more than any thriller.

I did feel in one case that Grisham hurried the ending but that's my personal opinion like all of the above. One should read the novel and experience it for all that matters. The novel has been adopted into a CBS television movie/telefilm for "Hallmark Hall of Fame." Go ahead, pick it up from the shelves.

Next time-"A new place to Stay"

Wish you were here...

2007-09-12T10:29:00.000+05:30

I have heard this so many times but I just do not seem to grow out of it. Unfortunately not being an intense listener of songs I always had failed to comprehend the lyrics of this masterpiece. Listen to this now... and read the lyrics... awesome!!! Indeed something around me make me "Wish you were here" too.
And the best part of a youtube embedding... Click on the tab "Menu" in the bottom right corner and you will find a list of other Pink Floyd great master pieces.. right there leaving you "Comfortably Numb" :)

So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell,
blue skies from pain.
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?
And did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?
How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have you found? The same old fears.
Wish you were here.

The Electron

2007-09-03T13:34:00.000+05:30

Spiralling across the cosmos
the mind-its epicenter
Fears no invasion,
the electron is the key
my soul
In it's path
I vanquish them all!!!

I guess thats how I feel immediately. Things are moving fast around me . I wonder if I am keeping up the pace. At this moment I feel like the electron pushing itself through countless directions and in this process creating energy.

By the way Preetika shared a very nice thought for the day today:

Confucius said

"Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall"

Not at all confusing , is it??? :)

Read and Write

2007-08-30T16:57:00.000+05:30

"The truth is, it's not a great career move to create a readership and then, in effect, abandon them. "- Dan Simmons

Remember the first time you wrote a verse/prose or perhaps painted a picture. Beyond the self satisfaction of creation what was the next thing that gave you goosebumps- appreciation or criticism from your audience. No matter what was the reaction but the bottom line was the thrill of being recognised for an act of creation. It is so inherent that even as the most detached, inconsequential (sorry to use this term) or introvert author, you might yet, want a readership or recognition. My guess is we all go through it. For my matter, even I do, though the entries are only into a blog. Somewhere I feverishly wish that more people read what I have to say and also leave their feedback.

Bouquets and brickbats are never worries. Readership is. I would sometime think over this and worry that maybe my entries are not attractive enough to pull in readership. Thankfully, I do not continue to think the same today after I came across the quote by Dan Simmons. Very simply said but immensely thought provoking. It also reminds me of a movie "Finding Forrester". If you all have not watched it, then you must. Sean Connery in it. (Awesome movie and its a kind of serendipity when I realised that the makers of this movie are also the makers of "Good Will Hunting". Both these movies are my favourites.) Anyway, like I was saying readership, therefore should be the last thing in your mind if you are writing. One should write because he/she enjoys writing. The act is to write without any pretensions; express what is in the mind. The editing can happen later and readers will follow even later. Marquez does this and I guess all who want to express do the same.
Three cheers, Mr Simmons. Let me sum it up also with another quote of yours

"There's a unique bond of trust between readers and authors that I don't believe exists in any other art form; as a reader, I trust a novelist to give me his or her best effort, however flawed."

Haiku 2

2007-08-27T22:43:00.000+05:30

It came, touched me
I was touched
Am overpowered by emotions.

The above are some very personal feelings of a moment that came and left an indelible mark in my mind.

I love Haiku.

Haiku

2007-08-26T21:33:00.000+05:30

Hmm I was reading into the Japenese form of poetry- Haiku. (Follow the link) Interesting! Few of my attempts are below:

Waves

From waves near and far
Voices and news I hear
The mobile, the television and the transistor.

Love

Blind as the bat
scurries like the rat
shatters like glass!

Comfort

Food, water and roof
Vehicle, garden and golf
The green in the pocket buys them all.

Do let me know if you liked them...

Of Molars, Incisors and Dentists

2007-08-26T20:30:00.000+05:30

Last week I visited a dentist. I cannot exactly trace the period when I had last visited one but it was certainly a long, long, long... time ago. Why do I have the dentist phobia is also something I cannot recall. Only that my association with dental patients have always resulted in an understanding that these lot of doctors can be very 'painful.' Friends holding their mouth with miserable expressions before and after visiting a dentist had an 'Ally Mcbea'l effect on my imagination. I began to regard dentists as a species who in their 5-6 year period of studies learn and master the art of masochism. Such was the phobia that I refused to get one of my upper molars checked for severe ache and I bore it for days striving on dozens of brufens. When the pain subsided and after a few months a small section of the tooth also broke off, I became an advocate of "no dentist but self help of one's own enamels." This was a few years back. Last week was different.
Simmi and I had an argument over something and I wanted to reach home late. I really do not know what was cooking in my head when I parked my bike close to the dental clinic. Of course there was this pressure that one of my incisors was infected, that I could not chew well from the right side, also that two of my left molars had very visible "CAVITIES" (yeah that's in upper-case) and a reminiscence of my tooth ache was haunting one of the lower molars. (phew and I thought I will never have to visit a dentist)
I very surreptitiously entered the clinic. My mind was racking for excuses to avoid a confrontation. The empty reception was a good excuse and I was about to leave when I heard a lady call -"Yes, Can I help you?"
The next thing I remember is me addressing her about my tooth problems and a while later seated on the dental chair for a routine examination.
"Open your mouth wide," she asked.
For a moment I thought that, "This is it. I should immediately leave."
Miraculously I held on and after the examination she dropped the bomb.
"Binodan, 8 cavities and probably 2 RCTs that will need immediate action," Aarika expressed in boisterous voice.
I seriously wondered what's the need for the excitement unless that every time a dentist examines the enamels he/she digs into it as unto a gold-mine. Of-course that each filling is at Rs 500 and the two probable RCTs are pegged at Rs 3000/- each are the finer details that she would explain later. (So you see where the gold mine analogy fits)
At that moment noting Aarika's chirpy voice I guessed that they would be painless rendering and promptly agreed on a sitting for Saturday.
After the examination I felt proud of myself. It took me courage under "the dentist's lamp" to overcome a phobia.
So what happened on Saturday is something I will chip in another entry. Though I still uphold the courage, I have some very descriptive moments to share when Aarika had lowered the drilling machine into one my molars. ;)

Fat-boy-Slim!!!

2007-08-25T15:05:00.001+05:30

I have been putting on weight. It has been close to two years that I have realised this, but yes I have been gaining some grams every month in this period. It was/is not alarming as yet but yes it has begun weighing on me physically and mentally.

I weigh some 89 kg, which according to some (very unreliable!!!) medical sources in the net, is close to a 25 kg overweight problem, vis-a-vis my height. (which again is on the average side at 5' 7") I avoid being bogged down by any information on obesity or for that matter even with the 2 pair of favourite jeans that apparently refuse to rise above my thighs. (yet I have preserved them with a vain hope that I will fit into them someday. Sigh!) With a 36" waistline I do not exactly look very athletic, though in my virtual profiles I choose the latter description without batting an eyelid. I even carefully chose a photograph which makes me look slimmer for the profile.

Every morning I wish (and also believe) that I wake up a little slimmer but sadist around home and office are quick to puncture my reverie. I even had stuck cutouts of Yoga exercises on my cupboard thinking that a few breathing exercises will slim me down. I have realised that I also need to practise them and not just stare at the postures for the desired effects!!!

Simmi is very unabashed abut my efforts. If you ask her of any distant possibility of me slimming down, you will be met with a hysterical laughter. She also has gifted me a white T-Shirt- body hugging which naturally makes me look sillier than I usually am. (Thanks to my chest which stands out like-you know what...) She expects me to wear it and expects that I will slim down caring for her sentiments with the gift. My sentiments are perfectly present with the gift but the effort associated with them seem to be uncalled for.

At office Vipin tells me that I remind him of Lord Ganesha. (very funny Vipin!!!) Ravneet and her gang keep enquiring when will I deliver and if it would be a boy or a girl. (Sheesh!!!)

But friends, all said and done I have realised that indeed I need to slim after I rummaged through some of my not very long ago pics. Keeping these in mind I solemnly promise myself to begin a disciplined work out... from tomorrow (now I have been saying this from sometime).

No I will, I promise... In a months time I will put up an entry and tell you of the kilos I have/will shed!!!

70 kg here I come!!!!

"Tintern Abbey"

2007-08-19T14:27:00.000+05:30

"FIVE years have past; five summers, with the length

Of five long winters! and again I hear

These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs

With a soft inland murmur. -- Once again

Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,

That on a wild secluded scene impress

Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect

The landscape with the quiet of the sky."

I have not been very appreciative of romantic poetry or for that matter to be more precise, of Wordsworth and the poet's "emotions recollected in tranquility." However, I had to submit to the Laureate's sentiments during the recent Khandala trip. Though the pretext was of a Marketing meet (which did take place) the real pleasure and high was Khandala and its weather.

In an essay to the "Prelude" Wordsworth lays down certain principles of poetry. Poetry, according to him should be a "spontaneous overflow of emotions recollected in tranquility... in the rustic's language." I would have continued to believe the same until I read T.S.Eliot's poetry and his criticism of the former's love for emotions in composing poetry. In those spurt of juvenile and ambitious aggression, I was more drawn more towards Eliot. Therefore, very expectedly Wordsworth and his coterie took a backseat. Eliot appeared more real because he addressed issues which were topical. His symbolism and the attempt to encompass the history of literature in poetry were immensely seductive for me. Yet, a repetitive argument in mind ensued between expressions of spontaneity and calculated expressions. The Khandala trip resolved the argument to a large extent.

Of course, Khandala might not be unknown to you all. Bollywood must have certainly driven a lot of imageries of the valley's beauty in your mind. For those of you, who have visited the place nothing better can be said other than your own expressions of the picturesque landscape. The lofty hills and graceful wisps of fog awakened in me the most subtle and 'romantic' imagination. The showers and the view from Shaheen's bungalow into the majestic mountains lent a gothic sentiment in me. With power/electricity playing truant and the night being strewn by candle light the sentiment only grew more and more overpowering. Amidst sips of scotch and touch of the icy wind, my mind explored a raw feeling of being alone and being one with the power within Mother Nature.

The defining moment of realisation, however occurs many hours and miles later when my flight takes off from the Mumbai airport. The deafening roar of the flight, increasing pressure on my Eustachian tube and shut eyes suddenly brought Khandala live in my mind. The fog touched me again and the overpowering moments of the darkness of the nights in the hills inspired some instant words from me.

"Pardon me," my co passenger repeated twice, shaking me to open my eyes to meet the bland and empty look of an air hostess.
"Did you say something?" he enquired.
"Nothing," I mindlessly expressed.
"I am told Delhi is 35 degrees," he went on.
I nodded, silently trying to acknowledge that 'I was not a game for a conversation.' Indeed I was not. I wanted to go back to my reverie, to my Byzantium. (Yeah, I use the term so deliberately now) I could not. Not for many days till today, when I write this prose. And even as I was half way through this prose the words I spoke in the flight in that heightened state reverberates-

"For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude;..."

Wordsworth again. Sigh! I must admit some "spontaneous emotions are best recollected in tranquility"
Cheers to romanticism!!

Putu

2007-08-05T20:07:00.000+05:30

Hey I adopted a Giant Panda as a virtual pet in my blog today! Simmi christened him Putu. So, if you are reading this then be kind enough to feed Putu his regular feed of grass brfore you log off. All you need to do is click onto the tab "more" and a bamboo shoot will appear. Click on the icon and then feed Putu!!!

Kanika introduced me to this virtual pet adoption. She has a really cute piglet in her blog- POKY!!! Now before you guys sign off let me clarify what's my ideal of adopting a virtual pet and that too a Giant Panda!
No prizes for guessing "Why a Giant Panda?" Precisely, because this cute little grizzly is on the verge of extinction and maybe the only ones left for care and adoption will be the ones like Putu, in a virtual world.
The other reason to vindicate my adoption is Discipline! Why discipline? Well, if you have a pet for real then you'll understand what I mean. Pets are the best way we can learn to discipline our lives, regulate ourselves and not to say even learn to emote. In my instance to begin with, before I adopted Putu I nose dived into some eco read about the Pandas -their eating and living patterns. Ofcourse, in a virtual environment the things would be different, but if for a moment I was to adopt a Panda for real then this is perhaps what my routine would look like:
Morning: Feed Putu
AfterNoon: Feed Putu
Evening: Feed Putu
Night: Feed Putu
Midnight: Feed Putu
Dawn: ....
Yes, my friends the giant panda lives a life that we all aspire- "Eat, Drink, Sleep, Eat, Drink,..." Sorry for the pun but I guess "Leading such a life is dangerous and therefore the Pandas are moving towards extinction" :o)

You can log into this site (mighty useful) and find more about Giant Pandas and his family...

By the way, I also stumbled into this interesting trivia as to how these grizzlies got their genric name. Quoted below:

"Giant Panda
Understanding the derivation of the word "panda" is not a black-and-white issue. The first appearance of the giant panda in literature occurred more than 3,000 years ago in The Book of History and The Book of Songs (the earliest collection of Chinese poetry), which both referred to the creature as pi and pixiu. The animal then popped up in Er Ya, the first Chinese dictionary (221–207 BCE); The Classics of Seas and Mountains, a famous geography book (770–256 BCE); and The Annotated Readings of the Book of Songs (475–221 BCE). These books gave the panda three new names—mo, zhi yi, and bai hu—and described the creature as a white fox, a white leopard, and similar to a tiger or a white bear.
As if the identity of this bamboo-eater wasn’t confused enough, the giant panda in later literature also received the names of meng shi shou (beast of prey), bai bao (white leopard), shi tie shou (iron-eating beast), and zhu xiong (bamboo bear). To this day, the Chinese name for the giant panda is still under dispute. Is it a banded bear (huaxiong), a catlike bear (maoxiong), a bearlike cat (xiongmao), or a great bear-cat (daxiongmao)?
The academic community even had problems deciding on a name. Attempting to give the giant panda its first scientific name, Père Armand David placed the species in the bear genus, Ursus, and labeled the species Ursus melanoleucus in 1869. About a year later, Alphonse Milne-Edwards correctly placed the species in its own separate genus and christened the animal Ailuropoda melanoleuca, meaning "cat-footed, black-and-white animal." This Latin name has stuck.
Altogether, the creature has received nearly 20 different Chinese names, yet none resembles "panda." One of the few known candidates for the root of the word panda is pónya, possibly derived from a Nepali word referring to the ball of the foot--perhaps a keen observation of how this bear eats bamboo with an adapted wrist bone that functions as an opposable thumb and sixth digit. Other writers believe that "panda" came from wah, the Nepali name for the red panda (Ailurus fulgens), and originating from the childlike sound that this species sometimes makes. The ultimate answer, however, may remain as elusive as a wild giant panda in a forest of bamboo.
—Alex Hawes and Matthew Huy"

Yeah and "What's in a name"- Right!!!

Indra Vihar-House no 297 Chapter 1 : Etiquette

2007-07-29T19:58:00.000+05:30

The coterie of friends in the house only increased every weekend. House no 297-Indra Vihar, North Campus, Delhi University was a haven (can be read as heaven) for a many motley lot of Assamese boys that immigrated to Delhi for their 'higher' education. My first visit to the house was a pretense and also my initiation into the lives of many people who would go down the memory lane as great friends. Sajid, a friend, occupied the first room with another great guy- Som Pal. Bipin Gogoi occupied the room in the middle and Pemba occupied the the innermost room (I would like to refer to this room as the most interesting room and also the common room for all guys who visited with their girl-friends). The house would confirm itself to all expectations of the typical bachelor suite. The first time I entered, I was greeted by an intolerable stench from the bathroom. On a more intrusive inspection and query I learnt that Bipin had left some of his clothes in a bucket to be washed for a week.
"So?" I quizzed.
"No, he has left it to be washed and the maid who washes our clothes has quit," Sajid informed me.
"And we perhaps forgot to tell him about it," Sajid continued seeing the "So?" look on my face yet again.
"Perhaps!" I shuddered. The stench and the nonchalance with which, Sajid told me the reason mixed into a terrible cocktail in my head.
"How can Bipin be so callous about his clothes and how can these guys roll around on their beds without winching their nose in the stench which was only getting stronger," I thought to myself.
I restrained myself from probing further thinking it would be uncouth to do so.
Etiquette is a funny learning imbibed into us through our upbringing. While we swear by it when we age and climb into the more sophisticated layers of society, it certainly is a deterrent to friendship during your college years. This exactly was my case then, as I watched Sajid roll into the corner of the bed letting out a yawn. Cropped hair, Oval face, average height, charming smile (the kind which will allow you to be comfortable) Sajid is someone I knew through my earlier set of roomies- Allan Saugat and Asif.
At this moment, clad only in undies, Sajid was not the attractive self as described. I thought it was blasphemous to sleep in your undies alone. And here I am, seated next to someone who with his complete nonchalance to my thoughts was puncturing my paradigms of etiquette.
"Are you comfortable?" Sajid quizzes me, wondering where was I lost.
"Yeah, am fine," I replied snapping out of my philosophical reverie.

(So folks that is it for today. Next: "Bipin Gogoi"

Lonely Road

2007-07-23T12:21:00.000+05:30

Today is a Monday. Yeah, correct and I have the proverbial "Monday Blues". I aimlessly was flirting with my mails, chatted up with friends and now finally am taping the board, wondering where will this lead me to. To my right Venkat is listening to "The Clash"-" a punk rock band from the "60's and the 70's". Before you marvel over my knowledge of this music, I guess I should set the record straight- I am not the real music buff, it's Venkat! Yeah, he is really into classic rock and I thank him for introducing me to new bands like the "Wolfmother" and (wait I can't even remeber the name of the others he had mentioned). Venkat hails from MICA- (Mudra Institute of Communication Ahmedabad- abrreviation for people like me who keep thinking the 'A' stands for Advertising). So he is the MICAn in our office and like many creatures from this 'land' he brings in, what I proverbially like to term as 'stoic bloc of knowledge.' Why 'Stoic?' Well, simply because they (these creatures), know a lot of what they ought to know. Pardon my 'foreplay' with the words but that is something that best explains people from MICA. Before I begin to dissect them I think I should get back to Venkat. (Pardon me pal, but I just thought to write about you in this entry. All cynical and 'not so called for statements' can be attributed to creative liberties and sensibilities)
Venkat looks after the web business of Music Today. His story for joining MT- "Online Marketing" and "NBD" (Well if you could peek into my mind and imagination right now , you can see me rolling in laughter. The reason would be 'politically incorrect' for me to state.) Now then, ofcourse I do not want to describe his job here. I would stick to describing him. Physically- 'hmmm,' he is like 6'5" (What???) Yes, thats him tall and lanky (I refrain from the word 'skinny', since it can hurt sensibilities ;)) He is quiet an enthusiastic guy with a jest for theatre and other related artistic activities, which allow my wavelengths to gel with his. Infact, he is also performing the role of the 'Madman" in "Accidental death of an Anarchist".
There is something about some people which make them interesting. Qualities like knowledge and good communication skills allows an involved audience and Venkat always has us all ears. So this is about his communication and before I forget, Venkat has also introduced to me good ol' Rajnikant and ofcourse he innumerable antics and stories of this actor. I was supposed to watch 'Sivaji' with Venkat as a translator but I missed it. ( Yeah!!!)
Does the above entry make you feel that I have held back in my dissection. Well, yes somewhere down the line writers like me, (hope there are not many) censor their emotions so that the reader is not offended. Talk about being politically right. Yes, that's what we need to be always-politically upright! My Bosses are. They are so right that I wonder if they can ever bend.
Sometime back I had composed a verse titled "Corporate Knightmare". I am attaching the verse below. It's always a solace for my heart to read it. And that's how I sign off for now... and "oh! Venkat- hey sorry dude, like you see/read- You were an excuse for me to arrive to this emotion. I used you as a filter to arrive to this. But the excuse for all this is as always- "creative sensibility"!!!

In the days of corporate knights,
No round tables but Claustrophobic cubicles.
The monotonous humdrum of air-conditioners
Cool us, the perpetual sinners,
Some arses are licked,
Some arses are kicked,
When the young ones whine and grind,
The elders take the shine.
Some wait for a bone to be thrown,
Some snatch the achievments alone.
When the lady flips or slips,
Knights with hankys arrive to rip.
Growth is a mundane term.
Manipulation is the norm.
"Look there is a rainbow outside"
A fresh look and its a screen saver's light
Yet I slogwork like a dog,
At the end of the day,I know I am away from all that lot;
Happy in my plateau(no promotoin you see)!
I still say on face that my elder is an empty top!
I lay the rules,
Questioned by fools,
Accepted by the top shots,
As my elder's thoughts.
I still do not care,
My wit and thoughts will have its share.
I am no Iago,
Neither am I willing to be Othello.
I rather be the king
Of my own ring
And when they shall know the truth
I will be the man with the boots.
No hurry to reach the summit
I will be there without skipping my heart beat.
"You'll not be in the race," some say.
I will not follow the pied piper into the bay!
His music might not lure me,
Its my grail that I only see.
If you follow the words above
there will be no miracle, no olive leaves, no dove.
But an oar you will see,
And in an island of your own, you shall be!
Binodan (23rd Nov)

Fierce Grace

2007-07-22T22:32:00.001+05:30

Aha This is something that Priyanka Nandy aka Tania had asked me to write about sometime back and I kept denying myself the pleasure and the orgasm of composing lines for such a lovely oxymoron. But just as things would be and with no definite explanation of why I want to write about the same, on a continuous note of my stream of thought the composition begins:

The darkest hour of the night,
Streamed by the distant moonlight.

My overladen heart,
Pierced by the most insignificant dart.

The calmest breeze across the ocean,
Unfurl my deepest blue emotions.

And yet I ask why
The mind laments ?
No dewdrops of solace,
But a gripping tale of fear and disgrace.

A history of inconsequential events,
Trace my being and presence.
No thought precedes the other,
Every speck of emotions takes the mind further.

Did He hear what I have to say?
Or Is it just a picture to whom I pray?
Across the window there is a room,
I can see the gay spirits and hear the tune
Not the one of the lady blowing into the flute
The lonely tune,
My mind is mute.

Galloping from far away,
A sound pierces the dreary night
The silhouette of a wild horse,
Now rise above the sky.
The streams of the dawning sun,
Break my solitude bare.
The wilderness of her flying mane,
Caress my dying shame.

In her pursuit I start yet again amazed,
haunted,
By her Fierce Grace.

Cheers!!!

Theatre Ahoy!!

2007-07-12T12:09:00.000+05:30

"Now that is quick," I can actually feel that you are saying this considering that this post is immediately after my yesterday's. Yes, that I am not the active kind in blogging, this will be indeed regarded as quick. However, we all have spurts of emotions and this present log is associated with the most inherent passion of mine-Theatre.

Oh yes, theatre! (and thanks to some pesky and noisy friends like Venkat and Sameer, I was stuck on the latter phrase for two mins and thought to drag you-my esteemed readers into the same emotion of the 'pause' and 'wait'. Cedric Watts terms this as a delayed decoding process) Aha I will return and begin after the smoke ( I really dont know how to decode this in the blog) ................................................................................................................

.........................................................................................................................

I intentionally have left a trail of dots to signify the hour-long smoke cum lunch break that I took on behest of Sameer. "Mighty irritating." Is that what you are thinking? Well you should not because if I were you, I would be wondering why am I not talking about thetare as the title suggests.

Yes ,Theatre. I have been always into it and though for very long the calling has been keeping off, destiny was not far away. I heard the 'calling' again when Kanika invited Venkat and me to be a part of a theatre group, she was in the process of establishing. Disowning all the personal and physical (sin of sloth) hurdles I did manage to attend the first meeting one Saturday, at a Cafe Coffeday, in Janpath. While I was driving myself to the rendezvous, I kept thinking to myself whether I am actually ready for this. On a very sublime level I knew that theatre is very interesting and will shape my creative curiosities into something concrete. But deep down I was being nagged by the fact that might govern so many of us when we try to place ourselves into a situation of responsibility-"Will I be responsible enough". Many traffic lights later, as I manouevered and parked my Discover into the parking lot, I was telling myself-"No wishy washy promises, Binodan. If it's theatre then you better be in it"

Kanika, Venkat and I met, we discussed and we proposed( as in ideas!!!! duh) and after some points I suddenly realised that 'it' was happening. Though I did not exactly dig the script but I was for it. Very soon by the next meeting I realised that more people were wanting to be involved in it and that was really a good sign. But the acid test was to observe sustenance. And the test began from the very next meeting. (By now we had already decided to do a a ready script and since we were focussing on subversive theatre the obvious choice that I had was "Dario Fo's" "Accidental Death of an Anarchist"). In this third meeting I saw new faces and a few old ones. People spoke of problems with time,venue and commitment. Sigh! The ghost of Khalsa was revisiting me. Yes, we faced the same problems in Ankur-the dram soc of Khalsa. This time, however, I was determined and perhaps in the face of this theatre group I was fighting my own battle of incosistencies. So when we met last Sunday in Lodi gardens for our first reading, even though the presence was less- (only six of us) I went ahead with the reading without losing hope. I can sense it-I have entwined myself to this fatal attraction of the stage with vociferous sentiments, and I plan to stick to it for long.

The extra space above is deliberate again. I guess the whole entry was getting emotional.
This is what I love the most of creative sensibilities- the crescendo, the pitch, the thrill which gives you goosebumps and a chill through your spine. Aha from my ship I can indeed see the stage- " Theatre Ahoy!!!"

30th May

2007-07-11T22:16:00.000+05:30

I know it has been long and like stated earlier-Yes I have been too lazy and preoccupied to punch into my blog. I even broke the promise to myself that I will be regular but what the heck. Here I am again and I begin off with a little 'long' ago memory of my birthday. Oh yes 30th May was my birthday. "How old" did you ask. Well, I have walked 26years on this earth. (25 to be more precise considering that one year I was cradled in arms). Oh yes, there were celebrations and thanks to Orkut, there were wishes from all quarters. Birthdays allow one to feel ery special and I guess mine was no exception. Be at home or at office all stood by my side, sang for me and also polished cake on my face. (Some pics below will certify that). I always get a little philo about birthdays and celebrations but being human I enjoy it tremendously. The evening was with Simmi and it could only get better. Now, when I come to think of it everyone who made me feel special shared the emotion that "Yes Binodan we care and we want a party", Cheeky, yes, and yes many parties are due but like I always say... Parties happen always and so it will for all the well wishers!!!!

A highlight of the Orkut wishes was a thank you note that I very egotistically take pride of of showcasing hoping that the poetic skills are appreciated. I have laced it along with this post and reiterate my thanks to all!

"Thanks

So that was my day,Some butts and many hugs to say.

Thank you Simmi for being the first to begin my day

Abhishek the beers are for you still there

Purbasha, my lovely sis you indeed scrapped before anyone dares

And from Dubai, Abhi you also made me special all the way

Leena thank you in the proverbial way

So also to Riaz in the Australian bayMadhushruti

Ofcourse the party is due

Pallavi friends like you are few

Ratnadip you are indeed of the langotiya yaars and years (pun intended)

Rahul Mathur- of the best NIILM dosts and yaars

Roshni- a double whammy my sis, message and scrap and the 10p call

Arushi, Meha might have missed it but not you-the real friend of them all

Priyanku-missed the 26 pegs but loved your skull

Sudarshana from JNU-you make the wishes and chat more fun

Pratik wished me the bottles of beers,to you I say I say cheers!

Anmol I am fine and loved your thoughts dearLata- For your feelings-Thanks you

Bubbly ba wished me from Bangalore, with a "dog named Boo" [;)]

Sharmee-My black velvet lady-Special wishes 4rm u

Barnalee bou, will celebrate with you all tonight, Apu you can also be a part of the Assamese cuisines delight!

Kartik-Your guitar and smile rocks my scrap book

Akshat-your wishes aerodynamic made my day fly off all hooks

Nadeem You remembered, a long wish-

Thank youMerlvin my mate . my sherrif and 'the voice'-

Your energies were with me day and night

Isha- a lovely message a lovely scrap and ofcourse my digital designs dear

Jasmine- A wish from you and tweety was more than just mere

Allan- Big wishes from the big man, you are a sonuvagun

Gunjit-main kaha ji thank you ha jee,

Kameene mera B'day mein last wish kiya ha jee

Pooja- legal wish from the legal eagle

Mitasha-grace defined, Patiala Peg thanks the Red wine

And lastly Bijal you are not late

Your wishes were always in my plate

Swati a day late but your wishes count a lot, mate!

So thats it, I think I have not given anyone a miss

And so I thank you all and promise you that I treasure you all!!"

Rantings of a Sunday Morning

2007-05-27T12:36:00.000+05:30

I woke up early. Not that I did want to laze a little longer on the bed, but the 'innocuous' door bell rung twice incessantly. We have one of those loud 'self service restaurant' kinds and each ring is loud enough to remind you that somebody totally unwanted will be at the door on a Sunday morning. My hunch was right as I opened the door and some gardener was in the gate wanting to know if we needed any new saplings for the tubs. "Saplings," I thought to myself even after I refused with a feverish shake of my head. For God's sake, we only have three tubs and rest that lie unattended are reminiscences of our landlord's wife who loves plants.

We have recently shifted to this new flat. It's a regular three bedroom flat but definitely with good interiors. The floors are tiled, walls painted and cupboards in good shape. We did not have to think twice before we agreed to take this 1400 square feet space for rent. In Delhi, with scorching long summers, a ground floor is a boon and this only facilitated our decision. So here I am on an early Sunday morning surveying our new home and refusing a gardener who still stands on the gate and assures me that we certainly need to spruce up our greenery. He points to our neighbour residing opposite and tells me that it was he who has made their garden. I look at the garden and see it more as a dense forest that has been shaped. I shudder to think that our home will be the same and I finally vocally express my dissent to the fellow. He leaves with a promise to come next Sunday again. I sigh!

Closing the door I contemplated sleeping but gave in to my body who for once refused to lie down on the bed. It's an irony that on a Sunday I am all active and ready to run a mile while the very next day -Monday, my body feels like an un-oiled machine, refusing to budge from the cosy comfort of the bed. I made myself a cup of tea and as I sipped the liquor I began flipping through the newspaper. This, my friends, is how I began my Sunday and will fill in more of what happened as the day progressed when it progresses. Right now after my tea and a movie-"XXX' (The Vin Diesel flick, before you all think I am a perv) on Star Movies I began flirting with my blog-space again. No apologies, for a completely mundane entry but that's how a Sunday is and if I oil my imagination a little bit, I would rather key in the short story that I have in my mind right now. "Yawn," that will take some time. I wish to flirt with some music now! Have a good Sunday! (that is for myself too)

Why Unapologetic?

2007-05-26T22:37:00.000+05:30

A little intoxicated and a little morose- a perfect moment to punch my thoughts into this space that I have created sometime back but never got the opportunity to express myself. While the world is wrapping themselves into technology and 'penning' their thoughts and expressions through the keyboard I still am (somehow) loyal and a fan of good old pen and paper. A reason perhaps why I have not been able to key in more than my profile entry here. I had begun ambitiously with an earlier blog www.canvasNreflection.blogspot.com but the infrequent visits and my truant memory got better of my creativity- I forgot the goddamned password and am reduced to only reading the two entries, which I had assumed would be an ideal beginning to my literary 'masterpiece'. Oh yes, like some hundred thousand aspirants I too would love to write a book and ambitiously have laid down many plots and murdered many too, but perhaps drawing a parallel to O'Henry's "The Last Leaf", I still have a blank canvas (or rather a screen) infront of me.
It's not often that I feel the impulse to write. It is a sudden sensation. Often it goes through a catharsis because I end up thinking about the frills associated with the creative thought and thus the expresion dies. However, when I begin to punch in without wondering much where my thought is driving me to I often do end up 'composing' something. My poetries are often materailised out of such moments. At the end of it, to be honest all said and done, I am unapologetic about my guilt of failing to write something that will make me happy. But I know I will and perhaps this entry will mark the beginning!