Friday, March 28, 2008

The 'Men'ace of Slipping Eye-Balls

Read this only if you have an appetite for crap conversations and even if you dont have such an appetite then you can always create one. So read anywayz.

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" Tell me, what was the first compliment that you ever paid to a woman..........come on tell me..........hey are you listening........................and what exactly are you doing...................will you please stop staring like that!!!! "

" wwwwwhat.................staring??..............what...............where............"

" So what do you think your eyeballs were doing?? ..........you never look into my eyes while talking................they just keep slipping down........."

" Slipping???............what are you saying.................my balls, i mean..........eyeballs are very much intact.................how can they just slip..............."

" Dont try this, " re-arranging words thing ", with me...........its so ridiculous.........."

" Now what is so ridiculous about this? "

" Everything!!! "

" Everything??? "

" Yes, ' everything '...........you........your slipping eyes..............and your stupid mammary fixation................"

Bursts into laughter............. " wwhat fixation?? "

" You heard it right and i am not going to repeat it again...............and what's so funny about it?? "

" Funny?? ................try saying that to another guy and he'll probably die laughing.........."

" Yeah.........how could i forget that all you men are the same.........."

" Now come on..............dont you think that you are over-reacting...........it happens, its quite normal........"

" oh!! so its normal...........i dont get what is it that you men are actually interested in...............is it love, money, or coition..........."

" Coition?? " Bursts into laughter again............ " that word is as historic as the dinosaurus, madam.............and please do not use it anywhere else..............it sounds as if you are giving a lecture on the mating habits of hyenas on the animal planet.............."

" So you have to make fun of everything that i have to say.........."

" yeah.........i mean.........no..........now look at that girl over there...........she's wearing the minimium to get the maximum of attention........what do you say to that?? "

" Oh!! God!! you men are such a huge menace............."

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" So friends, that was girl-friend number 3 to desert me. Why cant they say, " you rotten bastard!! I hate your guts, i'm clearing out, and i hope you rot!! " But no, these girls have to make a polite, emotional mess out of it................"


Now Playing:: The best of me.......................Bryan Adams

Friday, March 21, 2008

Thought Attack

It seemed to be a long time since people had settled down for the night's dreaming. It was around 1:30, when i finally managed to flop into bed, with one foot already in the droopy realms of sleep but the other foot strongly refusing to oblige its partner. I spent almost an hour tossing and turning with a thousand incoherent thoughts caught in a tug-of-war in the dull cloudiness of my restless brain. It was hardly doing any good; lying on the bed...............i woke up, infact i never slept in peace.


The night world outside seemed to be in some kind of commotion as well. On the whole it was a strange kind of night with sporadic gusts of wind, followed by an eerie sough that got conflated with the irritating whispers of the dry mango leaves making a futile attempt to stay put on the cemented floor when being lifted by the juvenile breeze. With every passing second these sounds magnified, giving rise to black imagings. I woke up amidst this strange cacophony of the night world.


I turned the computer on, and played the song, " kahin na jaa ", which was sent to me on that very night by a chat friend ( i dnt know what else to call him ). I leaned back and closed my eyes. Listening to the song ( its a R D Burman no. ) echoing faintly in my ears...........i could feel the film of the past hovering around me................. compelling me to remember things that were making their foray into the conscious; which till now had been slumbering in the unconscious. The lyrics have a cadence, a compulsive quality that engages you in spite of yourself. The song goes something like this,

" Kahin na jaa, aaj kahin mat jaa
phir mile na mile, yeh pal yeh sama
baahon mein aajaaa.............."

This line, " baahon mein aajaa"..............brought into the room a pleasant frisson of passionate tension that had not been there before or, if it had existed, it had existed so deep down.................probably in the gaping chasms of the mind.I liked these lines the most,

" uljhan teri main sab janoon, tujhe teri tarah pehchanoon "


The most futile cry of man is his impossible wish to be understood, and the attempt to understand is probably a thousand times even more futile. The tune of the song along with the eerie night breeze induced a sort of self-forgetfulness; they spoke of an experience that was immediate and real...............churning a few unreasonable tears in my eyes. I know this sounds too hokey, but i cant help it!! I've to indite these emotions to smother the mounting frustrations within myself.

I dont exactly remember, the number of times i played this song, but it continued till late in the morning.............marking an end of yet another sleepless night.


Solitude sometimes arouses vague emotions; the half-formed hopes and desires and fears and joys, that can give enough employment to the mind............to last an entire night. A couple of events last night unlocked the flood-gates of these unwanted memories..........but, on the contrary they made me a better judge of my own thoughts.

Come tomorrow and i will explode my life into a riot of colour. Anywayz HAPPY HOLI readers.


Now Playing:: Kahin na jaa...................Kishore & Lata

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Confessions of a Charlatan

I am a good talker. I love to hear the sound of my own voice, its pleasant music............to me, the talker. So its not amazing, how i foxtrotted into this world of sham and mendacity. The worst of it was that in spite of this knowledge of my degeneration, i continued to behave as before. I continued to lie and sham. And thats coz i could not quell this desire of reading hands...........those knotted fingers, the thumb, those sinuous and winding life, head, and heart lines..........exposing a bewildering world of its own...........stirring an ineluctable feeling to get lost in those alleys of complicated mechanisms.


I wasnt doing all this just to get popular or become the nucleus of attention. There was something in the way that people started admiring me. They came to me for my advice and opinions because they believed that i knew more than they did. They asked for my help in finding the solutions to their problems thinking that i am wiser than they are. People saw in me a person who knew everything about something, while all the time i was just a less advanced life form trying to know something about everything. We got our perspectives badly mixed.


People would always ask the same vexing question, " What does the future hold for me?" My success in answering this question depended heavily on my opening words, as the consideration that they would give me to what i say later would be based on their first impression. I dont think i ever lied to them but i dont think i made them conversant with the truth either. I carefully constructed my sentences with phrases and tried to manipulate their mental processes with the limited amount of knowledge that was there at my disposal. I felt strange when people actually started to believe me when all i was trying to do was base my predictions by just looking at their fingers, and some lines which help in deducing certain aspects of the personality.


After all these years of my so called ' practise ', i can say that most of the human problems seem to originate in the mind. So the greatest benefit that i could impart to anyone was FAITH. Most of us find our lives in a pool of shambles because of the unsuspected defects within ourselves. The only thing that i did was, i tried to implant a certain degree of faith in people who placed their hands before me; faith in themselves, in their abilities and in their strength to overcome dangers and defects residing within themselves.


Some months back i told a friend of mine after reading his hands that he would surely get a job this year. He was running low on confidence, and this being his final year, i did not want to deny him of 'hope'. Yesterday he called me up to drop the tidings of his placement in TCS.

SPEECHLESS!!!!!

Hence these confessions!!

Maybe it is better to dwell like an ignoramus than constantly be on tenterhooks by being a charlatan.

Now Playing:: Hoshwalon ko khabar kya................Jagjit Singh

Sunday, March 16, 2008

The Universe Takes Revenge

Everything was usual about yesterday, infact everything about the whole week had been usual; nothing outside the day's routine had happened for some time; and it did not look like anything would ever happen again. My body had gone through those little congeries of events, common to all Homo sapiens; dressing and undressing, eating, drinking and sleeping; but it seemed as if the rest of me, including mind and soul were enjoying the tranquil hibernation, with needs equivalent to naught. So the Universe decided not to crush me under the weight of a routine schedule and packed the events of a dreary Saturday with an intention to surprise me with some unpleasant events, but our capacity to absorb surprises is enormous i guess.


There i was then, returning home; all gay and cheerful coz i managed to get the highest marks in a stupid exam, resulting in the Prof showering a bunch of encomiums on my rather wretched studying habits. I was so entangled in my brown-study that for some reasons unknown, i avoided the highway ( my usual way back home ), and turned towards a street that i always had a paticular aversion for. The street was pretty deserted leaving me with no other option but raising the acceleration and i could see the needle almost kissing the 60 mark. O you know what i am hinting at!!


I continued to drive at that speed, until a stupid car driver decided to take a sharp right turn without giving the damn indicator. In a last effort to avoid collision, i applied the brakes but the speed was too much for me to control. My Activa skidded, and a couple of somersaults later i came back to my usual senses. I realised that the street had become peopled all of a sudden, and my helmet suffering the impact, had detached itself from my head and was lying far away from my zone of reach. Now, accidents no matter how gory they turn out to be, are real embarassing situations to find oneself in. They compel you to entertain serious doubts about your driving skills.


By this time some guys had perched all around me and were surveying the scene with intense curiosity. Somebody amongst them lifted the Activa and handed me the helmet. The next moment saw me vanishing from the scene like greased lightning to save myself from further agonies of embarrassment. It was only after i reached home that i saw the crater like dents and not to mention the innumerable scratches that got added to the voluptuous figure of my Activa. But the poor thing!! is in a fine running fettle even after such an assault.


And listen to what my bro had to say about all this when i placed him a call. " Accident........thats allright but dont ask me for my blood........i've lost enough weight and i dnt want to lose any more by giving you those precious drops." Thats how strong my khoon ka rishta is!!


So guys never complain about the kind of routine that your life seems to be falling into, coz when the Universe decides to register your complaints a bit more seriously, you know that you are in deep trouble, and all are not lucky like me to escape such accidents sans injuries.


Now Playing:: American idiot............................Green Day

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Revisiting Those Lanes

Ok so where was i the whole of last week? Think, i was in a waking dream, thousand miles away from my surroundings, probably lost in the dusty bylanes of that sleepy, picturesque, and fictitious place called MALGUDI- an eternal fascination for Narayan's readers. I certainly wasnt reading Narayan for the first time but it was strange that i felt like an inebriate, imbibing strong and heady wine. I have been so much into Narayan this past week........almost feels like an over-dose of Malgudi........but i still yearn for those lemon pickles, and the inevitable, tumbler of hot coffee and steaming tiffin that we encounter so many times in his works.


So why this sudden fascination for Narayan........for Swami and his friends.............in a world that probably belongs to the Harry Potters and people writing about war and sex........the only existing extremes that human beings find pleasure engaging in. It so happened that i stumbled upon Narayan's autobiography, MY DAYS, last week. What began as a quest to know more about Narayan's life, ended up in me devouring the other works that were readily available on my book-shelf. So in the past eight days i was lost in a corner of the house, and like a hungry anaconda devoured Malgudi School Days, The English Teacher, The Bachelor of Arts, and The Dark Room.


Of all these, i enjoyed his autobiography a lot............written in a simple, lucid style with gentle irony, and a wry sense of humour its a delightfully brilliant account of his growing up years at his grandmother's place in Madras with a bizarre caboodle of pets and i guess Swami in many ways is the mirror image of Narayan himself sans the pets ofcourse. Numbers and figures invited his disgust and always interested in literature, it was very early in life when Narayan decided that his trade would be...........writing. Infact i was so struck by his unswerving sanguineness that for a timeless time i sat gazing at his picture, desperate to strike a conversation with this literary genius. Maybe some people realise the purpose of their life " just too early ".




R. K. Narayan describes his conception of Malgudi " I bought an exercise book and wrote the first line of a novel; as i sat in a room nibbling my pen and wondering what to write, Malgudi with its little railway station swam into view, all ready-made, with a character called Swaminathan running down the platform peering into faces of passengers, and grimacing at a bearded face; this seemed to take me on the right track of writing, as day by day pages grew out of it linked to each other. ( In the final draft the only change was that the Malgudi station came at the end of the story.)"


It was interesting to know that Narayan had a roving eye and quite openly celebrates his feelings of love as he says, " sighing over a pretty face and form seen on a balcony, or from across the street, or in a crowd, longing for love..............................any girl who lifted her eyes and seemed to notice me became at once my sweetheart, till someone else took her place. " How the manuscript of his book, Swami and Friends, caught the attention of Graham Greene and his life long friendship with him, his falling in love and marriage with Rajam followed by her sad demise and his odyssey towards fame and world wide popularity makes it an excellent read. Hey anyone of you who knows what a 'pyol' in Tamil means, then please lemme know.


The book does offer certain valuable tips for budding writers........rules that were stringently followed and some that were avoided by the writer himself. He says, " i took care not to read too much or anything that might influence my writing at the moment." And then there was something about measuring one's literary output by counting the number of words written in a day, and all a writer has to do is to write, write and write, eventhough his works do not get published.


Narayan was largely responsible for exposing the Oriental magnificence, but many have criticized his style to be "pedestrian", "impoverished", "limited and conventional". Maybe Narayan today will not appeal to the spick and span generation, and probably Swami's real and lively world would slip into oblivion facing tough competition from Potter's magical and sub-human world. Harry may have won the battle, but Swami in the long run.............will win the war.


Now Playing::Jeene ke ishaare milgaye................Phir milenge

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

The Winning Streak

'Monday'.......damn thing............it always comes round again, pretending to be new, but alas!! its always the same in reality. I think thats what most people feel about " MONDAYS ". But not this monday........i mean yesterday..........thank God it came and disappeared, without causing much of " anything ". It was just a brief, insignificant interlude between a 'Super Sunday', and a thousand times more 'Superb Tuesday'. Oyye bheja fry!! then scrolling try!!


Still didnt get the connection between Sunday and Tuesday?? Gadho prasad chaurasia that you are, lemme tell you that India won both the CB series finals. I know that its a stale news to deliver, toh kya hua.......ho jaye balle balle, oyye chakde phatte. God kasam dil garden, garden ho gaya!! Oh! boy!! what a treat it was to watch India digging the final nail in Australia's coffin.


Really glad that i played truant from college today, otherwise would have missed some huge doses of entertainment. Classes would have made my mind wander towards cricket, eventhough my body could not actually slip out. Believe me guys, my vocal cords are almost paralysed................courtesy, the high intensity of screaming and shouting that i was engaged in through out the day. I guess my adrenaline was all over the living-room. I hardly remember the number of times that i jumped in glee or joyously punched the air above and screamed, " yeeeeeeeeee".


I really missed dad a lot today. Watching cricket with dad is like being crazy and zombiehood in full bloom. We have this mini-dancing sessions, everytime a boundary is hit or a wicket is taken, that makes us appear almost like lunatics. And not to mention the damaging effects we can have on the tympanum ( it means ear drums........for readers who didnt study biology ), courtesy the high decibels of noise that we genarate, contributing to more of noise pollution. But watching cricket sans dad is sooo boring.


Ok! enough of my reverie, but what a nail biting final it was. The best moments of the match would be undoubtedly Tendulkar's innings, and not to mention the joy on seeing Clarke's stumps in total disarray. Dil ko badi thandak pahunchi when Hayden got short of his crease and i think the match reached its dramatic denouement, when Symmonds' foot was caught before wicket off Bhajji's spin.


I do agree that all sports should be played with a competitve spirit, but i couldn't help but enjoy a dash of Schadenfreude in today's game. You should have seen those Aussie faces...........they were like, a sorry looking heap of crushed arrogance. These guys probably think that they are god's gift to cricket. This defeat must have galled the hell out of them; poor souls, i guess were more busy in firing verbal arsenals; with a toupee like hairstyle guy creating all the ruckus. I wonder why he took so much of offence on being compared to the atavistic remnants, probably he didnt realise that he almost lost the chance to become the first ever " living fossil ", amongst the human species.


Anyway i am more than glad that India won and gave a befitting reply to those puerile blame games played by the Aussies. I guess that was the only way to teach those characters a lesson. Chalo Test ka badla One-day mein le liya.

Now Playing:: Eternal Flame.....................MLTR

Sunday, March 2, 2008

True Lies

" Why are you not opening the goddamn door? "


" Yeah i know that its late............but, what do you think........i can't get in...................."


" Just stop playing these puerile games with me.................you know i have a key!! "


********************************

" And what the hell..................why didn't you switch on the lights? "


" I can't believe, this is the house that i live in.................i dont get this, it looks so goddamn spooky........."


" What do you do all day at home.........."


" You..........your dark room, and your stupid dark thoughts...........when the hell will you start believing me? "


" Now get out of that room...........i'm sick and tired of banging."


" Ok.........ok.............i wont bang anymore."


" But please listen to me...............i know i should have told you about this much earlier............before everything was.........over........."


" I just hope you understand."


" Its amazing how my lies grew. I started with a small one that seemed too easy to cover.............then i got boxed and told another one........."


" You believed me at first.............you even acted upon my lies."


" I told them coz it was for your love that i craved with every atom of my being............"


" And yesterday...........yesterday..........in an agony of emotion...........i fell on my knees by the side of your coffin..........asking for forgiveness of you and of the Heaven.........."


" But you rejected me even in death............"


Now Playing:: Breathless.........................The Corrs