Not Just Another Post

My imagination seems to be sinking and i'm again falling into my gloomy habits of thinking...................thinking about a person, to whom i can dedicate nothing more than an elegy, but even that looks impossible in the present circumstances. " Silence ", for most part of his lifetime, was his constant companion. He understood the value of silence in its true meaning, and once advised me not to confuse introverts with dumb people coz someday the silence would break into an explosion of immense energy and would not settle for anything less than " good ". I cant force myself into any reasoning which would establish the utility of the eternal silence which he has retreated into, and yet i cannot possibly deny the truth in his words. I am slowly beginning to value silence, coz it has finally dawned on me that even truth may be damaged by too many words.


His absence from the world seldom affected my cogitations in the beginning and it was largely becoz of my personal denial of his absence, but it wasnt late enough when reality struck me hard on the face, and my thought process began to dwell in the shadows of memories and conversations. Nothing could divert me from the past, for the thought of him never left me alone. I'm still struggling to strike a balance between what 'was' and what 'is', and the stuggle will continue till i find an outlet or a solution to this mental agony.


However, my thought process has shown signs of improvement in these two years. The day seems to pass without a single thought of him haunting me, but at night on turning off the lights his thoughts do return to me, and on dayz like this, when the magnitude of all the thoughts and memories stretch beyond the purlieu of my resistance, i sit down to pen them coz there's hardly any other way of de-stressing at my immediate disposal. " Writing ", somewhat subsides and exhausts the agony and gives way to periods of calm and peace. It is clear, i think, that it was love for a real person, however transient it may have been.


Here i'm reminded of these lines by Vijay Tendulkar


" There are times when one's life appears to be a stage. People come, people go. They come in order to go, and go with no intent of return. When they return they return as one's past. A past that would make you feel that the present is false. "


Now Playing:: Pukarta chala hoon main....................Rafi

Chala Change ka Chakkar

I know i shouldnt have gone for it in the first place. But i regret nothing. I realize, even better than anybody else, that there was of course, no sense in the whole affair. I've always been a person who has clung to the time present. occasionally sneaking visits to the past, and if i hated anything in the extreme degree, i hated " change ". But, change my dear friends, is something which is always constant. Now there are occasions in our existence when we must make something happen, must fling a splash of color in our lives, so that the little kid in us does not perish to the greyness and dullness of things surrounding us.


So with such noble intentions, i got my long locks chopped off ( against the better judgement of my mom ) some months back, and these dayz people see me hosting a ' feather-cut ' sans the feathers of course. Now dnt ask me, the feathers of which avian species inspired such a cut coz the basic fact is that the damn cut looks like a hair stylist's worst nightmare. It has sure become a hair menace for me!! For one, the strands keep falling into my eyes, vexing me and making all attempts to obstruct my myopic vision n trying to pur-blind me. Secondly, it makes me look like an electrocuted creature, if i forget to put on the helmet while driving. Now, myopic vision reminds me of the new pair of glasses which i got yesterday, and this is what happened.........


Mom: A look of horror
Me: " How do i look mom? "
Mom: " I never knew you had such horrible tastes. U look like a lizard. "

( This was certainly the wierdest of all comparisions. I mean i would have totally agreed with mom, if she had called me a monkey, but 'lizard'........how on earth can a human being resemble a lizard. Now i know from whom did i inherit such Ram Gopal Varma type creativity ).


Me: " Come on mom, yeh aaj kal ka style hai. "
Mom: " I dnt know it looks real bad. "


However, a closer inspection did reveal the reality. The glasses have certainly added a few more years to my visage, but i still cant come to terms with the idea of me looking like a lizard. But had the optician even flicked a derisive eyelid, when i was busy trying them, they would never have been mine. It seems as if the guy got super embarrassed when i asked him, " acha lag raha hai na? " He obviously smiled with the air of grave approval, as if mocking at my " admirable taste ", and mentally saying, " i'm no body to comment on your "distinguishing" taste, madam ". My friends are yet to see me with these strange things on my face, but i consider all these changes as a romantic gesture, a wave of defiance to the mundane routine of life.


Now Playing: Tum ko dekha toh yeh......................Jagjit Singh

Green Chillies Entertainment

I just dnt like running errands, and especially if it has got anything to do with fruits or vegetables. I mean how easy it is to ask, " bhaiya ek maggi packet dena, bada wala ", pay the money and getting lost within no time. Isnt it always an easy task to buy things which are stuffed in packets?? But, vegetables and fruits...........nah, they are specially designed to make life hell for innocent souls like me!! For one, it requires a lot of examining and re-examining........as if the vendor is fool enough to put all the rotten ones on the top, yeah but if you let him do the choice for you then you are sure to take home a basket of rotten things ( experience se bol rahi hoon ).


Yesterday i was sent to buy green chillies by my grandma, and since it was an order from the high commission, none of my play-acting worked out. The vendor was near by so i thought of ' walking ' the errand. I was specifically told to bring 100gms of chillies. This much concept was clear to me. I put forth my requirement to the vendor, but the very next moment i found my heart was beating faster than usual and my palms were getting clammier. What i couldnt understand was, i had asked for a hundred grams of chillies, its so simple isnt it, then why was this rodent talking in terms of ' dedh ' rupiya and ' dhai ' rupiya? Now the only thing which confuses me other than organic chemistry is this difference between dedh and dhai rupiya, i still dnt know which one is greater? I didnt know how much to pay him and i certainly couldnt ask him to clarify. At first i thought of giving him ten rupees but my wallet was super heavy with change, making everyone listen to the sound of money, which made me drop the idea. I started the search operation in the coin zone of my wallet for the only remedy....................a five rupee coin. This added some more seconds and now the vendor began to grow restive. And finally after intensive searching and praying, i got the only 5 rupee coin in the wallet. Believe me guys i was never so happy in life not even when i topped the last three semesters. Anywayz, he returned me 2.50, and i knew how much those damn chillies costed in English, but i'm still not sure about that dedh and dhai funda!!


............................some minutes later i again found myself in front of the vendor and this time in search of onions. I deliberately left the wallet at home and carried only ten bucks, you see, na rahegi baas aur na bajegi baansuri!! So there i was then returning home all gay and cheerful and i think i was swaying the polythene bag a bit more vigorously. The bag had some defect in its rear part, and after some seconds gravity won the battle and the contents in the bag were seen making contact with mother earth. I must have looked like a rag picker, who was lucky enough to find onions on roads; kaash dharti wahin phat jaati aur main usme sama jaati!! Well, two other events also made their way yesterday..................the mother of all embarrassing moments, but will post them later..........


Now Playing:: Meri duniya mein aake..........................Tum Bin

Nothing Too Serious, but......

I decided to avoid company. I had to. I was suffering from a horrible numbness. I was too young to learn how to grieve. The mind and the heart were no longer good working partners and it had been a long time since they had taken up different paths. I knew i was slipping down. Everybody thought i was head strong, but really my weak brain had just left me cold. I was striving to define things to myself which i never understood, but the damage had already been done...........i can fight with people who are 'living',but its beyond my powers to fight with 'dead' people. The very idea of living with a psychological scar was making my existence unbearably wearisome. For the remaining part of my life i had to live with the fact that somebody despised me even during those parting moments.............a time when people usually prefer " forgiving "...............


I tried to move on and continue with the inevitable business of " living ". But it was not easily attained. Every single day brought with it a thousand reminders................of the happy times shared together, of the endless confabs, and the inconsequential banter which kept on ameliorating with every passing second...............and now all that seemed to be deeply tormenting. Dismal emptiness was beginning to stretch before me. I decided to take measures. I immersed myself in study, and desperately tried to efface all memories from my thoughts. The need to keep up a countenance of cheerfulness and interest in living helped me a great deal. The more i interacted with people, the more i was able to recover my original self, which was trying to make its presence felt amidst the mushrooming sad personalities. I regained my lost sense of humour. I was my usual self again.


I've stopped taking things too seriously....................but no matter how hard i try, the basic feeling of contrition refuses to die down, thus dwarfing all my efforts to move on in life.................


Now Playing:: Silli hawa choo gayi.....................Libaas

No More Antiquity Plz

After an andante passage of time, which seemed like eternity, Moll Flanders has finally come to an end, leaving me with a new resolution for this year; the resolution being, not to read anymore of the 17th century literature for a loooong time to come. Well this is my second attempt at writing a book review, the first being, My Days, and lemme tell you that i'm pretty bad at giving reviews. Now coming back to the topic of discussion, Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe is the autobiography of a prostitute, who masters in the acts of petty thefts, and judges prostitution, bigamy and robbery only in terms of their potential profit.






I recommend this book only if you have an appetite for antiquity or else its a torturous way of testing your patience, which you are more likely to flunk. Its one of its kind coz it begins and it ends. It barely gives you a chance to breathe as it is not sub-divided into chapters and goes on and on like Mahadevan's Breathless. One cant expect anything more from a 17th century piece but a traditionally formal prose style and a mannered manner which sometimes is not well recieved by the modern reader. If you are able to navigate through the first fifty pages then the remaining two hundred pages wont pose much of a challenge as the story would take care of everything else and is most likely to keep you engaged till the end. But believe me guys i had a real tough time trying to keep pace with Miss Flanders' life.






Now Moll is a lively and delightful rogue, who uses her beauty to try and achieve financial security; her sex being the only commodity which she continually tries to sell in the highest market. Though she is penitent at the end, and finds happiness and peace after her adventures of the flesh and robbery, but she lacks all moral sense and is guided by only a deep and constant sense of the value of money, She reduces everything sooner or later to its monetary value and some of the events actually reminded me of Scarlett O' Hara of Gone With The Wind.








Moll Flanders, however is worth giving a try coz antiquity after a period of time acquires the grace of novelty and a formal style of writing can be a agreeable relief to any present day piece. So read it if you want to test the levels of your patience to the extreme.





Now Playing:: O saathi re.....................Omkaara

Lets Talk

He: " You believed me at first. Didnt you? "

She: " I still do. "

He: " How can you possibly love me so much, after all the things that i've done? "

She: " You know what..........love ceases to exist once you start attaching reasons to it. I cannot give you any reasons, coz there are none.......... there cannot be a bigger reason than ' love ' itself. "

He: " You are mad.........do you hear me, you are 'mad'........... you dont even look human.............do you belong to this world.............. just get lost!! Why dont you despise me, why dont you hate me............and if you cant then why dont you just leave me alone.............."

She: " Oh poor baby............i think i'm really torturing you. Have you forgotten that you are standing in my house..............who should ' get lost ' then?? "

He: " God!, wont you ever give up and i dont understand why the hell do i come here every night and beg you to hate me..................and what are we exactly..............two imbeciles in love, who are all set to ruin each other? "

She: " You know what, sometimes a relationship is more marvellous than the people involved in it. You cannot make me hate you as you want and i cannot make you love me as i want..............."

He: " I..........."

She: " Let me complete..........."

She: " You know why we inflict this 'love-hate' torture on ourselves every night?............its becoz it makes us lose our egoes for some brief moments, and thats what both of us have craved for all our lives. "

She: " Its delicate for us to handle, yet its hanging heavy on our hearts. A mere touch will loosen it someday, and the sooner it goes from us the better it is. I've lost a lot of people becoz of you............all my friends have fallen off one by one.................but i still cant stop loving you and this relationship is the only indemnity that you can offer me............."

She: " Indemnity, in the form of acknowledgement is the only thing i'm asking you....................but its too much i guess!! "

She: " And how does it feel to be a man and have a fine penetrating intellect.........................instead of mere emotions like us............"

She: " Maybe you should leave now............."

He: " I never................"

She: " Just leave....................."

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

She: " I know u'll return to me.............and i'll be waiting for you, but dont take forever..............life doesnt last that long.............."


Now Playing:: Neele neele amber par..................Kishore

Trying to Breathe Again

Well, people say that if you dont love yourself, you cannot possibly love anybody else as well. Of course i do love myself above all the rest of the world, and yet my dear self has become so wearisome that i can scarcely support its conversation for an hour together. The more i try to avoid myself, the circumstances and all the life forces seem to put in more energy to see me dwell in the lap of a forced solitude. I cannot positively escape, but it is a deplorable condition and sometimes drives me to pitiful shifts in seeking how to avoid myself...................and lemme tell you that forced solitude seldom generates a pleasant frisson ( as the sub-title of my blog suggests ) but on the contrary, if you spend too much of time with yourself , then you are bound to create incisions in the soul and that my dear friends, genuinely " hurts ". And the worst part of it is that, no matter how hard we try to engage ourselves in worldly things, there is no escape from the SELF, which constantly engages itself in exhuming those memories of hurt.................mocking at our wretched existence, better known to us as LIFE.



...........................................there's too much of noise in the mind right now and i guess i'm all set to win the Nobel Prize for ' self induced suffering '. I feel terrible, or probably i feel nothing. By the way which is worse?? Gosh!! i'm totally lost without him or am i lost " because " of him?? Sorry, folks, but i'm in no shape to frame rational responses and the more i try to explain these things the more i'll be spewing screwed thoughts. And there's no point in explaining things when the choice has already been made. But it was a Catch 22 situation i guess!! I was afraid that the price of making those choices was terrible, not realizing that the price of not making them is even more terrible.



Amidst other things, i reached home in the evening all drenched and dripping, but feeling victorious at having survived the blinding lightning and thunder. It was an attempt to free myself of my own company and i was too keen to pay a visit to one of my school friends', but it seemed as if Nature had some other plans. I had to return from midway, courtesy the terrific downpour of rain. WEll the summer's really cruel this time and this downpour is sure to cool things for quite sometime now. It seems as if the earth has suddenly lost all its virginity and is all ready to concieve and explode into a riot of color, making everything more verdure than ever.



I wish i could say the same about my life as well. oh...............no, no........... i'm not talking about losing my virginity , but i wish i could paint me life in some other colors as well................


Now Playing:: I breathe again....................Adam Rickitt

The Boy Next Door

Place:: Grandma's house


Date:: 01-05-08


Time:: 11:15 p.m




I had been staring at the blank paper for quite sometime, trying to write my one-act play. The ideas kept streaming in, but the inspiration still refusing to strike, left me staring...........at the paper, the floor, and all other parts of the Universe within the focal point. The pen continued to spin, swing, and dance making imaginary circles and other geometrical figures as contrived by the digits of the hand. I realized, that i had become a slave of the computer................i've almost forgotten the art of putting thoughts on the paper............the five slender digits are barely able to hold the pen for a longer period of time but instead are forever willing to fluff on the keyboard. What a pity!! the art of " writing " is soo out of fashion!!! Well " writing " is out and " typing " is in!!




So there i was then trying to write, and my characters ( in the play ) had just begun their conversation when my auditory senses started picking up a faint sound as if somebody was playing on something. It stopped for sometime and then started all over again. I had to open the window inspite of my grandma's rule of keeping the windows closed at nights. I turned the lights off ( God knows what i was thinking!! ). And as i had expected it was the music that was playing on the laptop of those engineering college dudes living in the neighborhood. Since ours was the first floor it offered unobstructed view of the neighboring ground floor as provided by their open window. Oh! no this isnt going to be yet another open window!!!




.....................and there he was, dressed in a blue color Tee and probably navy blue bermudas ( they appeared black though!! cant say for sure ), working ( i would stick to that word, cant say what exactly was he engaged in ) on the laptop. But i wasnt concentrating on him................i was too busy in labouring my mind to remember the song that was playing and was faintly audible. It appeared to be vaguely familiar..........i was sure i had heard it before..............damn!! i'm too hopeless with these angrezi songs...............and then finally, YESssssss i got it............it was Green Day, singing ' welcome to paradise '. Maybe i'm not that bad after all, but i wished he played ' wake me up when september ends '.................









Well he never played that song but this dude had too much of street style to display. Now you might call me a reprobate, but i always liked watching men who smoke. Probably becoz i had grown up watching an uncle of mine who always amused me n my bro with his smoking skills. He used to take a huge drag and then the smoke came out of his mouth in the form of perfectly shaped rings. He would ask us the number of rings we wanted to see and he would precisely blow that many number. And the fascination remains even till today.









Watching this guy holding a cigarette reminded me of my uncle. But this guy was holding the cigarette like a rogue and i wonder what made him pout while taking a drag. It appeared as if he was bringing his mouth to the cigarette rather than the other way round. Now dont start accusing me of promoting smoking............i hardly harbour such intentions. But if we slice off the health issues just for a second, then the whole smoking thing looks real elegant almost reducing it to an art form. This guy however lacked all the finesse and thoroughly disappointed me.





I know these are strange comments coming from a non-smoker and my connection with smoking is limited only to my uncle who eventually died of cancer and the reason is just so obvious. Well the title hardly matches this post except that the boy next door just served as a medium which reminded me of my " smoky " uncle!! and remember " smoking is injurious to health ", so stop burning your lungs.



Now Playing:: Its raining men.........................Geri Halliwell