Fingertaps For The "Deep"

IRespect

2011-10-05T21:32:00.001-07:00

When the people struggled with a keyboard and learnt dos commands, he gave us the mouse. When cell phones struggled to design a perfect keypad, he threw it out of the equation and gave us the touch screen. When laptops were growing smaller, he pulled one out of an envelope. And when the world was getting used to smart devices, he gave us one that you could TELL what you wanted it to do.

The man made a humble fruit worth $300 bn has now moved on to another world. He touched lives, he changed definitions, he made people shed a tear when he introduces a gadget that was merely plastic, metal, chips and wires, because he believed in it so much that it transformed into the one thing that you HAD to own.

Every time I have touched my phone, I have bowed down to respect this man. May he rest in peace and probably change the equipment that they use in Heaven. Give God the iPad and he will see what miracles really mean!

IReapect Steve Jobs.

An ode to Mrs. Doshi

2010-12-16T02:13:00.000-08:00

I don’t know why I never looked back at my own blog for three years. It’s December 2010 and I feel I have forgotten how to type long accounts of the goings-on in my life but well, one needs to try, right?

So, what all has happened in these years? To begin with, I have aged significantly. No, seriously… I feel old as a hag on temple steps. But not in a bad way though. I have changed jobs and my line of profession to a certain degree (radio to television, but I am still a writer, albeit of different things) and I have made new friends (who are fewer in number compared to those I have lost along the way); nope, no regrets there. I like losing touch with those who don’t need me or who I don’t need. It’s easier to manage things that way. More so, a possible meeting and conversation with these lost friends in a vague party, does not feel too awkward if doors are left open. Usually, the only two words that are enough to start a chat are, “Long time?” The rest takes care of itself. Anyway, I digress.

If there is any significant change that is worth a mention, is that I am now very happily married. I have had a wonderful relationship with a nice girl who I now proudly introduce to one and all as my wife, Meghana. I think we have the shortest love story and that speaks nothing of the largeness of our lives together as man and wife. We met at work. We travelled together. We fell in love with each other. We mentioned it to the respective families and bla-ba-da-boom! We got engaged and married (with blessings from everyone… no masala there). But that I think was only the beginning. What came after the wedding was truly an experience.

Our honeymoon was in Italy where we enjoyed the crisp air and crisper pizza dough, soft gentle rains like the pasta at a small cozy tavern, a quiet time that sat undisturbed in bottles of red-wine on tables and long walks on swirly roads hugging the mountain-sides like spaghetti clings to the fork. We saw passion for art and nonchalant teenagers from varied origins walking right past it. We witnessed streets filled with people and cobbled stone lanes bereft of life. Sunny days that had no trace of heat and the rain felt cold and warm all at once. We saw the country-side and the major cities and felt like aliens in a somewhat familiar land. But all in all, we fell in love with a new country and a little more in love with each other. That was really the beginning of our love story.

When I was younger, I have had my share of musings with the fairer sex. And in those experiences I had learnt how important it is to find a friend to be with rather than struggling to convince a friend to be more. In the times when I was single, I dreamt of having a wife who would be that friend… idealistic is it not? Every matured man may look for someone like that. A friend to live with and every man who has claimed to find that perfect match has ended up confessing to a “marriage” rather than that “friendship” he desired. Not me, though. I am married to my friend for almost two years now and it is an awesome ride. We are the kind of people who care not for what conventional marriages are “supposed” to be. Where couples fight over adjustments, we adjust over our disagreement to fight with each other. Of course there are arguments and then there are conclusions; very conclusive closures. And then, a sea of love follows such 30 minute discussions. Egos? Yes, of course, those do clash too but the thing that means happiness to the other, takes precedence and soon the egos give in to a kind word of forgiveness, begged and granted in an instance.

I don’t mean to harp about my wife as if she was perfect but her imperfections are what I fell in love with and I still love dearly. It makes her human. She is not pretentious, nor absurdly forthcoming. She is not clumsy (a bit forgetful but that’s OK). She loves to love and hates to hate. Demands little and provides more, speaks a lot yet listens with as much passion and most importantly, holds no emotion back. I dreamt of having a wife that had a passion to live with enthusiasm despite any odd conditions. That dream has come true for me. I love my wife for everything that she is… but I love her even more for everything that she is not. I dedicate this post to her.

Thank you Meghana, for being what I always wanted my wife to be. I love you and always will, promise!

Phobo-philia

2007-12-27T06:26:00.000-08:00

I envy children; as much as I hate them. Those bratty little hooligans can take a toll on your peace and sanity but that’s the very thing I envy the most. Do what you think is right and no one is going to blame you for it. Kick people where you feel they deserve it and the smile back, pull your cheeks and say, “naughty boy” and wink at your mom. Spit all over the place, pee at will, cry, make noise, run around the house with no conscience nagging you… I was not like that. Now I feel I missed doing what I was licensed to do.

But there is something I can never get over; the sense of fear that they have and the fear we live in (at our age) is poles apart. What do children fear? Nothing! There are a lot of children who fear the darkness or the monster in the closet, they fear their own shadow but for how long? Till the night passes? Or lesser still, till they fall asleep? I sometimes fear sleep itself. Dreadful dreams; work pressure speaking to you in the middle of the night, sometimes gnawing at you even during the day; Bosses, their temper and ego, parents, their temper and ego… even your own temper and ego cross your life and jolt you now and then. I fear silence, I fear loneliness, I fear my future and there is nothing that comes without fear as side dish. I thought growing up was all about learning how to get rid of fear but no one told me there was fine print that read, “get rid of one fear and the other comes free after the first.”

Few find sense in their fear(s); fewer find their answers lying hidden within their fear(s). “Fear does pose questions and finding answers to them is the way to get rid of fear”, is what some philosophers say. Others opine, “When you look through fear, it will vanish by its own virtue. For fear is nothing but a figment of your own imagination.” I feel fear appears like God when its time for you to introspect or set things right for yourself. We keep looking for signs from god when we are dreading something and the solution is lurking within that darkness.

I stand by it: when fear strikes, be prepared to know what’s beyond it. All you need is one bold step towards the battle against your own dark side.

Natures Rave

2007-07-21T03:52:00.000-07:00

I went for a little party the other weekend.

This lovely person called Monsoon invited me. It was very nice of him to send me a shower that said, “It is time you took some time out, friend. Here is a lovely opportunity for you. There is little get together and you should come along to let your feet dangle and head swing to some fab music by DJ River Featuring Waterfalls and the Sparkling streams. Not to mention the Trees are going to be performing a little jig for you. Venue: Close to Pune, time… whenever the hell you like”

So, I took up the offer and organized a trip to Pune with a friend of mine, who has two friends staying there and they know the city well. Little did I know, what was in store for us.

The morning after we reached Pune, we hired a car and decided to let the host (Monsoon) take over from there on. 40 Km south of Pune, waited our first welcome committee. A small stream that trickled out of the big fat wall of Munshi Damn came out to greet us at the bridge. The carpets laid out, were all green and a mix of different shades of it, too. The sky pulled a perfect roof of clouds over us, which made it difficult for us to know what time of the day it was. Not to mention, it struck a perfect contrast to the lovely greens. We then moved on. A serpentine, gray road kept taking us higher and higher like an elevator. The greens grew darker and lighter at each turn and the small droplets of rain kept attacking us like a naughty child’s idea of bothering the guests. A boisterous gust was playing a lovely tune while the trees, the tall grass, fat bushes, all danced to the music. We would stall the car every five minutes and take a walk on the wet gray road. Mist rolled down from nowhere and waterfalls found their way from dizzying heights to the one rock where they would gush and gurgle to add another instrument to the orchestra of Nature.

Overwhelming sights were presented to us as we ordered for chai and biscuits. Sitting right in the center of a meadow we watched a boar grunt, buffalo herds being driven out and in the distance there lay a vast expanse of a lake with jetties hanging menacingly, over the clear yet gray waters. A dark cloud would fill the horizon, as we would watch for a great black Viking ship to break the mist and roll over to our side. Of course, that was not going to happen but darkness was having its effects. The party continued but the guests were all starting to get tired, a little edgy and the rains almost threw a tantrum. So we all decided to let them clear up behind us and we would relish the drive back to civilization.

At that point in time, I had no inclination towards returning. All of this was a scene straight out of the Shire and the images still play in my mind. We made a small attempt to capture beauty in our little cameras and what you see here is only a fraction of a fraction, of what we witnessed and more importantly, what we experienced.

Writing Blues

2007-07-01T21:43:00.000-07:00

Why have I lost my taste in writing? Why have I become passive to the one medium that allows me to be free with my thought? What has gone wrong?

I always wondered if it was a good idea to make your hobby, your profession and the answer is, “I don’t know”. I have tried thinking of it as a positive phenomenon but it just doesn’t come to a point, where I am completely convinced about it. Sometimes your profession makes you sick to the bone and you try taking solace in the fact that it is your “hobby”, thus, it must be fun. Conclusion? I must be tired.

So what have I done about it?

Nothing out of the box, really. A few days off because I suffered from Positional Vertigo… (I’m in no mood to explain what it is… look it up!), some movies… Lost season 2 is done with… some books (trust me, I was reading two books simultaneously) and driving around with friends. It did not help much but it did refresh my thought process. The funny part is, I got back to work and within a week, fatigue set in again. Now, what must one do? One has concluded that one must get out of the city. So, I have plans to go to Pune shortly and take three days off. I know this post has almost made you loose interest now and that is my point exactly; I don’t know what to write. I have lost the touch because now I only write 30 second commercials. This post seems menacingly long and it is beginning to annoy me because I still don’t see the point in typing all this out. I guess I will drop it here for now. Hopefully I will come back with something more interesting. So, all my loyal readers, (if I have any) please don’t hold this post against me. I’m just not in the “zone” yet.

You Give Me Fever

2007-03-01T03:43:00.000-08:00

It feels strange when your odyssey ends. Although you have gone through a hell-like experience for most part of your stormy journey, the rewards seem sweet. Sometimes there are no rewards yet a sense of the slightest achievement is ecstatic. The long and the short of it: I feel like Simbad when he returned with his princess. Sometimes I wonder if he was a Mallu from Kunnur but that’s another story.

BIG FM is history, for all practical purposes. But I miss the place. Come to think of it, that’s the catch. I miss my friends, colleagues, associates, the assholes at the top but heck, I am so glad to be out of the organization. All said and done, I received a warm welcome from vultures when I had joined the place and I got the sweetest farewell from them, as a fellow vulture, leaving the pack to invade browner deserts. (I would have said greener pastures if vultures ate grass, but they don’t call me a creative guy for nothing).

So, this vulture has arrived in a blood-red organization called Fever 104 FM. The newest kid on the block, is the result of Hindustan Times copulating Virgin Radio (now that’s the strangest thing I have said) and this place kicks some serious butt when it comes to knowing Radio. But the curse of the 82 never left my side even for the slightest moment. I enter a team of hungry wolves from the early days of middle earth. In the tongue of the commoners, they are better ill famed as “Sales Executives” and man, they can suck your brains out through your skull. Of course, I had to be a part of a team that does nothing to understand the medium they are dealing with. In the words of Meja, “Its all about the money, its all about the dum dum du-du-du-dum” and who gives a flying fuck about creativity, knowledge, feasibility… and such like terms. Having said that, I must admit, I am liking it, much more than BIG. I get to go home at 7:30 p.m. I see people when I go home and not half-dead sleeping dogs. For the unaware reader, I used to work till 1:00 a.m. every day, sometimes later.

Thus the proud sailor embarks upon a new journey of magical adventures and ugly clients with an attitude. Bon Voyage is what I told myself this morning before leaving home.

Murder that ad and i shall pay you for it

2007-01-19T22:37:00.000-08:00

He sat there with a frown and eyes squinting as he stared at nothing in particular and sharp was his nose as it twitched while he thought. His aggression, manifesting itself in the vibrations of his throat, as he prepares to speak. His left hand palmed his right fist, tightly clenched as if to protect a very important something from being stolen out of his hands. And he spoke with the authority of a U.S. General declaring war on Iraq. His forehead glistened with a bead of sweat as he opened his mouth and he uttered five words, in a low voice that was hard and cold like stalagmites in an arctic cave.

“IT HAS TO BE CLUTTER-BREAKING”

These rogues come in varied shape and form and they are better known as ‘clients’, dreaded by the agency, by every agency. It’s ironic that the reason for the existence of an agency is one and is also called, “the client”. The hand that feeds the mouth also pokes the tummy (and how?) My banter actually lies not in the inequities of the monster mentioned but in the five words he uttered. The old joke, if I may quote, is “you are unique, just like everyone else” and now this needs a change. The new version should be, “I want an ad that’s clutter breaking” Period. If every goddam client wants to break the clutter, allow us to make some first. The agency then brainstorms to come up with a “unique” idea that “breaks the clutter” and the client sits scratching his little chin. He then paces the room staring at the screen displaying slides of the presentation. A sip of water, an occasional grunt, a throat clearing ritual and lo, you have a client stripped of all that aggression he had displayed in the previous meeting. His face tightens and he looks at you with the concern of a mother and says, “well, nice idea but is this not too early to experiment such a drastic shift in conventional advertising?” You pathetic bastard… what else do you call “clutter-breaking”? A female selling shaving cream for men is clutter; would a man selling shaving cream thus become, clutter-breaking?

That’s not where the buck stops. You give him an ad he would like and he will kill it for you. Changes, as they are known, are his right to cruelty for he pays you to be victims of it. After a thousand such changes, you look at your own creation and wonder if it was your idea in the first place. You started off with an image and a headline and a body copy that flowed evenly, ample white space, lovely font and strategically placed logo. What you end up looking at, is a notice from the court. The image is gone, the white space is a waste of his money, the logo has to be larger than the goddam print area itself and the copy has to have the eighty-five-year-old history of the company and the future it promises in the next eighty years. Not finished yet, it should also tell you who the CEO is and how did he become the CEO and who wiped his poop when he couldn’t do it himself in sixth grade. Everything.

I don’t even know why am I writing all this in the first place… I belong to the radio industry… but they are no different there, either. In my case, my bosses are my clients… go figure my sadness out.

Condition Zero - the mind game

2007-01-13T02:36:00.000-08:00

The times when you want to return to that one state of mind that is ‘state of zero’ for all good reasons, are simply those times when you never want to turn around and ask yourself how you got to it in the first place.

Allow me to explain… Once in a way (invariably when you are alone and never want to be otherwise) your mind finds this one niche that is so peaceful, that you don’t want to move away. Maybe you might even feel a smile but that is the beauty of it… you never want to see it; just feel it.

For the irony, we have a simple sound of the earth calling you back; maybe just that message on your cell phone from a bank offering you credit cards at no additional cost; it brings you back, never-the-less. So here you are trying to run from everything that was ever taught to you and it’s the same ‘enemy’ that can pull you right back into itself, with the slightest whisper.

I guess I found one song that came close to that feeling. In terms of music, it is the only song that can take me there and then I discovered the lyrics… a little difficult to understand at first but the absolute pleasure lies in relating to it.

For your reading pleasure:

Angel (Sarah McLaughlin)

Spend all your time waiting
For that second chance
For a break that would make it okay
There’s always one reason
To feel not good enough
And it’s hard at the end of the day
I need some distraction
Oh beautiful release
Memory seeps from my veins
Let me be empty
And weightless and maybe
I’ll find some peace tonight

In the arms of an angel
Fly away from here
From this dark cold hotel room
And the endlessness that you fear
You are pulled from the wreckage
Of your silent reverie
You’re in the arms of the angel
May you find some comfort here.

So tired of the straight line
And everywhere you turn
There’s vultures and thieves at your back
And the storm keeps on twisting
You keep on building the lie
That you make up for all that you lack
It don’t make no difference
Escaping one last time
It’s easier to believe in this sweet madness oh
This glorious sadness that brings me to my knees

In the arms of an angel
Fly away from here
From this dark cold hotel room
And the endlessness that you fear
You are pulled from the wreckage
Of your silent reverie
You’re in the arms of the angel
May you find some comfort there
You’re in the arms of the angel
May you find some comfort here

Its about time I wrote. Or is it?

2006-12-27T22:03:00.000-08:00

Sometimes you regret the fact that you have a choice. Its probably as bad as not having any. It happens when you make a wrong choice and Murphy comes to play each and every time. I am not quite thrilled about the work I’m doing for the past few months and this is quite a sad thing to say but the station (radio) I’m working for is not going to survive even a couple of years. Its ironic that I’m in the office right now as I type this out but hey, that’s how bad it is.

The pleasure of going home is greater than the work done in the day. The sense of achievement has been lost on me. The sense of creativity is an alien concept all together. I am a writer and now they make me hate that fact. (if this is now becoming a non-sensical rant then please feel free to view happier blogs). There was a time when I could be confident of what I wrote; only once would I write it and it was a masterpiece at least in my mind. There were several who supported the feeling with zeal and more but now, here, it’s a vice to submit a singular concept. Take a brief (a sad excuse for a brief) think of two or three routes to approach the ad to be produced, write it all out with complete sound design and then one is selected with others going down in dumps.

Sometimes its worse… the selection is done by three different “authorities” and all three select the three different ideas. Then ego hassles will shoot up into cold war among the three and I get stuck in the “grind”.

Well, its not the happiest post to put up after a three month sabbatical but that’s the point, I just don’t have anything else to say to you poor souls (my victims).

Come to think of it, all the blogs I have recently visited are having the same bloody rant… damn! I got sold out to the concept of popularity.

Me Big Boss!

2006-09-04T01:51:00.000-07:00

A single most important issue with human nature is its tendency to look for something it can not tackle. Complications spring up more because we want them to. Implicitly, it is a boost to any human’s large ego. What could also be the case, (which I have concluded after much deliberation) is that we constantly look for attention. If not in the form of approval, then in the form of pity. If not from near-and-dears then from ourselves but we want to know that we are dealing with life just perfectly.

We want to figure out all the nuances and sometimes nuances that don’t exist. We want to have a control over situations that are uncontrollable by making ourselves believe it is within bounds of human control. A simple example is an everyday argument. I’m not saying that there is absolutely no reason to put forth your point of view but more often than not, we want to simply raise issues so that we can tackle them. Not meaning to sound like a saint from the Himalayas but I do understand this from experience. I have tried this several times… let go of some issues completely. If someone says something you don’t like, don’t utter a word. Simply nod and try looking for a reason to like the point made. If you cant find any, still shut up and go ahead with the conversation. Then, if you still feel an urge to refute, go ahead. But you will definitely sto being a control freak or at least feel nobler than the rest of the world.

Think about it while I go and do some more deep thinking… (deep breath taken and eyes shut)

Memorablia

2006-08-27T02:25:00.000-07:00

Putting up pictures and videos to comemorate oone;s escapades is nice. In honor of such wise and meaningful thoughts, one has started off with a new blog which features the pictographic remains of journeys embarked upon... knock yourself out... mind you, the videos might take some time to load. patience is required.

Its called Memorablia

Un-bored

2006-08-16T01:19:00.000-07:00

I feel proud of myself at times. I guess that is a good thing. I find pride in knowing that I actually make use of my time. The fact of the matter is that a whole lot of people have no time to do anything. They are busy either with work or with telling people how busy they are. No really, I know people who spend a half hour on the phone trying to explain to you how much work they have and how their minds have been molested by the unwanted.

I don’t have any work to do. But I have heard “the wise owls” say, “you are lucky. Make use of this time and do things you always felt like doing. Take up a hobby.” What do you know? I did.

I always felt incomplete when the world around me spoke of the magic of books in their lives. All of them, except me, in their school days and college days seem to have finished reading bundles of books. They discuss authors like they were old pals and poets like they knew the very essence of why they wrote. It made me feel out of place and also a little bad about the fact that my parents did not push me too much to read. There it was, all too easy to blame them and sit back and grumble. Until a few days ago, I kept procrastinating, the idea of actually starting with a book. I feared font size 8 and 512 pages like it were a beast out of the bush. Then came along the power of technology and the introduction of a concept that hard core readers swore at and I would swear by: e-books; absolutely convenient to say the least. E-books are available so easily off the net and can be magnified and bookmarked and sometimes if you feel too lazy to read, ask the damn computer to read it out to you.

I finished four of Dan Brown books and I enjoyed them all. Then an Ayn Rand book which I almost slept through. Othello is next on the list but right now, its one of the greatest epics that managed to form cults all over the world: The Lord of the Rings. Enthusiasts will be glad to know that I have this book complete with the prequel (The Hobbit) and the maps (all the maps) and the tree chart of the families. I am presently hunting for Macbeth.

That’s not all. I am also watching the entire first season of LOST at my own pace. It is an awesome series. Next on the serials’ list would have to be “24”. Also I finished an entire game called “Hitman” recently and am planning to upgrade my comp so as to facilitate more games.

The point, my friends, is that when one has time, making use of it leaves no scope of regret later. I am thrilled to know that I am not busy with work or telling people that I am busy… on the contrary; it is fun when people nickname me “Lucky bastard”… (muhuhahaha)

I shall say no more...

2006-08-05T23:00:00.000-07:00

A shop outside Heera Panna Shopping Center, Haji Ali.

I, myself, Happy Singh...

2006-07-17T23:21:00.000-07:00

... and here is the reason why:-

Proud owner of: SonyEricsson W810i Walkman phone... know more

Mumbai Rocked… Again!

2006-07-12T04:35:00.000-07:00

After a year, Mumbai has been taken by shock but this time it is no ploy of Mother Nature; only some terrorists who tried to prove a point which they have not made. I personally saw it coming, like another friend did. What’s the most vulnerable region where security is minimum and potential damage, maximum? Local trains.

A lot has happened in 12 hours and there is no denying how heart wrenching these past few hours have been and still the spirit lives on and people are back to work. A sight we Mumbaikars are pleasantly surprised to see, even though we are a part of it. What I mean is, we all are back on the go and we all know we can not do much about the casualties and we will mumble under our breaths about the bad security and then in a few days, we won’t bother about it anymore. Clearly, the people who have been in the planning forum are not Mumbaikars. They should know that this is like a dent in the average Mumbaikar’s memory and no more. Terror? Hell no. It’s just one small glitch in the routinely running system which will continue to run in the same, unperturbed way. We all celebrate the spirit of Mumbai and say, “nothing can stop this city” with great pride. Is it really a matter of pride?

We get back to work like an unstoppable gear system because we know we have to. I will call Mumbaikars a sensible lot but they are not the “wow” that we make them out to be. They can’t afford to stop working. They can’t not go to work because they are scared out of their pants. If they do, the consequences are dire, leading to a dent in their income and hence in their entire lifestyle; too much of a price to pay for something as simple as being scared. So, the fear has been driven out of a Mumbaikar by his lust for a higher level of lifestyle and not because he has “the spirit to move on and not look back.” I’m sympathetic towards all those who have lost their family and friends in this unfortunate and rather meaningless mishap and with all due respect, even these people, after the thirteenth day, are going to move on to live their lives. Why should someone stop living because someone close to them has died? Unfortunate? Yes but not impossible or unbelievable. People die. I am just trying to look at this “spirit of Mumbai” thing in a rather realistic light. I feel it’s an overstated fact that can be proven wrong by an even worse attempt to make this city fall on its knees. The more we pat our backs, the more the incumbents will try to stick the peg into the gears.

May the dead rest in peace. May their families find courage to face their loss. I’m sure Mumbai definitely will.

The new and (definitely) the improved

2006-07-12T04:27:00.000-07:00

After much labor we have finally improved the sound of:

Nishaniyaan (click to be victimized)

Lyrics: Rakshit Doshi
Music: Austin D’souza
Vocals: Shaban Khan

(This song is dedicated to our boredom and creativity. We can’t decide which came first)

What the hell?

2006-07-06T11:05:00.000-07:00

One sits at home pondering over what shall be done about boredom. One reads a book and can’t stay up. One plays a computer game only to be frustrated with constant and persistent failure to kill random soldiers and some general as a mission protocol. Then the Lord said… let there be music… and one follows the inner voice to attempt making music.

Proud to present the very first attempt at home production in both, national language and English.

Anno domini

Nishaniyaan (guitars by Austin D'suza)

In case my willing victims have limited downloading problems with their ISP then this link will take you to a page which allows online streaming (for those technologically challenged, you do not have to download these torture-tunes, you can listen to it online by pressing the Play button)

Your feedbacks are NOT welcome... These musical works of art are strictly for the sake of ‘time pass’ and shall not be produced/distributed/copied by anyone in their own interest.

Word of Advice: Wear ear plugs.

Listen to the Unheard

2006-07-03T00:58:00.000-07:00

So I waited there at the shore for a voice to call me. The sea was violent and there was no space between two raging white waves as they rammed the shore. I was geared for the Rain Gods to test me and I am sure, the boulders at the bottom of the ledge, where I stood, were geared for the wild oceans unforgiving rage; for they stood unperturbed by the brutal force on display. A million eyes watched the sea in awe. Two of them were mine. Little children felt their parents were divine as they hung on to them in fear and surprise. Couples bit on corn as they spoke of distant lands where they would build their quiet home. Umbrellas twisted in pain and the saree-clad ladies laughed as splashes of the sea playfully teased them. They were looking free and away from their mundane existence for a while as thy spoke of happiness to their friends. Now I was not sure if these people were watching the sea or was the sea witnessing the many colored clothes and more varied lives of people. A Million people who lived two or three lives each… how much more can the word ‘gamut’ mean to anyone.

Slowly, the voices around me started to ebb and I started listening to the sea. It said nothing. Nothing angered it. Nothing wanted to take any revenge on it. It spoke of no force that made it wild. It simply was having a nice time. It was excited with the rains setting in. It wanted to go unnoticed. In fact, it was tired of being watched all the time. It was fatigued with eyes judging it. It felt like a child who had a huge body but a tender heart. People who died in its huge form were not prey to its rage. It was their own fault; much like a monkey playing with the electric wire on a post. It was innocent. When it was done playing, it started to roll back into its natural calm and the clouds were done entertaining the sea. They, too, cleared the sky. The people moved away like getting out of a cinema hall, like they would, when the movie is over and the credits are rolling.

The tiled floor was now exposed to the few shadows of bodies that moved around and to the glimmer of the sodium lamps. A silent hum of the sea was broken only less often by the sudden violent wave, like a child’s coughing during evening mass. I still stood there. My legs felt no fatigue but they wanted to rest anyway. The silence was broken when my cell phone rang and the voice on the other side asked me where I was. I had no answer to the question for an instance but my voice cracked as I replied, “Worli Sea Face, you?”

BHAISAAB, UTARNA HAI KYA?!

2006-06-29T22:11:00.000-07:00

Yes, you guessed it right; this is a story of a train journey. Short. Thirty-five minutes is all it takes from Grant Road to Santacruz. And this is a little incident we all encounter. Sort of a template for the quintessential Mumbai “trainee” (as in, a person who travels by the local train).

I am a meek traveller if I may say so. I am the sort of person who does not utter a word in a journey and to keep the omerta going, I carry my headset and listen to the radio on my cell phone. See no evil, hear no evil and most definitely, speak no evil. In the law books of train travellers, it is a mandate to learn at least five Hindi ‘evil’ terms because, well, it is required. I know more than five but it’s best to sit till the station you want to get off is the next one; get up at the right time, move slowly to the door and get off without being a cause of any discomfort. But this is Utopia. I never knew I could be anything but quiet. I realize now that I could.

Khar Road Station and I wait at the door to get off at the next station. The train is relatively empty and this dazed individual stands right behind me sticking his groin into my hip. “Hutt na! Mad@%$%^*&od!!!” I hear myself saying and thrusting him away. He moves away and looks at me funny and says, “Utarna hai kya?” So I scowl at him and indignantly reply, “Nahi, uss khambe pe oodi maarna hai” and point to the signal pole that is coming up ahead of us. He fails to understand and asks, “Santacruz kaunsi taraf aayega?”

I just gave up and showed him the wrong side. When the train pulled in, he jumped onto the tracks and leaped up to the platform on the other side. When I got off, a cold voice informed me, “Pocket check kar lo, chu%$^a kuch nikal na liya ho.” The blood froze in my veins as I felt my hip pocket and found no wallet. It took me an instant to remember that I had shoved it in my front pocket for I feared such a thing would happen. A bead of sweat formed on my forehead and trickled down as my blood finally thawed and I heaved a sigh of complete arrogance. I was now a member of the Mumbai Local Daily Travellers’ Club… Pukka Mumbaikar…

…of random thoughts and drifting sands

2006-06-22T02:44:00.000-07:00

I don’t like visits to a hospital. There is negativity just hanging in the air. Every molecule you breathe seems to be filled with aches and pains, moans and even death. Solemn faced doctors and emotionless ward-boys wheeling out the cripple or sometimes rolling in the unconscious. Strange smells of medicines, hurrying sergeants slitting skin and organs and running to perform their act on many unsuspecting patients… something just doesn’t seem right about hospitals. I went there for a check up of my hurting eye and returned with some medicines and a lot of depression.

I am angry with the rains. Coward rain threatens and never falls. I don’t even want to be complaining, actually. I am in no mood to dance around in the grey open expanse of the cloudy sky. Or eat an ice-cream in the shelter of a tin roof clattering with millions of droplets. I don’t want to walk on the shore of a violent sea struggling to engulf the land it can barely reach. Over ambitious, don’t you think? I don’t want the sweltering heat to disappear or the smell of wet mud to invade my senses. Why should I be thinking about lush green gardens and fresh flowers and dew-laden grass? Who needs rains? Do you?

We sold off the Zen we owned in exchange for a WagonR… good car but too small. I guess it was mom’s choice for a city-drive. Fair enough.

I have taken up reading e-books now. Finished one and half way through the other. It's far more comfortable for me to read large font on the computer screen as opposed to microscopic letters spruned on faintly oxidized pages of a thick, demoralizing novel. I know die-hard readers are loading their guns to shoot my eyes out of my skull but hey… your passion is the bane of my existence. Sorry!

Suddenly this lazy afternoon, as I lay on my back staring at the crack on my ceiling, I thought of taking an IQ test. I don’t know why. I just want to take an IQ test. I cant fail an IQ test now, can I? They are nice tests. They don’t upset you. They tell you that you have a brain that is thinking and its rationalizing. See? It is so positive to take an IQ test. All who are wasting their lives while you wait for some dimwits to sort out their ego hassles and give a nice employee a decent job, should take an IQ test. It will surely raise your spirits by telling you that the people you are dealing with (details) are far dumber then you can even imagine being. Fie on the HR dimwits! I shall be a part of the MENSA soon. (I hope I spelt that right)

My Mahableshwar trip is still trapped in the Olympus of my cousin. I want to feel good about the photography I do best. Flowers. I love flowers. Soon I shall be posting some pictures of the flowers I have shot and requesting the flower-experts to help me name the species. I don’t know jack-crap about plants. Sava?

Oh, I digressed while I was supposed to be checking the direction the crack on the ceiling is taking... an inch to the left, from the last I remember.

Take Care Now, Bye Bye Then!

2006-06-16T09:42:00.000-07:00

It is the norm of the day…. sufferance through deprivation and murder of raised expectations.

Three weeks of employment, complete faith of over ten people, more than a thousand congratulations, countless moments of glory… one simple rejection. This has been my month with Radio City… my first and last. A gung-ho station that had an enthusiastic employee like me… correction, potential employee and this innocent and hard working creative soul is caught between a war of EGOS! for crying out loud.

Today seems to be my last day at a work place that familiarized itself to me. An effortless association with the sweetest colleagues one could ever have had culminates into silent wondering and staring at the goings-on as an on-looker. No life, energy or inclination to work for strangers anymore.

Why is it happening only to me? - would seem to be an appropriate question to ask.

Never will I try to justify my failure but if I am made to lose on account of not being given a chance, leaves me no scope for blaming anything else but my stars. Two loves of my life, stolen away in a single month… not bad for starters. I don’t know if should expect to face worse conditions or should I sit back and think, “The worst has passed, what more can you take away from me… my life?”

A trip out of town this weekend seems more inviting now. Who cares if I sleep late on Sunday? I don’t have work to go to on Monday anyway.

...The job that was.

Show Me The Light!

2006-06-05T13:00:00.000-07:00

It is so simple to show people a situation as it happens and all in an attempt to make the person feel that he is being cared about, isn’t it? I know it’s a vague and rather heavy note to strike up a thought or discussion but it is true.

Let’s try and explain this in a little detail. You have a difficult case in front of you, for instance, (which you need to sort by making a decision). More appropriately, a choice. Now, you know this situation. You know that I have choice A which I can’t live with or without and I have choice B which is, again, as important. You naturally turn to a friend/concerned person who you know might be able to guide you through it. Invariably, this person will land up asking a million questions. You answer them like you were sitting on a couch in a shrink’s clinic, waiting in anticipation for a light to shine through. What do you get in return? A profound, deep throated statement which sounds something like, “So, as I see it, I think you have a situation here which is not very difficult. You just have to make up your mind and let’s boil this down to a choice between two things. Forget everything else. You have here choice A where XYZABC things will happen and you should look at choice B where PQRST things might happen. Just sit over it and think about it. Once you decide, it will all be over. It’s only a phase, buddy, just hang in there”.

You know what’s worse? You get up and shake his hand and say, “thanks man, I think you put it all in perspective for me. What would I have done without you?”… I know what I would have done without him… I would have found an answer to my problem without him.

May the downtrodden be “UPLIFTED” by God!

2006-05-22T01:57:00.000-07:00

I am hurt.

It is a major issue, slapped on every page of every news daily of this country. The entire “reservation against reservation” bit is draining me of all thoughts that are pro-education. I don’t know if my two bits about this matter would really be of much interest and much less of any use but for the sake of one more voice in the cry for justice, I shall voice my opinion.

I, for one, refuse to have a less qualified, DALIT doctor (who by the way, is no better than the rich-man’s-brat, who bought a seat in a college and does not deserve it AT ALL) to touch an ailing body of my family or friend and trade a simple solution to a simple illness, for DEATH. We all know better than giving away a doctor’s or an engineer’s seat to people who don’t deserve it. Fine, if he or she gets the marks or grades required for the entrance, then I am for having them pay a lesser amount, vis-à-vis an open category student, as fees. If they are intellectually at par with a hard working student of any category (which, unfortunately, can only be judged by the marks he/she reserves in his/her graduation exams or entrance exams, which I am not very happy to accept but… oh well…), then it is fair to grant them a higher education for a lesser price. But if you are saying “let’s trample all over the open category student just because we are a minority” then go take a hike. Worst case, let them get their reservations in fields that are not risking lives, something like management or PR or such-likes; but please, spare them from being doctors and engineers. These are professions dealing (directly and indirectly) with human life.

The open category is mistaken to be as high as the statistics show in the papers. There are ‘freedom fighter’s’ and the ‘government servant’ quotas that are being overlooked. Next you know you have 5% reservation for ‘unemployed bar dancers’ or 10% reservation for ‘Kashmiri militants’ whose fathers died in a shoot out. Why have ‘open category’ at all? Just divide all seats and distribute them amongst the ‘poor and suppressed’, while you are at it. I have been in the eye of the storm. I know how many of these ‘poor and oppressed’ lot really want to study and make something out of their lives. They are there because they have the safety-net of such reservations granting them their seats. They are there because an engineer will make more money than a union leader amongst factory workers. They know that a doctor will be able to buy a nice car within two years of his practice but a street urchin who strives and manages to run a chai-katta will not be able to achieve that dream in a lifetime. They know that the stupid government is meant to be gullible and by making a noise about their ‘poor’ state of affairs, they can manage to beg and get away with the ‘sympathetic’ government granting them their ‘rights’. Sydenham had a bloody OBC for a principal and an SC for a registrar… I challenge anyone to get a positive feedback about Sydenham from any of its alumni, from the past decade. The idiots (read management) don’t have common sense and what was even more pitiful was the fact that they were both Ph.Ds. Guess how they got their doctorate… CORRECT, reservations!

I am sincerely thankful to the Lord for giving me a wonderful family which is well off and touch wood, will always be… But then again, why are they not ‘poor and oppressed’? I would have had it much simpler then! (You get the point, don’t you?)

Coffee time vignette

2006-05-20T00:41:00.000-07:00

I was revisiting my memory bank to see, what are the things I have truly left behind? Soon and sure enough, I landed in a debate with myself.

Amongst all the things, a substantial chunk was of ‘people’. A bunch that I, very loosely, called ‘friends’. So the debate I was speaking of was, if I have called them friends, I wouldn’t leave them behind and if I have managed to get over each one of them, then they are not ‘friends’, in the truest sense of the word. These were acquaintances. That’s where the debate, pretty much, ended.

Then there were some fond memories that sort of felt like wiping dust from a photo album and smiling at the moment captured on film; a moment that was never to return. Some were embarrassments which made me slink in my chair and still a smile was felt running from one end of my lips to another, albeit, I couldn’t see it. A lot of these things, we might say, are taken for granted but I refuse to accept that. These are things that keep you going. I think it works like a pendulum; if it does not go in the opposite direction, it will stop moving. A trip down memory lane is not so much of an adventure as it is an evening walk. At least, that’s what I would like to believe. I have no siblings and I have never been able to share a funny moment from history with anyone in the wee hours of the morning, when I can’t sleep, so I tend to smile to myself and think nothing of it. But I have rarely pulled out an album from an old drawer and I kept feeling it was rather ‘old-ish’ to do such a thing. Felt like I was sixty nine and my children had settled in the states and I had nothing better to do than to stare at pictures and wile away my (remaining) life. But I was surprised to have a reaction which was quite contrary to this popular belief. I actually refreshed myself for a new day when I saw the album with my pictures with different relatives. Playing in the arms of an annoying aunt or of a nice uncle who passed away a few years later. Having my hands around an old pals shoulder, who I have not called or heard from for eons. The funny picture of the girl I would flirt with and still never got around calling her for kicks…. So on and so forth (I’m sure all of you are now finding this a cliché because I have started sounding like an ad for retirement solutions). Actually, I really have nothing much to discuss, just felt like writing such things down for posterity. I mean, what else does one do with a blog?

Next on the list: old greeting cards.

Eh? What am i doing here?

2006-05-18T04:17:00.000-07:00

I was reading some blogs just so I get inspired to update mine (as for the sake of good old public demand… after all that’s what keeps such futile sites ticking, right?)

What I realized is that, all of them were updates and not works of thought or literature, so I guess I shall not break the trend.

Job: none.
Searched and searched and could not find one.
And so my father, like all fathers would,
Asked me to do something with my wasting boyhood.
And my mother stood far and gave me a stare,
“what?” I asked. “do you really think I care?”
She shook her head in shame and said,
“son, you need to get out of bed
and help your old man in any way you can.
There are responsibilities of a young man”
… so here I am in a dull, cold room.
Doing a bit to keep away the gloom.
But I feel like I have a duty that calls.
The world needs me to help it stand tall.
There is something waiting to happen out there.
If only I knew where, if only… I knew where…

Na, I’m fine. Frankly, I’m at the brink of getting a nice placement in a place I want to be in. I shall put it up as soon as I am sure I am through. Until then, I shall glare at customers and passers-by. You can stop glaring at the screen. Go away! (Phbbt)

Radio Ads

2006-04-13T06:26:00.000-07:00

I hereby present to you the final radio ads of the class… you may download them by clicking the links below…

Grp 1:
Feviply

Voice Over:

Bijoy

Grp 2:
Ishtaa
Ad1
Ad2

Ad3

Voice Over:

Mahtab Taraporewala (main VO)
Najeshda Deshpande (tagline VO)

(All background sounds done by the group members)

Grp 3:
McDonalds Playschool (Stepping Stones)

Voice Over:

Kavitha Mani (main VO)
Binita Kuruvilla (tagline VO)

Grp 4:
MoPlay

(MP3 players by Fastrack)

Ad1

Voice Over:

Clayton Gomes (main VO)
Rakshit Doshi (intro and tagline VO)

Ad2

Voice Over:

Rakshit Doshi (all VOs)

Grp 5:
Snippets (greeting cards by Cadburry's)

Voice Over:

Clayton Gomes & Sharmistha Nagarkatti (main VO)
Divya Chandramouli (tagline VO)

Grp 6:
Peter England Shaving Cream

Voice Over:

Rakshit Doshi (main VO)
Binita Kuruvilla (Tagline VO)

(Any discrepancy in the above information should be immediately communicated to me by the group at rakshit.doshi@rediffmail.com)

... and the fat lady sings

2006-04-10T09:44:00.000-07:00

I saw the best of times and the worst of days, these last few months and I realized that it takes no time to walk in and out of warp zones. Just as one is about to embark on a journey, the destination is reached and one forgets to enjoy the journey while he is still feeling euphoric about getting on the boat. What I am trying to say here is, I did not realize where the nine months of ADMA flew past. I remember being interviewed, watching my name, first on the list of short-listed students, jumping around with the sheer joy of just getting an admission. The orientation, the first day, me being elected as CR and woosh! The last day of the year. The rest of it all just never registered, saving a few great moments and achievements (which I choose not to enlist here).

The memories of the Kune trip still linger on, the film shoot and radio recording, still seem fresh. I mean, these thoughts are like these eighty year old grannies, trying to take a seat on a low chair. They are still seeping in. I wonder if I will ever find a batch so amazingly smart and sensitive as this one.

To ADMA 05-06, may the fat lady die before she even begins to sing on us. This opera will never end. Cheers!

DHISHKYAANNWW - The Shoot...

2006-03-14T20:03:00.000-08:00

It has all come to a fulfilling end.

Almost two months of planning and fighting and mental torture has come to a close…. Actually a semi-close (if there is a term like that) with the shooting of the ad yesterday. A crazy month has flown past me and I can’t remember anything but “Peter England” making its way into my blood stream. The group of ten, aspiring ad makers has done some good work, I might say. We brainstormed our way into making a brand extension called Peter England Shaving Cream and now we have finally finished a tormenting shoot and it was all well worth it. I don’t want to get into the description too much but the way I see it, it takes a lot of foresight to make the d-day pass smoothly (pun not intended). Some solid pre-production work and minimal interference of one person's opinion in another's job can pay off by making you complete your shoot two hours before pack-up time. What we really enjoyed was the anxiety a day before the shoot.

It so happens that my apartment in Juhu (which is our location) is to be given out on lease the day after and hence is undergoing renovation. Two days before the shoot, the ceiling is pealing off, the marble on the floor is being polished to a shine, the fittings of all the washrooms are removed and the house is not in any condition to be lived in. At any given point in time, there were 13 people working, on every wall of the damn place and our blood pressures were on a rise. There was no chance in hell of it being completely ready on the day of the shoot and well, we had almost given up hope of a successful ad. An alternative was out of question because we had decided on the story board, the props and everything to do with the shoot well in advance. It would only mean changing the script. The lack of a back-up, needless to say, was making us bite our nails, fingers and palms. And we, in our infinite wisdom, went and decided to shoot first. It is only I who knows what went into standing there for twelve hours straight and getting those electricians, plumbers and painters to finish off the area in which we were shooting and obviously my group who stayed there with me, realized the anxiety I was faced with then. Two whole days were spent on set and that’s when the fun began. The best part is, we get the place done up at 5 p.m. in the evening before the shooting day. It was interesting to watch myself doing carpentry and my dear father doing some amount of drilling and nailing walls. Thank god for him and my mother, we managed to set the props up by 1 a.m. and it looked fabulous. The next day, the model was running a little late, few last minute hiccups were giving us the feeling of a major blunder but it all smoothened out and we finished the whole shoot at 4 p.m. that day. The pictures shall now speak.

This pack was designed by the group members and is not a commercial product

“Kudos to group six”, says our professor and it was an experience of a lifetime. My first ad shoot… only I know what the high is like. I shall retire to bed now. Sleep is a forgotten phenomenon as far as I am concerned.

Erm... Hello... !

2006-02-26T21:47:00.000-08:00

Ahem!

absolutely no apparent reason to do this but... oh well some colour is good...

fine fine... i admit... i was just bored of the black... :P

your two bits are welcome.

Back with the same, old whip...

2006-02-14T22:34:00.000-08:00

A series of weddings followed the series of projects and at one point, they both intersected and that is exactly the point where I forgot I even had a blog to myself.

Hello all ye patient readers of mine. I’m sorry for this delay in my rant but quite frankly I dint have anything to rant about and when I did, I didn’t have the time. Funny part is, now that I have the time, I have let go of all those reasons and topics that invite my foolish banters. So, let’s see if I can come up with something totally different to talk about.

One thing I noticed in these weddings of friends and cousins and random others, is that there is a lot of waste of talent. (Actually there is a lot of waste, period). The food, for instance, has different counters. In one of the weddings, the Rajesthani counter was so empty that the fellow who was serving there had dozed off. The stuff was really good, though. And then there was this Italian counter that had a line of people standing behind a mob of the front-enders and they stood with their plates held up like they were A1 class prisoners being served Italian food in their concentration camps. It was a sight worth a click. I mean, rationing shops probably look relatively demand free compared to this pizza-and-pasta table. Then there are the decorations. Orchids, people… each costing Rs. 20 or so, just lying around the corners of the food counter or the backdrop of the stage or some even picked up by little kids who were pretending to play “i-love-you” games with their fictitious girlfriends by wooing them with these ORCHIDS! For Christ’s sake, stick bamboo shoots and they will still go unnoticed. Let me not even start on Lighting! It seemed like they picked up all the flood lamps from the Vankhede Stadium and placed them there. It would look appropriate for me to wear dark glasses at ten in the night, I would say. As if those were not enough, there were lights stuck on the floor, facing upwards, to light up coir mats on GOLDEN backgrounds. No! We need more lights, so bring on the camera-man with his, very own, flood lamp. I could have gotten tanned if I didn’t leave in a hurry. Somewhere at the fag end of the ground in a corner so far away that it would take a bored individual to notice what I did (yes, Einstein, I WAS bored!). Three individuals resembling the Guns-N-Roses with a set of Tablas, a keyboard and I think an octo-pad, stood there and played ‘Tujhe dekha toh yeh janaa sanam’ and such likes. They had medleys of old songs firing back-to-back, for an audience that would rather chase rats than listen to their music. Waste! Waste! Waste! And more WASTE!

Why cant people make marriages an occasion to be remembered for the right reasons? Is it so important to have people repent their presence there? My friends and I were dead by the end of the day. Our feet, backs and shoes were killing us. We couldn’t sit for more than five minutes and the heat would make us want to rip off our suits and dive into a swimming pool. Somehow, the fact that there was no pool there to dive into made us save our suits. Having said that, I still can’t figure the point of such functions. The groom and the bride are stuck under the burning lamps for hours, the guests are dying to get home, the immediate families are tired out of their bodies trying to attend to the million who they short-listed from a billion to be invited, the gift obligations, the plastic smiles, the flustered waiters, the traffic, the traveling… why?

I’m getting married in a court… No one is invited. I shall post the news here and you are welcome to greet me by hitting on the Comments link, just where the post ends. Like so…

the circle of life!

2006-01-30T09:41:00.000-08:00

How small is this word, ‘sorry’? Sometimes it can work wonders for you, if used at the right place, at the right time (ironic, no? sorry is used when you are in the middle of a ‘bad’ thing, right?) and then there are these precarious times when nothing seems to work. Again, the ironic part is, it is always useless with the ones who are closest to you. Offend a stranger, say sorry and story ends with ‘they lived happily ever after’. Offend a loved one, say sorry and the bomb just blows up instantaneously… the world just turns over its head and the story climaxes with a ‘what’s the point if don’t mean it?’ or a ‘do you have the faintest idea of what that word means?’

It’s a scary thought to be a part of a drama where your character was not even given a script. You just behave naturally and try thinking that your counterpart at the receiving end would ‘understand’ you but sometimes it just gets interpreted as ‘being taken for granted’. Now, how do you explain these things? Where do you draw the line and make one understand that what you were doing was a part of a reaction and not a planned assault? Then you start wondering if what you have done is right or not. Then the questions take mammoth proportions. The funny part is, initial questions are unanswerable but progressively they start getting answerable with options at first and then, if you go further, they start having clearer, streamlined answers. Allow me to illustrate…. Why did I react that way? or What was I thinking? (Unanswerable). I am sorry but should it make any difference if I said it? (yes, at least he/she will know that I’m sorry if nothing else) / (no, he/she will only find it much more irritating. Leave him/her alone). Now the questions transform into rhetorical ones…. Will I be able to go on like this for the rest of my life? What will happen if this person keeps reacting this way in small trifles like this one? Now, you are scared. Now you want to forget about it and say ‘it’s just a goddam phase!’ you don’t want to answer anymore questions. You want to be exculpated and then you want things to fall into place, miraculously, if you will. Wonder of wonders, they do fall into place. All smooth again and the calm waters start waiting for ripples once again. What comes along can be a ripple or a wave or a tsunami and then the same questioning helps you swim through. Strange, true and completely fascinating, this human nature of ours. I am surrounded with optimism now. Happy thoughts about having to find solace in such cycles and ‘phases’. I learn and I write like this. Then I feel good about cracking the secret to not being affected… if it helps anyone of you, I shall be glad.

Two scores and a four... thats it and no more

2006-01-23T10:31:00.000-08:00

I was just reading my own post that I posted on the last day of the year gone by and thought to myself, “even though I know it is a phase, I still react to it.”

It has been twenty odd days since I last wrote and a series of things (I shall choose not to account for all trifles) have happened ever since… bad news, to begin with… my twenty fourth birthday. I am two dozen years old. I am a year away from being one quarter of a century old… I HAVE LIVED MORE THAN ONE QUARTER OF MY ACTUAL LIFE ALREADY…!!! (Breaking into cold sweat, spasm, convulsion… glugging water, breathing deeply, coming back to senses.) No seriously, it’s a crazy feeling to be this old. Anyway, the interesting part is, rather was, that I had one of the best birthdays in years. As always, a series of calls at twelve, ringing their way into half past midnight. Forty winks and then to college. A short lecture and then a delicious lunch with my dearest sweetheart (with red wine as fine as Rosé and Kailua cake for desert, if I may say so.). A surprise cake in college from three friends, and a cake for the 60 dear fellow ad-enthusiasts (curtsy, mamma dear.) Cake at home and pudding at my Nani’s to wind off my day. But amongst all this, the sweetest gift I got was this card that was made by Revati and Rithika, which had been passed around the class (outside my knowledge, of course) and each one had written a line or two for me which really meant a lot. I also received an extremely beautiful poem from my lunch date ;) and sufficient cash from my family. So all-in-all, my life looked decent that day. Come to think of it, all these days have been hectic and all of that but they have been crazy fun. The final module about ad-film making has commenced and so has the module on radio advertising. Oh, not to mention, we had a lecture with Jaggu and Tarana from Go FM as guest faculty along with Prachi from Radio City. It was so cool. Also a lecture on music appreciation and how the different hours of the day, the mood in those hours and the appropriate music, works in tandem with one another. One day we had a decent but not up to-the-mark, lecture with Mr. M.G. Parmeshwaran (who is the MD of FCB Ulka, the fourth largest ad agency in the country and maybe in Asia.)

That’s that, as far as updates are concerned and quite frankly I have nothing beyond that to say. I love saying this in good times and bad…

It’s all GOOD!

Later then… write in about your new years etc. if you will… it’s about time this site got interactive… ;)

Don't read if you wish to smile!

2005-12-31T02:10:00.000-08:00

Tie me up. Tape my mouth, sack me in a gunny bag and throw me over the wall of a bridge. I swear to the lord, I will not utter a squeak to voice disapproval of an act as benevolent as this. Tear me to shreds and I will oblige. Kick my soul till it dies in me. I deserve no more than a dead soul. Look for my brain, if you find it, look for the part that has some dreams stored in it and pull it out. Now hunt for the memories of a past day or even a year. Please remove it and destroy it so no one can find out how happy I was (and in effect, prove my potential of being happy even now). Use a pair of tweezers if you like, but pick out the little remains of smile from my face, my eyes or even my forehead. Every time I smile or have smiled, I have been on a secret mission. Undercover, if you will. I was told to blend in, to mix into the crowd and look for secrets hidden behind those very smiles. I know they are all disguises. Sometimes the mirror too, lies. I don’t want to be a part of that mission anymore. I have become one of them… pseudo-artists. Masters of the ‘you-will-not-find-me’ clan. The year always ends on a note that jolts me out of reality, or into reality, I don’t know which. I want to slink away in my couch and watch life on a fourteen inch screen. Somehow that is more believable than what I see around me. Every day there is more bright lies and brighter smiles to cover the lies and I hate wearing the glares on the last day of the year. Every bloody year.

Have a lovely new year all ye unfortunate ones who read this disturbing piece, while I find my remote control and bag of chips. Well, Titanic is a good movie after all.

:-s

2005-12-25T20:21:00.000-08:00

A weird thought was expressed yesterday. I was speaking to Karishma, a very old friend who is pissed at me for not having kept in touch, and she asked me about some relationship and girlfriend issue. Her thought is that there are two kinds of relationships… dating someone is never the same as loving someone. She was convinced about this and I don’t know if I should be, but I was close to being convinced. I really found it funny in hind-sight that a friend first gets to know the other person and then probably starts dating when there the show of slight interest. If things do go well, they fall in love. Otherwise, two people meet, fall in love, start dating and then things just go right. Another alternative, people meet, start dating, know each other and fall in love or maybe two people fall in love over the phone, meet and then start dating… whatever it is, I doubt they are mutually exclusive concepts (dating and loving). Then again, dating is more frivolous, according to Karishma; and loving someone is a total different ball game. The next link in my chain of thoughts was… have I not grown out of this rubbish yet? Have I not understood that it does not matter what you call it as long as you consider a person to be special and more important than others? Is that not just it? It is! To love someone is nothing but to consider the person special. It could be mother and girlfriend alike. So what’s this ‘dating’ and ‘loving’ business?

All this thought was about thirty seconds worth of my time. I then started watching a funny movie on HBO and pretty much left the thought unthreaded. I just wrote this because I had not posted for a while and I was bored this morning. Do not think too much of it, I would suggest. Cheers!

On a different note, I have had some great times in college. Party sharty, project voject, good fun. There are some random pictures I would like to post. Providing with details would require time and energy… don’t have enough of them both as of now, so hang on till I feel like writing again… Muhuhaha!!!

Catharsis

2005-12-08T20:13:00.000-08:00

Have you ever felt like you were never born? There are times when I want to ask my life why it even exists. There are times when I want to ask God to pick up this ‘strip’ of a few days and cut it out of the ‘reel’ of my life so the smoothness is not spoilt. Imagine, you sleep on Tuesday night and wake up on Wednesday next week; and all because the week was going to be a really pathetic one. I don’t know how to complaint about things happening to me when it is not even my fault. Innocence and thoughts of self respect are all questioned in times like this. No, if you are waiting for me to blurt my issue, I will not.

What I have learnt in the process (and this is the most important part) is that taking responsibility is a job that demands responsibility. Stop frowning and twisting your face… you know EXACTLY what I mean. Sometimes it never pays off to be the one doing the entire math. A friend of mine told me, “It’s a thankless job to be a responsible person taking charge”. Now, it’s different when you are running a company or a business because there, you are paying the buggers and they jolly well listen to what you say. But in a class of individuals where each is as important as the next, you can’t be bossing around. The funny part is, you take initiative and if the idea that you took initiative for falls flat on its face, you are blamed. But if the idea works, it qualifies as a ‘job profile’ of the representative. If you do something nice you get three individuals (from amongst those who know you and love you) to come and say, ‘good show’ but if you screw up… fifty faces frowning at yours and fifty voices (which sound like seventy) shouting in your ears about ‘this-is-not-done’ things. It’s not like one gets paid to hear this crap, right? And there are no privileges either. I still have to submit assignments with the rest of the class. I still have to get graded on the shoddy job I have done because I was busy fixing dates with the faculty who could not make it on a Saturday because his aunt’s third cousin’s elder son ran away from home. I still have to be in time for lectures because the attendance is going to be taken by me and it doesn’t matter how late the rest of the class comes because they can shoot their numbers out like I was there to play housie or bingo or something.

Oh forget it! There is virtually no point ranting to a keyboard. No offence to you, dear reader, but in front of me is only a keyboard. I just had so much brewing that it spilt over. I guess, “With great power comes great responsibility”… actually it’s the other way round… but then again, who came first, the chicken or the egg?

From the attic

2005-12-06T08:57:00.000-08:00

I mined through my drawers again… lo and behold; I find some of my old poems, again. It has been years since I wrote any of this. Actually, I have just lost that urge to write the way I did but I still look back at these works and wonder if it really was me who managed to write this way… no its not about my ego being converted to a blimp but I just appreciate the fact that I ‘voiced’ my feelings in different ways vis-à-vis others. Probably, I never had a good enough outlet that I could trust but what it manifested into was quite a memento that I could treasure and refer to in years to come.

This one, for example, was written for that one “perfect” woman who I could spend my life writing about. Strange (and still true), I feel the same way even today. For the records, this was written about six years ago. No, I was not seeing anyone then and did not see anyone for years after that. But today, I feel this has come as close to reality as it can… one of my favorite creations dedicated to one of God’s favorite creations.

NATURE AND YOU

We’ve walked a long distance in the sea-wet sand,
A while singing, a while moaning, we’ve walked hand in hand.
Your praise seems so little all the more it’s said,
When you walk on open roads they are like carpets red,
The day would threaten thunder when you hide your face and cry,
When you look up and smile the clouds clear the sky.
When you speak to nature the blue bells ding-a-ling,
When you stand in the open, the mountains seem to sing.
When your fingers slide through your hair,
Giving them a brush,
The dark night would sigh,
The waterfalls would blush.
The moon watches you sleep, the stars staring too,
Would you be dreaming of nature while nature is dreaming of you?

Ah! The sally of youth…and the gifts thus found…

:-)

Lego: bring on the brief!

2005-12-02T11:45:00.000-08:00

We were made to write a creative brief. (what?!?!).

Explanation: in the world of advertising, when a client (the advertiser) meets the client servicing executive (the guy representing the agency to the client) and takes notes on why he wants to advertise and what is he expecting the agency to do for him, is called ‘taking a client brief’. The other department, ‘Creative’, requires to know what kind of an advertisement they are to create for the client. When the CSE converts the client brief to a sheet of paper which gives the creative department the relevant information, it is known as ‘the creative brief’.

Our assignment was to write a creative brief for an ad already made. In effect, work backwards to know what influenced the creator to make such an ad. The ad was that of Lego.

The ad:
Two cars (limos if I am not wrong) roll into a compound and black suited men step out in regal style. They make their way to a room and open it with utmost care and walk in. they stare from behind dark glasses at the activities of a five year old who is sitting on the floor playing with his toys. A lady dressed formally (probably the boss of these men) walk in while the men make way for her to come up front to the child. The child looks at her and hands over a simple white box. The apprehension builds and the lady looks at the men before she anxiously opens the box. Just a peak and the light through the box delight the people watching. They are impressed and the next thing you know is this child being hounded by press reporters. He is made to sit in a press conference with a hundred mics in his face and camera flashes all over the screen. He is being loved and respected by the entire country. His picture is in every magazine, on every news channel. He is shown parading through what looks like London, in a sedan and with guards in front and behind.

The screen now has a Lego logo on it and the punchline that reads: "every idea begins with imagination".

Now I might have killed the ad for those who have watched it but that’s the best I could do, so, sincere apologies.

Everyone had their own way to draw up the probable brief. Some wrote poetry and some wrote three lines as their assignment. I don’t know how many others have done what I did. I recorded a speech and gave it some music; something like ‘Sunscreen’, if you have heard the song. It’s a pity I can not play that brief but I can post the text at least. So this is what I said:

I once asked a child, what is your dream… what do you want to be.
He said, “I want to be an engineer”.
On asking him why so, he replied with eyes that had the glimmer of a creator, “I want to build the world”.

Children have dreams, when they grow up they have aspirations. The difference between the dream of a child and the aspiration of a grown up lies in the fact that the child has no preconceived logic in his dream… no rationale… no inspiration from that which has already been created. It is independent of logic, of gain, of selfishness, of winning the race against humanity. The dream to create resides in the area of impossibility and the truth of the dream has more credibility in his mind than the credibility of matured logic in the mind of a grownup. I once saw a child play by himself. He was talking to the floor, to the air, to the light, to the sky, to himself, to the fictitious man who in his imagination was the hero of the world. He was pretending to be the partner of this superman and went around saving the world. He had his own flying car, his own speed bike that could turn into a robot, his own light saber, his own jet that spoke to him and obeyed his commands, his head quarters from where he operated. As I watched our young messiah answer a call on his very own voice activated computer, he jumped up and shouted out to his car. I was watching him as he strapped on his jet packs and took of to the crime scene. Then I watched him as he blasted the bad guys with his specialized ray gun with proton beam mode and then I watched as his mother took his hand and dragged him outside the room to feed him his boiled vegetables. The words I heard from her tore me into shreds. “you look crazy when you keep jumping around shouting to yourself. Don’t be such a retard, you are ten now.”

I stand by it; no man can think like a boy. If each dream that a boy had, was given shape, if each child was given a tool to make his dream a reality, if each little brat was given a chance to be heard, the world would have found ideas that would make these children take over the government, the business, the people… the world. We can not be those dream weavers but what we can do is to give the child a gate to take his imagination one step closer to reality. We take children seriously because the world is built on bricks of thoughts and all thoughts are built on ideas but all ideas start with imagination.

The track I used is called Ave Maria. It’s an old Celtic kind of a song by a composer who’s name I forget. This particular exercise really opened my mind up to possibility. I have always been a nice observer but this is the first time I put it to some creative use. What I was proud about was the fact that I actually managed to pull it off well, all by myself and I like this piece of literature I typed out with no predominant consciousness or any particular reasoning affecting my flow of thought.

Oh well, the grades should be up in a while so, more then, or before that, if I have any other ‘proud works’ to display, which I sincerely hope I do.

Weave your dreams with a strong thread and they will become reality, and this time around, for once, a reality you can possibly handle and take responsibility for.

Cheerio!

So I Learn…

2005-11-23T22:50:00.000-08:00

For I stand to watch the fire burn,
I stand to watch and maybe, learn.
I stand and see why they fret to find,
The hidden lessons in the flames of time.

I see the mild blow of destiny in my face,
I love divine affection and grace,
I hate the scorch of human hate,
And I keep learning as I wait.

I smile at sorrow for he is my teacher,
I call on angst, my homely creature.
I look up to see the moonless sky,
The stars are clearer so I wonder why.

I cry when I hurt that, which I love,
I cry when I hate the heavens above
And ask them Gods their reason to test,
My choice of what I thought was the best.

I bundle myself in pain as I see,
My freedom being taken away from me,
And when I find my space in time,
I can open up and begin the climb.

I worry for those that worry for me,
My faith but lost in false company.
I seek answers and question them too,
Who am I? Who are you?

They seem to see no sign of sense,
In watching me sitting on the fence.
They feel I can not judge the world,
And then at me, a question is hurled

“You only see the black from white,
And never see the grey inside,
And never loath or love you show,
Forever saying ‘let it go’”.

“There is balance”, I do reply,
“In every step of the walk, through life
And when you see that balance go,
You will find yourself fall and so…

Know that not all are the same,
And each one plays his own game.
And for what they do, we are none to judge,
They may balk when they want and budge when they budge.

We should give each one their space to learn,
For each ones road takes its own turn,
And why be pointing at the passers by,
When YOU can’t be perfect, however hard you try”.

Then they say that the world is going to be mean to me
And I’m just too naive to see,
That some things need the skeptic’s eye,
For not in everything does goodness lie.

I never have seen just the goodness in all,
There could be faults in things, big or small.
But all I want the world to know,
Is “SEE” the dark but “WATCH” the glow.

‘Cause there is not just good or bad,
‘Cause no sadness is completely sad.
For there is failure in every try,
And in every stone does a crystal lie.

So live your life a moment a time,
For the niche is found in each step you climb.
And there lies beauty in every person you meet.
A different smile each time you greet.

So, I stand to watch the fire burn,
I stand to watch and maybe, learn.
I stand and see why they fret to find,
The hidden lessons in the flames of time.

Party On!

2005-11-16T20:29:00.000-08:00

I always held ‘cousin weddings’ in utmost contempt. I always hated the idea of ‘plastic smiles’ that were a mandatory requisition for any such function. I hated old aunts that I last met in 1761 and now they talk to you as if your mother was less bothered about your future than she was. I almost throw up when your most distant cousin wants to keep you company for the entire time that you are in the said party and not step out of the circle measuring 3 cm in radius, around your body.

But surprisingly and fortunately, last night was a different story. In fact, this cousin who is getting married is one of those who I respect as a person because he and I are similar on many counts. So I did want to voluntarily go for some of his functions (three out of ELEVEN bleeding functions that the rich family has organized, to be precise). The good part is that these were three very well thought out programs that only money could buy. One being a sangeet night… now on a normal day, a Sangeet night is one where the kids of both families dance and their steps have been choreographed by professionals. It usually takes place in a nice hall with food and drinks. But mama dear, went and booked The Grand Intercontinental out… the entire hotel. Then he invites Falguni ‘the Dandia Queen’ Pathak to come and perform with her band there. A good twenty, thirty lacs blown up. Nevertheless, it was a lovely party. The energy was tremendous and the performers loved it. The next one was where he booked out an auditorium in Bandra and invited the entire team of winners at the Great Indian Laughter Challenge to come and perform. Now these guys (for those ignorant of such shows) are a bunch of stand-up-comics who compete to win the crown of the Laughter Champion and do so by audience poll. This was a mind-numbing show. It was the first time that these guys were performing for a private audience and they went on for four hours. It was so hilarious, people were rolling off their seats. The third, which took place, last night, was not an innovation as such but a good break from the normal eat-heavy-food-and-die-of-acidity scene. He organized a “DJ Night” at The Club in Andheri. It was complete with a DJ and booze and psychedelic lights and masks (like the one used by Zorro). I discovered that my mother was a great dancer. I mean, when was the last time you went clubbing with your mother? The old aunties were scantily clad, to much shame, and the uncles that were otherwise pious looking souls, were found grabbing a glass of Smirnoff and Pepsi every thirteenth minute. I had never seen my father shake a leg before this… my cousins and close aunts and uncles looked (as much as I hate to admit this) cute! The sad part was, all the hot women around turned out to be my cousins so I pretty much gave up gazing around for visual-feasts. It’s strange how such parties bring out the dormant devil inside each one. I mean my 110kg aunt was dancing so beautifully on Dus Bahane… I also jived with my mother… How cool is that?!!

So we have come to a verdict, not all relative oriented parties are bad. One should arrive at the scene, sense the energy, examine the food (how could I miss that?), and if any of the above are acceptable, stay; or complain of a stomach ache and scram. Oops! I am not supposed to blurt these views out aloud now, am I? :-p

Clickety clack

2005-11-11T20:18:00.000-08:00

We have learnt the fine art of holding a camera…

I’m not being sarcastic there… cameras are not easy to handle. Think about it, we have spent about eight hours in a classroom trying to understand what is the purpose of a bloody camera and why is it more important a tool than being a box that captures memories. Eight complete hours of understanding what a ‘good picture’ is. Eight hours to know how a camera works, how to operate in conditions that are unfavorable to the photograph’s beauty, or shall we say, potential beauty. I have been a half-decent photographer for a while and have loved capturing frames that seem slightly wasteful to the Scrooge who wants a family member in every photograph clicked. But this program just gave all those funny frames a meaning, a name even. Concepts like composition, symmetry, light angles, geometry, pattern, color composition, the rule of the one-thirds, color temperature, sharpness, blurring, focus… a million things that go into making a picture perfect. My recent trip to Raigadh, with friends, was one hell of an experience and gave me a lot of scope to explore this sublime art with a twist. The other three with me, looked at me funny and whispered amongst themselves, doubting my mental state, as I bend over a patch of grass with stones and stare into my camera lens for a while before clicking an absurd composition. They were quite cynical about my new found hobby and kept asking me indirect question so as not to hurt my feelings, while expressing their subtle disgust towards wasting damn good snaps. But let us not digress. I always used to wonder why photographers are gaga over some monster of a camera called the SLR. It is a digital age and the era of ‘smaller and lighter’ but these professionals or aficionados were always swearing by SLRs. It is only after this session that I want one for my own and trust you me, I am ready to part with my savings for it. The kind of things one can do with a Single Lens Reflex is only a figment of fantasy till you actually hold one in your hand. It is fantastic to be able to manipulate a natural frame in your mind and then actually capture it the same way you pictured it. I am so thrilled by the fact that this module on photography is actually making me learn a new form of art and in turn appreciate it too. I was so shocked the day I was standing in an art gallery with my finger on my chin making sense of pictures taken by a professional in a heaven like place called Kashmir. I was with fellow classmates and I caught myself staring a a picture scratching my cheek as I said, “the depth of the picture is so amazing. The pattern of the v right here in the center is totally giving an amazing dimension to the whole frame. Oh and check out the juxtaposition of the red and yellow, amazing!”

I am quite disgusted by the fact that I have been using a Yashika single shot, no frills camera all through my life and now a Sony Cyber-shot that belongs to dad (which is also not good enough). I want an SLR and I want it now! Any one ready to sell me one or give me money to buy one? I also accept gifts with a lot of gratitude.

Excuses to squander and how...

2005-11-02T03:25:00.000-08:00

Mumbai has officially gone insane… I don’t even know where to begin. This evening of November 1st, Van and I decide to take a ride to either of the sea faces to watch the fireworks on Diwali day. All is nice till we pick up our parcel of pans and start riding to Marine Drive. Now, there was name calling happening. The traffic thickened like milk to butter. The cars just looked like they were on a mission to block roads up. Once we entered the Chowpati area, the only expression on my face was, “what the F**k”. The traffic grew and the crackers sounded like WMDs. To add to the noise were the constant horns. I swear, Van and I felt like we were in the middle of a war. Rockets zoomed past our heads, hit cars and people on the side-walk lit those sparkle showers in the middle of the bloody road. The entire area was like a time bomb ticking and ready to blow. I was worried about the cars getting it in the petrol region and if there is the slightest leak, I don’t want to think about what could happen. The minute we found opening, Van zoomed as fast as possible and we finally made it to the Sydenham lane. There too there was enough traffic to keep the honking alive. I couldn’t hear myself talk. I couldn’t think straight because the crackers were so loud. The sky looked like it was being shot every second and it bled thirty different colors and screamed and wheezed and did not have anyone listening. We had to move to a quiter place or I would have got a migraine attack. We found some peace at Charmichal Road where we stood and spoke about this very insanity that the city is dealing with. The number of fireworks was mind-numbing. I mean, you might as well pick up a stack of hundred or five hundred rupee notes and set them ablaze. Why bother giving that money to some poor who can’t afford a sweet for his family on Diwali. Blow it up instead. Why donate a hundred rupees to a blind school when you can see five hundred rupees being shot into the air to display colors that lasted three seconds. Ridiculous to say the least. If not donate that money, get yourself a CD player, or cake or chocolate or have a booze party with friends or just drive around in the city for the equivalent in petrol. But this is downright insanity. We crib about the roads being unkept. We crib about them being dirty. We crib about flyovers not coming up. Traffic, pollution and Mumbai wanting to be Shanghai… where does it all go when nights like this come around? You should see the roads the next morning… breathe the air and I will lose any amount if you don’t catch a cold or cough your lungs out.

I know it’s a matter of likes and dislikes and all the jazz about subjectivity in democracy but this night defied all logic in its basic form. It gave a whole new meaning to the word, ‘waste’. God bless all. Happy Diwali to you too.

If only a sigh could have said it...

2005-10-30T02:14:00.000-08:00

I like nit-pickers. I know that’s the most absurd way to begin a post but I do. May be not nit-pickers who are irritating but those who are touchy about small errors, faux pas, if you will. The kinds that love to read a beautiful poem written by an amateur and smile while reading it and suddenly jump and point out their index to the small comma and say, “that is wrong, it should have been a semi-colon!”. The ones who comb their hair/ tie up a bun like it were a ritual and if the sacred geometry was moved by an inch, the gods of symmetry and perfection might never forgive them. The ones who carry two kinds of tissue napkins (course and soft) for cleaning hands and wiping face respectively. I love to watch them clasp their wrists while their eyes move on black words on paper in front of them. Sometimes they look down upon the book in a tone so condescending, as if to say, “be glad I’m reading you, you little insignificant thing” and their backs propped up and neck perfectly aligned to the spine, legs joined at the knees and feet, heel-to-toe, perfectly parallel to each other. Their gorgeous language that can sound sweeter than fresh sugarcane juice and if well read into, can cut like a sward burnished in cold blood of many that fell prey to it unsuspectingly. Fastidious, nastily demanding and still making one feel it were their honor to give them what they are asking for. Those, who can not stand the thought of catching a cold. If the thought does dare to surface, the fortress of cotton ear-buds and socks and mufflers and rugs is built in a matter of seconds. I love them, when they tilt their heads and smile while listening to the most irritating man on the planet and say nothing more than “I see… oh Good God, is that true…?”. The ones who sheepishly laugh at a sarcastic statement they have made and has not hit home as far as the incumbent is concerned. I love their politeness and diplomacy. Ambiguity that is clear and clarity in their ambiguity. Exactly like the sentence you just read. The fact that they wash their face after every three and a half minutes of exposure to five dust molecules that might have settled on their flawless skin, is not only fascinating but so arrogant and royal. They don’t wear perfume but the smell lingering, is their shampoo and conditioner and in all probability, the aroma of the candles that they had lit while having their bath: a two and a half hour one at that. I love to see them sitting out in the sun on a cold winter morning, watching sparrows and other fowl peck on their grains or on the flowers planted in their garden. I love to hear the deep throated sigh when they are actually convinced that the world has a few more nice people than they suspected. When they laugh they sound like little babies chuckling at the bright colors of the world and if you know them well enough, you know that the laugh was the loudest one you heard in a while and that he/she was really, really happy. I love to watch them walk. Their steps are measured as if with a scale and each one resting itself on the floor like it did not want to disturb mother earth while she snoozed on a dull dreamy Sunday afternoon. And when they stop to admire the much forgotten nature, they seem to stop time, dead in its tracks. When they stand with their hands folded in front of their torso and legs perfectly straight, their hair playing with their thoughts and the wind playing with their hair, they seem to be commanding the heavens to descend immediately or the Gods were in deep trouble. Their concern woven in their wisdom and their affection glistening in their eyes like snow flakes on the window sill of a wooden cabin, somewhere in the Alps.

Ah well, I can probably go on forever and come across as a ‘wanna-be poet’, but its true, I have finally had the pleasure of making these observation from someone I am proud to know. Let’s leave it at that now, shall we?

Exodus

2005-10-22T23:32:00.000-07:00

I have been hooked on to my class like a limpet on a rock. The much awaited sabbatical has arrived and the out-of-towners have fled home. Friday was a mellow one. The individual excitement of each outsider was overshadowed by the cumulative effect of them missing this city. What can you blame? Afterall, this city is addictive. That day I felt closer to them a lot more than ever and so did most others (as they vouch for, in so many words). I have had the tightest of hugs and the warmest of handshakes from almost all those who were off for the next fortnight. There was a four hour presentation session and not one of them felt any nervousness or complained about any ‘midnight oil’ getting to them. The mood was low, dim would be more apt but it all seemed positive. I don’t know why I am trying to explain this feeling in words, but it was so palpable that I felt like trying to lock that feeling up in a jar and preserve it for future gaze. This was the closest I could get to doing it. A few friends and I have decided to hook off for two days to my place at Khandala, so expect some reports in a short while. Maybe some photographs too, since we have an assignment on hand. I cant believe this course, you have to take a vacation to do an assignment… what more can one ask for?

On a different note, this is something I downloaded a couple of days back. I used to listen to a lot of Ghazals in the days of yore but somehow I lost touch. I got into the mood for it recently and this ghazal by Mirza Ghalib took my fancy. Prima facie, it looks difficult to understand but if you give it a closer dekko, it makes so much sense. “If you want to be a writer, show me your wounds”, says George Bernard Shaw and I couldn’t agree with him more. Rendering it in English was quite a task but nevertheless its still got a flavor one can taste from words that could fill only Ghalib’s genius mind and cloud ours. Who else could do it more justice other than Jagjit Singh? I love this ghazal.

Hazaaron Khwahishen Aisi…

Hazaaron Khwahishen aisi ki har khwahish pe dum nikle,
Bohot nikle mere armaan lekin, phir bhi kum nikle,

Nikalna khuldussir aadam ka, sunte aaye hai lekin,
Bohot be-aabroo hokar, tere kuuche se hum nikle.

Mohobbat mein nahi hai farq jeene aur marne ka,
Usi ko dekhkar jeete hai jis kaafir pe dum nikle.

Khuda ke waaste parda nakabi se uthaa zaalim,
Kahin aisa na ho yunhi, wohi kaafir sanam nikle

Kahaan maikhaane ka darwazaa Ghalib, aur kahaan vaayiz,
Par itna jaante hai, kal woh jaata tha ki hum nikle

Hazaaron Khwaishen aisi ki har khwahish pe dum nikle,
Bohot nikle mere armaan lekin, phir bhi kum nikle.

A weekend with not-so-weak end!

2005-10-17T01:58:00.000-07:00

Saturday was an odyssey to be recorded for life, in books that can be read out to the generations of the 60 students who awoke to a morning of hell - unbound. It was a day filled with tension, unreasoned causes of migraine, violent thoughts on the verge of manifestation, critical overload and frustration personified. For the first time ever in the history of our four months of XIC education, we had a presentation at an unholy 10 a.m. People worked the night out and just about managed to drag themselves to college and not die in the process. But I receive the first call of the day from the lecturer who was to take the presentations, an hour before d-line. In a very husky ‘I-just-woke-up-yawn’ voice she tells me, “can we keep it at eleven, I don’t think I’m going to make it before that”. Excellent, there goes the temper of sixty zombies. And I am the ‘harbinger’. So how much more could I ask the lord for (grumble mumble!!). Sure enough she walks in at 11.15 and we start presentations by 11:30. There was no chance in all hell that she would finish twelve groups in three hours. I had to decide something fast because we had a guest lecture at 3:00 and we also would require a lunch break. Nothing clicked. Then there was a deep cry of remorse from someone behind me who said, “Cancel the next lecture man” and I, almost as a reflex action, picked up my cell and called our lecturer. I requested her for a twenty minute extension which we got, so now our lecture would begin at 3:20. But no, the woman had to talk to the group for ten minutes after a fifteen minute presentation about how they DID NOT do what she wanted them to. Sick! She went on till 3:35 and I was shuttling between a pissed off guest and an unprofessional blonde who did not realize that what she was doing was wrong. The icing on the cake (I wish we had some that day) was that no one would get a lunch break now. The technicians were pissed, the faculty was bored, the blonde was unaware, the students were losing it and I broke a pretty Chinese fan that belonged to Binita who was in turn mad at me and the day alike. After the blonde is done, in comes the regular marketing faculty who had brought in the guest to talk about market research. She fires the people who longed for a lunch break and threatens to give a C grade to those who didn’t return for the lecture in ten minutes. The attendance drops to thirty nine. So anyway, we went on with the lecture and the lecture went on till eight. I had nothing to eat and a few glasses of water were the only intake for the day. Post the lecture (which I personally did not like) we had a pre-planned get-together at my place. I had last counted ten odd people but I was not surprised that the number shot up to twenty. Nineteen of them stayed back and Viraj had a doctor’s appointment so had to go.

A night of revelations and long talks ensued. It was amazing, the way people gelled like never before. Quite frankly, the only reason I wanted this party was because the term was closing and people would have been on their way back home. In the past few months, no one has gotten around speaking to each other beyond their group projects and I just wanted the not-so-close people to get to know each other. Not that they have a closed mind but there was an opportunity lacking to have them open up and let their hair down for a while. My purpose was served. Booze flowed in small quantities but I promise, everyone was high. That was the best part. I had Van and Ankit join in and was not sure if they would gel in fine. I was pleasantly surprised that they mingled in minutes of their entry. The legendary game of truth or dare followed the sit-down-and-bitch-about-the-world session which is another amazing way to get to know people. The music was curtsy Rakshit Bahadur, (yup, I have a friend that has my name, at least one who has a weird name like mine) and it brought in the required life. I felt really nice to see all my rooms filled and balcony choc-o-bloc with classmates who spoke their hearts and screamed their lungs out (some smoked their lungs and drank their guts out but that’s how it should be). Since we had a Divya ‘the nightingale of adma’ in the house, we began to sing some oldies. Poulomi took over the Hindi bit and Pankit went all out on Sher-o-shayri. Man, the night grew younger by the minute until three or four in the morning. The moon lit the sky in white and navy blue. Clouds refracted the moonlight to give the moon an aura-like halo. People talked like never before. Some slept like they would never get up. The following Sunday started off as lazily as a Sunday could possibly be. Most left and what remained was nine individuals who were too bored to go back home. A plan to lunch out at shiv sagar materialized abd a walk at the beach and ice-golas brought the day to a fitting end. But my highlight was a bioke ride home and I was Rakshit’s pillion. The most dangerous thing I ever did in my entire life was when I dozed off on the bike and I dozed for nothing lesser than twenty minutes. Damn, it was scary when I woke up. Little did I know that my friends from Sydenham would call me the same day. After a long time we met at Barista and watched Monster-in-law. A perfect day I would say.

Its interesting to note that something that misbalances you is only there for you to try balance it out again. Case in point: the lousy day at college. Everything seemed to go wrong but it all added up for everyone and from ten guests we had a 100% increment to twenty frustrated souls ready to loosen up a little. If this would not have been the number then the party would have added to the fatigue and that would solve no purpose. Have a look at some crazy people here.

Thats Van sleeping through the chaos

Revti sleeps with her legs sticking out like pegs from a barrel and the other fellow would be Devang

Melroy massages Pulak massages Pankit. Talk about our ansestors being monkeys... we might be going back to basics.

Pankit sleeps during a lecture. Who would blame him on aa day like that Saturday.

Thats Gaurav from Sydenham at Barista. what a brilliant day.

Collage in progress

2005-10-12T21:34:00.000-07:00

Vignette 1

I love the wind in my face, wind in a pace enough to make my eyes shut themselves into a dreamy trip. Which is why I love traveling on bikes. Thanks to van, this happens every second or third day. last night was just one of those short trips to a pan shop and then to a sea face. Endless conversations, meaningless, inane and disjointed. If you have ever visited marine drive and sat at the end point of it, opposite the NCPA premises, you will know what I’m going to be talking about… we realized that the Queen’s necklace was so semi-circular from that perspective and so straight when one is actually traveling on the road that shapes the necklace. And this thought lead to a revelation: we are so small… one little spec of dirt. I know it’s a known and understood fact but the ‘gotchya-off-guard’ type revelations hit you where it hurts.

Vignette 2

Finally got a DVD burner… it is the loveliest feeling for this time I put in my money that I had saved and had not taken any permission for it. I also got fired for it by dad and I was hurting all night after what he told me (which I will not go into, lest I dampen the excitement) but all in all, great feeling man. Bring on them DVDs…

Vignette 3

Holidays are approaching fast. 22nd of this month is when they begin and I am in half a mind to run away to some city. Any suggestions on what one must do in such free time? I am quite annoyed with the fact that I will kill days like a ruthless, homicidal convict out on parole. Going to a place unvisited by me shall top the ‘to-do’ list but need backups.

Vignette 4

Recently, (this Sunday to be precise) a group of friends from college managed a trip to Mocha at Churchgate. The journalism people hosted a nice party which pretty much fell flat on its face for the lack of attendance, post which nine of us felt like sitting around and not do much. At mocha, that night, we dwelt upon one another’s strengths and weaknesses and as far as I am concerned, it was a trip to reality (with a little icing and sugar nonetheless) which gave me a chance to have an insight about certain issues that need immediate attention. It was a brilliant time spent and invested if I may say so. the good part was, we were people who have not really had a nice time together outside the campus and this made a lot of difference. Not to mention, we succeeded in coupling up a few people for god-alone-knows-whatever reasons. Here’s one…

Saket and Chitra.... Chow chweeeeet!

I’m sure I had some more stuff to write… damn, I’m growing grey in the head… what the hell, they are still vignettes… you get the ‘picture’ now, don’t you?

A night-in-gale (blown away)

2005-10-09T00:26:00.000-07:00

Have you ever felt like God has dosed off and instead, Murphy is watching over you? If not then please know… IT HAPPENS!!

I had a lousy yesterday. The day opened with a shrieking alarm that reminded me of a Monday morning and still, it was a Saturday. I had animation classes (the ones in 3D if you recall from a frustrated post a while ago). As I drag my oversized body to college I fear getting late, coupled with a statement that rings in the heads of all who are zombie-fied at unholy hours; “screw the class, who care, BED, PILLOW, SLEEEEEEEEP!” All ok in the class but then starts the ordeal of some godforsaken term called ‘brainstorming’. Another project, another group effort where group works to the extent of opinionating and balks right there. Then the onus falls onto three or four self-actualized individuals who take the driver’s seat to actually execute this plan. Needless to say this post is filled with self-pity and empathy for all ‘drivers’. So the group goes back home and I get all lazy and not in a position to work, and then my guilt machine goes off. By now I want a drink. “TAVERN… OH GOD, TAVERN!”

After inane conversations with Van and constant persuasion, the plan to go to the ‘temple’ for some ‘prashaad’, is formalized and we also have a Sachin and an Ankit to go along with. We meet at 11 and set out to relax our minds down. I picture all my pressures being washed away by a sea of beer. The customary homage of white ‘incense’ was purchased en route and we were encountered by various temptations to just sit around at all other places except for Tavern. We some how discarded all options and headed where we were supposed to. Enter the corridor of Farias and I get a call from a group member. Harrowed and disturbed, she was resorting to the final option of giving in and dying for the night. All was justified and I felt bad that I had an option to get out and these others did not. Maybe some chose not to get out and have a drink but I was the only one running away. The rest are standing in the lobby waiting for me to hang up and walk in. I signal them to carry on and I shall join later and Van shouts “it’s shut you ass!”… I, in a complete state of awe and disgust, continue talking to a bothered friend. Once I hang up they say one word that breaks all dreams into pieces smaller than sand grains… “DRY-DAY”

After a short trip to Symphony (regular panwala) we drop Sachin to his abode and head straight off to the sea face (Worli). The remainder of the incense are lit and puffed with joy and tea and coffee consumed in small quantities add to the beauty of the night. And ofcorse some there are some biscuit packets lying in the car that served as ‘bites’ with our ‘drinks’. The sea roars, the moon hides, a quaint plane flies past at a great height and an even more inane conversation about the plane follows it. Bitching about life and its definition of ‘irony personified’ continues into another smoke filled night-sky. Deep sighs of remorse and acceptance of a downfall of hope in the Saturday evening of much too many desires are breathed and all head back to respective residences to sleep off the regretful night. I have no idea why, but it was the first time I was that pissed with fate. Sorry, but it’s not done. I ask for beer and they gave me coffee…

God should party more often on Saturday nights and let Murphy take a break. Honestly.

Taking a break and still at work!

2005-10-03T22:21:00.000-07:00

Its ironic sometimes. My class managed to piss a lecturer off a week back and we salvaged our reputation by offering him a presentation of the topic he was then dealing with. So the class goes all out and starts working on some kick ass presentations. I am pleasantly surprised with the amount of effort put in by each group. We were nine of us who did an amazing presentation on Powai. What’s more, we went to the place and had some awesome time there. What follows is a photo blog but a brief on what we did…

Binita ‘I redefine perfection’ Kuruvilla made the most amazing host ever. so our trip begins with lovely filling lunch, followed by a mind-blowing cappuccino ice-cream and the most amazing Swiss chocolate ever. Imagine eight people on a brilliantly dressed table with warm food and Simon and Garfunkle playing softly in the background. We began to move through the Hiranandani area via the woods and then to different places from there…

from left clockwise: binita, pulak, paresh, rakshit, khyati, chitra at nirvana park

Nirvana Park

pulak and me

Left to right: Paresh, Khyati, Devang, chitra, Binita and pulak (being gagged)

Tere are more but u get the idea dont you? It wasw a fabulous day out and a lovely presentation ensued this trip. oh darn, have to get back to some other mundane, stupid, silly, boring work now... cheers!

Skeleton in the closet…

2005-10-03T21:54:00.000-07:00

It is so much fun to clear the old drawers. I was on a total cleaning spree a day or so ago. I did not spare a spec of dust. All redundant papers were brought to justice. Every ‘un-needed’ reminiscence of painful memoir was removed out of existence. But I stumbled upon this one piece which I had written then. I don’t remember when was ‘then’ but it was in the last year or so. it was a song I wrote, for a band recording, for a “Break Dust” come-back and it was an acoustic wonder. I had conceptualized its music first and then on approval by my colleague, I wrote these lyrics. They are rough and not my best work. I liked the feel of the words simply because it went well with the music. If you do bother reading through this song, DO NOT judge anything about my state of mind from what the lyrics say. I had my share of angst but this is a slightly ‘exaggerated’ version. It was written on this little piece of notepad paper. A 3x5 inch rectangle. All I mean to say is, the piece written was nothing great but just digging it out of its grave and reading it was a pleasure one has to experience to know. The song was never recorded but I guess I shall ask my other music-aficionado buddies to help me do the same. I want to render it, for the sheer joy of vintage value that I associate with this song. Read on… constructive criticism is always welcomed but hey, euphemism is a nice word too! (kidding, go ahead, rip me apart…)

BLAME

They say I lost my sensation,
They found me behind my smile
They asked me why was I in so much pain,
I had been that way for a while.

I cried my eyes dry every night
And climbed the roof-top to laugh,
It felt like I left myself alone,
As one half killed the other half.

But I knew it was not so bad somehow.
I knew it could not be.
I could not have pained you ever,
The only one to be blamed was me.

I saw my dreams drifting away from you,
I lost the smell of your skin,
I could remember no taste of your lips,
Lost our night as the dawn broke in.

I promised myself to stand up again,
No whiskey could ever knock me out.
I will never trust you to take care of my heart again,
Never put myself under doubt.

But I knew it wasn’t so bad somehow.
I knew it just couldn’t be.
I could not have pained you ever,
Cause it wasn’t bout you,
It’s all about me.

Anime... in 3D

2005-09-26T22:07:00.000-07:00

When I had posted a couple of weeks ago, I had mentioned how ‘kick-ass’ our animation would be… [buzzer!]… WRONG!

Animation sucks… it’s an awesome software to work with (3D Max) but it’s too much to remember and recall when working. You have a certain object in your mind and by the time you figure out how you should create it, you lose track of what you had initially decided. To top it all, we have some fixed number of sessions with fixed hours per session and it all has to be taught and done with in those many hours. Practical impossibility. So, we have to design this logo of our own and then animate it in three dimensions and then give it motion and make it move around. Yeah, Right! Oh, and if that is not enough, the college does not give us the software to take home and practice. It is huge, and I mean HUGE when I say that. So we have to scout around for it ourselves. When we do get our hands on it, it is a version lower then the one at college. Sheesh!

But its fun too. If I do manage to have a shape of my liking, I jump with joy. I managed making a wine glass the other day; gave it some body and texture and gloss, set up lights to reflect off its surface and then gave it some refractive index. Nice job, even if I say so myself.

Our sir made a hilarious statement the other day. In the middle of the fourth session which essentially meant eight hours of the class were up, he asks us if we have done photoshop. The class blinks at him like it was a scene out of a Japanese animation flick. Few shrug and say “Erm… err… NOPE!” To this the dear teacher reacts… “Then why the hell are you learning 3D max?” Now this is where we all feel disoriented and redeemed at the same time. Redeemed because we as a class had not been digesting anything he was teaching except for the fragmented knowledge each had on an individual level, which when put to collective use made up about ten percent of what he had taught. Sure enough, the man makes the statement about the management going nuts because you cant teach 3D to people who have not worked on 2D and then gets right back to the teaching bit in a split-second. We were too sleepy to hear what he taught after that.

All in all it has been one heck of a challenge to tackle this course and if we are given enough time to practice under guidance, we shall do well I presume. I always wanted to learn some flash animation though, wonder if they will have that as a part of their syllabi.

Ahem... Going Places...?!

2005-09-20T11:34:00.000-07:00

So this week was my claim to fame. Lets run through it shall we?

Sunday, 18th Sept 2005

Venue: TV18 studios
Channel: CNN
Show: CNN connect (Dialogue for peace)
Panelists: Imran Khan, Praful Patel, Humayun Akhtar Khan, Shabana Azmi, Mia Mansha and Nasil Wadia

The discussion was nothing out of the ordinary but was very crisp and still jumped a lot of topics from all over. I did not get a chance to speak (like 75 others in the audience) but was good fun listening to them having a chat about improving relations with Pakistan. Good show overall I would say.

Shabana Azmi and me after the show...

Tuesday 20th Sept 2005

Venue: MTV studios, Lower Parel
Channel: MTV
Show: * not really sure*
Topic: Relevance of Mahatma Gandhi in today’s world.
Panelists: Anupam Kher, Boman Irani, Urmila Matondkar, Ashok Pandit.
Hosted by: Cyrus Sahukar.

This was a more exciting show and it was nice to have people from Delhi and Banglore, connected via satellite and all spoke their mind on the topic. It was an excited debate to say the least and the panelists were thrilled by the fact that the youth just spoke their mind and were so forthcoming. It was a lovely experience to converse with this fabulous bunch of Indians. Good fun overall. Not to mention the lovely lunch and a great class with Rajiv Chavla at the end of the day.

that would be Boman Irani and the rest of us...

Waiting for more such encounters with the biggies.

What? Whats that you said?

2005-09-17T22:46:00.000-07:00

Random chatting on the net with certain people bring in so much of perspective in ones thinking. I was just having this conversation with a friend from college who is probably the youngest in the class and is constantly reminded of the same by one of the oldest. Now what happens is that the young lady feels a little upset, notwithstanding the fact that if we stop considering relative age difference between them and start seeing the absolute values of her age and his… it reveals that she might be younger than most but not the most immature of the lot; which I agree with, totally.

I don’t know if it is really that difficult to practice this so called “fine art” of selective listening. My take on the subject is that one should ignore the words that don’t matter to him/her and that have no purpose of existence other than annoying the very life out of his/her brain. I can do it quite well to say the least and I never knew that having such ability was really worth a mention or even a consideration as strength. To my surprise, in these recent days, I have encountered people who are suffering from a deficiency of this ability to throw out what they can’t take. I have caught myself telling them (those who have confided in me with their dissonances with the world around) not to listen to things that put you down. “No Rakshit” they say, “it’s not that simple man. People are out to get you. All that they want is to bring you down. I don’t like him saying such things to me. I don’t want him to judge me. Why is he constantly drilling unfavorable thoughts in my head?” and so on. Now, tell me, what is the simplest solution to this? What can be easier than shutting down all receptors and staring back at the person yakking away, making him feel as if he is talking in Chinese, and blinking like a Barbie? Once the person is done jabbering, nod and say thank you and not have any more recollection of the talk than a bad hangover on a Sunday morning. Really, try it the next time without having any detestation for the orator. It works like a charm.

Having said that, you might as well have skipped this piece all together, don’t you think? Try it. Go back to the top and read the first few lines and say ‘bah, screw it…” and skip onto the next blog. Should work.

2005-09-12T12:33:00.000-07:00

I could not have related to this piece written by Ruth unless I went through it myself.

Ok, frankly, it is not all that bad but it is close to what I go through these days. Have been a little sickish these past few days. Changing weather I suspect.

Didn’t have anything in particular to talk about except for the fact that I died laughing while reading Ruth’s blog and had to mention it.

elvis has left the building

2005-09-11T05:37:00.000-07:00

In the past few days, I have been scooped hollow. I have been with some friends for eternity now but there is a mass exodus happening.

I have written about most of them but a recap never killed anyone now, did it?

Muffi: left early last month or so for the states
Mickey: died last month
Soniya: killed herself

And now for the additions

Manas: old college friend since junior college days, left for London this week.
Atit: left for Dubai this week for business.
And yesterday, Saurabh: again, for Dubai but for studying.

A note on Saurabh Kothari: he joined Green Lawns High when we were in the eighth standard. Standing at six feet odd and weighing a good eighty Kgs this man was tenderer than coconut shake. One shy, timid little mouse sitting in the corner seat managed to make no friends in the early days of school. I had a rather sad social life where school was concerned and I finally found a partner in crime there. We managed to exchange a few words and shifted places to sit with each other and then chatted till the cows came home. I never knew anything could shoot out of this little chat up but I was so wrong. Soon in the vacations, the school took a trip to Mauritius and we both signed up. And then with the journey what began was a relationship I can not forsake for life itself. We enjoyed every spoken word with each other. In fact I was amazed at the matured sense of humor this man had at times (meaning to say, most of the times he cracked himself up with these sad one liners and poor quality, downright pissing off jokes…. They worked like a charm I tell you!) We have ever since been the best of buddies and, at the cost of sounding damn blah-dee clichéd, have stood through each others thick and thin. He was one of the few who believed in my ability to make it big some day. He knew inside him that I am going to excel and God knows, he still feels the same. He never says it out but he will lecture me on the smallest of mistakes and make sure I take note of it if not follow his advice like gospel. The night before last, I was dead tired with some work at home and still I went to his place and decided to stay over so that I could go drop him at the air-port. I swear I was cut to half when I saw this man walk away with his oversized luggage. I lost a part of me. Even though there are chances that the fellow will come back in a year but still, a year is too long. After Mickey and Soniya, any moment is too long. The man loves the sea and loves winters and rain; sad part is, none of these are available there. At least not where he stays. Ok the note overshot but so have my feelings at this point. I can’t imagine Worli sea-face without his long talks about ‘getting serious in life’ or ‘ice-cream is bad at snowman’s’ depending on the mood of the day. So varied, so damn flexible. Sure miss the bugger. All the best pal!

Spoken Silence

2005-09-06T20:39:00.000-07:00

Another song that I heard recently over the radio had me ticking…. I mean, it told a lot about our nature, our tendency to miss out on the ‘unsaid’. Little whispers in our heads are either killed or they die a natural death from asphyxiation. Voices suppressed and made unheard. It could vary; compunctions, euphoria, fear, philosophy, guidelines, orders, ethics, denial, disbelief, belief, choice… and what have you. The predominance of a psyche is a murderer. We refuse to turn around and sit back and listen. A movement of the eye, a gesture of the fingers, a turn of the head… touch… all just walk by us and we sleep through it. Funny part is, when we get into trouble we ask for miracles to bale us out of the crap; pay attention asshole. There were Divine interventions to help you not get into the damn mess in the first place.

But digressing from digression… this particular song is about hearing beyond the spoken word. It happens with people who are close to you and those who seem to be far away but are really not. It could be mere co-incidence but in the past few days I have felt myself listening to voices with a little more respect. I know it is something a lot of us do but I also know that most of us don’t. It was a thought in my mind and this song comes along and plays itself on the radio… see what I mean, confirmation of divine interventions. Haha.

When You Say Nothing At All

It’s amazing how you can speak right to my heart
Without saying a word you can light up the dark
Try as I may I could never explain
What I hear when you don’t say a thing

The smile on your face lets me know that you need me
There’s a truth in your eyes sayin’ you’ll never leave me
The touch of your hand says you’ll catch me if ever I fall
You say it best when you say nothing at all

All day long I can hear people talking out loud
But when you hold me near, you drown out the crowd
Old mr. webster could never define
What’s being said between your heart and mine

The smile on your face lets me know that you need me
There’s a truth in your eyes sayin’ you’ll never leave me
The touch of your hand says you’ll catch me if ever I fall
You say it best when you say nothing at all

The smile on your face lets me know that you need me
There’s a truth in your eyes sayin’ you’ll never leave me
The touch of your hand says you’ll catch me if ever I fall
You say it best when you say nothing at all

No title for this... creative block!

2005-09-03T22:59:00.000-07:00

So many things that have gone wrong over the days. So many, that have gone right. So many, that never register. God knows, life is moving faster than I can recall any of it. May be it is relative but it still is so damn fast.

A friend of mine has gone and done a stupid thing like committing suicide. I will leave it there. I don’t feel like talking about it. Returning to egotistical tendencies, I am as usual buried in work. But this is worth a mention. I had to submit this project on any subject provided it was a power point presentation. That’s where I chose myself as a subject and decided to make a CV (I mentioned it in the last post I guess). So anyway, I hand over these few pics of mine to Najeshda, and ask her to do some art work on it… and man, this sea of creativity, just makes an awesome collage. You can find it here.

Have been spending whole days in college recently. All thanks to animation in 3D. Interesting class but the damn thing starts at nine and ends at eleven and the lectures are at four… projects pile up and group discussions take place for a precise ten minutes. Then what? Eat drink and be merry. Day before yesterday though, we had an awesome four hour jam session with lovely Indian songs dashed and sprinkled with select classics from the west. Incumbents in question: Kavita with a number of years of training backing her voice, Chitra, maybe not trained but a lovely voice none the less, Abhishek, a master at strumming the life into old songs and new Hindi rock. Then there was an Austin who plays the blues and classic rock like no one else. Binita, Khyati, Tanaya, Amruta, Devang, Sana, and Amisha, all fans of music joined in every song and sang aloud in a way I have never heard them. Was such awesome fun. The beauty of it all is when you get back home, there is something new to think and smile about. When one looks back at the day and thinks of all the people one has met and known, it just adds another name to the list of a well lived life. There is guilt in having spent a non-productive day but it is so trifled by the feeling of having achieved a new friend. And dear lord I sound like a desperate housewife or something so I better balk right here.

Considering the kind of write-ups I’m posting these days, I have decided to entertain guest-posts. If the humble readership of this web-page entices any of u, kindly mail me anything you would like to post.

rakshit.doshi@rediffmail.com

Up-Dates

2005-08-29T22:15:00.000-07:00

A week or so gone by since I last wrote. The reasons being, lots of project work and lots more of project work. Unaccountable hours spent on the chair, staring at the screen, coordinating the motion of the hand that holds the mouse with the eye-movement. The mind rattling off ideas, the gut discarding many while the limbs are still working with those ideas that were filtered through all tests of logic and intuition.

I have come to realize that the field I am in requires a lot of intuition. Recently we studied the methodology of de-layering an advertisement. There are a number of steps that go into doing so. But then again, behind each of the methodically theorized steps, there lies an element of intuition. Like, if we are to judge the objective of the ad, there is no way that a judgment made by two individuals will concur. This is where the intuition kicks in. Paradoxically; the intuition only works when you have enough experience in stripping ads down to its element and getting it right. Conclusion being, you might not get the damn thing right for the first few hundred ads, but you will get there. Or so I would love to believe.

Anyway, back to project updates… there is a film marketing project which I am not allowed to talk about (G14 classified!) since the film is in its making and we are to design the marketing plan for it. That’s about all the information I can dispense. Then there is an assignment where we have to work on consumer insights using certain techniques called laddering and collage (and no, I’m in no mood to explain its working. If interested, call me.) Another kick ass project is to make a power point presentation about any subject. This is obviously for the power point training sessions we’ve had over the past six weeks. It has finally come to an end and what comes now is even better… animation. How cool is that?! So, the presentation topic I have chosen is, very narcissistically (pronounce that correctly in one go and I shall bow down and pray for thy tongue), ME! Trying to make an innovative kind of a resume. Let us see how it works.

Oh, I almost forgot, this weekend the class is going to Kune, a hillock between Khandala and Lonavala. It’s a ‘self-actualization experience’ trip, but haha, we know better now, don’t we? So definitely looking forward to that one. I have half-a-mind to go to my place in Khandala, ‘while we are at it’.

Went to Tavern this Sunday. Van, Ankit and I. It was quite obvious we were missing Mickey but more so, Muffi, our regular buddy at Tavern. He now resides in the land of opportunities… the States. This chap would not spend a moment without howling at the lead guitarist of Queen and head banging at a U2 track. Right hand holding the butt of a dying cigarette, left hand high above his furiously nodding head, his index and pinky stretched to the extent of breaking the skin in between them. Man, Tavern felt empty. Just while we were discussing this, Van’s cell goes off and there is Muffi at the other end! What can I say? It was a surprise for a second but somehow, it faded into the obvious. It always happened with Mickey and me. He would call to rescue me from the tightest situations and depressed evenings by just landing up at wherever I am and calling me and saying… ‘Come down man, I’m outside your gate…” Always! He always would be there when I wanted to get out. Sigh!

Work beckons and I shall answer the call. Have some presentations to make this week and wind up before we set out of the city. Cheersh! :)

A Night in Heaven

2005-08-23T13:32:00.000-07:00

As the silent night presides over the meetings of the stars and watched the moon perform, the heavens lit up in celebration for an evening given away to the request made by one of its fans from the planet down below. The noise of the impatient ocean takes but a while to fade itself out as the guests of the ‘fan’ arrive to greet the night with ‘spirits’ most called for.

Humor takes turns to bless the spoken words of each individual and the laughs adorn the mouths of the rest that hear the one speaking. Jokes fly around and giggles and chuckles transform themselves into mind-numbing laugh riots as a bolt of spirit trickles down the throats of them that were present there. From the closed room to the open balcony. The crowd of few (six or so), moves in and out frequenting the high of the spirits consumed (inside the closed room) and interwoven with an admiration for nature’s ultimate creations (in the balcony). The night still feels no older than it was two hours ago. The ignorant owl and a bat or two fly past not understanding why the good humor is fading and bouts of emotional anguish are taking over. Some moved to tears and others to empathy and all moved from mood ‘happy’ to mood ‘what the fuck, am I here for?’ An arrival much less expected but still well made sends all of the (moods) above in a tizzy. Otherwise an acquaintance of the host, she meets all and normality makes its way back into the wary interiors of the flat. But little did the ‘fan’ of the heavens know that his little dream had been granted and even as he downed another glass, he grew on to the night and the guests.

As a voyeur cloud floats past, it smiles at the couple locked in an unbreakable bond of facial expressions. The heat of two bodies coming closer, raise the temperature of their thoughts and feelings. The first sensation of a tender peck on the mouth and the desire to feel it again takes over. The desire manifests itself in actions now no more governed by the conscious mind. The spirits or the desire itself, one may blame it on either, but the fact remains, that what followed was unprecedented. The fingers on the sides of the waist crept behind the body as the arms took their place. They gently smiled as the noses rubbed and the breath of one intoxicated that of the other. The lips were sealed, mutually, but once again and no room was left for questioning this numbness. The time flew past and yet stood still as the embrace loosened for a while, only to be a little tighter the next time around. The fluid still flowed, the smoke still continued to blur the images of the mind and reality itself was no less of an illusion.

The night stretched like a tired housewife who has just about finished her chores and is craving to lie down and yawn as she delves into the deepest slumber. The moon, sets in the sky after wishing a magnificent good night to the two who lay on the bed and even as they watched it cross behind the great coconut palm, they thanked the stars for being around, while they held each other. The world could possibly come to an end but the two lay in no regret even if it did. The sense of living was complete. The pride in dying would be a bonus but the musing soon faded out as the day faded in. The reality of the world beckoned them to rise, and follow the day as it progressed. The only hope one had was not to let this night be just a page in the enormous history of eventful logs. One hoped in hell as one would soon find out, it was a night only to be written and forgotten about… forever.

A dream is not to be lived; the beauty of a dream lies in the fact that it is not reality. For the one time that it did change forms, it now remains as a memory of the dream, which is even more beautiful.

Back To Nostalgia

2005-08-19T23:55:00.000-07:00

It has been months since I went back to my engineering days and remembered anything from there. Abeer, though, has an awesome post on ONE of the MANY incidents and activities that have taken place on the other side of ‘the gap of Mankhud’. Albeit, this was after I left the engineering clan and shifted to a humble graduation in commerce. This is a post I had written when I was surrounded by the memories of Nerul and I personally love this piece for its sheer honesty and expression. And there are these conversations that keep comeing back to me like sunlight through rainy days. I really want to post this one with Abeer. It probably has faded through his memory but it was a turning point in my life and I bloody well remember it.

DISCLAIMER: the words are close to what they actually were, though modified to make its reading more… erm… reader-friendly?, if I may say so myself. Plus, I had written this some six months back, and it just reflects the fact that I will never regret the decision I had taken then.

Revert

I stubbed the cigarette and gave out the last puff of smoke high above my head only to blur out the bright, shiny moon. The air was crisp, motionless and even unforgiving cold. The guitars of David Gilmore cried softly in the background. The solo of “comfortably numb” had reached the part I loved most when Abeer’s voice broke through annoyingly. “The bugger can really play man!” he said with a tone that even priests could swear was something they never heard of a true devotee.

“Ya, you bet, he’s a god”

“Are you through with your assignment work?”

“No, got a little frustrated with repeating the same drab over and over again, just came out for a smoke. How about you?”

“Almost done. I should get through with it by four in the morning.”

“Its already 2:15 pal, you’re quite fast I must say.”

“No my dear, you’re slow! What is it with you anyway man? You seem to be all annoyed a lot more than usual, why?”

My roommates and I shared a strange relationship. We never spoke to each other about our personal lives. Some times we made it seem as if we had nothing to talk about besides our daily routine. But within ourselves we knew we all had a story. Not necessarily dark and unpleasant but still something that was not suitable to share – at least that’s what I would like to believe. But still, it was not true that we did not care about one another. The four of us made a good team. A perfect example of spaced out closeness. This probably was one of the most rare moments when someone bothered to ask why the other was not upto his optimum. Most of the times it was left unnoticed and sometimes even the person were left undisturbed but no helping hands offered to the drowning… never… until now.

“Tell me this, why did you choose to be an engineer? What made you pick it up?”

“Oh for F$#% sake, don’t even start with this…”

“No tell me, why an engineer…?”

“Frankly, I don’t know. I took it up because I had to. It was providence if you will”

“Humm. I want to go back. I don’t feel this is anywhere close to my future. Not the one that I picture at least”

“Dude, I think you need some sleep, you’ve gone mad!”

“No, I’m serious, I don’t feel at home, it’s so uncomfortable”

Abeer had this weird question mark on his face. It did not make him look lost, just surprised. He could relate to what I was saying but he just wanted a clarification before he jumped up and gave me a lecture about not being a quitter, or so I was expecting him to do.

He spoke with a calm voice but a mellowed feeling of anguish in it. “You cant just quit, its two years, its just a bit too deep into the quicksand for you to pull yourself out now man… do you realize the consequences?”

I waited for him to finish and even after he had finished. I had never heard him speak that way ever. It took me a while to digest the beauty of the concern before I replied. “What’s the worst case Garg? I lose two years, that’s all, right? And of coarse a lot of money but what am I gaining here? You can see me struggle, can’t you? You know the kind of marks I am getting. My term papers to be rewritten are way more then the number of subjects that are there in the term. I chose a path, I failed, and I want to turn around. Can I not?”

“Man, these decisions can not be made over a cigarette and some music in a night. Take a few days off and see how you are going to direction your life… correction, redirection your life. It’s a tough one but if you pull through this phase and actually get out of the muck, I’ll respect you for your courage. It takes real balls to do this and it wont be easy on your parents either.” he patted my shoulder as a soldier would when he bid farewell to a fellow who’s going home for a vacation and he, going on the line to fight the unyielding enemy.

I could see him from the balcony. His head buried in the piles of papers and graphs and files and lots of black words scribbled on the white papers. Words that made sense neither to the person who wrote them nor to the many who copied them as they were. I then turned to my pile of similar words and resented each sheet that fluttered in the coldness. I felt lost, distressed and maybe even misguided. This was not for me. This was not my war. I was in the wrong frame. It grew stronger, the feeling of damnation and horrific guilt. I wanted to run, to move faster then the death of my future that was following me. It was gaining on me and I had to divert. For a while I saw no other option but to leave two years and all the mistakes committed in the two years behind me; start afresh.

Then it hit me like a brick. I realized I was not the only one involved in this kind of a decision-making. I had a predicament called parents and an impediment called family. I had to go through a rigorous test of patience and understanding and at the same time enhance the power of explanation, for the task at hand was one that was going to strain the very fabric of my skill to justify my action. I had to be patient if I had to bring this through. And I was, somehow, ready for it.

A strange rebuke also shouted itself out in my head. I kept hearing words like “coward” and “loser” ad infinitum. The voice tried to psych me out and it succeeded but only momentarily. I knew it was wisdom and not cowardice to stop following dogma and to pursue dreams. I was not clear of what my dream was but I knew I would find it out in a matter of a few days. First things first, the nuke had to be dropped at home.

Abeer’s lights went off and his pile was cleared. Mine still repulsed me. I stared at the empty streets and saw nothingness at its very best. The riot in my mind grew dimmer and the sky that hung above me grew brighter. The sun broke the string of thoughts and the alarm in my cell phone cried out loud as if it wanted to do its job of waking me up and then go back to sleep after doing its job. I had a submission that day… I did not go, was “sick”, you know!

The Hand That Feeds

2005-08-15T11:52:00.000-07:00

I was to write this a while ago. It had been on my mind but it just traveled to the back of it. Read Lall’s post and remembered this phenomenal man’s story.

Anna, the Xavier hostel’s MES owner and cook lives in Ghatkopar. The fateful Tuesday evening when the rains took a toll on the city, there were about 500 students stranded in college and decided to stay there for over a day. This man with his team of four or five, cooked meals for all the residents (temporary and permanent) and probably a few hundred liters of tea and coffee. For two full days, this man stays in the canteen and does this service, when he has no idea of how his family is and the fact that they don’t know he is safe in college (no phones stood the test, remember?) On the third day, this guy somehow goes home and not much surprise, finds his ground floor house submerged in six feet of water. His wife and children were safe in a flat above theirs and the neighbors helped them salvage some precious belongings and bucketed out some water while Anna was away. They knew he would have stayed back and they had not lost hope. When Anna reaches home he does the little saving he can and is quite unable to restore his life’s earnings and savings. Come day four and Anna is back in the college canteen, serving the meals to the students/hostelites. He narrated the whole incident on insistent asking by the students, and smiled a bit in complete disapproval of life.

“Your wife and kids are home alone today also? Why didn’t you just stay back and straiten things out?” asked worried faces of the students.

Anna smiled again, wiped the sweat of his face with a towel on his shoulder and said; “agar mein ghar pe rahega toh mera do bachchalog khaana khayega… agar college ayega toh mera sau bachcha khaana khayega…” he picked up the plates and walked out. What was left behind were startled faces that had no way to react to this; and rightly so.

2005-08-13T17:29:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, Binita sang us a beautiful song in our half-hour break (which was actually an hour on that day, we had been spared early…) and it was a song that I had heard for the first time then.

Well, the lyrics that I shall post at the end of the rant are good enough to speak for themselves and not to mention, that is the kind of a mood I’m in, and these are the thoughts in my head even as I type. Games, that’s what life keeps playing with you, and it has a bloody good stamina to go on playing incessantly that way. Just when you begin to understand what is black and white of the current situations, pop comes in a dark shade of maroon, not to mention the dash of blue and green streaks across, probably thrown in by life for 'kicks'… the number of colors are directly proportionate to the complexity of your perspective on life itself. Some people chose to take on the palette and paint the canvas the way they want. Some make the most of the shades, mix them up to give a better looking shade and brush away. Others look for the right shade to set in and then pick their brushes up. And a select few who decide to pick the damn colors up from the box and make the mixes themselves. I personally like to paint with the primary solid colors that are there in the tube. If there is a wet patch on the canvas (wet from a previous stroke) the shade will form on the canvas itself, and I am happy with whatever it is. If I know that a blue looks good with a yellow, I really don’t care about that little green that showed itself up at the intersections. Yeah, that’s it! That’s how I think of life; that’s the way I can get the closest to having a philosophy in place. But then again, you never know when and how some clumsy oaf comes around and stroke his brush to try and make your painting look slightly better. Trust you me, there are a plethora of such ‘freelance painters’ around the place who have no canvas of their own but only a brush and a desire to ‘screw your painting up’. That’s why we call life “ironic”, that’s the song Binita sang and this is where I let you in on the lovely words of a new favorite song of mine… thank you Binita.

IRONIC (Alanis Morissette)

An old man turned ninety-eight
He won the lottery and died the next day
It's a black fly in your Chardonnay
It's a death row pardon two minutes too late
Isn't it ironic ... don't you think

It's like rain on your wedding day
It's a free ride when you've already paid
It's the good advice that you just didn't take
Who would've thought ... it figures

Mr. Play It Safe was afraid to fly
He packed his suitcase and kissed his kids good-bye
He waited his whole damn life to take that flight
And as the plane crashed down he thought
'Well isn't this nice...'
And isn't it ironic ... don't you think

It's like rain on your wedding day
It's a free ride when you've already paid
It's the good advice that you just didn't take
Who would've thought ... it figures

Well life has a funny way of sneaking up on you
When you think everything's okay and everything's going right
And life has a funny way of helping you out when
You think everything's gone wrong and everything blows up
In your face

It's a traffic jam when you're already late
It's a no-smoking sign on your cigarette break
It's like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife
It's meeting the man of my dreams
And then meeting his beautiful wife
And isn't it ironic... don't you think (my favorite lines) :-)

A little too ironic... and yeah I really do think...
It's like rain on your wedding day
It's a free ride when you've already paid
It's the good advice that you just didn't take
Who would've thought ... it figures

Life has a funny way of sneaking up on you
Life has a funny, funny way of helping you out
Helping you out

Good Deeds

2005-08-08T14:40:00.000-07:00

This Sunday, the group of friends (Mickey’s nearests and dearests) decided to have an amazing day, in his fond memory.

Ricky, one of his closest buddies, had flown in from Madras to pay his homage and was here for a day or two. Sunday morning at 8:30 or so, we (friends) met up at Mickey’s place for breakfast. A stunning meal of sandwiches and lots of sweets (as is madu typicality) was laid out and the bunch of us ate to our hearts content. Most of these were menu items that tickled Mickey’s taste buds and as I have mentioned earlier, this guy was a total food-freak. Mellow walk down the memory lane and the recent past all made for good table conversation and the good part was, no one was critical about the misfortune. The shock had subsided and what remained was an empty space which will remain that way for a while now. Only time can tell.

There was a sudden roar about getting late to go to Matunga, to Don Boscow School. Mansi, a close friend, had her in-laws arrange a meal for some poor children and aged individuals who could not afford meals. It was the most wonderful experience I have ever experienced. There was this chapel close by that was resonating the prayers of the Sunday mass and these two long rows of hungry starving people sitting and waiting for a meal which they did feel they deserved but could have never afforded it. We were seven friends and each one went around serving these people their delicacies; Sweets, samosas, rotis, daal and rice, humbly accepted and thanked for by each one.

I have made a vague attempt at capturing a glimpse of some faces on my cell phone and it was heart-wrenching to see them eat like they have never eaten for years or something. Usually, the organization that is involved in this kind of charity, fed about 300-350 individuals every Sunday but this time it was 500 people for reasons unknown. We prayed for the soul of Mickey and even went to the chapel to thank the lord for having given us the opportunity and the resources to have had this charity done.

I don’t know why but the entire incident left me satisfied with myself. I know it was not the contribution of money or the physical presence that was making me feel good; it was the sheer joy of seeing a smile on a well fed face. At that point, I knew Mickey approved. I could feel him smile. We drove back home and enjoyed every minute of the ride. Somewhere we all knew that we had to enjoy life in the here and now. Somewhere Mickey left us thinking and more importantly, he left us a legacy; a legacy that taught us to appreciate life as a gift and be ready to part with it at any given point in time.

That evening, Van and I decided to go somewhere and we landed up at Tavern. Our favorite hang out. The DJ played “wish you were here” and I could barely control a filled throat and a tear that cried to let itself out. I could not let it go for it would bring more behind it. So I smiled and Van made a very very apt statement then, or may be before that, I don’t remember… but he said, “We should not moan Mickey’s death, we should celebrate his life”. So we do. We drink to Mickey.

Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd)

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.

I take A Bow!

2005-08-07T02:18:00.000-07:00

I realize I have had the first thousand hits on my blog from the time I had installed the counter. Hence I shall take this moment and opportunity to wave my hand at the dearest visitors and send my humble “thank you” to you all.

No seriously, its been a brilliant experience to have been read and the fact that most of you’ll come back, is sheer inspiration for me to write and rant some more. I always look forward to a comment or two and I am generally not disappointed. So again, thanks to those who have been commenting quite regularly and for those who don’t bother… START COMMENTING… :)

See you around…

Happy Birthday Ayesha

2005-08-06T11:49:00.000-07:00

Ayesha

I am guilty as charged.

Today was the birthday of my little munchkin of a friend, Ayesha. Little because she is about six years younger to me and munchkin for reasons that are for me to know.

A note on Ayesha: A Sydenhamite ever since her junior college and now in the BMS faculty, Ayesha has lived up to be beyond a typical Sydenham-girl. She is a fantastic communicator and a brilliant mind at planning and leadership. An avid reader and a mistress of good diction, she has been a case study for me and in her words, I have been her ‘mentor’, but I would say I have only been a guide most of the time. (The world looks different when you are looking up to it.) She has been an active entity with the Annual Magazine Committee of Sydenham and has worked her way up to being the next chairperson of the committee in nothing more than two years of her being in there. On a more personal note, she has been one of the most matured and ‘before-her-time’ individual, I have ever come across. I truly admire her honesty, respect and empathetic nature to boundless lengths and I really love her for her take on life, its teachings and its earnestness.

Here’s wishing you A Happy Belated Birthday. I love you kiddo and may God shower you with all that you want, love and most importantly deserve. :)

A Tribute

2005-08-03T13:33:00.000-07:00

You know what the worst experience in life is?

To hold up the dead body of your best friend on your shoulder, carry him to the funeral alter and set him ablaze. Yesterday (2nd Aug, 2005) was the longest and I hope the worst day of my life. I lost my best friend Mickey to a sudden heart-attack and the worst part is, none of us still know why it happened. A healthy, well built, handsome hunk who loved life more than anyone I can imagine, lost his most priced possession-his LIFE and we lost our most priced gem.

I have been a friend to Mickey for almost ten years now. The school days where we had an estranged childhood, the both of us, bonded well on that front. We were the only friends the other had. Universally disliked or may be just never ‘in the group’, we had our own fun in school and this guy transformed once we were out of school. He was the most kind, understanding, and extremely giving person. Someone who taught me that life is not for worrying your way through it but to live it the best we can. He taught me how to dance, how to dress well, what perfumes to buy, where to save money without compromising quality, and most importantly, how to be a nice guy and smart all at the same time. An over-enthusiastic party animal, a major movie buff, and a hard-core foodie. This chap was a one-man party package. And all of twenty-three. He had three dream; owning the fastest bike, having the fastest car and making shit-loads of money. On the face of it, these are the most common desires of all young individuals, and that was what was special about him. He was just another young blood and he admitted to it in style.

I’m not in a condition to talk about him too much, especially in the past-tense. I can not digest that this one heck of a healthy bugger is no more going to be eating out with us, or just meet up for half an hour for his dose of smokes. I can do but little to pay tribute to him and this post is a prayer to have his soul rest in eternal peace. You beat us to it once again man! God bless you!

Mukesh Bihani (12-01-82 to 02-08-2005)

…ONE SWEET DAY (Mariah Carrey feat. boys-II-men)

Sorry, I never told you, all I wanted to say.

Now it's too late to hold you.

'Cause you've flown away, so far away.

Never, Had I imagined, yeah, living without your smile.

Feelin' and knowing you hear me.

It keeps me alive.

Alive!

And I know you're shining down on me from Heaven,

Like so many friends we've lost along the way,

And I know eventually we'll be together.

One sweet day.

Picture a little scene from Heaven.

Darling, I never showed you.

Assumed you'd always be there.

I took your presence for granted.

But I always cared

And I miss the love we shared.

And I know you're shining down on me from Heaven.

Like so many friends we've lost along the way.

And I know eventually we'll be together.

One sweet day.

Picture a little scene from Heaven.

Although, the sun will never shine the same,

I'll always look to a brighter day.

Yeah, Lord, I know, when I lay me down to sleep,

You'll always listen, as I pray!

And I know you're shining down on me from Heaven,

Like so many friends we've lost along the way,

And I know eventually we'll be together.

One sweet day.

Mumbai... Rocked! (shaken, stired and disolved)

2005-07-27T09:42:00.000-07:00

My tube had been put on mute and all my ten odd news channels lined back to back. All I did today was flipped through them over and over and had no inclination to increase the volume to any audible level. The sights were distressing and all I saw was trains derailed, people stranded, complaining, hungry, desperate, women crying, death by the worst cause and I wondered about all the celestial injustice and divine vengeance. If at all I have learnt anything out of it, it is the value of having a family and a home which keeps you dry.

I have never been a negative person, I have never wanted to ask questions to my destiny which would have replied to me in answers uncalled for (lest I had questioned it.) but this entire ‘operation flood’ of astronomical proportions, forces me to ask unhealthy questions like “what if…”. What if I were one of the people living in places so far away that they could not be accessed independent of public services? What if I had parents that worked in remote suburbs or vice versa? What if the landslides happened in my vicinity? What if among the people who died, there were some of my own? I know it sounds as if I am not concerned about those who have lost their loved ones only because I was not one of them, but I can’t think of the situation where I would be the incumbent. I’m only too moved to think sense at this point in time. I heard of friends walking ten hours straight to reach to their places. I heard of people walking thirty five kilometers on the railway tracks to come home to a worried family. I heard of children crying of hunger and thirst and helpless parents waiting for the blessed train to take them home. It’s carnage by nature. It’s an answer in the form of a slap to the faces of all those who said “nothing can touch our city… Gujarat and UP are all too underdeveloped to be accident-proof”.

I can’t go on forever but the crux of the post is the fact that all who are reading this in the cozy chairs of their homes equipped with technology, should be more than thankful to have been eliminated from the hit-list of Mother Nature. I know I am.

Splashing Day out!

2005-07-26T10:42:00.000-07:00

I never knew a city with a heavy rainfall for a whole day could probably have total turn around effect on the lives of its proud residents.

Stranded to quite an extent, three friends and I decided to walk home on this exceptional event of major city-flooding. No taxis, no buses and hell no trains. Knee high waters and noisy traffic were our adversaries. I was taken aback by the kind of chaos this kind of weather can possibly cause.

On the request of a few panic-struck students from college, the lectures post four were cancelled and kids were promptly sent back. What I saw next was the worst case of loneliness in a crowd I have ever witnessed. The students that had flown in from other cities had their temporary residence in the suburbs of this great city and dew to the torrents, the trains would not budge. Lost in the city in any case they were now lost in a college which is far away from a house that in turn is far away from ‘home’. Most of them decided to stay put and go home only tomorrow and there were few who ventured out in the quest of finding alternate means to commute back to the cozy atmosphere at home. I, for one, knew that I had to get back, for two reasons. One, staying there meant no food (something I don’t like the idea of) and secondly, I stay close enough to make it any-which-way I can. Dipti, a resident of Worli, and a classmate, tagged along as I decided to go walking back if nothing else. And so the two of us shook ourselves and walked out of the gate only to shiver harder than ever. The waters were intimidatingly deep and blood-curdlingly dirty. A customary rolling up of trouser bottoms and off we went, swishing through the mucky accumulations of heavenly outbursts. On our way, fortunately, we found two more ladies, reckoning the same fate as us and destined in the same direction too. On our request to join us, Tanaya and Khyati were way more than happy to have some company in the frightful endeavors of our foot-journey to distant destinations. So the four of us forming a clumsy file splashed through the rains and unknown water-bodies and I shred DIpti’s umbrella which would reduce our pace considerably. Anyway, who was in too much of a hurry? As I said, the entire city had turned over its head. The traffic was slower than the pedestrians and why not? The pedestrians walked in the middle of the road and the cars… you guessed it, on the side-walks. The road looked like it was bleeding cars and people just looked so lost in the face of an otherwise tackle-able problem. The frothy waters gushing out of any and every opening on the road looked disastrous. It looked like the city was draining and straining all its water content and trying to live on a waterless diet! I would have loved to take a few snap-shots of the scene but then again, pulling out a cell phone in a heavy shower is not a very good idea.

After splish-splashing for over an hour we made it from Fort to Babulnaath. The journey was quite intriguing and full of a merry cheer for all were convinced they’d get home sooner or later. Just as we were contemplating over Khyati not having called her car when she had been asked by her mother, she spots her mother in her car. We felt redemption and it was a welcome surprise as we saw her signaling us from the other side of the road to hop in. her mother on the wheel and an uncle of hers kept us on a rolling laughter spree till we almost reached home. It took us a good hour from where we were, to reach our place, which on a normal day with traffic, would take nothing more than seven minutes. All I remember after reaching home is that I ate a light dinner and passed out on my bed till I woke up with a jitter. I was wondering if Dipti made it or not for she stayed the farthest and she was going to walk it up. The most frightful fact was that she had just gotten out of a Malaria attack and it was only her second day in college. A phone call confirmed her safety and I now sit here and make a record of this unforgettable day.

I still wonder what my other colleagues from college are up to. And I also pray for those many that are now left stranded on the platforms of cold railway stations and wet streets. Mothers who are lost to their children on the other side of the city. Husbands of the awaiting wives. Children of the anxious parents who are waiting for them on the dinner table. I sincerely hope they make it back as soon as possible. Oh dear God, just can’t deal with the shivers down my spine.

Silver and Grey

2005-07-21T13:02:00.000-07:00

The lectures in advertising are turning out to be more of a class on psychology. We have these intricate details on how a human mind reacts to different stimuli. It’s up to the copywriter how he uses, misuses or abuses this psychological trait.

Don’t feel like ranting about the geeky stuff, only, its hardly geeky. On the more fun side of things, getting to know a whole lot of people one at a time and in depth is quite a rejoice. There are these after lecture sessions in random music and singing that has had a great bonding effect and I love it. I have been out of touch with a lot of my old friends and it also feels great to go back to them every once in a while which is not too often.

I am out of all topics to write on. Somehow, I am even deteriorating in terms of diction and language. Feel like I am arriving at a writer’s block, which is a depressing thought. :-(

I will try and redeem myself… today, a friend commented on a problem/issue I put forth. She said, I always tend to be in a win-win situation and I replied, quite like a sage. I said, “No situation is win-win by virtue. It is all in how you deal with it.” and then I came to think of this one liner which I made during the conversation and totally love it for all its spontaneity and its sense.

When there are too many liabilities on your balance sheet, turn the sheet around.

Love it! But your comments are as usual always welcome.

Its All GOOD!

2005-07-16T16:51:00.000-07:00

Stability: this word has had me think to depths even I can’t fathom now. I mean, happiness after all is somehow related to or it completely is about being satiated, satisfied and ideally speaking, having no desires what so ever (but that’s virtually impossible.) May be, just may be, the secret lies in being balanced. I am quite tempted to believe that one should at least try and achieve some sort of equilibrium in their lifestyle. As impossible and Utopic the concept may be, the fact remains that it is achievable. Nirvana is a tall order perhaps but myopically speaking, achieving satisfaction is quite in our hands. It is a matter of perspective at the end of the day. I was actually unable to word this but what comes closest to what I am trying to say, is this beautiful song which can really make you realize this one thing: it’s all good. I stand by the maxim and even live by it. I mean, how much can go wrong? The panic levels rise and give way to a tsunami of more panic. Anyway, I’ll let the song do the talking for I have spoken thus much. ALANIS MORISSETTE spake here on…

"Hand in my pocket"

I'm broke but I'm happy
I'm poor but I'm kind
I'm short but I'm healthy, yeah
I'm high but I'm grounded
I'm sane but I'm overwhelmed
I'm lost but I'm hopeful baby
What it all comes down to
Is that everything's gonna be fine fine fine
I've got one hand in my pocket
And the other one is giving a high five
I feel drunk but I'm sober
I'm young and I'm underpaid
I'm tired but I'm working, yeah
I care but I'm restless
I'm here but I'm really gone
I'm wrong and I'm sorry baby

What it all comes down to
Is that everything's gonna be quite alright
I've got one hand in my pocket
And the other one is flicking a cigarette
And what it all comes down to
Is that I haven't got it all figured out just yet
I've got one hand in my pocket
And the other one is giving the peace sign
I'm free but I'm focused
I'm green but I'm wise
I'm hard but I'm friendly baby
I'm sad but I'm laughing
I'm brave but I'm chickenshit
I'm sick but I'm pretty baby

And what it all boils down to
Is that no one's really got it figured out just yet
I've got one hand in my pocket
And the other one is playing the piano
And what it all comes down to my friends
Is that everything's just fine fine fine
I've got one hand in my pocket
And the other one is hailing a taxi cab

BONDING!

2005-07-15T02:00:00.000-07:00

I should have posted this long back but just did not have the time or the inclination to do so. This was Saturday last (9-07-2005) when we, the few students of the XIC met up to bond and get to know one another better. It was fun and quite hilarious too.

Initially, people converged in the college canteen and sat around chatting for a while. It was 5 or so then (the time) and Akshay comes up with “let’s go to Marine Drive” which all agreed zestfully to. But by the time we actually upped our rears, it was 7. I don’t even know how many of us were there but it was a nice crowd that we made at the Marine Drive sea face…. Good fun!

These are some hazy snaps shot in the dark… no puns intended.

Eye-to-Eye… our friend Melroy kneels down to the power of ‘Amma!’

If music be the food of love… play on…. Way to go Austin

Serious conversations happening there Akshay and Revti

Figuring out.... Divya wonders on.

Still figuring out…

Line em up!

Suzy… trying her hand at the guitar for the first time.

By the way, we plan to do something of the sort this Saturday too. How cool is that huh?

Cheers!... "clank"

2005-07-11T22:31:00.000-07:00

It finally begins. After the entire weak of orientations with talks running the gamut from soft-skill developments to development in technology helping today’s world, we finally embark upon the year-long voyage through the turbulent seas of ADMA (Advertising & Marketing). Our lectures begin at 4 every evening and as per our schedule, they end at 8.30. Its ok, I’m not complaining. In fact I like the idea of an evening college.

The lectures began with this fabulous lady addressing us (who also happens to be our course coordinator), Mrs. Anita Sharan. The first half of the lecture relating to the history of communication had a fabulous start and it progressed into mind-blowing facts about the evolution of communication over the years but sort of got heavy towards the last 45 minutes. Trust you me, all of us were imagining every possible food item we could order in the half-hour break. I, by the way, was fantasizing about vada-pav and chai!

At 6.30, lecture part-2 began. This time, it was even more interesting. We went into the nuances of digital technology and stuff and the power point got over quite soon. And as such, we were done for the day. But madamji decides to get done with the election of the class representative. This is how providence progresses.

Mam asks people to volunteer and a couple of them who were the willing victims stood to make their ‘pitch’. It was all fun and games and a laugh riot as we kept nominating names and pretty eligible ones at that. But mam then decides to ask me to make my pitch which makes me shit bricks. It was quite unexpected and I had no idea why she did what she did but I played on. Quite frankly, I don’t remember what I said but I know it was to do with my hobbies and it definitely had a word about my passion for networking and my innate quality to pull off good P.R.giri… so I returned to my seat shivering (and I have no idea why, because I never had any sort of stage fright.) maybe because I had to make something up on the spot. I thought of it all as a joke while other members were pulled up and made to repeat the process. I knew the choice would be difficult because the people who were coming up were those with either a work experience or a business of their own. I guess about 10 odd people were ‘made’ to volunteer (including yours truly) and then the voting began. My best hopes were these guys who, as I said earlier, had tremendous work-ex and they were all quite neck-to-neck. When I was pointed at, I was expecting to have the same number of hands or maybe lesser to vote for me. Wonder of wonders… there is this sea of hands that reach the ceiling with a great fervor and I am literally turning red in disbelief (I could feel blood gushing to my face) and I was humbled with a sense of pride. Mam doesn’t even bother counting them hands and I stood there not knowing why there was so much faith in me. It was a lot of mixed feelings taking over then. I was astounded to say the least and I was diving in pride. I was happy and I was also shivering with the sheer load of the responsibility that came on so suddenly. Took a while for me to sort of get over the shock.

What followed was one of the best discussions about propaganda, advertising, brand building, strategies in advertising and reasons why ads work and don’t work. Mam spoke with complete conviction and I for one, wanted to bow my head in prayer and respect to her knowledge and analytical skills in determining what went wrong where and with which brand… what a lady. The class spoke and there were these short arguments, criticisms, difference of opinions and a whole lot of gyan, just floating around. It was a mind-blowing class (if I may put it in the basest of words.)

It was a brilliant day and it was another day that assured me of my belonging. After quitting engineering, I keep looking for these signs to guide me and assure me that I am where I am supposed to be and where I want to be. It is absolutely essential for me (and maybe everyone else) to know that the 3 criteria above are coherent and that they concur perfectly. I am happy as much as I am afraid of goofing-up. The one thing that mam said after class put me a lot at ease. She said, “I knew it that you would be their choice, I was wondering why you did not volunteer yourself”. Just goes to show the trust of an accomplished person in an amateur’s ability to lead. Just the thought of it is a comforter. Thank you Lord for another experience that is still un-arrived.

Pathetico Ridiculum! (spell to ward such things off... hope it works)

2005-07-07T23:46:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it’s so astonishing to observe how people can be so damn judgmental at times. An aunt of mine was reading the morning paper and she came across this picture of a home that had a caption which said something like – look beyond the home and delve into comfort – or something like that and she found it less of a house than a ‘museum’. So she very bluntly makes this remark about ‘how can someone call this kind of a décor, practical, silly oafs of the modern day…’ etc.

Why, I ask, is it so important for us to know and react to someone’s subjective likings? Is it so crucial to make an ‘I-know-it-all-and-u-never-will’ comment on every issue? What I realize is that a lot of us do it without knowing why we did so. Then it is forgotten. You see a man crossing the road in a peculiar manner and you shoot your mouth off, ‘what an ass, he’ll die if he walks this way’. You see a fellow sitting on the footpath and your mind starts making note of how stupid the man looks on the road… the fellow by the way is a college going good looking individual, not just any man. We want to judge the world at the drop of a hat. It’s really quite a mystery to me, as in, why should not a person, sit back and rethink a judgment before he makes one or at least before he vocalizes one. After the judgment becomes vocal one will put everything on the line for justifying one’s point, even after realizing that he had wrongly judged whatever he voiced last.

Actually, it brings me to a parallel thought. If a lot of us do this (and I for sure, don’t) then we are all a subject to such judgments ourselves, right? Which means we are also conscious of everything we do and don’t do just so as to be or not be judged? Things like first impressions and obnoxiously nauseating amounts of decency some people show in their first acquaintances is quite a favorite to many. I personally feel that observing vis-à-vis judging is so much more fun and politically correct. Plus, it saves you a lot of trouble when you don’t talk about someone else doing something weird for some unknown reasons. Just see that last statement. No parameter in judgment-making is a constant. In fact, more than variable, they’re unknown. We all might want to agree on one thing I suppose, most of the time, all that we have judged often changes its course. And then we change our views. Recall, how many times we have heard statements made by old pals which start with “You know, the first time I saw you, I thought….”.

I just went through the above and I realized, I sound like Dale Carnegie or someone… sheesh!

The Beginning

2005-07-04T13:19:00.000-07:00

My first day, in the post graduate course. My first day, in a Christian college. My first day, in the direction I have decided to go in. My first day, in the institute where I have earned my seat on account of good self-representation.

There is an inexplicable high of energy flowing through me as I write this account. I entered Xviers with absolutely no anxiety but an equivalent amount of thrill and determination to go ahead and make my mark in the field I have chosen. I shall spare the rant about how advertising is my dream. What was or rather is important to me is that I felt redeemed today. It used to send depressing waves down my spine and into my stomach, the thought of all my pears having finished post graduation or are in the last year of PG from kickass colleges around the country and many of them happily placed with large MNCs. Some, so deep into business, that they failed to figure as pears. Some married off. Some about to be. Being stuck trying to attain a degree for five years non-stop is no laughing matter I tell you. Lesser, the fact, that I jumped fields like Tarzan jumped trees. And not to mention the colleges. But it’s all good now. I felt like a grown up all of a sudden this evening as I sat there listening to the Father speak in impeccably propah English. The English was an added bonus, for no exception to the fact that each one spoke like they were Brits born in India. The coordinator then took our batch of 60 (pronounced Six-tie… I love it) to our classroom and addressed us as ‘the crème de la crème’ for we were 60 out of the 400 odd who made it through three, stringent processes of filtration. There were moments of complete fear as they spoke about the kind of project work and time dedication that the course would demand, but those were minor details. The penalties scared me out of my wits (for missing deadlines and remaining absent etc.) but as I said, mere details. Nothing comes for free and nothing comes for pure, unadulterated frolic.

I stand here and now,
With eyes smiling and tears shining,
Looking into the sky in an endless glance
And capturing each passing cloud and making it shower its blessings
For I am a happy man today.
I have come to achieve the pleasure of being amongst those who belong here with me.
To reckon my fate with the souls who are thinking the same thought as I.
I wait and run all at the same time.
I know it is here and now for I can hear the call of calm.
The time …to stop running around and start running ahead.
…To stop looking for direction and start looking into one.
…To stop asking for help and start preparing to help myself.
…To stop worrying about unknown perils and to start taking them up as challenge.
I am here now.
I am going to be there, then.
I know I am moving and this time I know where.
And I thank the lord,
As I stare up in the sky.
In an endless glance.
I have arrived…

... And miles to go before i sleep...

2005-06-28T13:43:00.000-07:00

It was the funniest, craziest, awesomely insane decision that I would have ever taken. To my surprise, though, I have absolutely no regrets for having done so. my mother and two of her sisters had decided to go visit my place in khandala. I was asked but I had cordially turned down the offer. I felt I could do better here. My cousin urged me to come along and she said we’ll get back the next day. It was 4 in the evening in any case and it would not hurt too much to go there for twelve odd hours and get back the next day. So, in a matter of ten minutes I packed and we upped and awayed to Khandala.

That would be my pool-side. The most serene places I have known. Just sitting around here doing nothing much is the most euphoric feeling ever.

Anyway, so we reach the Khandala station at 7:30 or so and its purple… the sky is this shade of purple I have never seen. The temperature is just perfect and its raining just enough to wet you but not drench you to a sticky gloom.

The three cousins and I decide to walk it to my place (a fifteen minute uphill climb) and the three sisters decide to take the auto. Alls well as we reach home and comfort ourselves with hot coffee and toast. I realize soon enough that I should meet my sweet-heart, Karishma, while I am here and so I promptly call the lady. Little did I know that I was going to be invited over to breakfast with her and that too at 7:00 a.m for she had her class starting at nine… ugh!

A note on Karishma: Kash (for I call her so…) has been my friend for the past 6 odd years and nothing has ever changed the kind of bonding we shared. She did her BMS from Jai Hind and an MBA from S.P.Jain Dubai. Now placed with TCS and is being trained at Khandala’s North Point Training center (which by the way is a mind-blowing place.)

We seldom meet and barely talk but we have never been blank about what the other is up to. Quite amazingly, we meet up at weird places like we did this day. This is how the most beautiful day of my life went…

As planned, I wake up bright and early at 6:30 and get dressed up. It was odd because I had to be presentable and at the same time I could not screw my formal attire up in the rain. Never the less I was ready to leave and sure enough the lady calls to check whether I would be keeping my appointment or not. I had never heard of the place I was supposed to go to and at seven in the rains, in the middle of a bloody forest, I was not to find any mode of transport or the faintest sign of human existence to even guide me through my unknown path. ‘no sweat’ I thought and walked straight out of the gate armed with an umbrella. Rustic Highlands was what I had to head for and from the bare minimal that I knew, I took the direction I trusted my intuition to show. Then began the wildest, most breathtaking walks I have ever taken.

This was the road that lay before me as I breathed every bit of fresh air my lungs could facilitate.

I them came across a board that showed me direction to ‘North Point’ and I was happy that I would at least be seeing her. (I really doubted that I would make it in time, or make it there at all!)

This is the sight of North Point from where I stood and I did not know then that it was three kilo meters away from where I saw the board. I still walked on. The fog got thicker and the road steeper. The air became crisp and the light spray on the face with chilling gusts just felt heavenly. I know I sound insane ranting about it but I could possibly write a book on how I felt as I inched to the top.

I have never liked trekking but for something like this….. What can I say?

After 45 minutes of blissful agony I made it to North Point and that, sadly, was not the end of my trial. I lost my way in the jungle that the place was and there was no one to even guide me to the reception. In the process, though, I took the trip round this magnificent estate. At one point I felt I wanted to take a job in TCS only to be trained here for a month.

This here, is the view offered by the lobby in the reception area. This is where I met Kash, all formally dressed. She looked gorgeous as always.

We met her friends and I had a brilliant breakfast and some amazing conversation. Half an hour later she had to get to class and I had to head back home. Considering my mother would be quite shaken not to find me around, I’d better minimize the time lapse. She offered to call for an auto but I had to walk back…. Had to!

These are some more pics I took on the way back.

This is the whole estate…. Splendid!

A small waterfall on the side of the road that lead down to Rustic Highlands. The whole way was dotted with these on the side every few meters.

I must have walked twelve kilometers overall and it was totally worth it. The scenic beauty and the weather. The falls, the rain, the mist, the thin air compeling one to breathe harder with each step and of course this killer of a smile….

Totally paid off!

Retrospective Introspection!

2005-06-24T13:43:00.000-07:00

I rediscovered this term today after having used it a long time back. Its so self-explanatory and apt for what it is meant to convey.

I met Sanju mam today and while speaking to her, I spoke of this innate ability in me to step out of character and watch myself for a while. Through all the pain and anguish and anxiety and hate and love and euphoria…. Just observe it all happening and smile and say thank you to the lord for the knowledge he has thus provided in the form of an experience. That’s what I call retrospective introspection. It was a beautiful day of happy jokes and a mind-blowing weather. Sanju mam is to be hospitalized and I hate to think of her in that bed. Wanted to cheer her up so I felt like spending time with her. To my surprise though, she was quite cheered up and was more kicked about the ‘vacation’ that was coming up. Love that lady, I tell you.

Then I decided to take a look at my place at Juhu. I walked in and opened the balcony. The gust that came in from the sea side just about blew me off. It was such a beautiful sight. Actually it was too dark to see much but all I could hear was the sound of an angry sea and the constant and consistent rhythm of the pouring rain. The trees swayed in silence and the rustle of the leaves was almost lulled by the sound of the breeze sweeping all into a deep endless slumber. I stood and watched through an abyss of nature’s night-out. She was on a roll to say the least. It sounded like a rain-forest in the middle of Amazon. It looked that way too. I could hear myself breath and think. I wanted to sing but breaking that silence would be criminal so I decided otherwise. It was late and I had to tear myself away from that bliss. I could’ve just stood there wondering about myself and all that surrounded me. That was the perfect time for it… Retrospective introspection.

I Rote To Ruth

2005-06-23T05:00:00.000-07:00

I don’t know why I titled my blog so. But it sounds cool. In fact, this is the first time I wrote a letter to someone and what an experience. To pull out a pad and scribble words onto the blank papers, is absolutely irreplaceable by fingers tapping on a keyboard. The sight of a bright white envelope and the four lines of an address is again a superior high as compared to a single line of something@somethingelse.somthing.

After I had finished writing it, I was filled with the laziness of a lion to go and post it. I mean, the post office is a 1½ minute trot from where I reside but NO… lazy. My father then made me go down to the bank SIX TIMES over and I’m not joking. I took it as providence and the sixth time around, I decided to post it. The whole thing is so much fun. Walking over in the pouring rain to a deserted post office where the government servants sit around behind their counters with the expression of a disinterested munshi on a holiday. “Can I have a five rupee stamp please?” I ask. The lady shows me her palm like a traffic cop and opens her drawer. It takes like 20 years for her to pull out a stamp and shove it to my side of the counter. She then slunk into her chair and almost slept off till I asked for glue. So the lady snarls and takes another 30 years to go in and get some gooey looking blue substance which felt like solidified mucus… Yuk! So I stick the damn stamp and walk over to the red post box. I was overwhelmed and as I pushed the envelope down the throat of the red dormant beast, I had the warmest feelings running through my heart and I felt myself smiling. I even whispered ‘take care, Ruth’ as I let go of the envelope. I felt the rain hit my face with gentle slaps and the breeze caressing each one very gently. I walked home and realized how nice it feels to write the old fashioned way. I’m sure to write a few more now. More than writing it’s the effort and love that goes into going to the post office and stamping and the best part is letting the envelope drop into the many of its own kind. Each one having something to convey. Each, as filled with news (good and/or bad) and affection as every human being in a crowd.

Somehow I’m glad to have changed my opinion about snail mail. Thanks for the motivation Ruth.

Break Through

2005-06-20T11:20:00.000-07:00

One has achieved something after a lot of perseverance and a hell lot of patience. I must admit that I was almost fighting a battle with myself. A battle to stay put and wait till all that I was denied is given to me. A tall order some might say, but I knew it had to be accomplished. I was directioned and I held on to a desire, a desire to follow instinct. A desire to learn how to make profession of hobby. To become an ace in my territory of my choice. And this is where it begins. My tryst with destiny. After trying a lot of things (which I shall not mention), I finally made it through the Xavier’s Institute of Communications. I’m joyed and more relieved to know that there is a chance that I belong here (In the ad industry that is).

Some beautiful lines (extracts from Ullyses) that inspire me at this point and maybe always will are…

…I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees. All times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone;…

…I am part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherthrough
Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades
Forever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make and end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things;…

…To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought…

…There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;
There gloom the dark, broad seas…

And most importantly of all…

…but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield…

Thank you lord for the notice you have taken to prayers unmouthed but sincere… and continue doing so for all that need the light. Thank you!

Bring it on already!!!

2005-06-16T05:09:00.000-07:00

This heat is now being a pain in the …. Ummmm…. You know where.

I mean, it’s about time the rain gods woke up. Usually Bombay is hit by the damn monsoon in the first week of June and for whatever reason the heat is getting quite unbearable…. My sentiments are best reflected by the song that just played on my play list and it’s a bloody pleasure to listen to it after such a long time. In fact, the band’s name reminds me of the good old Nerul days when they used to call me ‘Blind Melon’ and invariably it would be followed by ‘Deaf Tones’… haha. So this is how I feel in the words of Blind Melon…

NO RAIN… L

All I can say is that my life is pretty plain
I like watchin' the puddles gather rain
And all I can do is just pour some tea for two
and speak my point of view
But it's not sane, It's not sane
I just want some one to say to me
I'll always be there when you wake
Ya know I'd like to keep my cheeks dry today
So stay with me and I'll have it made
And I don't understand why I sleep all day
And I start to complain that there's no rain
And all I can do is read a book to stay awake
And it rips my life away, but it's a great escape
escape......escape......escape......
All I can say is that my life is pretty plain
ya don't like my point of view
ya think I'm insane
Its not sane......it's not sane

So now that I nagged and winged all day,
I do expect there’ll be rain…
There’ll b rain…. There’ll be rain…. There’ll be raiaiaiaiaiaiaiain!!!

Haha, sowy for adding that but it goes with the tune yaar so Maaf hai!

Up-dates

2005-06-12T22:27:00.000-07:00

God, it’s been a while since I got this time to write something and get over the Ahemdabad trip. It’s brilliant how the people have really taken efforts for staying in touch with each other. The Y! Group and the sharing of photographs and videos and incessant calls and sms and the works… I feel if it weren’t for the techy stuff, this trip would have been a blur in all our memories and faded by now. On the flip side, the charm and excitement of receiving the snail mail is a different high altogether, right?

So what has one been up to lately…

Interacting with Mrs. Sanjaya Misra on a regular basis is quite entertaining and thought provoking. I loved it when she took me with her to this meeting with Schredar Dunkan (may be wrongly spelt but I need not mention that categorically). It was about a training course they are looking out for. To train their employees in terms of team work and assertive thinking and communication skills and may be some stress management kind of stuff. It was a pleasure to be amongst the shirts and ties that walked around the place. I have never been fond of corporate life but it’s just too ubiquitous to be hated. Theek hai… no fondness, no regrets either.

XIC entrance, my last resort in educating myself with the fine art of ad making…. (Bull shit, no one can teach ad making but ya, the course is hands-on and bloody intensive). Got through the writtens and now have GD and if filtered from the lot, PI. So that’s on the cards. Praying to get through.

I have been meeting up with friends everyday and it’s a bloody high too meet different people from your life, one at a time. Lovely. Tavern still rocks, the smoke still dances, the booze still flows and the laughs and shouts and quaint lyrics still blurt out of drunken moths in complete devotion to the lords of rock!

But do not get me wrong, I’ve been a nice bacchha also! I’ve been going to the office whenever I can and traveling to the suburbs for work and running errands and not fussing about it.

It has been a beautiful life and it sure will continue to be! pakka! Promise!

my trip to Ah-MAD-a-(not so)BAD!

2005-06-03T14:23:00.000-07:00

Back after ten whole days. Feels good to smell Mumbai. There was this one decision I made which really happened to craft my thoughts (if not change my life), and that was to take this trip to Ahemadbad. MICA, one of the most renowned institutes in the field of communication held this wonderful workshop for an age group ranging from 16 to 24. it was an experience and quite a motivating one at that.

This was the very flight we (my cousin harsh and i) flew by.

Ten days of complete madness and a real organized one, followed. The campus was absolutely mind blowing. It’s a shame, I only have some videos so cant show u that here, but this is a picture that shows the road that connected the main classrooms and the various hostel buildings.

And it was two in the morning when I clicked this one. Trust me, the campus was anything but empty. There was a 24 hour canteen and a 24 hour comp lab and a 24 hour library so people could work all night and they did. It was hot most of the time but still the public was quite chilled out. Enough of advertising MICA but I really loved the place. Some how it hurt me a lot to see that I tried and I failed at getting in there and doing all the things that these students did. Writing jingles at four in the morning, doing TV commercials for fun sake, writing scripts, chatting over coffee and cigarettes, the works and all at unholy hours. Just missed it. ‘sigh’

That would be the group outside McDonalds... amazing each one of them

Anyway, Raunika Sethi, the most calm and matured 24-year-old I have ever come across. The coordinator of the entire workshop. She had a wild persona and god knows she just inspired me to no apparent end. The lady had an aura of complete excellence and she perfected the art of commanding respect. I swear I would have fallen in love with her but I respected her too much to have considered such a base thought. She was a sweet heart.

Raunica, you are the best

Speaking of sweethearts… Ruth Saldana. Man, what a lady… a complete laugh-riot-package-deal. I mean, unholy hours and late nights would not inhibit her sense of humor in the least. Doing her BA with literature was a turn on enough and then she had to go and speak impeccable English. Complimented by the tangential jokes which only I (probably) understood and a machine gun like reply to joke and joke to reply session happened. One crazy instance is when this kid sits behind Ruth and me and starts listening to us rolling in laughter. With a poker straight face, the kid asks, “Ruth, why do you laugh so much?” I had half a mind to turn and whack the kid for all his sins he has ever committed but all I heard was Ruth laghing a little harder. Incessant jokes continued and at this brief moment when Ruth takes a break, the kid says “ok… now… close your eyes… and take a deep breath… and do not laugh anymore!” That would be the cue for her to burst out in splits. Poor guy died of abashment. Then there were the Ruth-isms which for the life of me I cant remember. One was ‘dogma: single word for son of a bitch’… and this comes up in the middle of a classroom session. Could not control any part of my body when I heard this. And then there was the ‘prof-with-funny-pronunciations’ syndrome. Cant really explain how we did it, but we spoke in phonetics. I mean, the hight to which written communication can go, chatting in phonetics?!! Crazy… but Ruth oh Ruth, so much fun.

Then there were the sundry mad people who made lots of jokes and fun and the usual stand alone types. Then the ones you cant stand and others who are too sweet and touchy to make jokes or pass funny comments on. But all in all, it just changed a whole lot of things for me. Not to mention my experience with hospitals and doctors, considering my cousin decides to play football with a plastic bottle at 3 a.m. falls and dislocates his left shoulder. Lost out on a couple of days but nothing to regret. I learnt to deal with lots of sudden decision making and I guess I did score pretty well at that. Got back home on the 1st of June and had some amazing memories rolling in my head ever since. Some other pictures that I randomly took are here.

That’s Roxie, the laziest German Alsatian ever. he slept in class and inspired us a great deal.

Ruth found a fried frog basking in the sun (if I may say so)… yeah, the frog is dead and crispy.

That’s times of India news press… HUGE!

That is the only auditorium in the country to have a floor seating and its in MICA… bottoms down!

Raunak with a golden voice sings an Abhijeet Sawant number… Indian Idiot!

Harsh returning home with a broken limb!

Mr. Zeeshaan and Radhika, the two extreme wackheads stand together... killers i tell you

Mr. Accident: Pratik was the man... 'i will jump from the sky for you darling'

Ritu was the cutest and funniest of the lot and also a majorly cathartic sadist i must say. loved her

our man Ritesh knew nothing better than what he is doing now... the buddy I can never forget

Amul almost hired her after she sang her 'Doodh Malai' hit single... Jagrit, muahhh!

Elvis + Leonard Cohen still is not = Phalgun 'Venky' Reddy... i will kill for that voice man!

RED EYES

2005-05-20T22:18:00.000-07:00

Have you ever seen smoke dance to a squealing guitar? Have you ever seen a flash of light so bright, it almost blinds your faith in wonders? And then when you turn around to look, it’s a single stick with a sulfur tip that’s putting the end of a white stick of paper filled with a ‘deceiver’ on fire. Raging hands shaking high above numerous heads. Droopy eyes. Heads reaching for the floor to enhance the effect of the ‘hit’. Bear hugs and love expressions. Crying teary eyes, cribbing, bitching about the bitch. Lyrics pronounced in religious dedication. Unbeaten concentration on the playing of a non-existent guitar in the hands of many. Sluggish feet making their way to the rest room. Some to the smoke vender. Couples cuddling to prove no point of consequence. Loud laughs. High fives. Muffled words. Slurry sounds of unborn thoughts that die in the mind. Dead hopes, dead desire, dead smiles. A violent crisscross of base sounds and drummers beating their lives onto dead skins till they feel they can tear it. Mind numbing jokes. Beer. Cold drafts of air from the A/c over head. Lack of sensation. Lack of control. Lack of logic in finding meaning to what or why one really really BELONGS here. More beer. Nostalgia. Déjà vu. Visions. All three of the above in the same flash of a split second. Reluctance to go home. Compulsion of having to go home. The fight between the two antagonistic sensations. Suspended animation. Some more Beer. Red flames glowing like stars from a different universe. One, more personal than the one you are living in. and of course, more and more beer!

God I love Tavern.

And Jal is an amazing band... since van is a big jal fan, went to see 'woh lamhe' and 'adat' (performing live in bandra) but couldnt get in.... actually did'nt need to. after that was tavern. great fun.

2005-05-19T12:03:00.000-07:00

I had written this article a while back when I had just gone through with my t.y.b.com exams and I really like it. i am also publishing this in the annual magazine this year (of Sydenham) but I thought of putting it up here none the less. Ok… I admit… confession if you will… don’t have any inspiration to write lately so…

TEXT BLUES

I was surrounded by zombies. They feared something, something strange and silent. i knew the shaping hand of providence was closing in on my future and the magical touch was just a silent acquiesce away.

They sat silently. They had a motive to achieve as they stared at black letters on white sheets, smelling fresh with the chemical used for photocopying. It is strange how one person who was possibly sleepy while he was listening to this lady (who does not know what or why she is speaking) is scribbling the letters dropping out of her mouth onto a piece of paper, which suddenly becomes a bible for those masses who never went to 'church' all year. What were they trying to achieve by being atheists for 11 months and suddenly having their sins catching up with them? It is commendable though, these zombies pull it off to say the least.

Those few weeks before the exams may be the glorious festivity of a hated event called “studies”. And the venue, as hated as it may be, is the otherwise haunted, library. The cult gathers at 8 am sharp and the prayers begin with a consistent chant... 'Oh fuck, I’m so screwed!!’. A few discussions with fellow 'believers' rekindle their faith. They open the untouched holy books of unknown subject with fear and spite on an equal balance. The reading begins and the next ten minutes are filled with a religious dedication towards the commitment they have made to this religion for the past 20 years or so. But as I said, ten minutes; then comes along Satan with his overpowering charm. Every one of the seven sins put together in the words that drop out like gospel hymns for these zombies to follow as their new bible… actually they simply revert to their atheism when they here him say “come on guys lets go for Chai!”. The “holy bibles” go for a fantastic toss and the “harrowed” individuals want to go for tea breaks.

It’s not too long (just about two hours) before the pangs of guilt strangle the necks of our refreshed students and they decide to head back to the Mecca. The books open themselves as if it was a favour to mankind to have been read by the youth of our country. Eyes wander on chapters and the “out of touch” memories of the kids can support no data other than the page numbers and chapter headings. Now the fine play of food aftermaths kick in. Drooping eyes and divided concentration make fine excuses for going no farther then where they have stopped (which again is a page and a half). Soporific chants lull them off for a 2 hour knock out and the fearful laughter of friends and screams of the disgusted parents jolt them up in frenzy. Heavy amounts of water and large quantities of mint and chocolates are consumed before faces are washed and we resume. Books spring to life and pages turn like an unprecedented dance of fright and random motions of the hand over letters flow through minds of young bloods. They push to remember as much as they can. Bullet points, paraphrases and highlighted headings are inter woven with thoughts of failing and irritations about why the girlfriend slept off without saying good night to the lover, the night before.

The crows mark the forthcoming of a regretful evening of a wasted day. The realization of not having grasped even 10% of the amount perused is a wake-up call but we decide to press the ‘snooze’ button and get home unperturbed by materialistic thoughts of taking exams to get a degree for getting a job and earning large pays. Sometimes, thoughts of this sort are like reality checks. Questions like ‘Where am I going?’, ‘What am I looking for?’, ‘What’s my future in this field?’; ‘Do I even belong here?’… start making sudden and irrational sense. The questions remain unanswered and the night passes off like a kink in the flow of time. the dawn of a new day of stress, toil, turmoil and pain and friends, food and tea breaks; the ratio being 2 hours is to 8 hours. The same old guilt, the same additional 10% and the same deep, philosophical questions end the day’s disgust.

Every day is a deja vu and the guilt goes to a penultimate tightening before the grip breaks your back bone and you have no option but to reverse the 2 to 8 ratio and make the 10% to 100% absorption. You ignore your girlfriend and the thought of failing is sinful. Eyes water and dare not droop. Food is kept to bare minimum of rice and veggies. Page numbers matter no more and photocopies are handled with perfect honesty. No Satanic interventions and no more distractions to feast your tired eyes on. The nearing of judgment day is time to wash out your sins and bathe in the holy waters of knowledge. The exams are a revelation of a toiling farmer ready to harvest (in this case the farmers decided to use hybrid variety that matures in a month). They (exams) arrive in chariots of fire and you are ready and armed. The soot of the midnight oil is the artillery you posses. Pens raging on the battle field. Printed questions thrown ruthlessly at you by your adversary. The bell sounds like the war horn and the raging bulls attack. Every bit stuffed is regurgitated with utmost precision and the battle culminates with the defendants left in doubt of their victory.

This is the story of a normal student… a story about a young mind fixed in a matrix called education and a small protective world known as a college. The concepts that bind the mind are a matter of legible volumes of unwanted information jammed into the system for a small rapid fire round and then forgotten for the rest of their lives.

Well, I’m through, I’m tired and I’m glad. The legacy is thus passed on to the next batch of degree aspirants… for me; the hunt was more interesting than the kill.

VALENTINO BLUES

2005-05-16T22:41:00.000-07:00

“Nothing in our lives is ever going to come easy man!”

This is a quote from my close buddy in fear and sorrow, Valentino AKA Van. Let me give you a quick history of the man. Van is a Chinese born and brought up in India. Did his schooling from a convent and passed B.Com from Sydenham. But most importantly… he was born in 1982… like me and other ill-lucked, jinxed souls like me. This year is defined and tagged as “the darkest year” in the history of mankind. This is the theory we hold: nothing will ever go our way and nothing has ever gone our way in the past. (I have reconfirmed this from all 82’s and they concur). Van started working in the stock markets and for the two odd years he was there…. well, nothing went his way. Now he has finally given up and that too because he has ‘no more money to lose’. By the way, all that I put under quotes are his words. We met today (like we usually do) at the famous Muchhad Panwala, now termed as “Nainas” after the boutique that stands there. This was also Van’s idea so that when we say “nine ‘o’ clock, Nainas”, it sounds a little better than “Nine ‘o’ clock Muchhad Panwala”. Anyway, we met and discussed our run down lives and the daily issues and minor glimpses of the rather usual bad lucks. But today was exceptional. We laughed over these things like there was no tomorrow. No cribbing. Just laughing it all off. Then Van starts with his theory.

“God hates me. He keeps telling me, nothing is going to come to you. You want it, earn it. Never buy a lottery ticket. No use. I mean, we’ve all heard of ‘work hard, party harder’ but for us… ‘wanna party? Work harder, bitch! Wanna party hard? Don’t push it!’”. He went on with his screw up for the day when I asked him what happened. “My aunt is coming down from Taiwan. So I asked her to get me a graphic card. What do you know; they ran out of stock that day only. Had to settle for something lower. What the hell man”. Lots of laughing. “I’m sure they have a surveillance team in place up there man. Every time Van asks for something, make sure he gets none. Imagine, a place like Taiwan, a demand like a normal simple graphic card…. But no. ‘Empty stocks quick, clear clear clear’…. Van demands, shop keeper says ‘Sorry, no stocks’… phew, mission accomplished… high fives”. I died laughing. So did he. And this is not where he decides to stop. “Even the stock exchange has a Screw Van Squad in place. Picture this: small room, few computers few men. Sitting, cracking jokes, lighting cigarettes, all going fine. Van hits a deal on his machine… finished. Red alert alarms go off, battle stations…. Sell sell sell till the price drops to a 50% and let him square it off…. Van shouts SHIT…. Mission accomplished”. It was unbelievable, the way he was just laughing about these things. And no exaggerations, this is how bad it was. The market is sky rocketing till he punches a deal. Boom! Kaput. And to top it all, they others even joke about it saying ’82 kahi ka!’

“Screw that”, he continued while I regained balance and some breath. “I go to a lounge bar at Bandra with some friends and I see this Chinese sitting in the corner staring at me. I think it was Henry Tham and he knows my pop quite well. So even after six months, he’ll bring it up and well, the rest as they say is history”. Sure enough, at that very instant some dogs started howling like wolves on a full-moon night. Van comments, “Yeah, weep and the world (you belong to) weeps with you”. There was no stopping this guy tonight. Then some other friends joined in and topics shifted base. It still circled around bad luck and jinx… simply because the other two were also 82’s.

“the Chinese believe”, he spoke with words as profound as sermons but facial lines far from the concept of seriousness, “that there is harmony created when the good and bad, darkness and light and other such opposites are in a balance. The forces of the universe are in perfect equilibrium….”. he stopped for a drag and let smoke out of his mouth like a cloud of thoughts and continued, “Bloody hell! The only reason why anything good is happening in this world is because I balance everything out single handedly!”. A crazy roar of laghter filled the place up and woke this poor bawa family on the first floor of the building that had Nainas on the ground floor. “no seriously, the week when I was finally making some money in the markets, the tsunami killed millions… co-incidence you think?… no way. The yin yen never fails my friend”. We were now on the verge of getting a little serious and probably had stood enough to make our legs tired. But all that was happening was not feeling fine any more. I guess hee took the vibe in account and simply said “f@#! it…. some day God shall take a break and we’ll have our days in place... may be next year”. We had the last laugh and shook hands while each parted though I was still with Van because he was dropping me home. We took ice-cream and went to our humble abodes to retire in contemplation of all that went on in our minds… simultaneously.

The real reason for the post is, this kind of a conversation actually redefined the word ‘catharsis’ for me. It was quite a serious issue. All of us have been going through this phase of thrashed fate. I don’t want to discuss the issues in depth but know you this, they are no laughing matter. I guess this is a better way to talk things out with some friends and not have them run away. I know how it feels when you always have had a calm approach until you can hold back your angst no more and you want to talk. The slightest notice of an outpour in the offing and the other ‘friend’ starts hunting for obvious exits. Don’t know if I should and can blame someone for doing so, but I have never done it. Can’t turn a deaf ear. Even if I can’t help someone out, I still listen patiently, indifferently also (need be). Catharsis is no excuse for comfort but a deterrent to say the least. Anyway, its times and people like these that really show you a different perspective of life. Nothing comes easy to anyone but as our friend Albert says, “I don’t care how big your problems are, mine are bigger”. Here’s to the man who chooses to see fate as something having a good sense of humor unlike most who say it has bad sense of timing. Here’s to Van. Pleasure to have a smiley in flesh man. J. Floyd concludes:

Where were you… when I was burnt and broken?
While the days slipped by from my window, watching.
And where were you… while I was hurt and I was helpless?
For all the things you say and the things you do surround me.
While you were hanging yourself on someone else’s words,
Dying to believe what you heard…..
I WAS STARING STRIGHT INTO THE SHINING SUN!

Cheers!

Shifting Sands!

2005-05-14T19:12:00.000-07:00

“So what does happiness mean to you?”, she asked me. Her face showed interest like none I had seen. She really wanted to know, which is a welcome break from the usual pseudo-isms, what I thought of happiness.

I had seen profoundness coming. 8.30 pm walks on the empty beaches can do that. It was unbelievable. We (Priyanka and I) started walking from my place at Juhu and came across the craziest noise pollution. Walked on as she fiddled with her phone and I with my thoughts. Something was on her mind or so I felt but only to realize it was a message conversation she was having with her friend bout some party they were to go for that night. Anyway, the sweet thing was she kept biting her tongue as she looked outside the small world of her own called the cell phone. Incessant apologies followed. Then we took that detour to the left of the main road that lead to the almost uninhabited shoreline. It stretched from infinity to infinity. The moon was small but bright, the stars almost looked like LED lamps… yes you read it right, we saw starS (the capital for stress) in Mumbai. I love the sound of the sea. It’s so peaceful. It’s quite a paradox/irony/funny thing (call it what you may). The sea itself is restless, the waves are mad and hence they create the world’s most soothing sounds. That is what started us both off on the insightful interview session. Happiness was the topic at hand. Can it be quantified? Can one say when one is the happiest? Can one know if this is as happy as it gets? The questions and thoughts flowed and so did wind. And so did time. We stood there for what looked like an era but it was really not more than 45 odd minutes. She kept defining happiness and I kept soliciting my idea of not conceptualizing or binding any such abstract feeling as happiness. Reasons, 1. It is abstract. 2. It is a feeling. 3. It is relative. I always feel happiness, sadness, anger, pleasure, satisfaction, attraction, prejudice; all these things are what we’ve trained our minds to think what they are. I was telling Priyanka, how a job that pays well is clubbed as satisfaction right now, then it might be clubbed under routine but happy, then maybe mundane and unhappy, then piss off and at that time the family that you dread having right now (getting married etc.) is actually your saving grace and that’s what you start clubbing under happy. It’s all relative. Shifting sands. The silence on the beach was broken only once in a while by a plane that would zoom by. I looked up at one of them, that was flying quite low and so did Priyanka. Suddenly her one hand caught my shoulder and the other pointed a finger at the plane that had crossed the bright moon. “Nature is dying while man takes no heed of how beautiful it is to be amidst it” she said. Went on to add, “God, these quiet walks can really make one think tangentially. I haven’t been like this for weeks now maybe. Work work work…” And quite on cue, her cell phone rings. “Oops! Boss calling…” she said and took the call. I figured it would take her a while so I picked her up by the arm and guided her through the traffic, got her into an auto, and already started off. By the time she hung up, she had no recollection of what happened back there. When did we get up, get out, got where we were…. Nothing. All I had to do was smile at her and she understood that it was this very instance that we had been talking about all evening. 45 minutes, just that much to break away into a world not yours and 45 seconds to bring you right back into it. You can’t stay too long where you know you don’t belong.

Usual Musings of an Unusual Day

2005-05-12T13:14:00.000-07:00

I met a friend today after a year… after she came back from Dubai… she has done her course of MBA from S.P. Jain there.

It was the most unexpectedly fabulous moment, the minute I saw her. I couldn’t even imagine that it was a YEAR ago that I had seen her last. The warmth, the truth of having been there with each other through a lot of heavy and light things…. Just having stuck around with each other for more than six years now… amazing. I’m just short of words to express myself for the first time (probably!).

We caught up more on new times than old. What I was pondering over was, how there is a marked paradigm shift in our conversations sometimes. I mean, here there is this girl who I spoke to in the junior college years. The topics included ‘boy friend, family issues, discs’ and suchlikes. Now its ‘placements, pay, future plans, family issues…. Then, maybe boyfriends’. Funny I tell you. We grow up so fast but all at the same time. We need so many things but all our needs are quite similar. We see different aspects of life and they are quite common to all of the peers that we have. We use different words and form a jargon. All in all, what we think of ‘vast’ is not quite so. Perceptions, I might say. Clichéd piece of a write up, I know, but was really taken back by the thought. ‘VAST but still so small…. Vast Iota’. Yeah, that’s what life looks like sometimes.

And the evening closed with a fabulous Udpi dinner with an extraordinary company. When I see both these females, (and not to mention my mentor and friend Ma Sanju) the lines that come to my mind are:
“The time has come”,
The walrus said, “To talk of many things,
Of shoes and ships and sealing wax,
Of cabbages and kings.
And why the sea is boiling hot?
And whether pigs have wings”

Loved my evening. Thank you both. Karishma and Khyati. Its amazing how we talk no end and still make sense of it all. Amazing!

Life In A Moment

2005-05-10T21:33:00.000-07:00

I stood there, staring at the red and orange colored sun as it quietly collapsed into its cozy bed with a sense of dense satisfaction… a sense of “I did what I had to do; but I do it every day anyway, still I do it and feel good” kind of a thing you know-dense satisfaction.

Well, on the exterior it all looked calm, the scene, the sky and the posture I assumed as I stood with hands behind my back and neck raised but relaxed. But on the inside it was a storm like no sea had ever witnessed. It rose with a violent “so what do you think you are going to do now?” thought-wave and moved to ferocious levels with the realization of not being able to direction the course of my life… the feeling of being scattered even torn if you will. Following the pears always seems to be a security blanket when you are really not aware of what you want to do. The “herd mentality”. A guru once said, “I am ready to accept your claim that humans are intelligent, provided you believe me when I tell you that when a human is amongst others, he is not”. Holds good for me and pretty much for all of us. Then there were the crisscrosses of statements that I had heard during a mind game that I was playing with my eldest uncle in my third cousins wedding… “Beta try doing a (some course I don’t remember the name of), it will be great for your business”. When a lady who has never seen the world or thought of it any more than a kitty party interrupts him. Says the lady, “No no, Shalini’s eldest son tried doing it but failed at it miserably. Instead, why don’t you do your…” And the words started blurring out and fading into the oblivion, as if I was drunk and some one was calling out my name as I try to figure out the voice, not the words… all just a muffled lip movement and sounds. These things that I detested then all started surfacing as I stood there.

I let thoughts pass without “thinking” them on deliberation. It is like standing on a railway platform, during peak hours and without the intention of boarding a train. You are there just to watch the “market” bustle. Then somehow the chaos is no more a cause of irritation but a stimulus to inspiration. That’s exactly what it feels like when you observe a noise in your brain, without being a part of it.

There were voices of my parents, teachers, friends… even people who I didn’t know. People rambling suggestions and some more suggestions. It occurred to me then that there was something waiting out there to come at me. Not in a bad way, in a manner to help me. There was an answer waiting to leap out and scream. But the noise was persistent; the intuition equally prominent. I was lost. And I wanted to be found. My brain felt like a radio, with numerous channels but all playing at the same time.

What happened at this juncture was remarkable. I stopped looking. I quit the idea of trying to battle life. I thought of a word called “wait”. It had to be around. It had to come blaring out if I stopped looking too hard for it. A sudden calm whizzed past and killed the riot for good. It filled the air with a deafening silence. I started to hear myself breath. Until this moment I had no idea how different it was to think and feel. If I closed my eyes then, the world felt strangely alien. I did not belong there. I was a part of a system that was there to revolutionize existence as mankind knew it. I lied down on my back and stared at the sky as it ebbed away. I felt it within me as much as it was on the outside of me. I felt one with the openness and its very nature to be abysmal. All of a sudden my existence started having a form and definition. The thin line between life and living was erased. The whole idea of birth and reality leaped beyond the words defining them and broke every barrier of empty concepts that were built by us. I could feel myself smile. The feelings bred every successive thought and the thought brought in a feeling. A beautiful balance between logic and emotion played on like a symphony in my mind, or maybe my heart, I am not quite sure where. I lay there for eternity. Either time stood still or it raced ahead so fast that I was, by now, only a reverie to nature.

“Lets go, I found the phone!” It took her touch to bring me back. “I left it at the tea stall, nice man that chai wala, he returned it promptly”. I smiled and said, ”Great, you ok now?” “Ya, but what happened to you? I left you waiting only for three minutes and your mood seems to have changed polarity. Guess I should have left you alone earlier huh?” “Rubbish! Those were the three longest minutes of my life”, I replied.

TRIPPING

2005-05-08T07:44:00.000-07:00

He was crossing the street with a mind that ambled far more then his feet did. He knew not why he was walking, to where was he heading or for what was he aiming. He was not even wondering why he was walking like a vagabond; probably it was a deliberate attempt because he wanted to see the beauty that lies in not thinking. The peace of mind is only a concept to most of us, maybe all of us and he wanted to experience this concept first hand. He smiled with a mild satisfaction of achieving the goal he set himself but the worry on his mind was the fact that it was still a “goal” to be “achieved” when he set out to relieve his mind of noise… of goals and their achievements. A paradox, some would say. He called it irony.

The sky hung over his head in the pale gray of his mood. The streetlights painted a dull picture on the empty tarmac, almost as yellow as an aging manuscript lying in a lonely museum cabin. There was a violent crisscross of lights and a riot of sounds all around him that faded as fast as they had made an appearance. He chose not to listen to them but only to hear them and let them pass. As he walked on he wished not to make sense of what he saw, and so he just saw everything without any relation. For a while it seemed like an attempt but then after a few minutes or hours or some such feeble measure of time, he realized it took no effort to detach himself from the goings on.

The people around him seemed to have a reason attached to every move they made. He saw the gamut of reactions that ran from a child crying for a balloon to the couple that stood on the sidewalk and screamed their lungs out at each other. The stranded bus that had suffered an engine failure, the people in the bus and the people outside the bus, they all had a motive. The ice cream seller, the pizza delivery boy, the man who dropped a coin and the lady who could not walk due to overweight, were all cribbing about misfortune… he couldn’t hear the thoughts in their minds but the faces said it all. He was still holding on to his smile, to feel the security of not being a part of this confusion that people like to call life. He proved to himself that he had a different definition of the concept. At one point he even considered it a heinous sin to conceptualize “life”.

Hands in his pockets, he trotted on and jumped pebbles and missed people walking at a pace faster then their legs could handle… only because they were pressed for time. Ipso facto, they chose to be subjugated by the mortal parameters developed to check and guide the self from running astray… the parameter of measuring ones activities in units.

The sea was never ending. The crowds shifted in a wide range of colors. The sky did the same as the evening grew to a close. The streetlights brightened the faces faded into sulky weariness. Some sensing a satisfaction of getting the day’s job done and most others worrying about the next thing they had to do. His quest for peace had broken the barrier of self-contentment and was now entering the zone of pity for the mortals who wasted away their energy to fulfill a never-ending demand, to satiate a desire that would grow on the feed. It was a strong moment of enlightenment, one packed with emotional “whys” which pricked his mind no end. The futility of life was the very essence of its rejuvenation. What a city-dweller on a normal day would call “wasting time” (evidently the act of sitting and doing nothing) was a way to understand that to direction life was never a priority as compared to “moving on”.

His euphoria was groveling in the lowly dust of reality by now. His thought of achieving peace within, simply by observing life was starting to look like a utopia, never to be reached. He glanced and stared on, gained pace and moved with more effort. His senses grew strangely sharper, his mind raced to answer the unanswerable, his body flung out in rage when he realized the quest was a dead end, and he felt his nerves shudder with fear and anxiety. He could not understand the depression that was mixed with the innocence of a child who does not understand something and asks daddy for an explanation, only, here there was no one he could ask. “Why study, what good is money, what is the use of a marriage, what do you mean when you say ‘happy life’”? These and innumerable questions of a similar degree bantered his roots, his foundations that were laid by his education and by his parents and teachers and he realized the insignificance of it all.

Sweat dripped in cold successions from his forehead and he began to run, as if trying to get as far away as he could from these questions. The zombies would not give up. The last scream of help would have been vocalized, if it were not for a strange vibration and a familiar one, which tickled his thighs.

His leg trembled and his hand reached into his pocket for answering the ringing cell phone. It was time for dinner… he had to return home… thank god.

Train the menace

2005-05-07T03:30:00.000-07:00

It’s quite a piss off being a part of this idiotic and abashing community at times. GUJJU, the proud businessman sans manners.

I was made to go to this function hosted by a rather decent family. I mean, the host was my father’s school friend and his daughter has been engaged so there was the much required show of the occasion (as it is in all communities I guess). That was normal. The party was humble with few family and few friends (now that is unusual for the khakhra-munching clan). This was a welcome thing. For once there was good food which again is a break from the usual extra ghee highly oily excuses for a paratha or nan or roti. But the dhokla lovers had to make their presence felt. I was irritating with the kind of noise the women made while the poor singer (who had an amazing voice) was trying really hard to come close to kishore kumars voice and he damn well did… but it all got drowned in the vacant conversations about the diamond necklace and the pretty black salwaar. Pissing off to say the least man. As if the shoes and lipstick oriented small talks weren’t enough, the snazzy cell phones went off in the middle of a wonderful mukesh number (chodhvi ka chaand ho). The disgust of the orchestra playing was far more evident than my loath that remained hidden under the plastic smile I wore while I spoke to the never-seen-before, never-want-to-see-again bunch of ladies that claim to have seen me when I was like 2 feet in height or something. Then the other obvious irritation that I dread made its manifestation as expected… “so son, you finished graduation right?” and I could (try as I may to miss it) see the gleaming iris of their eyes saying ‘when is the next party announcing your engagement young man?’. UGGGHHHH!!! Get off it. At one point, I nodded at the question and promptly asked the 45-something-trying-to-look-like-30-nothing aunty, “So has your daughter, hasn’t she?” and tried replicating the same glare in my eyes. What do you know? It bloody hell worked like a charm. A quick turn of the heel and a smooth get away to the pasta counter… yeah, that’s more like it, I thought. Not to mention the other irritants like noisy mouths, smashing forks and spoons, ultrasonic high decibel laughter and the absolutely pathetic ‘leave used plates anywhere you like’ syndrome. Shit! I wanted to run so hard, it’s not funny.

Not quite surprisingly Mickey called and asked me if I would like to catch a movie. 9.30 show. There is a God. This is the same guy who I had written about… the fellow who is always around to get me out of anywhere when I want out. Without me even starting to think about asking for help, he shows up with an escape route. So I sigh and say “yes, I would love to” in a tone that reminds me of the time I first got asked out by a girl for lunch. Quick goodbyes and off we were to the darkness of delight, the movie hall. Man, I tell you, the entire community should be given scholarships to join finishing school and a crash course on ethics and manners. There, I wish in hell again but I mean it… honestly.

Otherwise, all is good fun. Office is not exciting but quite interesting. Went for a day to Lonavala with a bunch of new friends and their respective siblings. Good fun there. I’ve always enjoyed making and maintaining new contacts. Especially if they are non-gujjus. I don’t have anything against those who share the same view about the clan as I do (and there are quite a few). So I enjoyed the hectic but fun day there. Pretty chilled out public so guess I’ll be around with them for quite some time now.

Oh! Almost forgot. Saurav Palit (engineering days’ friend and rhythm guitarist of our band) and assorted friends (of his) have decided to cut an album of our very own originals. Awesome! The way I see it, it’s the highest form of respect for music. Everybody listens to music, a lot of them listen to good, quality music, quite a few have a wonderful collection, even lesser than that are those who appreciate it and the absolutely few of them who dare make their own music for others to listen to. Now think about it, the kind of honor that I should be feeling in being a part of this handful. Our songs are turning out fine. The lyrics seem in place. The arrangement requires some tweaking. And recording has to be done. It’s unbelievably exciting. Frankly, I’m out of words to try and express how elated I am at this point. BREAK DUST makes a come back in style I suppose. Our bassy has exams so we miss him. But what the hell, BRAK DUST is back.

We have been redeemed it seems!

2005-04-30T18:22:00.000-07:00

So I get this very flattering invitation to write for a friend’s blog and I do…

Its great to do a little something to have people pat your back and say ‘hey, I’d like to have you do that for me too, will you?’ and then you give it a deep thought (like you had a very busy schedule) and then nod with the slight reluctance (as if you are making some time for this person in your life and doing a huge favour). And you get a much demanded ‘Thank You so much!’ for it also. The fun part is when you turn around and say very politely ‘Ah, it was nothing…’ Makes one feel quite proud for no apparent substantial reason. Its funny, human nature. Quite funny. Trying to fake a guess when someone asks you for directions at the bus stop and you are not sure. Trying to make a serious face to grab some attention from friends. Cracking real low, downright disgusting jokes when you are with a ‘blondie’ (which happens to be your friend’s friend and is quite hot)… lots of these. They all just show our liking to being ‘something else’ quite literally. And its fun on the hind side.

So back to original motive of the post… visit me also at http://khyatu.blogspot.com if you’re not bored of me already (though the saving grace is that khyati herself writes really well). This is of course subject to the host’s discretion of putting up my stuff. Thank you khyati and I shall also follow suit. You (khyati) are invited to write in something for me too… not as formality but for the fact that you really write well… love your thoughts.

loosing my Appreciation

2005-04-23T14:01:00.000-07:00

Today was quite a day of realization…. Actually just a very simple thing that came across as a huge change in the way we tend to miss out the nuances of other peoples’ lives.

My office (or should I say my father’s workplace where I have joined… we wrote about that earlier) is undergoing a renovation. It’s done now but when I sat there watching all the mayhem, I was observing the way these souls were toiling. The carpenters hammering away for 6-8 hours, non-stop, the painters stroking their brushes furiously and the polish-walas… well… polishing stuff. I was trying to imagine their thought process while they spoke nothing as they worked. What will the electrician be thinking while he plugs on the bulb? What’s on the glass-fitter’s mind? The kind of lives each one of them live as they chisel their masterpieces (of course on an individual level). Well, you can say I am bored and have nothing to do, which is the truth to an extent. But it’s a hair-raiser none the less. Think about it man, these guys would have been such intricate parts of all the brilliant structures that have been built through the course of history. What would stop them from boasting about their hand in building say the Adlabs multiplex or cross-roads or the huge mall at Malad and Ghatoper?

This one carpenter had just been casually chatting to the others about what a cumbersome job it was to make the shop hoardings for Big Bazaar. Just amazes me no end. The minutest details are so well taken care of. Just for a few minutes, put yourself in their shoes and think how you would feel if you were to pass I-nox and look up at the paint job that you have done. Listen to the comments about what a fabulous structure the new cross-roads is. And now, think of it as if you never cared. Never have you looked back at this design that you have watered with your sweat and hard work…. Unimaginably cruel I suppose. But that’s how it is for them. They obey the orders of their employers and do their bit, collect their wage and move on, never to turn around and appreciate their own ‘baby’. Im saying this because this is what has come from the horse’s mouth. I cant forget that unpleasant smile that this fellow threw as he stared at the empty paint can and said in a sheepish voice “kya farak girta hai saab, ho gaya, acchha laga to theek hai, bhagwaan ki daya.”

And here we are, trying to appreciate the ‘art’ of a bloody lunatic who has made random hand-prints on a white canvas… sold for a million bucks… crap! When oh when, dear lord, will we start realizing the true value of the ‘innocent artist’? Nevermind, hota hai, chalta hai, dunya hai.

A 6 a.m. walk down memory lane

2005-04-22T20:15:00.000-07:00

This is really weird as it feels right now, I am up since 6 for god alone knows whatever reason and its quite pissing off to not be able to sleep again. I don’t know what to do and I decide to check my bloody mail for Christ sakes.

This actually reminds me of those weird days in Nerul where I would either sleep at these wee hours (6 is a wee hour for all practical purposes ok so don’t give me that funny look!) or wake up to study the bare minimal that I would. Funny times they were indeed. Journal work, morning cuppa of chai, the PL tube table lamp, anything-but-cozy bed… oh and the chilling morning breeze of December. If I look back at it now, I never appreciated the beauty of being there with 3 other sorry souls more than I do now. All I remember is waking up with this question lodged in the head like it were a part of the whisky consumed the night before – “why am I stuck in this shit-hole doing what I don’t wanna do?” then there was no answer.

So the typical day at college would begin with the slow thud of steps towards the pot. A shout out for chai to the good old Raju and off we were to the table. The next thing you see when you lift your eyes up from the morning daily, is this lanky (and I mean nothing more than 18 inches in diameter!) figure walk in with a shawl mummifying him. Shoulder-length hair; making him look like a mop used at the airports. “AAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!” he would say in a volume enough to put the rooster out of business, as he sits down on the sofa (the classiest piece of furniture we possessed). A very interesting question would then come up from this thin masterpiece… “You know what?.....” and then there was silence. After the long gaze at the poster on the wall, he would continue, “it’s too cold to go to college today”.

By then another figure would immerge from the room with the sound of dragging slippers. His voice, a deep sleepy hiss, like it were scraping his throat as he spoke with utmost disgust… “What time lecture?”. “Eight thirty”, I would reply digging my fork into the double-omelet I got the man to prepare. Yes, I would be caught eating quite often through the day; Almost as often as this man cribbing about losing his PC chuddy. This is when soul number three (affectionately addressed as the 3/5thling) would make an entrance. One hand dug in his pajama pocket and a walk which would seem to show as if this fellow hadn’t slept at all. He would walk up to either of us and the first words out of his mouth would be “taari paase taitris chhe?!” or some such comment that you wouldn’t be able to relate to if you tried for three lives back-to-back. After a point, one would get used to it and let it pass. Quaint table talks and the respective tea, bournvita and coffee would be consumed with corn flakes and/or bread slices with butter. Once in a while, it would be ‘2 eggs, sunny side up’ and an occasional Maggi (there I go with the food again, but I must say, it was one of the few promising things) would be the morning breakfast before each headed to their rooms to get dressed for visiting the Alma Mater but once again.

Each day from here on would be a different one but don’t want to go there anymore. May be I can describe it as ‘hell with happy memories’. Somehow, I really don’t mind reliving them. Ya, I don’t.

Here I am, on the road again,
Here I am, up on the stage,
Here I go, play the star again,
Here I go, turn the page.

(Hale Metallica!!)

Wokie dokie, 8:30 now. Need to get back to mundane life. Guess I’ll make some more notes about the fabulous set of experiences at Parimal Appartments more often. I’m sure I’ll have inputs coming in from the incumbents too, wont I?

scewd but true... it flows from nowhere to anywhere

2005-04-21T02:32:00.000-07:00

its quite pissing off when you make a blog and no one reads it...

anyway, nothing too great to report (maybe just to myself) but the fact that i am working really hard to keep myself occupied... constant travelling to the suburbs of this wonderful city, taking the best transport ever administered in the country (the local train) and getting fried in the Mumbai summer attack is not really the best idea for spending time but well thats the best i can think of so far. that is the only way i can get out of the house actually. office is one more get away but sitting in one place is not very adventurous i would say. the godown has got its own certificate of being the biggest tandoor of its time so i avoid that completely. still work becons and work has to be done.

so there is dadr (*the shop) matunga (the godown) pedder road (the home) and Santa cruz (umm... the home... part 2). shutteling between these is good fun and a training session in travelling on intuition without the need to actually think where im going. seriously, it is so mechanical with the trains that i could commute to these places blindfolded. its good fun meeting up with my friends in cruz and my mentor, friend, philosopher, guide and critic mrs.misra. always around to give me some work and keep my otherwise warped head in good use. i have never been understood by a non family member in such short time lapse, ever. someone who comes out of no where and becomes an integral part of your life. who makes you think differently and gets you to change your perspective about yourself. mr. ghalla is another one of those head-stron unforgiving creatures who still has the odasity and the nerve to stick around with me for almost 7 years now without a chooch.

so this time i decided to get these two absolutely powerful influences to meet each other. both had heard about the other to the point where they could sware that the next statement i would make would be coming from the respective counterpart. and as i had imagined... they hit it off quite well too. god knows but i enjoyed the fact that i was left out of the conversation. every once in a while i would come in with an expressive 'hummm...' and shut up again. aahhh! i could go on about it for hours but what the heck, im too bored to describe the whole 3 odd hours in detail... not a woman u know...(with all due respect to the entire clan of the said armless millitants).

since i am making note of people who have influenced me, another name that comes to my mind is my very dear chinese friend...Valentino aka van. love the guy for his smile-through your troubles-and-they'll-pass-you-by-in-disgust attitude. he has always been this unasking buddy. then there is the very emotional but still absolute fun guy... mukesh bihani aka mickey. a wonderful man with the most charming personalities i've ever come across. i cant resist but to make note of this rather facinating fact; everytime i have wanted someone to talk to or get out of the house just to quit feeling clostrophobic, i wouldnt even have to make a call... i have just made a wish and this man's name flashes on my cell phone screen asking me if i am free and want to go for a ride. absolutely amazing. Not to forget his ability to chance upon the most gorgious women to have him fall in love with. Sonia is an absolute cause of anyones diabetese. an inspiration to think possitive and never give in... hats off babe. Ankit Patel: the man of a thousand opinions. a mentor as far as acads and fun are concerned. methinks this very qualified and i-will-die-with-a-book-in-my-hand kind of a guy has the most remarkable sense of humility and consideration. practicable and sensitive... again, what a man.

there are so many of these people who have influenced my life and as cliched as this blog might read, i still want to thank each one of the individuals who have been an inspiration to me. the only reason why i mentioned these names is because they are the ones i've been hanging out with for the past month or so. the others have just been there on the phone and the net and so on. not that i value them any lesser but... aaahhh its too complicated. i love you all... always will.

back to original crib about people not reading my blog... screw it, i think this is good enough to keep reminding me of what a lucky lucky individual i am... thank you lord.

the sage speaketh once again!

2005-04-17T12:15:00.000-07:00

Sundays are becoming quite spiritual for me. Maybe not in the real sense of the word… I mean the perceived sense of the word at least. There was another session of good old “satsang” today too.

I got to learn something more about the being of a ‘sadguru’. It is quite essential and sometimes enormously helpful to have the ‘right’ teacher. By right I mean a mentor who you can connect to. It is only faith in the actions of his words that one learns to imbibe and apply. It could be anything, business, service, spirituality or even something as simple as music. We tend to have our focus quite divided amongst the things we want to do and those that are expected to be done. In that case you wouldn’t want to call it ‘focus’ but you know what I mean. The essential part is not ‘defocusing’ yourself from the distractions (that’s quite easily preached and hardly practiced) but the fact that you can ‘refocus’ your energies in that one mentor that you choose. That makes it simpler to set goals and more importantly achieve them.

I remember the time when I wanted to learn how to play a guitar but I never could. The academics always eclipsed the extra-curricula and as a result I never could take any formal training. Then came along this friend who knew his bare little about guitaring and that’s where I understood the concept of chords. Then I moved on to watch him play and then picked up a couple of chords from his progressions until I reached a level he had achieved. Now I had to move on and before I could regret the fact that I would have to wait for someone to take me further, I found another friend who had a lot of knowledge about chord-note agreements. This is where I learnt the fundas of rhythm setting and tuning. I exhausted his share of teachings just by copying him and practicing my own variations. I grew and grew till the point where I started figuring out my own tunes and understanding music in a more panoramic perception (if you will). The point is, I imitated each of my gurus without a doubt in his ability. All I could see was his dedication to his guitar and my responsibility towards my aim. I was ‘focused’ if I may say so. And this is applicable almost everywhere. Each time you are in the midst of a situation (not necessarily a very grave one) you have to picture this mentor dealing with it. Compare notes. See how you can imitate his action and with a complete faith in your action, face it… there is barely any chance of you going wrong. So there we have it… gyan for the day. But seriously, this kind of an approach is the most practicable approach to life in general. It leaves a lens behind that allows you to broaden the sight of your so-far-perceived horizons. Works for me at least…

Everyone must blink their eyes every once in a while to prevent tears from coming in…. think about it.

LIKEwise

2005-04-15T03:12:00.000-07:00

So, after a few days of complete agony, im writing in complete health and happiness… yo!

There is a beautiful song that really moves me. It reminds me about all the little things that we tend to miss out while we sail through life. And we crib and cry and grunt about those things that make us sad… not only the fact that we don’t like something (that’s never responsible) but the fact that we really crib about them which makes us upset, depressed and sometimes it puts us through tests of mind numbing games that we play with ourselves. Tell me, how often do we make a simple, careless statement about, say, a puddle of water in the middle of our driveway? When is the last time you said, “Damn I don’t like those spicy chutneys” with a smile on your face? All we do is cry about the boss and the girlfriend and the wife being a bitch (all at the same time, hehe). So just listen to this song if you haven’t already and the lyrics are all here.

"But I Do Love You"

I don't like to be alone at night
And I don't like to hear I'm wrong when I'm right
And I don't like to have the rain on my shoes
But I do love you But I do love you

I don't like to see the sky painted grey
And I don't like when, nothin's goin my way
And I don't like to be the one with the blues
But I do love you
But I do love you

I love everything about the way your lovin me
The way you lay your head upon my shoulder when you sleep
And I love to kiss you in the rain
I love everything you do, oh I do-o

And I don't like to turn the radio on
Just to find I missed my favorite song
And I don't like to be the last with the news
But I do love you
But I do love you

I love everything about the way your lovin me
The way you lay your head upon my shoulder when you sleep
And I love to kiss you in the rain
I love everything you do, oh I do

And I don't like to be alone at night
And I don't like to hear I'm wrong when I'm right
And I don't like to have the rain on my shoes
But I do love you
But I do love you
But I do love you
But I do love you

Official!

2005-04-09T12:08:00.000-07:00

When I opened my eyes this morning I knew that there is something that is waiting to happen today. Well, the premonition was quite accurate.

I had my morning cuppa of chai and was just planning the day as I read the papers and mumma darling comes up to me to ask what may I be doing today. As usual my answer was “I don’t know but I have this project on my hand and that’s it… nothing planned… why?”. So mom sits down, picks up her paper and staring at the headlines just passes a statement saying “Dad wanted to take you to the office today”. I wondered why the hell would he want me to go to the office with him. And if at all, why is mom telling me this. But mom continues her incomplete statement by saying “today is Gudi Padva and is an ospicious day so he might want to do some ritualistic pooja or something”. The statement put me at ease and I continued reading my paper with some sense of relief. I was thinking about the last time I went to office, as in for some work, not just as “the boss’s kid”. Not quite surprising…. I couldn’t remember when.

Then papa came along, sat in his chair in my room and switched his P.C. on, which is in MY room. Then he called me in and said, “get dressed, we’re going to the office from today”. Little did I notice the “from today” bit and by the time it hit me, he finished with a very assertive “you have to go everyday with uncle in the morning and come back with him at night”. Now this was unasked for man…. I’m not a businessman. I know that all the generations that preceded me have all been “true blood Vanias” but I just was a huge mistake. Dad knows that I am more inclined towards a creative job profile rather than any kind of finance or marketing or some such thing… but he is of the belief that no matter what I do, I’ll still return to being the “banya”.

So anyway, I went along with him and reached the office at 11.30ish. The office is under renovation so it was all quite broken. But the table and the phones on the table, the sample books, the cash register, and the chai cups lying around… all took me back to the typicality of offices. Dad asked me to sit on his chair and I was feeling the guilt of not being worthy of that chair. I could almost see his ploy quite clearly but it just was not working. I respected it like the honor and responsibility of being able to run a small kingdom but it was not my prerogative to accept it or decline it. it was almost an order. I took the seat and uncle and dad walked out leaving the office to me. “Attend the calls, we’ll be back in a while”. And almost like a plot, the phone rings… “do you have XYZ samples of ABC type and code 1234” came the voice on the other side… “the manager is not in, who is calling… ok… ok… just a sec…” and I played on. I picked up the file strategically placed in front of me and scanned through it… no mention of the XYZ and type ABC… so I picked the receiver and said, “sorry, we don’t deal in the XYZ.” After a few minutes they walked in and I narrated the incidence to them with absolutely notable signs of deliberated disinterest. Pop was all impressed with the story and said, “good, we don’t like that man too much anyway.” And uncle gave an approving smile.

Somewhere in the whole time I was there, I felt needed more than me compulsorily being there. i thought of taking up the family business only as a contingent plan. For a while I thought all my aspirations of being an ad guru were in schism. I could picture myself in that chair, day in and day out, breaking my head over what delivery and when and how much to charge and what to sell…. Not a pretty picture I tell you. But then I pushed myself into believing that they would never force me to do something I don’t want to do… they never have. We went home for lunch and mom sat me down and reconfirmed my faith in the fact that I can still do what I want.

It was a day of never-before-done introspection. For once I felt serious about choosing the right career and really working towards doing what I want to do. But on the brighter side, I saw the contingent plan was not as bad as I thought it would be… I have a choice and there always will be. So it is only about making the right choice more than hunting for options. Yup! That’s the thought for the the day, maybe the weak or even more.

just let it out!

2005-04-03T00:42:00.000-08:00

women have a bad habbit.

i mean all their habbits are kind of harmful but particularly this habbit of being all vague.

they think we cant understand whats cooking in their minds when they act all funny and moody and "i dont know but im in a weird frame of mind today" kind of attitude. anything to smoothly brush us off eh? its curtious though that they are actually concerned about our feelings once in a while so they dont want to be all direct. but whats the point killing the cat with more curiousity than it can handle. every second statement is diliberately made to contradict the previos one. so one decides to be patient and wait for things to simmer down... but to ones surprise, its boiling at room temperature... "you are not concerned about me.... just because i dont talk, you cant ask how i am, what is on my mind... u dont care... booo hooo". sorry honey but i wud do that if i were assured of a stright frank answer telling me your problem.

oh i cud almost start another edition of "men are from mars and women are from venus" and probably finish the next 15 in one sitting but theres no point... just none.

theek hai... they'll always be that wayand we'll always be the way they want us to be so that settles it. i remembered a quote a frnd read out to me one day - "the best a man can do after winning an argument with his wife is say sorry..." C'est la vive

feel good factor

2005-04-02T08:44:00.000-08:00

After a long time, I went for a “satsang”… a kind of an intelectual discussion on the writeings of a very accomplished (spiritually that is) personality, Shrimad Rajchandra.

I used to often have these discussions on the way “dharma” is with my grand mother aand after she passed away in June last year, I have barely made an effort to go back to it. I sort of came to know a lot of facts about a life in genral… how we spend most of our time and efforts in “sanculp – viculp” which is, to do or not to do. To accept or not to accept. To take or not to take. We never let things be the way they are. We want all of it to be the way we want it to be. Our POV is all that matters.

Have you noticed, whenever you see a new product that steals your attention, you start to compare it with all you have. The comparison is so subtle and quick that you never realize how much calculation you do when you just finish saying the word “wow” or “yuk” (depending on what your result of comparing shows). For instance, lets say you have a cell phone which is a coloured screen and has a jazzy look. Now you chance upon a cell phone with a one mega pixel camera and integrated flash with a 30 minute video recording capacity… whats your natural reaction going to be? Obviously it’s a “wow” but the minute you see a monochromatic white light single lcd display with no frills… “yuk” is your face reaction. Now just imagine how many such comparisons will you be making in a day, every minute, every second of the day. Cant imagine can you?

It was so nice to know that we are going wrong and the fact that there is a right way. A way that is so much more enlightened by the people who have paved it. it’s a shame that we get blinded by brightness and then just stick to our dim dark regular route. Its almost cemented by the materialistic man who treds every inch of this path every second of his life. and the bright, bumpy road is quite avoidable in our regard.

So today I have felt good about finding a new fact about a thought process that is seductively wrong. I don’t know what I am going to follow but at least I have a choice now… like many of you who are reading this…

voices

2005-04-01T11:05:00.000-08:00

its strange that sometimes there is a little voice that tells you where things are going RIGHT! and how its about time something went wrong. seriously baffling but it happens to me and quite often too. thought i'll make note of it this time around.

i dont want to get into the details but the gist of it is that i was having a strong introspective session and i was feeling odd that life in all respects was quite smoothe. infact, knowing me, it was too smoothe to be real. i mean parents were more responsive and my friends were respecting me and wanting to stick around with me so much more... the reson jolly well could be me bieng caught up with exams for a while but still its a very pleasant feeling... all in all i was just about enjoying every bit of it.

then came today... i wake up all grumpy and have a rather lousy morning. nothing much to report but it all just balanced out. had small bikerings and some failed plans. as a matter of fact i just decided to stay out of the way of people and not talk or call anyone dillibrately. seclusion. my comp and i having our little romance. evening brought in some guests and i scrammed out of home just to avoid weird questions. decided to bring in moms birthday so went and got her pastries and pies. teamed up with pop and woke her up at 12... this was the high point of the day... imagine waking up your tired mom from a deep slumber is "the high point"... how rude!

but what the heck. alls well that ends in a well! sleeping now. shall finally switch this poor machine off. hope its better tomorrow.

oh! just heard the pope passed away... God rest his soul. and the souls of all those who have died in the quake and the crash and the suicide cases... may the be at peace. amen

faux pas

2005-03-27T10:33:00.000-08:00

Why is it that most of the time we tend to give away too much of our mental space to a single person/thing?

There are just weird moments of undiscovered passions that we tend to overlook... may be we want to call them a passion, may be they are just obnoxious selfish needs that we want to pass of as a sad excuse for passion.

I have done this, time and again; given reality but little preference over my fantasy and the slightest hint of it coming true. I have also mistaken my ego to be the “love for my passion” and pursued it till I almost kill myself with the pressure of not getting what I want. This might sound all familiar to all of you reading this, because we all know it happens… but the real question is how you deal with an issue so closely woven into your emotional system. At the end you are the only one who can help yourself out of the vortex or just flow through as if it doesn’t matter to you…

Well I have no answer…. The only reason I’m writing this is because I am in the process of committing this mistake even as I write… weird but true.

all i am is cold

2004-12-10T04:58:00.000-08:00

All I am is cold.
Like hell that froze over,
A drop of water that failed to flow,
A sigh so deep, it could not go lower,
A breeze too still to blow,
So all I am is stiff pain,
Cause all I am is cold.
All I am is needle rain,
All I am is cold.

I let out a shout in freedom,
I left the world to weep,
A life left alone in schism,
Left beneath the ice I could not sleep,
So all I became is stiff pain,
Cause all I am is cold,
All I am is needle rain,
All I am is cold.

I craved to see the sunrise,
But the clouds, too thick and dark,
I want to see the smile through the cries,
But the sorrow, too deep and stark,
So all it makes me is stiff pain,
Cause all I am is cold,
All I am is needle rain,
All I am is cold.

No warmth,
No sun,
No fire,
I run,
I hide,
I fight,
I toil,
I boil,
I whisper,
I shiver,
I cry,
I die.

But all I am is stiff pain,
Cause all I am is cold,
All I am is needle rain,
All I am is cold.