contrapunto

In anonymity

2011-10-16T15:16:00.000-07:00

He just likes to paint a picture

one that never has two sides

He's not known in books of History

of men who fought for people and rights

Few know him more than just his name

for he leads a solitary life

He knows not how to talk of freedom

and things which could ignite a light

He just likes to paint a picture

one that never has two sides

He cannot make people laugh
nor can he forge their tears

He seldom laughs, he never whines

but knows that he rejoices inside

He knows not how to sing a melody

or songs which could turn to anthems

He just likes to paint a picture

one that never has two sides

He'd never want a swarm of ties

that'd make him flutter in futility

He couldn't ever shake the world

or make it the better place to live

Yet I see him live for greatness

for I know him more than his name

We know not how to talk of it

and things which could inspire a write

We just like to paint a picture

one that never has two sides.

Look Pal, the Bill sucks.

2011-08-25T13:55:00.000-07:00

All this time, I have opted to concede to my naivety and to sit back and muse over the current Indian tamasha, for I only found myself between a rock and a hard place, in the context of the Anna Hazare movement. I still do not find myself taking a stance as far as the intricacies of the Jan Lokpal Bill are concerned; for a simple reason that I do not consider myself breastfed on such cerebral superiority, that I should dispute a topic of legal domains, outside the realms of my interest or expertise. And which is why, rather than committing myself to buffoonery and stepping out, crying "I am Anna", I have tried to keep mum.

And after reading this article published in The Hindu by one Prabhat Patnaik, I only intend to go on with my oral fast. Frankly, the eloquence with which this article has been put to words voices most of what I had inside me, in wordless sentences; which surfaced once in a while in the form of a deja vu, or a distant thought in the back of my mind. And now, having read this article, I do not think I could add anything to raise the bar of the national debate even a trifle.

So, without feeling any guilt of sorts, I'm going to continue staying out from the rains, and the out pour; for now I know, why as an Indian John Doe, or Mr. Sharma if you please, I should not support the Jan Lokpal Bill. Not to mention, I love India as much as you do.

Also refer to: I'd rather not be Anna by Arundhati Roy.

nomenclature yet?

2011-08-19T12:40:00.000-07:00

I've been sleeping a lot of lately and it might have culminated into a century, which is why I ask this. Have we, Indians, reached that stage of development where we can shrug at the basic amenities and start delving into the aesthetics? Have we reached that stage where a state ought to be named Paschimbanga (read: Poschimbonga) for its relevance to the culture it embodies than worry about the pathetic standard of life there? Or a phase in our lives where statues of a chief minister could be erected and venerated than ruminate over the illiteracy and rural-ism in that state? Forgive me, if I am wrong, for I really seem to have overslept a century or two. And I'll probably talk about an Indian dream that I knew of when I was last awake.

That was an India that had lived 64 independent years. Freedom was still more than just Independence. It was a state of mind. They said India was a growing superpower, the fastest growing economy, an IT giant, and such epithets which did appear incredible. Yes, the problems were enormous too. Of ignorance and corruption, social evils and vices, of crimes against women and infanticides, of reservations and the-joy-of-being-born-a-backward biases. But at least this was what we talked about! There was this Anna Hazare in those days who took up a cause and fought a Freed-aissance, as they said. Though I never went to those youth rallies for the sake of my own convictions, I did feel happy that this country acted like a free nation, and people were neither forced to join those rallies nor were their voices plugged. India was not a golden bird anymore but it definitely was a free bird that had caught the eyes of many with its plumage.

In those years, changing Bangalore to Bengaluru, or Bhopal to Bhojpal was immaterial. For the need of that hour was development, in sports, education, nutrition et al. We adored Shakespeare for his What-lies-in-a-name? [a lie!] quote. We had gotten up from a mighty Blighty assault and were running fast and furious. Kolkata? or Calcutta? Who cared? Eradicating communism from the state was a bigger achievement and getting West Bengal back on the road to development, the immediate goal. A statue? Of some dimwit Maya-wit? Oh for Christ's, there were roads to be tarred and lights to be erected - which was the real beautification of a city, than some ugly Mayawati-pillar - before one could move on to ostentation. There were Rajas to be sentenced and Kasabs to be hanged. There were Vadras to be identified who were eating Sonia-filtered money of the country. Who had time for renames and statues? We didn't! We hadn't reached that stage where we could opt between maroon and magenta for we still had a long way to go before we could paint the town red. We were living an Indian dream where every child could wake up to a day full of possibilities and contemplations. Where dreams found grounds if not sustenance. Where the road to development had potholes aplenty but there were people fighting for it, freely, if not successfully. And where the only name that mattered was India, which kept us together, inseparably.

ਮੇਰਾ ਪਿੰਡ

2011-08-13T12:44:00.000-07:00

At the entrance sat a model of a Sikh, clad in traditional robes, coloured and glossy. The place had everything Punjabi; the waiters wore kurta-pajamas and had a turban on their manes, the music was forever Gurdaas Mann, the glasses of water were steel-made and heavy, there was a dummy of a huge tree with kites entangled on its branches. Some traditional Punjabi artifacts adorned the shelves. The room was coloured heavily yet somehow, it did not lose its grace and nobility while portraying the essence of Punjab, colour. The service was warm and congenial. The glass of lassi did lack the original flavour but with a different breed of cows in Madhya Pradesh, one should not be too finicky. The food was what eventually took me back home, miles away, to my place, mera pind, Punjab. As a part of the Diaspora, this was the closest one could get to our Desi food. With every nibble, I could see myself flying kites back home, eating food that is more than just delectable, savouring those crisp, snoozy glasses of lassi that my mother makes so deftly and above all, the scent of Punjab, the soil that evokes an ode from my heart, every time I think about its majesty and crave for its love. What could have been another-casual-Saturday-dinner turned out to be a nostalgic reminiscence, at Pind Balluchi.

to own the buck

2011-08-06T03:38:00.000-07:00

Well, you could say that on the 4th of August, at the stroke of 4 in the afternoon, when the sluggish boys' hostel slept, I made a tryst with destiny. You could also say that Headstrong is a woman, because she gave me a job! You could but not stop talking and with poetic justifications tell, how it feels to have a job under your belt after 21 years of life; each year of varying durations. Some long and perpetual, others whizzing past you in the blink of an eye. Some as mute as to hear a mouse fart, while others as loud as to, well, not hear that mouse fart. You could go on and on (and not let me hear that mouse fart this year again) but the fact remains; the first job is special. It evokes that gush of masculinity that makes you feel more man than ever. It gives you an idea of what money shall look like when it's your earned money. (Of course, there's still a year before I begin, but poetry is time travel, oft)

But more than anything, the first job is a harbinger of change. A new avatar of life that heralds the end of past. A new beginning. A change. One grows and outgrows oneself to reach a stage like this. It promises to be difficult, filled with bad-hair days, with rare field days, but it would still be what you'd want from life; nomadic, struggling like the Old man in that sea, and at the end of the day, one, that makes you sleep so numb that you forget to dream, or you forget the dream; that which I like to call a near-death experience; when even your brain wants to cut itself some slack at night and wake up to to a new life, everyday.

True, life might be a lot less poetic than this, once I get down to work. But everyday, somewhere in the sub-conscious, after a day's toil, I would know -and I would try to hold my horses on it- that my life makes me, if not the rest, happy. And many many years hence, when I hang my boots, and I chew the cud over what my life has seen, I'd smile at the irony, for my time at work shall appear the most poetic, like a songbird that sings.

I ruminate over the prospects of opening my own publishing house one day, but with the web-prophecies knelling the death of print media in the hands of e-crap, I now contemplate opening my own beer-shack on a beach someday, when I hang my boots and work barefoot on sand. And since I had my first job at 21, I would know, when Death comes, that I deserved every inch of it.

The following lines are the closest to a song, as to how I feel in the final year of college, with a job in hand:

Wind of Change - By Scorpions

an omelette of unbroken eggs

2011-07-31T00:46:00.000-07:00

Times have changed. A stitch in time now saves five. Researches entail cutting it down to three by 2015 and by 2025, a stitch in time might in fact lend you nine. All that glitters might turn gold: Alchemists propose to belittle the proverbial sophistry soon. A picture might actually paint a thousand words: Optical Illusionists are confident of a breakthrough after the recent 3-D surge. They believe that Mona Lisa might smile just the way you think, subconsciously, she should. To hell with Vinci et al. Rolling stones now gather moss and Mick Jagger could thus manage seven more genetically engineered adult babies. In doing so, he shall reap what he hath not sowed. And since you need not sow anymore to reap, Rome can in fact get built in a day. So when in Rome, do what the Indians do: pee in the open. For that shall never change in the eons to come. Gospel Truth.

the geographical reflex

2011-07-27T10:54:00.000-07:00

The US reflex:

Wife: I'm pregnant.
Husband: Oh great! Who's the father?

The Indian reflex:

Wife: I'm pregnant.
Husband: It better be a boy or I'll kill you.

The Chinese reflex:

Wife: I'm pregnant.
Husband: You kidding me? One more plops out of your tunnel and we're dead.

The Aussie reflex:

Wife: I'm pregnant.
Husband: It better run in the Olympics, mate!

The Arab reflex:

Wife #15: I'm pregnant.
Husband: Ya habibi!, You're one of my wives? Third Wednesday?

The Iraqi reflex:

Wife: I'm pregnant.
Husband: Of course! My missiles never miss targets!

The African reflex:

Midwife: I'm pregnant.
Husband: What am I going to tell my wife?
Midwife: That she be the mid one this time.

The Somali reflex:

Wife: I'm pregnant.
Husband(an hour later): Here! I got a little eye-patch for my sonny Jack.

The Italian reflex:

Wife: Tony! I'm pregnant.
Husband: Oh! So pastas don't work as condoms, eh?

The English reflex:

Wife: I'm pregnant.
Husband: And Lady, I believe I'm the human whose essence you've stolen?

pulp humour

2011-06-24T09:44:00.000-07:00

What an !dea 3G:

Abhi Bachchan on knocking up wife
said the irony was no ordinary rife,
For only when Idea
had 3G in India
could his sperm speed past her bee-hive.

----X----X----

A Misguided Missile:

Boy (exasperated): What am I, a shoe?
Girl (offended): You know, (feigns a tear) Marilyn Monroe once said, "I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best." *scoffs*
Boy (pauses): Are you Marilyn Monroe?

Halfing chances

2011-06-22T14:22:00.000-07:00

I dreamt the earth was flat as a coin
with a side up and a side down
the repelling poles were made to join
and people were up, people were down

The earth was a place, a tad too simple
the uppers blissfully hit the hay
the lowers always kicked the bucket
fell off from earth, away, away

Things were either black or white
nothing was in shades of gray
puns could never fog the language
metaphors seldom won the play

The sun shone and burned the top
and uppers tanned themselves in day
lowers froze in ice galore
the deads had to die this way

The earth might have been a tad too simple
and prejudice, its price to pay
but what went around still came around
as earth tossed like a coin in fray

Only this season, the heads had lost
and tails now held the swaying forte
the uppers fell down, broke their crown
and lowers kissed the sunny fay

This earth was a place, now a tad too fair
where heads and tails had equal say
when happiness crossed hedonistic realms
a season change went underway

If not for Columbus and his voyage
my dream could have had found a sleigh
A flat earth and rounded coins
might have had made this untread way

to soar beyond sores

2011-06-14T14:34:00.000-07:00

If it were about unspoken lines
or unpronounced vibes and virgin words.
If these were to flee, a place untouched
as a virgin's honeypot, patrolled
by a man's aversion to speak free
from a soul made to wrest in peace.
If this soul were to escape someday
the chains and chides of an aura
so tyrannical, that it flew without wings
and danced without a motif.
If but his soul could be just free
and not free to all, for chaos
was never finer than tyranny, and
freedom for grabs is freedom denied.
If love was then neither unrequited
nor was it a public display,
I'd say life is beautiful...

Maria Perello and Wimbledon Redemption...

2011-06-06T12:51:00.000-07:00

The good thing about Rolland Garros is that Wimbledon is just around the corner. New hopes, great expectations and Roger Federer.

Catching this man's genius will always be will-o'-the-wisp and I continue to find a foothold to make myself believe that he is to win more grand slams and that he can't get over, just yet. Victories and defeats shall always come knotted, but if there is euphoria in victories, there is grace in Roger's defeats.

When I hear people denouncing him, nit-picking him and writing him off because he faltered in the Final of a grand slam, I see how Irish people can be. But then, that's how it is. The crowd was never intelligent; it was always fickle, always brooding and seldom radical or receptive. This is the same crowd that goes bonkers over a movie as stupid as Dabangg or a number as frivolous as Sheila. They are ludicrous enough to foresee a baba as the Prime Minister of the country (that would be like retrograde motion), a country still trapped in superstitions and which still believes that the position of your stars ascertains your destiny. They'll eschew lauding the efforts of a man turning 30, playing for more than a decade, in a sport that tests your stamina and physical strength to the hilt; they're blind to acknowledging the spirit of a champion who's still far from over. Rome or India, Shakespeare was right about the fickle minded mob.

But I am sure Roger understands that life was never about convincing people; life is too short for that. And then, Wimbledon is just around the corner...

Innuendos:

What would you call the Royal Box at the French Open? VIP Frenchie!
Who has the best job on a tennis court? Maria Sharapova's physio. Ouch!
Who is hotter than Maria Sharapova? Maria Francisca Perello.
Then why don't you want to be her physio? Sigh! She does not play. She is Nadal's cupcake.
Who is better than Li Na, winner of women's title? V.S. Naipaul. He thinks no woman is his equal. Prick!

et tu, brute?

2011-05-10T18:17:00.000-07:00

One by one, they were all gone. Just like that. One victim a day, one stab at a time. But not until the train had moved and they had moved with her -with the current, the flow of river, the trends of the world- did I realize that they were never to come back. Even the final clarion of the engine had us unfazed. We still laughed, lived and loved like we've always done. Our gatherings have always been a mockumentary you know, one that burlesques our vanities. We're like doctors(mockters?) in search of that one weak vein to guffaw at. Any loose character in that gathering and he is to be slaughtered with jibes. But we've never put an end to this mud-slinging, for it makes us happy. You might call us swines rolling in the mud; chances are, that we might hurl a cake of dirt at you humans too. We like it this way, except that we call it Men playing rugby and not some swine-play. But only until the train had her anchors in our mud. Once she moved and took our pig away with her -to be put in another sty, another sky, a greener pasture- we turned silent and listened to her beats. This was the music of time, Destiny's concerto. The beats were turning heavy, the wheels now galloped, walloped our souls and at that time, hiding the tears beneath a cloak of smile and the stoicism of Man was tough.

For in the dew of little things, the heart finds its morning and is refreshed - Khalil Gibran

Time, the tide, and the wait for none

2011-05-02T05:48:00.000-07:00

And as I wrote down the date on the answer sheet, I was cocksure it's 2nd May. What month is May? I counted May on my knuckles. It was month number five. [scoffs]. I felt a little overwhelmed. Have we completed a third of the year 2011 already? Where have I been messing around? And then things kind of unfurled. The World Cup proved to be the time machine this year. Indians whizzed past these four months of 2011 without batting an eyelid and without bowling a loosener. And then the IPL? Before I could get any more crickety or grasshoppery, I was wriggled off my mid-exam slumber by another bouncer; I am writing the last exam of my III year today. I am entering the final year of grad! Where have I been messing around? Nothing unfurled this time though.

My state of mind is best described by the movie, Shawshank Redemption, one of the best I chewed on amongst the many I pop corned on in these three years. The movie talked about a gamut of soul stirring revelations but the final conversation between Red (Morgan Freeman) and the jury that grants parole to prisoners, dazzled me. After serving 40 years in the Shawshank prison, when asked if he was sorry for what he did back then, Red replies,
"Not a day goes by that I don't feel regret. Not because I'm in here or because you think I should. I look back at the way I was then. A young, stupid kid who committed that terrible crime. I wanna talk to that kid. I wanna talk some sense into him. Let him know the way things are. But I can't. That kid is long gone; this old man here is all that's left. I gotta live with that."
For Red and for many more prisoners who have spent a lifetime in prison, things haven't changed a bit cut their greys and wrinkles. For them, it's still hard to imagine that automobiles are no more countable entities and that a carriage belongs to a bygone era. They're a coterie who has seen nothing much to life than a cell and an infirmary. And after 40 years, they wonder what time took away from them and what it left for them, eventually; if at all time ever left something to somebody.

And as I finished my last exam of my III year of grad, Osama bin Laden I heard was killed. Quite a déjà vu that name brings. September 11. What month is September? You never count that month on your knuckles. It's a popular 9. A decade has died since that Kafkaesque day. A decade! Time! You just don't know what feathers it's made of. You just can't seem to catch hold of it. For not even a moment. As Red remarked, "Some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright!" The so called justice that Obama says his government has brought to people, seems quite a hoodwink. 10 years to kill a man by a country that asserts itself to be more powerful than Viagra? Time and the fickle mindedness of people does be-fool us all again when we politicize the solace people might have gotten today and call it justice. But then it's fine! Obama's got to grab every little fish in the pond and pretend its majesty by hooking it with an anchor, if he wants a second term.

The Eagles wrote a song on September 11, 2001. The Eagles have always had eternal feathers. Nothing could fade away their music. Not even Time. The chorus runs:

There's a hole in the world tonight.
There's a Cloud of fear and sorrow.
There's a hole in the world tonight.
Don't let there be a hole in the world tomorrow.

How to Cheat in an Examination!

2011-04-25T07:47:00.000-07:00

P.P.P.S. I was caught cheating the first time in V Grade. V grade was a transition period you see. It was the first time we wrote with pens, legally; the first time we never wore those revealing nickers in summers. We were avant gardes filled to the brim, with new ideas, new tricks.

P.P.S. Quite the roller coaster ride since you see. We're dab hands at dishonesty now. Professionals in the art of lying. Vying to attain that final frontier - to become Artistes now, at lying. That will take time, and a wife may be.

P.S. This is Pre-Script.

1.) Do a Woody Allen! "I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam; I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me." You won't get caught here considering what dimwits invigilate the exams (Woody Allen's invigilators were breastfed on cerebral superiority). But it won't be a piece of cake either, considering how half baked our own psycho-visions are.

2.) Never write on your goddam limbs! Amitabh Bachchan's character used this trick back in the 80's when he got his arm tattooed with Mera Baap Chor Hai (he did that only to remember de facto, the innocent child!). He suffered, that dunce, got semi-lynched and could never erase, neither the desi tattoo nor the ramifications along the journey. This is 2011! Do you think your invigilator will buy this ruse? They might be dimwits like the Adam who ate the forbidden apple, but they live in the Apple™ era.

3.) The phony guys. Objective type paper? Got an undie-friend? Phones are utopian. Text him "Questions 1-10". Phat! Bam! Comes the reply. "a c b a ...." Just a few brownies here:
a.) Keep the size of the cellphone as small as possible. Don't take that ugly LG Tablet that ugly Karan Johar uses in that ugly show of his. Remember Bipasha Basu's advertisement that ruffled sleeping tigers and rummaged through silence long time back? "I'll dance with the guy who's got the smallest!" Well! Bipasha's gotten old and ugly, changed from a cunt to a cougar, possibly a spinster in a few years (Wait! Isn't she already?), but that cellphone of hers might still be available in the dark alleys of Chor Bazaar.
b.) Invest a dime or two to get a message pack. This will not landslide your budgetary considerations. Your papa shall only get happy at the good results and throw you a gandhi in prize. Of course, boys wearing pink tees serenading around women 24/7 need not get a message pack. They've got one already; to forward shayaris and sweet dreams to their seeking-my-man-on-a-fucking-white-horse lady friends. Jeez! Horses are dead, you bitches! To the least, change it to a fucking-white-civic; you might find an audience.

4.) The Potty-way. Alright. This trick has certain prerequisites. The examination time has got to be long. You need a sunrise-to-sunset to prepare chits (Engineers, please halt for a short cut!). You need to reach the arena at least 15 minutes early. You got to drink a gallon of water before the scheduled time. The chits are to be placed SYSTEMATICALLY somewhere under the basin of the nearby toilet. Rest is self explanatory and pretty lucid. You pee and you peek! Like Hide and seek!
Corollary: Engineers have patent rights to cut short the time to prepare scraps. Search for the best xerox in town, get a micro photocopy of the holy book. This is your pocket Bible now. Don't take it inside! There's no darin' without that urine?

5.) The Graffiti Growls! Tad simple. You scribble your answers on the same desk where stuff like Rajiv♥Meena, Fuck you!, Death Metal!, We rOcK bAbY! call me - 1800-Asshole! has already been engraved in gold carats. One is proud to be born an Indian in such circumstances. Graffiti might have been born in Ancient Greece but Greece is only his biological momma. He was bred and brought up in India, in these classrooms, on the back doors of public toilets, on the seats of public transport, and the same desk on which you give your examination the next time. An efficient bluff indeed!

Rest are all desperate measures in desperate times:
6.) Audience poll. Confirm your answers. If you've reached here reading all this, you sure are one hell of lousy bastard. You sure need to confirm, amplify your answers!

7.) Han kerchiefs. The profound invention of the man whose nose never stopped running. Write with a pencil. Sneeze your way to victory.

8.) Look left. Look right. Be deft. Be bright. Somewhere, somehow, an answer may pop, a voice may whisper; a neighbour might help, you may get what you want, what you've always wanted. Answer to Question 5, part b.

9.) Sit dumb. Look pensive. Look sanguine. If the gods are to be kind today, somehow, you could produce bunnies out of your hat! You might write the right answer to the topic you never studied! A miracle is what everybody believes in, in an exam hall. Never have I seen an atheist writing an exam. There's so much faith, so much hope, gleaming in the eyes of those countless zombies. (A rare condition of your brain copying from your soul. Never happened to me.)

The Last Moor
10.) Everything's failed. Not one gimmick of yours worked. What should you do now? Get some peace. Get philosophical. "This is just one test of the thousands I'd be taking in my life. None of them final. None of them irrevocable." And then there shall be peace. Snap out of the hall and go grab a beer. You a kid? Snap out of the hall and go grab a bear.

P.S. This is the fucking postscript.

P.P.S. In an interview I read someplace, it's important to get smart, at the cost of your honesty. If you give an explanation to your bad pointers in college as, "My contemporaries cheated their way to better marks. I didn't cheat!", you're a reject, you're not smart, you do not know how to find a way to success.

(The above views are not shared by the author. He's just anxious today at an exam gone awry.)

A character sketch of Howard Roark

2011-04-22T08:46:00.000-07:00

[some assignment I did someplace. For what this novel means to me, this ought to be here.]

From The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand belonged to the Romantic School of writing. A form of writing different from the Naturalist School in a way that it deals with how things should be or ought to be done, and not how they are or how they were. This form of writing involves creation of a plot that swears on idealism. Therefore, the primary attribute of Howard Roark as canvased by the Romanticist is his idealism.

“Howard Roark laughed.”

The opening lines of the novel are in itself an overture to the character Howard Roark lives. He stands naked at the edge of the cliff, his hide, his body, a more literal portrayal of his nude mind that has nothing to conceal from a latent world. He fears none and laments not a moment; he is unperturbed by rejections, failures, condemnations. His mind and soul are in tandem, an ideal synchronization, and his naked body, of straight lines and angles, is a ‘personification’ of a mind so dauntless.

Howard has a clear mind, one that contemplates a weary journey ahead, his lone swim against a ferocious tide, his solitary boat in an upstream ride, but a mind that is not anxious, for everything is clear to him. Howard Roark has a productive mind. He wants to cut the granite into walls, the trees into rafters and melt the iron ore under his feet to emerge as girders in the sky. The rocks he dreams, are waiting to be crushed and rebuilt with his hands, his brain. His self-occupied dreams make him absent minded, towards his clothes, towards other people and towards their misery. His mind is solid as rock, except that his heart is stoned too.

His drawings are unprecedented; they are buildings never erected before, ideas never heard of before, the structures appear simple and austere yet a real look reveals his supremacy, his intensity. The drawings never yield to pre-written axioms; they are not obsequious to those grandiose styles of Gothic and Roman architecture. A building to him is as alive and throbbing as a man, and that its integrity not follow truth and fidelity is ‘blasphemous’, is depravity.

Howard isn’t toady to fame or money. After expulsion from Stanton for impertinence towards those apostles of traditional architecture, he decides to work under a rather broke Henry Cameron, another ingenious architect rejected by the ostentations of a country gypped, by Roman and Greek styles. Under Cameron he knows, he can learn and efface the lacunae in his drawings.

Howard Roark is hardnosed and stubborn when it comes to the integrity of his designs. No matter how much loss he incurs, he wants his buildings to be the exact manifestations of his designs, lock stock and barrel. He refuses to adapt to the norms of the society and at times when his financial condition is dire, he refuses to submit to the temptations of his prospects simply because a corrupt building to him is the highest form of treason. He can work in a granite quarry as a labourer, but not as an architect who relents to the idiocies of a society, a society which thrives on ‘plain-flamboyance’. Not that Howard never finds his coterie; his skyrocketing dreams do get fulfilled with the Enright House, the Monadnock Valley and aplenty more, but at every step, he is encountered by people who wish to bend him, make him surrender to what all have genuflected already. But Howard never gives in to their hypocrisy; he keeps on working with what people reckon as his presumptuousness.

For Howard Roark, reverence for his ability to draw transcends all protocols of success. He wouldn’t mind languishing one day, decades later, alone in an office like Cameron. For him, gratification of self is the highest form of virtue, something which comes to him when he designs buildings. Howard helps Peter Keating in his projects not because he wishes to influence his friendship by wheedling him, but for the seraphic joy he attains when a dash of his hand gives life to concrete. He is unaffected by the shekels that Keating is raking in, and continues to – in the words of Keating – ‘assist' him. He feels overjoyed at his designs taking shape and feels there is no other purpose to it than this. Keating’s manipulative and deceptive tactics are unable to unearth him.

"A house can have integrity, just like a person, and just as seldom."

Howard won’t do something without a reason, be it a callous drink with Keating or the majesty in the façade of a design. For Howard, ‘reason’ is the only reverent entity; no God, no self-sacrifice can ever outweigh it. His apparels, his room of essentials-only, his life and above all his drawings symbolize reason, simplicity yet paramountcy. Every stroke of the pencil and every throb of the heart must have a reason for Howard Roark. He argues that a human body has not a single muscle that is not carved for a purpose; there is not a single line in the body that holds futility; every detail has a reason that fits the idea, the idea and life of a man. Why then, he retorts, should a building be ornamented with trimmings and useless carvings and arches when they serve no purpose? Why then should there be buildings which please the charlatans who live not for themselves but for the whims of others? Howard finds no reason in a life of bootlicking others’ desires. He believes that most people have no sense of judgement of their own and they chew what is thrown at them. This love for reason makes Howard a cold person. Those fabricated people do not exist in his life and they bear not apples but the cold shudder of his indifference. He remains unaffected by people around him, stoic to their resentment towards him. Though his blue eyes pierce like a bayonet, he makes people anticipate their inexistence in his presence. He neither hates nor loves people, he is blind to acknowledging people’s existence and is impervious to emotions, of blithe or pain, of love or despair. But just as indifferent he is to the pretence of other people, he is puzzled at their indifference to reality. Their phony designs and their pompous lives bewilder him.

Somewhere deep down, Howard’s emotions for his work do surface. After a long hiatus that almost seems eternal, when he finally gets a job at Eric Snyte, his fingers tremble at the first hold of the pencil. When he realizes that his designs on Cortlandt Homes have been manipulated and tarnished and that the promise made to him by Keating is broken, he goes on to destroy the apartments, for their very sight evokes contempt in him. His designs of the Stoddard Temple are an attestation of the profound emotions he bears for Dominique and the respect he holds for his work. His affection for Henry Cameron, his love for Dominique Francon, his camaraderie with the electrician Mike, underpins his humanity, except that it emerges from the bedrock of ‘reason’. He sees himself in Henry Cameron, or better, vice versa. He loves men not for they can do for him, or for what he can do for them; he loves them for their virtues, the values that they achieve in their lives.

Howard is a man strong enough to wage a battle against the world. Right from his expulsion at Stanton to his trial for Cortlandt, Roark wages a lone battle against every force in this world. He fights the only woman he loves, for he wants her to realize, that things one loves should not be abandoned or annihilated fearing they’d be taken away, that one has to fight for one’s ego and ideals in a world that runs on men but yearns for rats. His battle is not just against those fake architects who with their craft win commissions, but against every man who corrupts the honesty in a building and thus, another man. His fight is not against Keatings for they are innocuous and fickle minded, but against Tooheys and Wynands who thrive on the common din to destroy men like him, who realize the presence of geniuses but who want to favour the weak, for that’s what the world seeks.

Howard Roark is a modern adaptation of the man who invented fire, of he who invented the wheel. They are lambasted for their genius, for their transgression into a territory man never ventured into before, but they are the prime movers of the world. They are men who tread on undiscovered paths and stand alone against their time. As Robert Frost once said,

“"I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."

They are men who devise man’s progress, man’s evolution. They are not sacrificial, for they live for none but themselves. They live for their right to independence, for their own ego, for nothing but their own selfish pleasure, because they are born as individuals first. They respect another person’s freedom but emphatically deny taking part in slavery. They are the Edisons, Einsteins, Aristotles and Roarks.

HOWARD ROARK IS AN EGOIST. His signature at the entrance of his office is a sign that moves the world, which has to fight the dogma, the conventions, the clichés, and come out victorious. His will is subjected to the oppressions of the society; he is tried for the beauty of the Stoddard Temple, for his genius in Cordlandt Homes. Men like Howard Roark are the motor of this world, for they do not rely on the past but on themselves, and mark a new epoch, into which the world enters, evolves. Howard Roark is an egoist. And for him, Man’s ego is the FOUNTAINHEAD of human progress.

It is imperative to end the way it did, the way it should, and the way it always will,

“Then there was only the ocean and the sky and the figure of Howard Roark”

The Finance Budget - 2011

2011-04-09T02:25:00.000-07:00

There are things you'd want to upchuck out of utter joblessness. Topics that you know shall turn stale in a day and thence reek of goo. By writing, or better, by answering the Nature's call, you'd actually be justifying your present coordinates as some government-owned Engineering toilet in India, where the cows drop the cow plop on the barren lands(in an attempt to make them fertile) and dogs leak their chocolate muffins(though Dog-shit is never known to have brought fertility to Calphurnia, or Earth. Bitches? Always a mystery they are!), on barren lands.

You too hit the John with the preemptive knowledge that it ain't going to smell like lilies or ladies. Of course, toilets would not have the aroma of benzene. They stink and they are meant to stink. But these government-run-toilets are different. They aren't just foul-smelling holes serving human esthetics, but are in fact the glorification of Human excreta and Assholery. Instances of you not being able to open the door of one of these gas chambers because you could not face the ugly brown Hitler(resting on the commode) smirking inside were reported on several floors. The festering turds had sent their nasal messengers everywhere. They say the sight was so gory after the water supply ran out the previous night, that the choc-a-bloc you, stymied at the bottom but unguarded at the mouth, defied all gravity laws and well, got relieved the other way round. Upchuck Woodchuck? Yuck! Fuck!

Sad, this hostel has got no place, for frustrations, excretions and educations. The education is dumb, the syllabus is as stupid as a bimbo-American-transvestite, and you often find yourself in a cul-de-sac seeking this one destination, The Barren Lands of Dog-SHIT, in your face!

P.S. Utter Joblessness. Gutter Lifelessness.

P.P.S. The Finance Budget I heard smelt no better. It reeked of a bureaucrat's french underwear sprayed with Eau-de-cologne but blotched with Desi shit, digestions of corrupt money.

P.P.P.S. "A ship in a harbour is safe, but this is not what a ship is built for"

a duped hope

2011-03-26T18:26:00.000-07:00

O Shrimp it's time to swim down home
why don't you see you're short of breath?
'been out on lands in search for the queen
you've injured a foot, lost a shoe
you're hurt, in pain, in sole and soul
O Shrimp just limp, hobble back home

Don't you see you stutter as you speak?
the words so weak they crawl their way
off west to the queen, who is deaf on the left?
you've run out of air, for you're not in the oceans
you can sing no more, and tell the queen
what you mean, when you say she's the queen

The turtles you see are not slow anymore,
nor are the crabs just a tasty dish
O Shrimp you've got to race for the queen
with a limping foot and a stammering voice
and you know how granny's lullaby ended?
the turtles always win the chase!

Not that you have not a feminine perching
underwater the mollusc is bonkers for you
the lobster that day did wink with tease
even the knotted trout goes naughty sometimes
but like man you fall for dreams that trick
that force you to leave your cosy nest

O Shrimp, do you now see what you're after?
an etch on sands as false as your voice
as fishy as your gait, ready to be doused
only your bosom knows it to be true
for it captures the moments as you sand-write
and now you should know it's time to be home

except you don't, and I know you won't!

like burns

2011-03-21T12:12:00.000-07:00

Once you get out of school, get out of home and plunge into the drudgery of colleges and hostels, you know you're out for good. The years you've spent rollicking at home, yanking your sibling's hair and getting caressed by mum are now days of halcyon, far behind you; and they're days never to return. Even before you realize, the world wants you to give up your boyish countenances, and face, embrace, a life at hostel I often end up calling coyote-ugly. You pilot the wallet, the bad food, the surly teachers (so not in unison with the parental figures at school), accidents, fights, a room, its elements, laundry, mid-night meals, and then it hits you; you're no longer going to be what you were, you are going to be what you are, may be even worse. Your hostel life and its smiles that come patched (purple or blue) and blotched is what it is going to be from here on. The buck stops here, at you, and it halts like a tenacious virus of a terminal disease. This new avatar shall be as lasting as the whiskers and the moustache that had finally cultivated on the brink of school, on those 'hitherto barren lands'; the first shave then was quite the last leaf at home. Of course, some things never change; you still love your mom the most, your dad continues to inspire you more than anything else, you still fight with your sister (over the Graham Bell), but...for some reason, a lot changes. It's a kind of growing knowledge seeping inside you, that not every road will lead home, from here on. So if you fall down, from a bike or from a building, there is no turmeric milk at your disposal, or a mother to coddle you (or a father to goad you), or a sibling to (a)dress your wounds; for they are miles away, anxious, clutching arms at every drop of hat, and cannot be bothered. Your wings have taken their own flight, you're on your own now, sometimes like a free bird, sometimes like a misguided one, trying to find its own way into an unchartered territory, but one that has to carve his own niche, its own nest, for the years to come...

the road he could've

2011-03-13T06:36:00.000-07:00

There are a million things to do

There are a million stars to gaze

Not every star will shine for you

Not every will shall have its ways

You set your eyes on life anew

And pick a star that runs ablaze

Not every star will rhyme for you

Not every choice lives up to its says

You’d want to mould the past of Jew

Re-pick a star that falls in place

Not every star is open to view

Not every travel-of-time obeys

Well,

You try to rejoice in the choice you sew

And let your star kindle with grace

Not every star is born to rule

Not every life gets what it craves

that 70's show

2011-03-03T11:10:00.000-08:00

Call me Hackney's butt, but I've got to write this. It might culminate into a misguided attempt at exultation, or a paean gone awry, but after a year of listening to Hotel California, I still do not seem to get over this song (I've been verbose about it). Call it realization or 'my musai-ssance' (portmanteau? Jabberwocky!), but I am becoming of the opinion that real rock music was made in the seventies. Those ragamuffins of yore, with squalid robes and perverted hairdos, pronounced Immortality, with songs that refuse to fade once they enter the chambers of your heart. Be it the crescendos of Hotel California or the cadences of Stairway to Heaven, the vocals of Chris Rea or the intensity of Pink Floyd, or Guns n' Roses, Iron Maiden, Bryan Adams, the songs hit you as if they were Music's own Cupids.

Hotel California is certainly the most beautiful song ever written, with those poisonous literary devices. The song gleefully running around an imaginary hotel, is in fact an allegorical representation of hedonism or an ostentatious life, a life where a person gets hoodwinked by the luxuries of life and when one day wishes to renounce them all, can just not leave. The use of the word California is of course an implicit reference to the extravagant, swanky lives of the people of California. The song is rich in literary devices with every line a hidden treasure. And which is why this song shall never die, says the soothsayer in me.

Or for that matter, Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin is infectious, even aphrodisiacal. Though the profundity of the song is as intricate as rocket science, with allusions to both Satan and Angel, one cannot refrain from getting absorbed in the amorphous shades of the song, that begin with the acoustics, then shift to the drums and end on a jarringly beautiful note.

The list is endless to this era that began in the summer of '69 and is yet to foresee, the dance of death, or say, the climb on the Stairway to Heaven; it is just meant to attain, Nirvana. .

P.S. Call it coincidence or call me Uncle Destiny, but this turns out to be my 70th post on Contrapunto!

The Invention of Crying

2011-02-12T11:59:00.000-08:00

Note: My political views are none. But my anti-political views are aplenty.

I always believed there are two kinds of lachrymations in this world - tears that fall in blithe and happiness, and tears that fall in pain and sorrow. And then I met the third kind! (Yes, the sentence is an adaptation from a popular Hindi movie). These are the tears we oozed when Mr. Onion nightmarishly went underground (quite literally!), stopped multiplying (in a country like India, where multiplication – of babies and money – is everybody’s hobby horse, the cynosure of teary eyes), and disgraced every risen sword (knife!) to fall back in vain; the dynasty of Onions, unscathed became the first of its kind Julius Caesar, to escape that treacherous dagger of Marcus Brutus.

The cynics were non-plussed at this new emotion, tear, from an uncut onion, though they were inclined to believe that it might be a domino effect triggered by a very dramatic 2010. Here’s how they plussed two and two:

The Great Indian Stage had a mélange of colours last year in a show of puppetry. In the august presence of Manmohan the Marionette, Sonia the Martinet, the play was a promising one.

There was Adarsh the stooge who was born to a warrior, Kargil the brave. Adarsh was an aphrodisiac for those countless babus who visited his bordello (Adarsh Cooperative Society) to satisfy their concupiscence. They turned his temple into a harem (quite like Silvilo Berlusconi) where they reveled in their clandestine. But when the raid, one day, discovered the deep secrets, the babus led by Chavan escaped scot-free, leaving Adarsh guilty. Sobs flurried, throats choked in the audience.

C.W.G Subhramaniam had been a mischievous boy himself. So when his son, Kalmadi the oxymoronical puppet started stealing butter from groceries, he was callously caressed as the Krishna of Kalyug. Little did C.W.G know that Kalmadi would turn at first a hoodlum and then a vampire, who’d suck his own father’s blood. As C.W.G lay in a pool of blood and Kalmadi was caught red handed, the rat turned into an ostrich, refuted all mischief, and danced away to the Pied Piper. Sheila the young spinster followed cue. The furious audience dripped sweat galore.

Raja the prince puppet took the plot of the play to the zenith (or say, the country to its nadir). Their cast included Radia the rag, Barkha the hag, ISRO the jet lag, and guest appearances by several other puppets. Bored of a mundane recitation of Manmohan ji, Sonia ji, Tata ji, Pranoy Roy ji, they all shouted in unison, 2 ji! Such was the shriek from the apples of Adams (&Eves) that the spectators trembled, babies wailed and tears – the Adam’s ale – started a new tributary at the very venue, Dil’li the Heart.
(When the shriek was later measured, it turned out 10 decibels more than a supersonic jet and just 20 dB short of Maria Sharapova's from-the-gut howl!)

Countless other performances, by Arundhati the Goddess of Big words, Sachin the fountain of youth at 100, Saina the ace shuttle, Jackfrost the global warming, Queen Petrol, Princess Diesel, brought in tears of joy and sorrow and gave their wee bit in giving this country its new tear, that was potent to efface the glory of the new rupee symbol.

In a magic cauldron, cynics surmise, when 2 tears of 2ji, bottled sweat of C.W.G (one tablespoon), 31 blood droplets from Adarsh's corpse (debris?), 8 letters of the word SEDITION, 100 spits of Sachin and imported spices (Tastemaker) ordered online at Wikileaks.com were mixed on Mayawati the Queen Kong’s 55^th birthday, the uncut onion tear was born. The reason? For the recipe?

Every Act In this theatre of 2010, Each String of every puppet, in “The Great Indian Melodrama” was hoicked and rhythmically controlled by the World’s greatest Artist, the Divine Controller of Men, the Conjurer, the Great Great Puppeteer,
Moolah the Money

‘Curtains Fall’

bon été!

2011-02-06T06:33:00.000-08:00

Ahoy there! Summers' here!
6 February, today, is when I say, Jackfrost kicks the bucket. Chuck the Met. Department's prophecies, I say Winter's dead, has passed the Stygian ferry, never to return back for quite some time. Phew! Let me undress, a tad! Let me tear away the snug pullovers and monkey caps before I pen a word further. Let me ask Ceiling Fan to run ruthlessly, yet stay put, in place. Let me ask Taps & Faucets to weep on me copiously, so that I smile and shine. Let me beckon the ice cream vendor and quench my heart that has been taking refuge under quilts and woolens for so long.
This winter was tough, harder than any. This winter I saw, countenances freezing, chilly smiles taking a tad too long to revert back, little kids peeing icicles and men exhaling such frozen words, that the words got stuck in midst and could never reach the listener's plugged ears. Words hung in the air, even Gravity froze!
Yes, the winter made me feel like a despondent, which is why I revel today and celebrate this day with festive fervour. 06.02.2011. 6+2+2+1+1=12. 1+2=3. Naah! Nothing very auspicious from a numerologist's eye. But should it matter? And to a person like me, born on Friday the 13th, should I be so finicky about numbers today? Nyet.
The first day of summer is bringing back the halcyon days of home. When the sharpness of lime and carbonated burps of fizzy drinks twitched my nose; when those death-like siestas at home and forty winks at school were satisfying as women.
A promising summer! Glasses of pina coladas and lemonades at beck n' call!

ArtIsLifeIsArt

2011-01-24T00:34:00.000-08:00

Dhobi Ghat from a panoramic view was a normal(let me rebound to this word later) movie; one of the very few Bollywood movies embraced in normalcy, thoroughly. What the movie went pass were romantic serenades with verses clocked to eternity, climactic cliffhangers with brawny heroes turning tables on destinies, erotic comedies with a lewd application of puns, tear jerking tales of mentally handicapped people(which often, always, evoke an encore from the viewers), catenae of murders, twists. .anything that is a departure from our otherwise cinch, ho hum humdrum lives(we live it that way!). In the dark hall of cinema when one wishes to be driven by illusions, delusions, super-humanity, heavily laden intense dialogues, Dhobi Ghat urges us for once, to not overlook the idiosyncrasies that abound a normal life. The interwoven humans knit with occult coincidences, the criss-cross of jagged lines of Destiny, some of the most intangible emotions one fails to behold, is what Dhobi Ghat asserts.

As one delves inside, the movie is thought provoking, astonishingly cogitating, yet feigned in normalcy. A painter who connects to a stranger's catharsis(and turns her into his muse), a vocational photographer's bonding with a washer(& vice-versa) and the intense portrayal of their emotions; the movie isn't thrilling, it is introspective.

Painting and photography were only modes to depict such karmic connections, platonic love between humans; one has to transgress and reach the state of art to realize the latent clarity in the movie; the unexplained emotions in those glinting eyes and jutting lips are left to the viewers' aesthetics.

The movie is not about popcorns and nachos one relishes in the auditorium, nor about those silent giggles one waits for at every use of profanity in a scene. The subject of platonic love and pure love, dealt with efficacy and artistic parlance in the movie, needs a more involved, a more open and a cleaner mind, to be able to appreciate. Dhobi Ghat worked for me.

Tiger Woodoo!

2010-12-06T21:41:00.000-08:00

Rudy Tomjanovich had said it all, when he quoted, "Never underestimate the heart of a champion".

Tiger's lost his glabrous whisker-less facade since The Dystopia, has had a winless, wifeless 2o1o, and to add to his detriment has lost his numero uno after 281 weeks. I would not stay an ostrich by hiding to these facts that support Tiger's current address at the nadir of his career. Perhaps, Gillette no more cuddles its brand ambassador, who now sports a jagged, bearded look for a person jaded by social decadence. So when golfing pundits round the world describe Woods' career as bogey, or a ball that might never find the cup, I find the stage set for yet another champion, who thrives best under a metabolism of provocations, to rise again from the ashes, the dust, the bunker in which his life has stagnated in 2o1o.

Michael Jordan had a lilted career, plagued by injuries, accusations, personal torments, that saw him hang his boots twice, only to return each time with a thwart; a new jersey, a new look, but the same relentless love for that ball to be dunked into that hoop 10 feet above the floor. A rent-a-quote pundit as he was, he described himself as having faltered over and over again, as having been trusted with a shot only to have miscued it, which is why he succeeded in life; venerated even today as the greatest basketball player ever.

Or for that matter, Roger Federer has had his share of crescendos and diminuendos. His juggernaut in tennis was brought to a screeching halt by a bull named Rafael Nadal in 2oo8 only to find himself rebound in 2oo9 and yet again wilt in 2o1o, after having held captive his number one ranking for a record 237 weeks.The man, reckoned as the greatest player ever, is at 29, still miles away from sleep, for his passion for the sport is unflinching, unfettered and remorseless. His paramountcy over the sport has demolished potential teen careers for they never could move past his Colosseum, and Roger to encore his feat all over again is inevitable, not by destiny but by ability.

Tiger has shown glimpses of his talismanic play retrieving, in the latest Chevron World Challenge '1o, where he made the audience relive those bewitching moments of his esoteric game of the past, in the 18th hole to force a playoff with an enamouring birdie. Though he lost the playoff by a tad, he has fired a litmus of a historic comeback next year that would fade the histrionics his life has seen this year.

Examples of such formidable men are aplenty, their twists are myriad and distinct, but it's the love for the game as much as the love for life that separates the ones who rest in peace and others who wrest in peace. From Ganguly fighting the shackles of Chappel to Woods exonerating from the manacles of infidelity, champions only need a reason to prove themselves that they are made of sterner stuff, the finest steel; for they are men who write History, elicit goosebumps from future dynasties even after they've fallen in a slumber that never shall have a sunrise.

Hallmark. .of God!

2010-12-01T04:17:00.000-08:00

the butterfly effect

2010-11-28T05:57:00.000-08:00

Someday, he would envisage, if he could incarcerate his poetic mind, trap Expression in a coffer, and snore in his slumber, could wake up to another day, to another theme in his life, and use his literary savings even if his mind would dwell in a different idiom.

But Expression would leak, sneak out of the strangleholds, trickle out of the chest that coddled it -like a bird that exonerates from the cage- and would soar in the boundless, could perch at my doorsteps -where I could be squirming my bottoms, staring at the welkin, in search of a new hue, in pursuit of an expression- only to find itself trammelled once again, in air tight containers that once preserved my cookies.

But Expression would transpire still, radiating out, leaving me behind, a mesh of a lexical jargon, innocuous and sapless, sans a rap or eulogy, whilst Expression would wheedle itself, ruffling and pitching, making itself flagrant to a hunter's vantage, who could shoot an arrow, that men today would call a bullet.

But Expression's got no flesh to fall, would turn not incarnadine to gall, as the hunter would rue his desultory cue, his vacillating hue, would attempt no more, for his first slip should be his last bloop, letting go the bow, which men today would call a gun, unfastening his quiver, which men today would read magazine, as Expression would skip a beat, and take flight with renewed blood, titillating, tantalizing, somersaulting, migrating across seas and oceans preying, on rats and words, squirrels and metaphors.

For Expression would then gloat in Invincibility, tying the nuptial knot with her, and in tandem could become exorbitant for all men, who would wish to have him as their captive, to gag him, handcuff him, to clip his feathers forever. With Effrontery as their offspring, Expression would turn insolent and boastful, and in his pomposity could expose his Achilles' heel, to a derelict but astute artist, -who would have no chains to bind, no kingdoms to bond- who would love Expression for its soigne gait and kinaesthetic lilts, and would trap not Expression to make him his stooge but let go the dove; for the artist could believe Kahlil, who wanted men to let go their love, for if it returns, it was always theirs and if it didn't, it never was.

And Expression would then feel the lasso turning taut, as he would tenterhook in the air for a moment or two, before falling into the open fields of the artist's soul, thus marking the return of the prodigal son, for he could fly again to his whims and caprice, could go places he seldom did, but should leave not the artist ever again...

personyfied

2010-10-30T02:46:00.000-07:00

Hot Mexican siren yo!
Bobbin' heart, excited Joe
Spicy tongues
Infernal lungs
Miss Chipotle Jalapeño!

bong sonny daddy

2010-10-26T11:05:00.000-07:00

Their sonny that day turned dire
bonking noggins, haunches on fire
A bong connection, he was tickled in the navel
emphatic fists, for there was no gavel
"lassoing the lass, my unyielding travel"

Daddy reclined for he knew the rush
of the nuptial fibre, that hormonal gush
A rent-a-quote not, he forbade to pry
to let sonny, burn hand in fry
and sermonize him when pigs would fly

Eaten by a canni-bong, sonny oinked unabated
bong turned heavy, why, steatomammated
binging in nooks, sonny doped in a cranny
connubial coated cannibal gypped poor sonny
"Father!" he sighed, "Was to wed so loony?"

Daddy let the breeze ruffle his mane
then spoke upstream, calm, sans pain
"Kids are green, professional are boys
But men are artists, at lying their voice
they lie to love, to forfeit not the poise"

Death of a sofa set.

2010-10-18T11:47:00.001-07:00

As he reposed then, on the grandiose new sofa set, one reminiscent of the English baroque - prudishly arched with a teak tiara, meticulously festooned with sober designs - he was instead reminded of the sofa set that was taken away by the coarse hands of the porters. Dazzled by the youthfulness of the living room, he had become oblivious of the entity that had scraped along his 25 years of life. But after refurbishing the room and floor gaily, when he dropped on the soft cushions exhausted, his dormant mind, which had been subdued by the emotions of the heart, woke up with a sigh and realized what he missed.

Not that the older sofa set was one artifact of the Antediluvian, that could fetch him a fortune at an auction. On the contrary, it was an ugly, disfigured mass that infected the look of an otherwise well-furnished room. It were the emotions of his ambivalent past that the sofa set bore along in its bosom, showing semblance. The deep scars on its body accentuated by frequent transportation were no different to his indented forehead coupled with those myriad wounds embodied within. The outdated style of its personality was akin to the rejected life he led. The sofa set had gone places, hobnobbing with cultures that change faster than time zones, like a rolling stone that gathers moss for a change. It had been a silent observer, to the many arguments that took place in the room while it nervously rested his angry butt, to his days of childhood, when he smeared ink on its cushions to rest his inquisition about the parody of colours, to festivals, to tragedies, it had lived his life in a parallel universe.

His mind travelled incognito, in retrograde motion, but reached the present once again, now in a different idiom. The somber lights of the room and the absence of congeniality might have played the trick. A feeling of gratitude for what had departed rephrased the feeling of welcoming what could have gratified. The room no more revelled on the birth of a baby, it instead mourned at the loss of an elderly.

The long years of the past do over-weigh the short moments of present, sometimes. Contrapunto does happen, sometimes.

road to Damascus...

2010-10-10T23:56:00.000-07:00

The gleaming rays of the sun cutting through the gaseous bosom of the clouds defy all reason-mongers who harp upon their anti-distinctness and pro-tangibility in their prosaic, banal journals, those which travel straight two feet above the heads of science-averse-art-lovers. The sun takes shelter under the shade of clouds, now, and jousts for its clout, brimming out of two breastfuls of clouds, then, like a puny that breathes a puff of air, post a feed from its doting mother.

The rays will escape, in the nows and the thens, projecting out sharply like 'pointed Roarks', not monolithic yet consummate with the unparalleled thunders of Zeus. The ostensibly gaunt rays bend not a tad and strike the melanins of my skin, the greys of my mind, seasoning either, with the ways of the world. The tan of my mind and the wisdom of my skin takes a surprise, reacts - but for the rays, the sun lies in servility of the gray nebulae, at the beck n' call of Earth's orientation, feigned by the aestivals and hibernals. He gets dispersed in his reflections at the surface of a rippled pond, is fended off his divinity, in the closed domes of a family, in the black shrouds of a shutterbug, in the abysses of black-holes, in the Mariana Trench of the Pacific, at the disposal of man and Nature herself.

As the sun begins his obsequies at the brink of the horizon, glistening obtusely, being carried away by the marmalade pall bearers to its pyre, I shudder. I shiver at the 'dawn of night' rising up the horizon, as the sun's apparition, inevitably. I yearn for those sharp rays to tan my mind once more, to germinate the cells a little more. The sun albeit dies, fading away with an incarnadine smirk, at the side of the globe that now trembles in the frost of the night, with the ponds turning black in hue, ordained from reflecting, with the clouds losing their sheen and turning into a cadaverous black. The sun farts behind a moon, as its relic, that shrunks then, and swells now, yet not manages a tinge of its fart-bearer, for the quilts are still held tight and the crimes are still plotted brazenly. The cold planets far away weep copiously, admonishing, of a land where the sun never rises, of a pond that turns white in lurk of the bright sun, of a land where families no not exist.

The cold earth foresees an apocalypse every such dusk...so does atheism. None must be banished as both have a role to play, in Sun's resurrection; for else why don't the cold planets yonder, see Light?

A requiem for the unborn

2010-09-28T12:33:00.000-07:00

Belittling it shall be if I
were to orate
those Tears tumbling by
that scream
in a cocoon of a sigh
the Mute obsequies
of a dream
borne out of fawn
that fends off
the Blinding sun
and denudes
in a Charred pun
to go unrequited
to sundry but Thee
Thee my love
who elapses by
the inconspicuous I?
glancing thou eye
in a cursory
numbing nigh
roasting thence the pyre
of an Unborn dream
that exhumes
in its birthlessness
at the hands of
none but Thee
Thee my love

the guillotined geography?

2010-09-21T12:45:00.000-07:00

No matter how improved the culinary of a hostel might be, the food tastes like provender after a fortnight. For every human that vests the Almighty within, awaits the ambrosia to keep the ichor in circulation, something only the nectar assimilated at home could mollify.

Embarked on a near barren bike this night, I was en route to the station dhaba that serves me my monthly manna. The city air at 12.30 am appeared rather tampered with to the accord that was seen a month ago at the same time. The roads were 'littered' with police patrolling and mute yet obstreperous police vans. Their pit-stops numbered more than usual, so did their leery stares at us. The hostel area has been recuperating from the recent bout between desperate pugilists and phony warriors who had resorted to damaging empty chariots(read: bikes) when their marmalade bamboos could not turn incarnadine. Such dastardly acts in college turned out to be only a microcosm of a bigger picture after my eyes left their residue on the current Ayodhya issue and the perennially current Kashmir curfew, both of which are Religious Crusades tracing their repercussions to places like Bhopal now. Is India changing? Or is just me getting hyperbolic in insomnia?

The Ayodhya issue has flared to a point where the government might have to impose a curfew at vulnerable points in the country in the coming crucial days. The issue exposes the Achilles' heel of religion in general. Religion has turned into an opium for the masses, who are blindly resorting to desecration under the sly fanaticism of yellow bellies. Suddenly, out of the blue, religion turns out to be the scapegoat of all disruptions. Aren't those lines, "Forgive them Lord! for they know not what they do", finding their relevance today, coincidental as the predictions of Nostradamus? Faith too after all, finds its divisions as 'faith' and 'blind faith' and the mob going bonkers over Ayodhya definitely mottles the latter division.

India appears beheaded like a prey, on the geographical map, without Kashmir. The place is symbolic to India's pride. However, the spleen exhibited in this beautiful place time and again, has only mitigated the faith(blind or otherwise) of it's people who now vie for an independent territory, cut like a chunk of cake between two countries. Though this plunders India's heritage and motif, the demand does not seem outrageous any longer. What is the purpose of ornamenting our country with a bijou like Kashmir if that jewel rests on the shoulders under a constant threat of being looted away? The boundaries after all are political and man made, and at the helms of peace it might become justified to succumb to the outcry.

As I found myself pushing the bike manually amidst these thoughts, a man at 1.30 am stopped by, understanding my predicament, and offering petrol to hitchhike the bike to the nearest gas station. I was filled with gratitude at his gesture and shook hands snugly with an honest smile. All the marauders eroded off my mind and all I could help was pray for my country, to throb in blithe, with fears allayed and independence of mind and reason for all and sundry.

Let the welkin ring. . .

2010-08-28T00:09:00.000-07:00

For I am weary of the air, Stuffy Stereotype,
Whose resonance now stifles my reason.
For the air that was once a zephyr,
His cadence now leaves me moribund.

He wants me to gobble the Gobbledygook,
Whose resonance now stifles my reason,
For he smokes in me, jargons of a bygone,
Annihilates me with Antediluvians.

He binds me to follow the Hackneyed blindly,
Whose resonance now stifles my reason.
For my mind ought not knell the Whistle,
Whose clarion would end his Kingdom.

I stare at the welkin, cutting through Air,
Air, who once stifled my reason.
I shout in Defiance, rising in crescendo,
An opera that shatters the Treason.
A unison that gongs a shift in Poles,
A Concerto that heralds new Season.
I let the welkin ring sublime,
I let it ring for Reason.

Twist

2010-08-19T06:41:00.000-07:00

A messed up life

A relentless strife

The mar of destiny

A scar of mutiny

Choked up lines

Rusted shines

Leading him to the days of doom...

An inflexible twist

Mind like a fist

Cutting the mist

An irrevocable lunge

Lands the punch

On a crying Moira

In the brain twas, twist twas...

The Heming-way of life!

2010-08-13T04:54:00.000-07:00

If all you fancy are musing tales about a para-human who breaks free from the shackles of a dogmatic world, who rises from a Bog of Despondency and who adorns the role of Hubris to defy fate and carves his own El Dorado of Destiny, then your mind might still be dwelling in a farce that is risk averse to the failures of life. 'The Old Man and the Sea' by Ernest Hemingway has a cascade of failures 'Santiago' encounters, during his gallant duel with the jaws of Nature. And thus, it gives an insight to a great philosophy of life, that retrospection of failure does not always yield inability and that there is a lot of honour in struggle and endeavour; that there is lot more to an earthling's definition of success.

After going fishless for eighty four days, Santiago captures a marlin, the biggest catch in the sea, following a tortuous grapple that had the old man emerge victorious. His conquest however turns turtles, when on his way back home, the scent of his slayed 1500 pound trophy induces sharks, whom Santiago fights with valour but eventually loses his marlin to the whims of Nature; after the long sleepless nights and delirious days, he claws back to the shores with just the tail and skeleton as the last relic of his defiance in the dark sea, strapped to the bow.

The novella though fiction, is a stark reality of how shattering failure seems after a long fought battle with life. Failure is something that walks by us like an alter ego, all through our life. Failure in tests of life, in relationships, are frequent enough to leave a person gazing at himself with distrust, making him succumb to the evils of a doppelganger. How often do we wish to leave the reigns of our very own life, appalled by confrontations! In search of gratification, we tend to disregard our mettle and our courage in the face of adversity. Failure is only the flip side of a coin! And it won't take more than a flip to turn turtles of our destiny! And if failure still barges in, one should learn to honour the immense struggle behind, for it is this struggle in our repertoire that would one day reopen the gates to success.

As the saying goes, " Those who fall down get up faster than those who lie down ", it only suffices to the pleasure in actively fighting the perils and never feeling beaten till battered to death! It is quintessential to be 'gluttony' about success but it is also vital to enjoy the 'paunchy wars' one has fought with time!
"
Why I was there and whither I must go
I did not care enough for me to know
The same unresting struggle and the glowing
Beauty of spendthrift hours, bravely showing
Life, an adventure perilous and gay
And Death, a long and vivid holiday
"
(swimmers, louis untermeyer)
After losing his marlin, all Santiago does is hitchhike to his shack and fall on his rotted cot only to dream about lions on the beach! Despite being a dab hand at fishing, he had Misfortune by his side for 87 days, his old body complaining cantankerously, but those eyes were still lively, to a dream, to another day in his life, to another venture into the dark waters, with his abilities despite adversities rising in a crescendo to meet another failure, or maybe success?, the flip side of a coin!

I've always seen my father living by this shibboleth, in a tone of divine peace and a benign smile, and I wish to induce this key to happiness in me whenever failure grins at my goddamn doors! I love you dad! This is for you.

Who is John Galt?

2010-07-25T00:01:00.000-07:00

When you shrug, the world remains unfazed. But when the undaunted Atlas shrugs, the epicentres begin to shift, the landmasses sullenly twist, the wussies get exposed, and sheer greatness prevails. The man who stopped the motor of the world, John Galt, is one such fictional incarnation of Atlas, who defies an acceptance of the absurd social vouch that timid men born in this world give to their alter egos. Atlas Shrugged is a novel about human greatness and the scrutiny it is subjected to, by the wimps, the vox populi of this world. It is as Ayn Rand says, 'a story about the death and rebirth of a man's spirit'.

Though the greatness of this novel, spread over a 1000+ pages cannot be hand-clasped to give a gist to the non-Randists, it does become imperative to tell oneself and the world, the degree of realism behind her fictional masterpiece. Since the majority of people snugly follow the social norms, blandly and under a cloak of abstraction, the ones who want to live by reason and a human mind are abjected for their selfishness and a lack of philanthropy. As John Galt lives by the shibboleth,
"I swear by my life and my love for it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor let another man live for the sake of mine"
he and his alter egos are imposed upon by all the prejudices of this world to somehow suppress their spirits and not let their competent minds take over the frail kings of this world. The question is, WHY? Why should the incompetent be given an external impetus to flourish and the capable be annihilated to be degraded to the levels of the inefficient? Aren't the inefficient lying plummeted by reason, fair and square? Why should there be a forced attempt to narrow the tracts between the unequals when they're not equal by reason?
"The worst form of inequality is to make unequal things equal"

Though written in the backdrop of railroads and capitalism, through Atlas Shrugged, I found words to those countless dilemmas in my mind, that lay floating in a pool of thoughts, wordless and in a quandary. That greatness should never be negotiated to the whims of those powerless yellow-bellies who live to conceal man's greatness with their slyness, that one should never walk on the path of the common din, but should rather tread on the trails of the human mind, the symbol of greatness, the most precious gift of God, and that the spirit must stay kindled till the end, for 'the worst of human depravity is a man without a purpose'.

As Robert Frost said,

"I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,

I took the less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference."

Federer Shrugged!

2010-06-30T08:04:00.000-07:00

Today, only the second time in half a dozen years, did Federer fail to embark the semifinal bus. I, who ~~has~~ (have) been worshiping Lord Federer since adolescence, am bewildered by the sudden tryst of destinies. On the verge of his defeat, I was sweating in the AC more than Federer in the sun. Because I refuse to write off this stroke of genius before the match dies; because Federer makes me believe that dying before death is like a life cut short by cigarettes. Yes, he lost! He does not seem invincible anymore. He appears to stumble at those ground strokes more than often, he does not seem to be retorting bullet serves too well! Roger's game suddenly, appears more human and less divine! But that's just the facade of it. Even today, after his loss, he knew how to inspire the crestfallen fan in me!

Roger Federer for me, plays tennis the fairest of all! I do not remember the last time he instigated his opponents with a surreptitious sledge or a stimulating frown. On court, he knows just one thing and that's tennis. He is unfazed by encores, by an opponent's venomous stare, by boos, by enthralls, by virtually any transgression outside the realm of tennis. Sometimes, with his impervious play, he raises questions about his lack of emotions. The irony? He's indifferent to those questions when on court, to anything outside the realm of tennis. This, as Ayn Rand symbolizes in The Fountainhead is the apex of professionalism and love for one's work. Odds of Federer ruing his ill luck at a defeated point at any climax of the game are less than grim.

Federer might maintain a stoic outlook during a match, he exhibits his emote side with honesty and sheer austerity. He'd cry in joy after a long deluded victory just as he'd weep, yearning at the trophy after a crucial loss. But his play continues to be professionally prudent and aloof from unethical whines and swears. Playing at such a high pedestal with celebrities swarming around the center court, it requires a Federer to have such an indifferent control over his emotions.

I've been following Roger for many years now and have seen him come from 2 sets down to actually thump his opponent and hitchhike to victory. Federer has proved himself time and again that he is a spirit of a true champion, one who refuses to call it quits. Above all other players, he is the one who seems to play the point judiciously, as a microcosm of the complete match. He remains fully aware of the clarion calls in a match when he has to up the ante. His stamina is unquestionable and one would never see a fall in his level of play during the fag end of the game. Infact, it only escalates to a new level. His off court life has a lusture of impeccability, with not a single blot. It rather has stars to it's name with his Roger Federer Foundation a beacon of light for unprivileged talented sportsmen of tomorrow.

Federer lost today. After a near decade, Federer seems to be showing his humane side, the imperfect angles, which he has efficiently taken in his stride and has played with exponential efforts. Nobody, not even Federer knows his limits after which he'd be overtaken by a global inflow of finessed talents(just as he had trampled Pete Sampras and embellished his igniting career); but one thing everybody would ascertain is that never was a player born of such blue blood, such quality mettle, who had every tennis shot in his repertoire, who made the game look tad easy with his staunch emotions, who loved the game just as he loved himself, who resided above the gaffe of a crowd entertainer because he played for nobody but self, and who came to this arena only to rule over residual humans in a silent mockery like a Colossus who is not only the greatest but is also aware of his greatness and takes egoistic pride in being the numero uno of his side of the world.

When doubted about the dwindling hope of the existence of such men as portrayed in her novels, AYN RAND used to retort, "That this book has been written-and published-is my proof that they do".
Arguably, one could put posthumously in her list, Roger Federer's name!

Jigsaw.

2010-06-19T09:58:00.000-07:00

"A crush is like a cigarette; it begins with a glow and ends in ash; but who cares? We are chain smokers!"

"People who get into a relationship at every drop of hat are the ones who remain naive about love forever."

Is love what people quest for in their lives through a catena of experimental relationships? Aren't those stereotypical canoodles and PDA more of a showbiz and implicit infatuation than love? Or is it justified to fall in contaminated love, one that guarantees transient gratification if not a dalliance of a lifetime?

After my 20 and a month more than a quarter years of life, all I could garner about the jargon of love was that 'love at first sight' is conspicuously a form of infatuation. It ceases to cast an impression on your heart once you come out of that cinematic cocoon of yours where every dweeb form of love is portrayed with sound conviction and tangible emoticons. The actors who emote such ploys being so distressed and entangled in their real lives is a clinching evidence why love is not just about romantic serenades and coup de foudre. Love has to be more than what meets the eye, aloof from bland physical attraction and a gigolo's intention.

"The worst form of inequality is to make unequal things equal." Demanding equality in love is a form of coercive adaptation, one that distorts an individual's identity than moulding it for the suave. Men and women have a diverse biology and an even more assorted psychology; just as today, too many empowerment laws for women and reserved castes have left a lot of men stranded and in dearth of their rights, similarly, demanding what one partner has, for yourself too makes the relationship sheepish and aids it towards tomfoolery.

On juxtaposed lines, double standards is even more hazardous in a relationship. What you presume for yourself as a fundamental right should not be obscurely diminished for your loved one on the pretext of yet another fundamental right. That is obnoxious. Love must not be given a reason to be justified as such idiosyncrasies only pave way to clarifications and a post mortem of a necessary abstraction in love, one that is often stabbed by either parties in a blame game. Inequality in equal things is still worse after all.

As Ayn Rand says, "The worst form of human depravity is a man without a purpose". Men who mooch aimlessly, in and out of relationships actually end up being the most disturbed and remorseful lot. For them, lust overwrites love as all they manage for themselves is a fling that lasts no more than a fag. However, if one falters at relationships erratically, it would be unfair to brandish him as a lecherous moocher. May be he is yet to achieve stability in his bonds. Your ideal match after all generally never ends up the way you prescribed it. It is often antithetical to the castle that we build in our minds. It is only when we experience and actually put our hands in fire that we know about the scorching properties of a glowing torch.

At 20 and a month more than a quarter years, I feel left alone in a boggling love labyrinth. There is too much to imbibe, too many tangles to survive, too many bloopers to fight and too many twists to a romantic night. I just had a crush on one of the cougars in Hollywood, but hey, those girls in Xylo made me bask in glory. No! This ain't love! It's just one of the ways to reach love!

Junebug.

2010-06-18T10:57:00.000-07:00

The whimsical June turns out to be not only the harbinger of the approaching torrential monsoons, but also a month flooded with events. As sports turns out to be the overstressed waistline, one would tend to omit issues of a lesser God around. As Lakers thwarted the Celtics riding on the ever glinting flamboyance of Kobe Bryant, France expertly extinguished their glowing embers of a FIFA glory(read:glow-ry). Tiger does seem to show his fidelity for golf but his shots at the podium and at Elin still stand bogeyed. And just when you thought my blog was lost into the obliviousness of charisma the world poses these days, I rebounded a 3-pointer attempt with this rather journalistic post!

I also had a treasured stint at the North East India, in a family excursion. The trip was just as conditioning as the mitigated air of the region. The bumpy meandering roads to diverse places in and around Gangtok, Kalimpong and Darjeeling were stomach simulators indeed, but I remained so agog by the serenity and the deafening silence of the place, that the only time when I felt the existence of my body was the time I left it to God's good humor at night, on the bed. The place was profoundly intimate with nature, virgin and savage. There was the Lampokhri lake, high on mountains, nestled affectionately, truly a feast to the eyes. Then there was the Deolong park, which was amongst the most resplendent creations of Nature I ever saw; drowned in an air saturated with dense mist and an uphill terrain punctuated with flowers of assorted hues and fragrance. It was I felt, a lesson of 'romance at short notice' by Wordsworth's Nature up there. The trips were all twirls on the chassis of the mountains, like creepers twining on the trees. A distant view, midway from these creepers was Divine. The tea gardens were mystique and mesmerizing in their own way; like a green sheet laid on the ground plucked at regular intervals by even more green points. I learnt the intricacies of those tea leaves, the costly white tea, the red label and the green label; all clubbed together on a singular mother stem, destined at different places owing to their mettle and blueness in blood.

There is something that can be inherited form every place on this planet. Every region has it's own share of characteristics which leave behind a great lesson on the fertile lands of the human mind. The excursion to the North East India unfolded in me a lesson of humility at the helms of magnanimity. The people of this region astonished me with their modesty and demureness towards life and other people. The term 'down to earth' seems rather oxymoronical to the people living almost on cloud nine with flushing meadows and embossed mountains around them. The people have a bucolic lifestyle and it is actually hard to demarcate the rural population from the urban ones because rusticity is the vox populus of the region. But there is a sense of affection one develops for the people around that place, for the unpretentious prowess the people have within them.

After a 7-day trip of Sikkim and Darjeeling, as I returned to Chandigarh, I was touched by the majestic ambiance of the region I witnessed in the past week. However, after being cut off from my umbilical cords with food and fodder of Chandigarh for a week, I did realize the meaning of being out of place. The North East India did treat us with love and candidness, but one could not deny the importance of one's homeland in one's life. After disembarking from the plane and placing my feet on the ground, the first line that crop up the mountains of my mind -like the car twining on the enormity of the mountains- was, Mera Mulk, Mera Chandigarh!

A rendezvous with deja vu.

2010-05-19T07:17:00.000-07:00

I wasn't born in those lazy meanders that twine around a mountain and tunnel through it a 103 times like a dagger stabbed abysmally into the Himalayas, that bleeds erratically, profuse toy trains 10 times a day. I wasn't born in Shimla. My life however, saw the biggest scoop of it's life in the lap of this surrogate place, that nourished me with wisdom and a penchant to face a tizzy-themed life. I grew up in Shimla for 13 years, before the call of vagabond made me desert it. 5 years hence, a mundane purpose made me revisit that pallid hill station and rejuvenate my lost days of childhood.

The place has not changed a tinge in these 5 years. Time here, seems to be enjoying a sojourn longer than one expects Time to. From a distant view, the town still appears as a clogged nucleus of houses during the day, and stars-under-your-belly during the night. At a closer glance, the town has unaltered constructions and unmoved people. Maybe Shimla is the key to feeling young forever. It was nostalgia at it's climax as I passed my day here in the bucolics of this town.

Much of Shimla that still simulates my memory is about St. Edward's School, MY school. I owe the puny credibility to my identity I have today, the change in the credulity of my character I mantle today, the chivalry in the mannerisms of my habits today, to the canes n' chides of this school. That disciplinary aura of the school was intact yesterday, and so was it's majestic architecture. I basked in glory and intense longing as I visited every checkpoint and the furtive routes where we once dwelt. The cottage designated for Class I-B, my first steps into the school, was now abandoned to a wretched state. I was reminisced of our Principal, Father Ambrose D'souza, whom I then bullied by names, but later realized him as the man who shaped my life. His idealism and principles stood unflinched, then and now. What made me gloat in ostentation, was the swift realization of me by my teachers, as soon as they caught a glimpse of me, yesterday, after 5 years. They did not forget that I was caught cheating in class V or I wrote good compositions then. Impertinence; I was a pain in their ars...lives; one that can never be faded out by Oblivion's curse. Lumen Sequere'!

I might have been a protege of this place for 13 years, but as I returned to embraced it one more time yesterday, I felt weaned from that place, strangely. A separation of 5 years had inevitably welshed the bond I had with the simplicity of this place. I was exhilarated to have visited Shimla, but I wasn't sure if I wanted those days to come back; all I was certain of was, those days would not come back. This trip taught me a great flavor about life and it's idiosyncrasies. Separation does create love for a person or entity, but separation also blends with the morbidity of time to rust relations. The same relationship that was once afresh with the romance it had overnight when subjected to an estrangement, forfeits it's charm and ceases to maintain the same levels of synergy. Hence, if you wish to redeem a relation on tenterhooks, the time is now. Do not lurk for a miracle, for time is already waiting for an ambush. Act, before the perils of separation strangulate the metabolism of your bond and leave you with an alienated emotion for that bond, one that can seldom revert back to good ole' happy days!

His stooge!

2010-05-01T06:46:00.000-07:00

For Govinda Rajan, the station master at a remote station of Palur, who's been serving the Indian Railways for the last 33 years, who on a purposeful demotion, took up the reigns of a bucolic station in a quest for tranquility,who along with a helper named Kamakshi are the only Railway officials at the commercially redundant station, the shade of his 60th birthday would turn out to be the hue of his doomsday, when he hangs his boots and bids farwell to his purpose of living, his work. The station has been blacklisted for it's lack of being an El Dorado and the Railway authorities are in lurk of Govinda's discharge so that the mundane station can be isolated forever. The lurk is a mark of respect for the dutiful services rendered by Govinda Rajan here.
The day post his retirement, Govinda would sit in solitary, astounded, in his shack, despite not being naive to the inevitability of this sullen day. His heart would throb just for the sake of it, he would breathe, for he was not strangulated physically but only he would be able to garner a death that did not stop his body systems, was yet so gruesome.
This world, says Shakespeare, is an enormous pulpit, where every mortal's got a role to portray. We mortals, are a paltry stooge of God who are meant to play their respective characters and amuse the audience(who? ourselves!). The end is concurrent. Crime or compassion, malice or affection, all narrows down to death.
Time flies when one is busy scripting his own life. My second year in college, glowed like an amorphous star but faded away in no time. Not long ago was I getting myself registered as a sophomore, sleeping at odd places, acting in a frenzy with friends? Not long ago was I hosting events in the literary clubs of my college; bunking classes and landing up at tourist spots on bikes? Not long ago was I quenching my late night hunger at the Railway station, with pronthas? Not long ago did we host the Tech Fest of our college, sleeping barely 15 hours that week, demarcating territories of the brain for discrete purposes; discovering new dimensions to our prowess by acquiring jobs of a DJ? The second year of grad whizzed past me in no time and in no time did I become a 1/2 engineer. Life here was just as it was in the First year, a dummy of real life, botched with challenges and rigged with adversities. There were nights meant to be survived with empty stomachs, because the mundane menu of meshed potatoes refused to follow the laws of gravity beyond the throat region. There were nights when you had to combat a perturbing viral with medicines relinquished and with exams overhead. You'd miss home like a puny but when at home, hostel'd refuse to erase off your memory. The year was gulped down fast with a thread of movies that saw a shore in the morning, playing games like hookers and falling in and out of love with celebrities, like floozies.
To gist up, one fell in love with life and with graduation. The spasm of having to gaze at it as History one day generates remorse already, as one begins to understand why even the nut shelled hearts melt during the farewell. But then life's a theatrical play, that moves with time, act by act, scene by scene, dialogue by dialogue, to reach a clairvoyant ending, "Curtains Fall!"

The Lewd Boxers!

2010-04-19T00:06:00.001-07:00

The tenet got included in all ledgers today. I have always been a bitter coffee for my teachers ever since my first steps in school became a giant leap in my destiny. I do not nudge my teachers, or jostle their dispositions on purpose; some crooked roads, some sharp turns, some narrow escapades and things turn topsy turvy in my life. From chides of being a back bench menace to the shameful ridicules of dressing lewd, my life has by now seen, all the ghoulish dimensions of the infernal education! And I probably would have to take into my stride, the blemish of never being able to please my praise demanding teachers!

Take today for instance. On a work of prime importance today, when I thought I could even be allowed to refrain security checks and frisks, I could not fetch time to change from my night dress, a tee shirt and shorts. Some crooked twists, some sharp turns, and I was forced to leave the hostel periphery and enter the campus vicinity, in that very pair of boxers! The errand was redundant but the repercussions made the day bamy! I was confronted with 'roadblocks' of teachers at checkpoints, who rebuked me, frisked me for my name, branch and year, and then lend me a prolix lecture on the rules of dress code and decency! I was let off though, but the mark was indelible in their minds. Those gross looks and sharp eyeball movements made me feel like a model with a sleazy wardrobe romping around in a religious clan. The only 'asset' I revealed were my legs, that were of no use to them. Jesus! To add more spice, the rabble rousers, my friends, made a laughing stock out of me!

The comments were impinging too,
"Are you on a holiday to Goa?'

"Are you a Goa'ian?"

"Indecent. Period."

"Lewd. Sleazy."

"Oh My God!"

"*Gapes*"

"Stud. Cool."

Interrogations being raised on my decency domains because I could not grab a few seconds to slip into a longer pair of bottom robes? If attire were to determine the character of a person, sluts draped in saris got to be worshipped; I ain't no man whore, whose 'indecent' clothes made the town go berserk; nor am I a self devoid rhetoric trying to grope in a few lasses by wearing a wrinkled boxer! The slack indeed was on my part. But given the fact that my purpose of visit was purely unofficial, and to append to it, it was not a working day, my stand holds ground. Besides, I don't need a license on holidays from some tom dick harry to decide upon my wardrobes!

WHAT THE FUCK, isn't it? These are the same boxers that are a part of the casual wear people would adorn on an off. It is however futile, to enter into a justification mode with the retro living mob. Those clogged minds got no drain holes to digest anymore vogue and it won't be humane to suffocate their cliches. I therefore preferred apologizing and evaporating fast from there.

The day was sweaty, the heat was cumbersome and the hours were tardy. The fruit turned out to be sweet however. We had a successful farewell, a mouth squishing truffle cake, a river of coca cola and my new designation as the boss of the college literary society. The bizarre boxer fiasco was forgotten and the respect I felt I was stripped off, was resurrected. The faculty could be avoided as they've always been, here in this government tagged college. The college administration has always been a stale statue when the welfare of students is a burning issue; and we the students, take pride in treading on our own, sans the aid of the money-hopping-chimpanzees.

Life at 40, in Utopia. . .

2010-02-25T06:29:00.000-08:00

A maid that can eclipse my spouse,

I want a bentley and a penthouse.

No time to reflect, to feel derelict,

I want a bentley and a penthouse.

To engineer my life on my architectures,

I want a jacuzzi with jet black textures.

To rest in peace, to revel on cheese,

I want my monsoons sans a sneeze.

To snooze in booze, to snore till dawn,

I want the GoldVish Le Milli-on.

A life away from cringe and crouch,

I want to boycott the absurd social vouch.

To work for myself and not for the society,

I do not yearn for an afterlife gaiety.

To never have to tame my endless desires,

I want my death on a diamond pyre.

A life to be expended on egoistic norms,

I want a yacht of exuberant storms.

To soar in the air, to sneer at mortals,

I want to high fly, a hawker in throttles.

This is my dream fighting Time to arouse,

I will drive a bentley and will own a penthouse.

To mom with love.

2010-02-17T03:24:00.000-08:00

Those aching inaugural steps of life,

the appalling bullies sparking a strife.
My wistful defeats in the athletics meet,
the doleful failure in the examination seat.
An incessant spasm from fractured limbs,
the dismay of earth spinning anti my whims.
An endless lurk to get over with monsoons,
the pining yearn to exonerate from pan-doom.
The excruciating nights of flinching focus,
the stimulus to lie like a battered carcass.
To fight such skewed, arduous tests of Destiny,
one needs a dalliance of Divinity and Humanity.
For me, it lies in you, Mother,
your benign existence makes me cease to bother.

Happy Birthday Mom!

You always were and forever will be, the most precious person in my life. I love you.

The Rime of the Engineering Moochers. . .

2010-02-11T06:14:00.000-08:00

Water, water, everywhere, not a drop to drink? Naah! The Rime Of the Ancient Mariner has gone passe. The Albatross never did rise from it's death in the poem. The overwritten adage is,
Water, water, everywhere, not a mug to bathe!

The ragamuffins got their happy tickets to unhygiene when water stopped tripping in those ugly taps at my hostel, but what about the rights of those who capriciously desire to bathe everyday? Isn't our government aided college concerned about them? Nyet. We were left stranded one sullen morning, with not a 'nibble' of water to quench our drowsy eyes; eyes waging a battle against anti-insomnia and anti education. I found zombies meandering in the corridors in lurk of just a mug of water, as if they were left marooned in the Thar Desert. There were 'corpses' too, of people who had been informed through the Word Of Mouth about the tragic vaporization of water in hostels; they now slept in a deep slumber, waiting for a miracle to happen or may be dreamt of getting drenched in the monsoons with their female. I too mooched around those oblivious. . .oops, obvious lanes(sleepy me!) to confront a Notice that was more eye-opening than the whole Pacific Ocean splashed upon my eyes. It said, water was to gain it's life back, after 3 long days. Taboo! Water's resurrection and Jesus Christ's resurrection taking equal time? Forgive Them Lord, for they do not know'eth what art they doing!

Ship-wrecked we were, and the irony of the situation, there was no water beneath! What an oxymoron slapped on the face of every occupant of the hostel. The college however, overlooked our title of ENGINEERS! We were born to exonerate ourselves from every steep mountain, by not building steps to the pinnacle, but hiring a chopper to land us at the zenith! We were born to apply our minds only when it was legally illegal and on educationally, the most bilge concerns. We bunked our college that day, in a silent but mawkish protest to the inhumane dearth of water. Our hostel that day, stinked like a rat's dungeon, but our resolutions were unflinching.

The college was unfazed either. They were in fact revelling at the unofficial holiday granted to them. Water did not come, as per schedule, the penultimate and the last day. When it became unbearable for us to sniff ourselves, we hit an idea to dodge the roadblock. What an Idea sirjee indeed!

We drove on our bikes, to the common din, in the market area, some 5 kilometres from the hostels. Where? SULABH PUBLIC CONVENIENCE. The great Sulabh Shauchalaya, a legendary invention and a tryst in the destiny of every Indian. The famous Sulabh Shauchalaya, that is now raked as the most spell bounding identity of India. I won't say, it was impeccable, but it did serve the purpose of the forlorns, US! Water gushed out from the taps, as if India had plenty of it to flaunt till the next millenium; as if it had the power to fill in no time a hypothetically empty Ganga. We bathed that day, with a freedom as saturating as the Independence of India, 1947; as if we intended to compete with each other, in terms of, who's left with a tinier bar of soap in the end. There was music in the background, Vividh Bharti, AIR, enchanting the sublime, blissfful song,
Naa Kajre Ki Dhaar
Naa Motiyon K Haar
Naa Koi Kiya Shringhar
Fir Bhi Kitni Sundar Ho,
a request made by Om Prakash Chaurasiya of Bhojpur village to his beloved wife, Lakshmi Rani. The floor tremored to the beats of that melody signifying the love people have for that song. The house was on fire!

The following night, we hooked up on table tennis for 6 hours, till we were left gasping for sleep at 4 in the morning. Not a single smash missed, not a single rebut mistaken; we felt as if we were invigorated with a supernatural power to face anything, any turbulence in the oceans, any drought in the hostels, any distress in our lives!

Jokes apart, this event was yet another of the numerous experiences one faces in his hostel life, doleful yet dauntless, making us seasoned to the ways of the world, installing within us the clout to fight it valiantly and at the same time, remain at peace. As the movie, The Pursuit of Happyness states, that happYness cannot be achieved, it can only be pursued. But during this course, one has to be at peace with those million significant drops of moments, that are precious and fast evaporating, like the water supply of our hostel.

Oh! The supply just rejuvenated. We revert back to the same old days but this puny experience remains etched in our memories for life, to be foretold to our heirs with pride and bons mots and wicked grins!

My Gasolina!

2010-02-09T01:33:00.000-08:00

I'm 404 about Dawood Ibrahim, but PETROL still rakes as The Most Wanted thing in my hostel. Girls and whisky follow the suit, but would still wither away at the mere sight of a mineral water bottle carrying that baptismal serum. Owing to the statistics that, per capita bike is close to 1, but per capita petrol is not even a quarter, it has now become a commonplace to find empty dry bikes parked in the middle of those ill tarred roads, at assorted checkpoints, or simply, under the sun!

Petrol under such predicamants, becomes "A Discussion of National Importance", in "An Institute of National Importance"; and it creates quite a rumpus at a mere glance of it. Analogically, it has presumed the status of 'Megan Fox' in a country of desparados. One would not be shocked if this hott liquid can evoke vehemance or a civil strife amongst the solid, human bodies. Most of the men, on this side of globe, believe that petrol inside a plastic bottle is more voluptuous than a female inside a saree.

Men at hostels, craving for this holy liquid, turn boozers and get sloshed in it's lurk. Men who do not drink go berserk and voluminously play, "You're my Gasolina" on their woofers, indicating the desire of this, gasoline. So, the sight of a depressed unshaven man clad in unhygenic grimy robes should not be mistaken as a Roadside Romeo, he's actually a piteous Roadside Empty-Dried-Petrified-Horrified-Stupefied Gasolina!

The logic behind women and whisky getting tumbled by petrol is pretty rationale and comprehensible, though a little radical. If there is no petrol, you cannot, in your wildest phantasmas, expect a woman to accept your rose and WALK the aisle with you; it nor goes well with your woman-prescribed-medicine of chivalry. So, women peevishly plummet the rankings of "Desire Charts". Whisky would have had not been in existence, had there been petrol and consequently, a woman to ride the pillion of your motor-horse. Whisky ostensibly, came into existence, in this college, with the dearth of petrol and repercussively the anguish of a girl. Petrol therefore, was unanimously, voted as, "The Most Wanted" liquid in a male hostel, superceding all other liquids and semi-solids.

And then of course, it's a government college, and the relinquishment of water or H2O is obviously acceptable. But there's an anomaly attached to it, in concordance with petrol. Ask yourself! In the murk, if you'd see a person hurrying outside, with a liquid filled bottle in hand, what shall'eth you do? Would you plan a conspiracy against him, to somehow squeeze out that bottle from his hand and fill your thirsty spouse's tank, or would you understand the ingredients of that bottle and profoundly desert him, calling him, yet another victim of bowel-simulations-in-dearth-of-water? The choice is your's. It's your greed to hunt for that treasure that lies in old worn out plastic carriers and refuel your bike and carry a girl on the pillion to the sunset of your dreams, where you two, look into each other's eyes and plan a pulchritudinic future with babies and nappies, hugs and kisses!

It is indeed your prerogative!

A human above petty humans. . .

2010-02-08T08:33:00.000-08:00

In the season of spring, when the air is neither soaked in an incessant blitzkreig of rain, nor is it shaken by a perilous typhoon of the falls, nor is it pined and trembled by the nippy dawn of frost, nor is it blurred into a mirage by the doleful daunts of the sun, an electric pole lies plummetted under queer circumstances.

It's 1:00 in the morning and I'm slurping in hot tea, sitting on the back rest of a concrete seat parked in the livid green lawns of my hostel, cantankerously. The gnawing gnats have gnarled my bare feet. I shrug them off and dodge my feet out of their claws.

There's no electricity. I sit all alone, away from human intrudance. My senses are fleeting with a million thoughts, about life, existence, love, penance. A beacon of light, yonder, has cast a strange silhouette of my posture on the facade of my hostel. It resembles a chimera, I believe.

I look at the boundless stretch of stars in the firmament. They are countless indeed. They do not really twinkle as those nursery rhymes established, but they certainly have an aura in them, a fascinating shine.

Amongst the countless pearls in a black ocean, amongst the infinite constellations resulting from infinite permutations, the star that catches my glimpse, is of course, the brightest star in the sky. It stands out of the crowd and has a scintillating appearance. But what tantalizes me even more about it, is the excruciating amount of torment it undergoes, to appear as the superlative degree of stars. It burns itself with gleam supreme and an unbearable energy to emerge as the cynosure of eyes.

There's a lot that can be learnt from the Universe, given a slight solitude to onself. To reign this world, to be it's Pharaoh, one has to tread a thorny path indeed. As they say, "Uneasy lies the head, that wears the crown". Life would throw a catena of hurdles at every rung of the ladder. It would be harsh, unjust at times, desolating, harrowing, distressing; but it's your greed to be at the pinnacle which makes routes easier and pain, anesthetic. You'll have to wage this battle alone, because human bonds would welsh fast during the course; and at times of mutiny, it would be your own discourse that can cajole you out of obstacles. To be dependent on a fellow, is felony and human depravity.

Being selfish is quintessential and in fact the furtive route to success. Being selfish is service to self rather than the faux pas it is alleged. Human beings are expected to work with a purpose in life; a purpose to glint with an infinite lustre, one day; more shimmering than those constellations in tandem.

The path is tough and is to be traversed lone. . .

Lasting a moment.

2010-01-30T07:51:00.000-08:00

As you lay your optic nerves on THIS word, and then traverse the barriers of language to reach HERE, you've passed a moment already. As your glance points HERE now, you might as well want to discern if you miss being in the moment you just farted. But the truth would still grin on the couch, that you've passed that moment. Whilst this moment, you're eyes might have grown weaker, though in a proportion of a drop in the ocean; you're hair might have lost their luminescence of jet black and become greyer, though in a proportion of an Einstein in neo-humanity; you’re voice might have lost the timber of softness in it, and become jarringly worn out, though in a proportion of a speck in a molehill; the world around might have been tampered with, with elevated carbon emissions, escalated Satanism and sanguinary, abysmal love, tumbled humanity, lofted cynicism, shoddy sagacity, though in a proportion of a node in a symphony.

One moment, and the chameleon one sees in reality is stupendously splendid. Imagine your rigorous, unassailable sleep at 7:59:59. There might be castles and fames, equanimity and dames, the power to rule the oceans, the clout to take flight and reign the world, to jump the realms of time and space, the prowess to suppress a rebellion, to ignite mutiny and nemesis, tyranny and sacrilege, to break free from the anathema of being born as a petty erroneous human, though in a virtual world of dreams. The resplendence would still be sublime. And then imagine the transformation at 8:00:00 with the clarion call of your clamouring alarm bell. The castles plummet and the dames vanish, your wings vaporize and time lies; you are a petty human again. That’s the power of a moment.

It needs an Usain Bolt to juxtapose 9.58 seconds and 9.60 seconds. A slight procrastination in those shudder of legs, a tinge of delay in the dynamism of those sinew arms, a momentary forfeiture in the focus of those convolutions, and the perilous time takes away the elevations of podium, the escalations of being sanguine, and the cheers of the crowd. That’s the significance of a moment.

A moment seems so transient, so short lived, like a scintilla. But when it comes to establishing the magnanimity behind this evanescent moment, no one does it matter than Ayn Rand. She can stretch a moment to it’s terminal elasticity, give life to an otherwise futile moment, attest how, a moment has the ability to last a lifetime and not just a moment. The description of myriad ideas fleeting in the human brain, like Brownian motion, at one moment, shows why a moment is not a subservient thing. Ayn Rand’s works are a hangover which last a zillion moments, never aging and unflinching, fresh as ever, virgin till death. That’s the magnanimity of a moment.

A moment does end, no matter how potent or quintessential, how long or mooching, how stoic or painful, how robust or yearning. There would be a sunrise anyway. The reigns of time are insurmountable. A moment might impinge hard on you, but the sores and incessant woes will die away anyway. The miseries of one moment will be overshadowed by the tranquillity of the next moment. That’s the futility of a moment.

Life is indeed a riddle, isn’t it? One big conundrum that no attempts could solve. Like an endless labyrinth, where every turn is the harbinger of a new twist, too abstract to be researched upon, too abysmal to be dived into, like a black hole with no grounds.

Mom.

2010-01-11T09:40:00.000-08:00

There is something very off beat about mom. As the penultimate days of my vacations form the inevitable overcast of gloom and convex smiles in the air, my mom would rather smile and show no signatures of reluctance or pain. She would force me to overeat, leave no dish in her dexterous hands unmade, watch precariously if I am equipped with the armoury to fight the hostel gusts and random blue funks and above all, keep that gusto disposition intact. Not that I am the black sheep of the family(I ain't no certain!) and she's in lurk of, my departure or her peace, it's her unflinching way of showing stoicism till the end, to keep me unfazed, so that I remain blissful in ignorance. Her candor however, refuses to match up to her ostensible smiles, and her stealth gets obviously noticed. She is actually the most melancholic of us all but her strong mettle hides it somehow. Her chides of me not eating well, watching movies all day long have a glimpse of sorrow within the cloak which she'd rather not blurt out for my sake. It's painful indeed, going away from home every time, but that's life I guess! Testing till the end. I love you mom! You're the most precious person in my life.

A Perennial Kiss. . .

2010-01-05T03:15:00.000-08:00

On squishing white sands
In the backdrop of blue hued clans
She reposes on the shores
Like a pretty maiden
He springs up from Timbuktu
With a rose in one hand
And a penchant in the other
The tides are colossal
And the rain is incessant
Under the crescendo of thunders
and a life sublime with wonders
He walks softly with a doting heart
passing the doleful tirades of their yacht
He leans forward and clutches her waist
The sun then drowns, coy, in haste
Her tears are lost in rain and love
And eyes then gleam like stars above
His lips embrace her lips in affection
The embrace has purity, it has unison
They kiss, till the last high of tide
and the last drop of pour
They kiss, till the last screech of sand
And the last tinge of furore
They kiss, till the last breath of apathy
and the last rung of endure
The kiss endlessly. . .

A brief pause

2010-01-03T02:46:00.000-08:00

The vagabond
Looked miffed
And benumbed
In the midst of
A prolix road
At a time when
His hands
Were blemished
With chilblains
And feet were numb
With frost
The long night
Of despondency
Let him not
Bat an eyelid
As the road ahead
Yearned to be
Traversed but
The heart within
Pined and
Withheld
The vagabond resumed
His journey to
Nowhere
With battered feet
And dumb hands
The halt was a sojourn
In the journey
Of life
That moves in a quest
To reach the end
And ends abrupt
One fine
Spring morning.

Life of a Cola slut!

2009-12-26T02:52:00.000-08:00

I'm sipping in my 15th goblet of Coca cola! I look up. I look around. I am in a marriage ceremony. Just the kind of pretentious bullshit, humanity is used to, by now. They flash their La Opulence with oceans of alcohol, godowns of assorted dishes, names of which are as hard to remember as the lessons of History in school, flinging off the Indian currency in an air of ostentation, pompous show of belligerence towards the ebbed community. I see the males clad in chivalrous suits, with a glass of wine in one hand and a fag in the other. Cool! They are ambidextrous aren't they? *Silly drunkards drowned in a pool of vineyard!* I would be boozing too, in a few years time, I repose. For now, I'm savouring the ecstasy of coca cola. I look back down. I see the glass and the black beauty floating inside, making me gloat in a sea of ostentation. She's my darling drink! I drop a sip of 'her', on my drooling tongue. My taste buds feel its slender body, enticing. Coca Cola is the elixir of life, with a picturesque body of a trophy wife!

I look up. I look around. I'm still there, sitting alone and contented. I see the male eyeballs, split in two latitudes; one eyeball sizing up the pulchritude of a dynamic woman, draped in minuscule robes, and the other eyeball, resting precariously on her father, synonymous to the watchful eye of Obama's security guards. Cool! They got ambidextrous hands and multitasking eyes? *Damn*

Not long ago was I doing the congruent, incorrigible thing, I sigh! Right now, I'm bound to the beauty inside the crystal, not the body inside a sari. I look back down. I feel the squishing sound of the liquid inside my throat. My Adam's apple is in a state of frenzy and fervour. My vocal chords act like symphonies. Coca cola is slender, but not tender. The carbon content makes it kinky. The pleasure is masochistic indeed.

I look up. I look around. I'm still there? Oh! Indian Marriages take a lifetime to complete. But of course isn't it? The ritual mongers feel, its a consortium of seven births, one after the other. Intelligent punks aren't they? They just deteriorated the odds of a divorce with such an auspicious ritual. Blah! Do I care? These so called liberators of humanity, are using religion as a stronghold to spread hostility, animosity and malevolence amongst the various clans of humanity. The innocent God has been discorded and divided. Forgive them Lord, for they do not know, what art they doing! Right now, I'm a slave of God's baptismal serum, coca cola. I look back down. My sweetheart has reached the cupid territory, the most emotional and poignant realm of the human body. The same heart that was once smeared with hues of red in the name of my love is now revelling in nights of black. The heart is pulsating with delirious throbs, sensitive to every stimulus of the romantic drink. The pleasure was of a lifetime, seven lifetimes may be?

I look up. I look around. I've not budged an inch. I've shunned the chameleon-time and the camouflage of the din. Like I never belonged to this world. As if this earth was Pluto to me, alien! As if all that mattered was the glass in hand and the true love it boar. I see the bride and the groom at a distant couch. They look happy and dogged in their affirmations. Marriage is a bliss, they say. Damn you. Divorce is blissful. Livins in blissful. Marriage is a cage, where you dare not go savage, says the old adage. But why I should I forfeit my gray cells on a topic I do not wish to execute ever in my life? I look back down. The fluid lady has reached my stomach. They say, coca cola is infected with pesticides, just as humans are contaminated with HIV? Crap! Bullcrap! I've been drinking the lady, hooked up religiously, for the past 15 years. The innocent cola never did leave its so called spiteful venom in my body. I digest. I belch. My nose gets the sensation of the digestion. I smile.

I look up. I look around. I'm in a toilet. I look back down. The cola's going down and under, in an abyss. I feel every motion of its trajectory. Oh! Ooh! Did I just pee you out sweetheart?

I get back to normal. I get back to the wedding. The mob continues to exult. The gluttonous brethren still makes merry with truck-loaded food, the womanizers still make merry with glares and gapes on the flamboyant females, who get happy and coy with every stare on them. I too flinch a few girls, with rambling eyeballs, who retaliate with a vicious angry stare rather than the usual blushes. Stalking women was never my cup of tea. I look around. I see a glass, with coca cola dripping from the brinks, waiting for a seducer, waiting for a tangible contact with a man's lips.

I'm sipping in my 16th goblet of Coca cola! I look up. I look around. I am in a marriage ceremony. Just the kind of pretentious bullshit, humanity is used to, by now. They flash their La Opulence with oceans of alcohol. . .
.
.
.
.
That's the life of a cola slut!

like you never existed. . .

2009-12-24T01:22:00.000-08:00

In the firmament

when you flash

with mirth and joy

and humble the murk

with your loud cry

You dazzle and gleam

with a potency of cosmos

and become oblivious

of your transient gloss

You start losing

the eternal sheen

and then wake up

from a distancing dream

*reality ponders*

You were a scintilla

born to die

that throbbed and ruled

and then bade goodbye

*realises*

You weep and shudder

as you age to your death

on the brink of your expiry

you catch a choked breath

And then you're gone

gone for good

your flamboyance

is buried

in dusts of history

your existence

is a void

and your radiance

is lost

in conservation of energy

like you never existed. . .

[Merry Christmas! Shine through your life before death swallows it and has the inevitable last laugh! God Bless!]

HOT - High on Testosterone. . .

2009-12-17T23:54:00.000-08:00

18+ only. Minors are requested to suck teethers and listen to momma's lullabyes, than stroll around here!

Disclaimer : As Contrapuntians, we have always been taught to observe the flip side of an argument. To not just flow with the wind, downstream, but to make an impact against the current, upstream. This post is yet another instance of the ethics of Contrapunto. By the end, this post might just create a brouhaha, and brandish me as a sexist or a MCP, male chauvinist pig; but my real intentions are just an attempt, to adorn the wrong and try to feel the good in it. Hail Einstein's relativity and Gandhi's optimism. I request all the Women Empowerment NGOs and Naari Mukti Morchas, not to burn my effigies or go on hunger strikes, demanding gallows for me. I don't care anyhow! Get a life! I don't need a wife!

I always believed that your name reflects upon your personality and mental acumen. Though I accepted it as a strong coincidence, I was flummoxed at some of the results. Tiger Woods has been a shocking savage name, with all the wild acts he has been doing playfully, yet clandestined in the woods. He has been the most masculine version of tigers, a class in itself, heavily masqueraded from media interventions(hitherto), despite his celebrity status. Trust me! Handling 1 beautiful stubborn wife and 14(not out) raunchy harlots is something that requires the artistic precision of a surgeon and not just the approximate measurements of a cook! Jesus Christ thy Saviour!

But hey. . .What do I hear now? Tiger has been stripped naked of his endorsements, is being ridiculed with hard cuss words by the media, by the fickle mob, in the blogosphere with prolix chapters expressing disdain, by women empowerment, yadda yadda? Oh Tiger! You've being tamed like a dog? Tiger Woods should not be axed for the so called "heinous crime" he has committed, feels CONTRAPUNTO! I'll start from the scratch in defense of my client, Tiger Woods! It was Adam who ate the forbidden apple, not Eve. For a handshake, says the Indian Army, it is a man's initiative and a woman's prerogative. The point I am trying to construe(not construe actually!) is, to venture and risk has always been a man's ploy! It was Akbar who tied the nuptial knot 300 times, not Mumtaz Mahal. It was in man's biology to do multitasking with women and since, polygamy is legally punishable in the modern era(For Indians, Section 497 of IPC), all that men are left with, is veiled multitasking, which is being blemished these days as a taboo, as Infidelity. I agree, times have changed. But the basic instincts cannot alter, be it a man or a monkey. No matter how hard you press, a monkey would continue to go bananas at the sight of a banana. It will drool no matter what. There are a few things we are born with. To forcibly maneuver them is against the laws of nature. Such is the present predicamant of my innocent client, Signor Tiger.

With a few exceptions, Men, are born with Casanovial hormones. Giacomo Girolamo Casanova made love to somwhere between 122-136 oestrogens. 14* is still a very humble figure. Infact, I would not be taken aback, if Ravi Kisan's Raaz Pichle Janam Ka reveals Tiger as Casanova. Who is to be censured here? Tiger? Or manhood, our ancestors? Men cannot change and they ought not be distorted by the lame boycotts of societies. Stopping men from buzzing like a honeybee on assorted flowers means, emasculating them! Arn't we, the men, bearing the blatant humdrums, the constant grumbles and whines of femininity? If men have acclimatized themselves from the harsh biting gust of female wind, can't women make themselves accustomed to man's gusto infidelity? Either of the gender is right as well as wrong. Does that mean, reproaching both and ending the world, terminating mankind(womancruel too!). As human beings, we got to end this impasse and reach an MOU, wherein, we accept each other the way we are, and that my dear friends, is THE UGLY TRUTH! There are already a lot of glitches and hitches to be revamped in this world; there is Copenhagen, terrorism, Sreesanth's swine flu, Obama's nobel, explicit lingerie, wardrobe malfunctions. I think topics of a lesser God should be made to rest in peace, such as the brave Tiger's fiasco.

On a personal front, I salute Tiger Woods. The machismo with which he juggled wife, mistresses, kids, media, himself and of course, golf, is spellbounding. You do not see such multidimensional polychromatic strokes of geniuses everyday. Even Casanova did not fare well at his workplace because he was busy with his unslothful promiscuity. Tiger is austerely, a vibrant, colourful MAN who has been debarred and blacklisted by the media and the mob, just to flash their own ostentation. !!Shun Opulence!! I am deeply influenced by Tiger Woods, both on professional as well as personal fronts. My weak verse versatility penned this RAP ANTHEM for Tiger Woods!

*Attention*

O yea! O yea! We date!

We date! We date! We mate!

We catch a fish, we bait!

We care a fuck bou fate!

We cuddle the tag, X-rate!

We love! We love! We hate!

We shag, we kiss, dun wait!

We got the Tiger's trait!

We date! We date! We mate!

We love the tag of taint!

We hide! We hide! Act saint!

We'll remain high on t'rone!

We care a fuck, you moron!

We play! We play! In bed!

We dance around nay-ked!

We're Tigers, for Christ's!

We're men! We're men! In den!

A-men!

P.S. Out of the Pandora's box, this post is just for gags! Relax!

I move'eth, on and on. . .

2009-12-16T04:15:00.000-08:00

A vagabond's life defies permanence. It demands a capricious living at a place and eating up a major piece of the your life span cake in travelling and transient settling. A nomad does not deserve to attach himself to the ambience of a place as that would only bring incessant woes. He has to move on and acclimatize himself with naive surroundings and unheard of cultures.

Owing to my father's gypsical job, I too savoured the tastes of a tramp. Every place seemed unprecedented, in geographical terrains and human brains. Be it the countrysides of Hoshiarpur in Punjab, where kites were flown in frenzy and utmost delirium. Or be it the tranquilizing yet savage serenity of the Queen of Hills, Simla, where education was as quality as the architecture of those schools built during the British Empire, with wooden floors and spell-bounding campuses on the outskirts; and the Principal, Father Ambrose D'souza's holocaust with that infamous cane of his, during his surprise visits to distant classrooms, with children shouting, "Mama(his pet name) is on a round!!"; those evening strolls on the Mall Road and sizing up sizzling girls from the flamboyant Tara Hall School. Or be it the dusty roads of Kingsly Gwalior, where forts now exist as a tourist attraction and palaces dwell at the disposal of the common din; where Hindi is spoken with sheer prowess and enormity. Or be it the city of lakes, Bhopal, sitting on the Malwa plateau, with topsy turvy lands and the equanimity one experiences on the banks of these little but great water bodies; the boundless stretch of my college, which lies virgin in the hands of nature yet imparts seductive gratification with a bird like freedom. Or be it my Chandigarh, where your life becomes the cynosure of eyes, with siren roads, enticing houses and alluring lifestyles; where life is neither bucolic and primitive, nor it is fast and unbearable like a metropolis.

So which way of living is more proximate to the meaning of life? The painful, taxing, capricious life of a tramp?, or the settled, constant, Pole Star-like-throb of an inhabitant? With or without prejudice, my answer would barge the hobo way. The life of a mover is analogically congruous to the life of a human being. There is struggle and there is transience, but there is poise and ecstasy, exposure and Nature's serum of novelty, mirth with a tempting venom, a chance to evolve, both mentally and socially! You attain multilingualism, you become seasoned to every tempest of nature and neo-sapiens, you become worldy wise and more adapted to the scornful tacts employed! And ofcourse, your poetic mind does gain oodles of ounces.

This philosophy is pretty useful when put to practicality. To rejuvenate from a lost job, a forfeited relationship, it is vital to think with a stringent rationale in the forward direction with foresightedness. Driving your car with your eyes always on the rear view is fatal. A cursory glance into your past is enough to recuperate from errors. Else, the past got to be left behind, without tasting for its staleness and conceiving wrath in your otherwise fresh taste buds. What use is your life of, if instead of bolstering yourself ahead, you end up where you started, your birth? Life is not meant to be spent on ground. It is meant to experienced at new altitudes. Yes, there is a cumulatively increasing chance of falling head on to the ground, but it is better to have tasted those heights and fallen back than to have remained harmoniously on the ground, forever.

My present residence at Chandigarh, and its bleak probability of becoming a major IT hub in the near future is only a provocation of my perennial gypsy status. However, it gratifies me with the chance of exploring this world more and more, which is in fact a great tool to revamp one's aesthetic sense. Having said that, I do not wish to employ 'shifting cultivation' methods of annihilating my image during the short stay as I leave, as the Earth is round and so is life!

My rucksack's ready! I've adorned the cargo, the unkempt hair and deserted my Oxfords. I just got my cam, my novel and myself! I move'eth! I would not stop'eth till death numbs my toes and life becomes my foe!

I suffer from RANDism!

2009-12-09T02:02:00.000-08:00

"The Fountainhead poses one of the most challenging ideas ever presented in a work of fiction - that MAN'S EGO IS THE FOUNTAINHEAD OF HUMAN PROGRESS."

The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand

My midway reflex while reading The Fountainhead was hatred and disdain for Ayn Rand. Her quality of expression and her precarious yet mischievous juggle of words made me feel jaded enough to pick up a pen and write. I ostensibly forfeited my competence to write, though I was relishing the taste of the novel at every point. Such is the aura of the late Ayn Rand, whose anti thesis about the glorification of human ego was so unflinching, that by the time the novel reached it's concluding phase, it invigorated me with renewed energy to lift the pen and fight any confrontation. The difference? Belief in one's ego!

The chief protagonist of the novel, Howard Roark, is an architect, a drop out from one of the most prestigious, Stanton Institute of Technology. The story is about the lone battle he wages against the stereotypes of the society, who believe that his drawings and designs are blunt, blatant, brutal, blasphemous, belligerent, and should be brandished as presumptuous, in order to preserve the ancient integrity of Architecture. The story is about the discouragement and social boycott that Howard Roark receives from the charlatans of Architecture and their mass media methods of convincing the fickle minded people of the country. However, Roark is unfazed by every weapon employed against him because all that affects him, is his work, his selfishness and his ego. It is a fight against the rudimentary mindset of the people who do not desire to be transformed from their slothful routines. The story is also about a beautiful young woman, Dominique Francon, who shares an enigmatic yet pristine relation with Howard, and who walks the aisle of patience and penance with him to finally accomplish the roads to success.

I do not wish to summarize the story here and call it a book review. Instead, I wish to put forth my frame of mind after reading this hallmark of a genius. Man's ego for long has been tied with the negative threads of human nature. But we tend to construe dodged implications of ego. Human ego does not mean condemning the rest and gratifying self. It purely means belief in self. The subject is not 'others' but self. So the outcomes or the repercussions of ego do not affect 'others' but self. Yes, I do agree that we, the homo sapiens collectively form the neo sapiens, and the outcome of one should affect 'others' too, but the idea is to believe in oneself for the progress of humanity.

Ego is not insolent or pretentious. The thin line between ego and arrogance? While I type this post, if I believe that I can write an exquisite post of a superlative degree, it's my ego. If I start ridiculing other people just to quench my own lust of an exquisite post, it's my arrogance. My ego is for me, not for you. Ego implies, to implant a chemical in my mind that, for a vocation of my flavour, I am the best and I'll do something that would give peace to my hunger and quench my satisfaction. 'You' do not come into the picture prima facie. Conspicuously, it is vital to be egotistical, to achieve something that no one has ever done before, as it requires 'the best' to do 'the unprecedented'. Ego is precisely, an elevated form of determination.

Yes, you will be belittled and censured with cuss words, at assorted points of life, for being an egotistical, because the majority would continue to succumb in to the cliches of life; and it's your ego with which you have to exonerate yourself from the radical chains of the society. Life may be short enough to be wasted in a crusade, but it's always better to live your life on your own terms rather than as servility to the Vox Populi. If you disagree from the majority in certain aspect of life, it is more gratifying to wage a battle and lose it, than to succumb at the portals. As Louis Untermeyer has said,

"Life is an adventure, perilous and gay,
and death a long and vivid holiday".

Ayn Rand wrote this novel way back in 1943, but its essence and charisma would remain stronger than many more to come in the future. The pages might have turned yellow, but the words are as fresh as the spring, the crescendo is as powerful as symphony, the theme is as throbbing as life itself. The Fountainhead is not just a novel, it's a way of life. I hate Ayn Rand; I hate her for the love of it. She made me realize the difference between 'i' and 'I'. To worship the Almighty within than to observe penance and self flagellate myself, to live this life for myself than to make it an embodiment for my afterlife, something I am unaware of.

Yes! I suffer from Randism!

Qurbaan - A freak's review!

2009-11-29T23:39:00.000-08:00

(Ross Geller fashion!) Ou Nou! Ou Nou!!

Just because I liked watching Qurbaan yesterday, does not mean in any pervert way, that your cinema hall had prejudices against you or, Karan Johar exhibited "theatrical chauvinism", by satiating only a minimal number of people! The reviews were bad indeed, but my impertinence just could not agree with the general consensus! My impertinence? When a superfluous number got going bananas over Katrina Kaif and Kareena Kapoor, I found myself drooling over the RELATIVELY uninhabited, Nandita Das and Chitrangada Singh! When a spilling quantity was clinging to their pens in anti-left positions in the examinations, I was rather savouring my ambidexterity with a pen in left hand and a cricket bat in the anti-left hand! So its just the idiosyncrasy of my mind rather than the belligerence of Dharma Productions! RELAX!

The movie was ridiculed per se, for its parallelism with a few prior to bollywood films, though I found, that barring the backdrop of terrorism, in which the movie was directed, every scene of the film fell at just the right place and time, and weaved this whole yarn in such an engrossing manner, that it moved souls for me! The epicentre of the movie, terrorism, might have lost its virginity by now, yet it left me petrified over the futility of terrorism and the veiled black sheep, USA, that's aggravating the situation! USA's happiness in the form of gas is effervescing as fast as the gas itself, because ultimately, gas is non-renewable! But the repercussions it has on the communal harmony of the world are grave! The destruction, terrorism has done in the name of fanaticism and the aftermath of such hideous instances on the innocent guiltless mob is thought provoking!

And then you have the perennial critics of God, the atheists, condemning God and religion for the eruption of communal disruption! No religion ever asked people to fight cosmic battles. It was the misinterpretation of man, which led to such gory incidents! For once, lets believe the innocent atheists that, had God not existed, there would not have been this injustice to mankind! Lets vouch for the fact, once, that "A man-created God" is the root cause of breach of all the ethos of mankind! But who are you going to blame for the prejudiced earthquakes and tsunamis that have hit the innocents in the past? Ou Nou! x2. You can't question God, you ain't a theist! You're an atheist!

For every proton of positive energy, there got to exist an electron of negative energy as well! For every speck of happiness, there got to exist a spleen of agony! For every rejuvenation of gain, there got to exist a forfeiture of loss! The centre of gravity might change for you when you take a quick leap forward, but for God, we are all a collection of skewed lines with a zero vector as the resultant(Oh! My engineering did teach me cosmic lessons, din they?)! So the grand total of your bill got to remain zero, no matter how many transactions you make in His account! Terrorism is a curse, indeed, but rather than abusing God, you got to pursue ways of ending it and this movie did make such an impression!

And by the way, saif and kareena complimented each other really well in the HOOKING rounds, with UNHOOKED robes! 18+? Peace. Period.

Winter heat...

2009-11-24T23:18:00.000-08:00

The El Nino is gone and so is the fall! The sharp fangs of the barbaric winter cat are rising from their hibernation to impinge on the human flesh, without oozing out blood, but causing the ticker underneath, to bleed profusely, in pain and insinuation.

The sky feels left out in hues of blue, with traces of white attempting a forged silver lining. The man down under is miffed and excruciated with this seasonal anguish, with the meek sunrays making a feeble attempt to rekindle the dead spirits. The clawed frost contemplates the culmination of mirth and the harbinger of struggle and slavery. The advent of fog has tenter hooked the visibility of the sun and the predictability of life, as the two crave to get alleviated from the painful crescendo of winter times. Bodies are caged in the synergistic bonds of fur and cashmere; happiness masquerades in dull cocoons. Winters just don't seem to reach an end as they cry voluptuously on the dodged souls of men! My eyes are transfixed on a puny. Poverty and pain make him glee. He does not seem to have ever seen happiness, has he?

It's a test! A test of physical grit and mental determination. The bitter air is just a passing wind; the storm before the lull, the night before the day, the winter before the spring! It is meant to be lived with fire in the hearth and a towering inferno in the soul. It is meant to be lived with skateboards and skis, with icemen and coffees. It is to be left behind as a battered carcass and not as a gallant gall. It is to be fought with the comprehension of your own transience and it's lesser transience.

The winter shall'eth die soon, but it's you who has to brave it like a Spartan, not a zombie. It's a season of romance, not a harbinger of gloom. It is to be thrived with long hair and unshaved chests, with nude bodies outside the cosy nests, with glinting smiles and unflinching zests. The winter is paltry and so is the grief.

Bon Winters!

ever heard of love?

2009-10-02T12:16:00.000-07:00

Does love exist? I don’t know! It’s a kind of a dubious predicament for a person who has not yet immersed his hands in the holy, pristine serum of love! The Bible does vouch for the existence of true love. I’d rather run after the Bible within!

It’s undeniable that blue-blooded romantic movies do produce vestiges in me, in good faith, about love! Movies like, “A walk to remember” and “P.S. I love you” enthrall the emotional djinn within, and tend to maneuver my vital organs (viz. heart and skull), in the dimension of love. During the course of a movie and subsequently the moments ahead, I would get lost in a trance, casting myself to play a role in love. I would get affirmative of every move of love and form a rather cemented version of the otherwise dwindling castle of love!

The next morning, I would wake up to the aftermath of a phantasma, wherein, I am stranded on the road by my love, because I do not have the money to nurture it? There would be roars and uproars echoing in my hollow body, “Money precedes love” and “Love does not last more than a honeymoon”? I would be taken aback by this heart rending transition in my cranium! I would consequently bring myself to an epilogue, that love comes complimentary to money and happiness!

But I am certain of the fact that none of the above two sculptures are carved to perfection and hence the revelation to my blog! The first one is too fable-like, too theoretical, too fabricated, too hunky dory, to be cast from a transit of reel life to real life. It has reasons that ain’t resounding enough to assert a chemical change. The second one is too barbaric, too impertinent, too money-oriented to discard anything known as love. After all, love is tangible indeed, between me and my family! Huh! Catch-22!

Love has to exist, partially may be? If it comes into foreplay only when there is money, or there is happiness, or there is foreplay [pun intended…] is a sound interrogation that has kept me flabbergasted. If it just happens inevitably and suddenly, I can’t coax myself to wait for the day when it would strip me off my mental delirium. It might just turn out to be a hallucination? But then, don’t you think that sometimes, being a living being is also a hallucination? Amin, who knows when a life shall ‘end’ and what would be next to this ‘end’? If scientists can give theories about a throbbing parallel universe, I too could just conk in a cranky theory about this earth and life being a mere dream of God in which God might just disrupt His sleep anytime and destroy His dream, the Earth I mean…? If we humans are so skeptical and wobbly about our own pulses, why should we be thinking about the virtuosity of love? Love might not exist in reality, but what the fuck is reality? Why should I be so serious and grave about the science of love? Can’t I take it as an abstract noun which is in fact an abstract noun in the first place? Why should I be meticulously monitoring the existence of something which is as wavering as life itself? Wow! This line mathematically deciphers, that love = life! Love is life, henceforth!

Hence Proved![Oh! I crib for this line the most whilst I’m solving math!]

Throttle!

2009-09-30T10:49:00.000-07:00

Some days, you wish to soar! You wish to dismantle a globe of perturbations on your shoulders, and for once, you wish to savor a life unlike Hercules! The worldly ways after all are toll taking and impinge hard on the mind, as you bleed profusely in the heart. You do not wish to crib about a lost sanity in the hands of a repugnant world, and so, for once you wish to (mis)behave insanely, to amass the audacity to face this world with sanity! U-N-C-A-N-N-Y it is, but that's how humans are! Idiosyncratic!

Amidst a prosaic day for me, I felt chagrined and anguished over the mundaneness of my skull, monotonous and irksome! It was pitch dark! At such obsolete moments, the best way to cajole yourself is to go out on a drive! That sensation of hair crusading against a gust of wind at inhumane speeds is enough to invigorate the mind. The HAIR eventually becomes the Hostage of AIR, when the car whooshes past an expressway like a hare!

So I leaped into my car and off we zoomed into a highway for a gedi! In Chandiland, a drive is popularly called a gedi! The exquisite thing about Chandigarh is, the sensuality of roads, which is enough to woo any car to excite it, to its testosterone states! You'll seldom find a babu's pothole here because it is hard to work under the tables in a Union Territory! I still remember the slog I had to put in, to get my license here, something which sounds amusing in the residual cities of the country! I still remember the catena of bills I had to forfeit while chalans were issued in my name!

But the nocturnal period allows you to live off the edge! I effortlessly rallied my car to 95km/hr! I was actually shouting frantically inside the car, elated with an overwhelming state of mind! The needle now showed 105 km/hr! Avaricious humans, as Baba Ramdev says! I still wanted to drift that needle to the other side of 105! Darn! A loser came in with his cow[pronounced as: car]! He was shown the middle finger and called out names! Whoa! That gave a lot of contentment to a Punjabi mind! I would overtake cars with finesse and pull the brakes(push?) asunder to find a scumbag honking deliriously and a little dubiously! It instilled in me, the much required sadistic pleasure for the night! Period. Peace.

This whole trajectory was repeated periodically till the petrol tank complained of thirst! I made an erratic pit-stop in between and chilled the car and myself with an ice-cream! I laid on my car, closed my eyes and felt exhilarated!

It was a bird's flight, yesternight! There is something about Chandiland that intrigues me every time I am here! If it's my umbilical cord being torn here, or if it's my radiant culture throbbing here, there is something fascinating about this place that keeps me so 'umbilically' and emotionally agogged! I never get tired of this place no matter the amount of insipidity that tries to overhaul me! When it comes to being a Punjabi and a citizen of Chandigarh, I am indeed(and in deeds), presumptuous!

moolah.

2009-09-29T06:11:00.000-07:00

"I would rather be a loser for you, than be a loser for myself!"

on the brink...

2009-09-25T10:34:00.000-07:00

With an endeavour, I’m rigorous,

And so you call me pompous?

With passion, I’m vigorous,

And so I’m brandished, ostentatious?

With life, I toil to be zealous,

And so you ‘figment’ me, pretentious?

O thou trend follower! I despise being called rhetoric;

I’m idiosyncratic, I’m distinctively rustic!

I have no malicious motives in my mind,

Before sullen rants, my eyes turn blind!

But I know, you’ll turn a deaf ear,

And you’ll jest to call me austere!

Amidst blood n hue, I shall’eth triumph this battle,

Fake I ain’t, I shall’eth prove my mettle!

As the bonafide soul rises to kindle,

Insolence must fall, weep and dwindle…

It's coming...

2009-09-19T14:24:00.001-07:00

Life, in the past 2 months, has been a plethora of feverish excitements, hard to camouflage! Studies have gone for a six and exams in a jeopardy, but the very satiation of relishing the never recursing moments dwindling past me, is something that would perish with my ashes now!

Saturday nights have particularly become the epicentre of the hostel fervour with every arriving Saturday posing in unprecedented avtars! So, though this post too is based on "My life on Saturdays", I felt it in a different tone and hence the re-knit of the yarn!

Starts off(ummn...the evening) with terminal fatigue and thirsty stomachs, after a day long participation in a Mega event of our college! So was the predicament of my buddies! Before I move forward with the flow of the events, I desire to introduce my group to my blog! We are three friends(chuck the names, it never matters!), the three Musketeers i guess! Life became an all three-gether different ball game ever since our skewed destiny lines overlapped! Somebody called our triology, TOOFAN, and so, we coined a name to our group, TOOFAN[does this name matter? Let's see...]

The edible plan was a flashback! Exotic food filled inside the tummies upto the brim(the neck) to survive the coming week's famine! What followed next was exhilarating!

We were overeaten and even the slightest giggle hurt the populated stomach! But we are abnormals, atleast that's what a survey led us to! An average, normal person laughs 13 times a day, said the survey. But we, the Musketeers warm up at the 13th jest! On reaching the entrance gates of the college, we enquired jocularly, the directions to our college. The guard gave a dubious look to our rear-side-at-front-buttoned-at-the-back-shirts and retorted that we were indeed standing at MANIT! In we went and out came the pour of laughter, shrill and simulating. We were in high spirits, the man declared to himself and went back to slumber, nonchalantly, considering the number of "victims" he addresses to every night. Innocent he was, not to have guessed the humour beneath the cloak / Shrewed actors we were, not to have given an iota of doubt of our anti-drunk status to the watchman!

As we were walking the boulevards, our eyes in tandem caught the sight of the water tank of our college, something we usually passby giving a mere cursory glance! Our giggles turned into gapings at the stature of the mausoleum as we spoke in unison of our chances of topping the Colosseum! It was 11:30 pm and pitch dark...

"O conspiracy!
Sham'st thou to show thy dangerous brow by night,
When evils are most free?"[Julius Caeser]

We mantled on that piece of art at once and in no time reached the apex of the water tank, some 75 metres high! The view was flamboyant and our mouths were open[there were no bees though, to capitalize the situation...].

We felt like kings, the three kings of the Roman triumvirate! The whole world beneath our cow-dunged shoes looked so petty, so weak! It was like a dream, standing there and gazing at the heights we had achieved, FIGURATIVELY, FIGURATIVELY! It was an impetus strong enough to launch us from the thresholds to new altitudes! It gave us a glimpse of success and the recognition and power it bears with it! Yes! I will be there one day ruling the world, being it's master, not it's slave.

That day we passed our night atop the water tank, thinking, figuring, configuring the topsy turvy roads to success! We laughed, we moaned, we sat in silence, speaking to ourselves and then reposed completely; we felt composed and tranquilous at that place. Before leaving, we established our footprints at that place, with ink and graffiti, announcing to the world, the advent of a storm, a storm that had the power to sweep aside obstacles and emerge LARGER THAN LIFE...The storm we called, TOOFAN!

"
'Cause we all just wanna be big rockstars
And live in hilltop houses driving fifteen cars
The girls come easy and the drugs come cheap
We'll all stay skinny 'cause we just won't eat
And we'll hang out in the coolest bars
In the VIP with the movie stars
Every good gold digger's
Gonna wind up there
Every Playboy bunny
With her bleach blond hair

Hey hey I wanna be a rockstar
Hey hey I wanna be a rockstar
"

A research on debauchees - ENGINEERS!

2009-09-13T02:33:00.000-07:00

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: [Being ENGINEERS, we are tender towards lee ways, appends, razzmatazz and the glitterati of a project, rather than focussing on the ingredients of it. The chief contents after all are pirated, plagiarated or...TOPOLOGIED, to speak with an engineer's Adam's apple!]
Man is a social animal. To finish with finesse, this post of mine, I had 360° aid from idyllically ideal vehlla pals of mine. Gratitude pals! Gratitude!
I would also intend to thank my parents, who pay my fees in an engineering college, and hence the chequered flags to this post.
I am indebted to the faculty of my college, that permits us mass bunks and short attendance, and thereby gives us a humble chance to assimilate, the aura of engineering traditions. Practicals after all supersede all theories!

TRIVIA ABOUT ENGINEERS~

"Studies reveal that capacity of the brain of an engineer reduces more than 20% by the time he completes engineering"

"Most of the Engineers are virgin because they are busy writing their assignments"

"An Engineer is extremely happy hearing the word “exam”; because that means, one month vacation before, and one month vaccation after!"

"An Engineer's favourite avocation - chick analysis in the nearby commerce college...
Why not engineering college girls? Oh! They are specky pieces of shit!"

"Engineers are never in dearth of attendance...because they have proxy servers installed everywhere!"

"Common question during an attendance asked by an Engineer! What is my roll number?"

THE PERVERT'S PARAPHERNALIA
A zillion more points can be incorporated and trust me, when it comes to engineering, the power of brevity=0. Scientifically and humanely, the work(read:targets) accomplished by an engineer is NIL, and subsequently, we end up being prolix about the nibbles we eat in our lives.
My field sounds tantalizing in the preface. It smells of the Gandhian fragrance and greener pastures. It mesmerises the mob with the status it apparantly has today. But the conundrum of engineering in reality is cumbersome and enigmatic.
Just as harrowing my first year was in this college, my second year here is cynical and bizarre. It is spicy yet off beat. Quite unimaginable! Queer!
The way our Saturday nights pass in the hostel was the prima facie reason for this post. Talk of yester-night.
After a week long fiasco of hunger and poverty, owing to our respectable mess, we carried our famished bellies to a plush and healthy restaurant, awaiting the feast of Lupercal! We ate to our heart's content and a far sighted intent. An intent synonymous to a camel's when he quenches his thirst and fills the hump(read:tank) on his back with water before setting on a voyage to a desert. Good food would next be eaten a Saturday later!
Back room, we now planned the schedule of the night. Phone Booth(movie)-->Cricket 2007(yeah right, we are passe and 2007-clinged)-->Vantage Point(movie)-->NFS Under Ground-->Parzania(movie)-->Counter Strike-->ZZZZZZZ...
Here was the hitch! Engineers are jinxed! They cannot afford to break the tradition of detesting plans! Everything oughta be extempore!

When we were done with Cricket 2007, my friend got a mail. A mail that played a spoilsport. Early in the day, he had got into a brawl with his presumptuous maid over a tiny winy! It was a regret letter now! The two first fought, then reconciled, then proposed. This process was tad longer than the way it has been completed here in a phrase! It required the male party as the mediators and the female party as the judiciary. Perrenial attempts were binned but the eventual outcome was fruitful as a nine month! But in the wake of this see-saw, time tortoised to exorbitant distances! It was 5:00 by the time the Rs.200 call came to a halt. The recession-hit-sufferer pledged a hiatus after the call, of no "tring tring" till the next week, a mission he knows, has failures etched! He will call soon, the Gods know.

Females were out of syllabus yet done with elan! Now what? Drowsy? Naah! We are the friggin engineers and we face challenges like a Spartan in the movie, 300! The plan oughta be traversed no matter the procrastinations. We took an interval to the night canteen to sip in the 5th tea cup of the night and were raring again to be set on the residual odyssey!

Yester-night/morning, we lullabyed at 7:30 am, after eating our breakfast in the mess and striving till the last gun shot of Counter strike! Mixed racist feeling seeped inside us! But the average is what matters to an engineer; the outcome not the means, the mango not the seeds, which was sweet though tizzying!

Yesternight, the three of us shared a Catch-22 bonding, stronger than the single and multiple bonds that we crammed in Chemistry while preparing for IIT-JEE! Our room had a diverse cacaphony in it, monstrous Punjabi laughter, Boeing 747 decibels, of whines and swines! Whatever that cynical night was, it was ecstasic and feverish! Amidst this night of romance-at-short-notice and Hangover-like-scenes, I was reminisced of my first girl! The moments we relished together, fought and recoiled, kissed, sweared, embraced, talked all night till dusk and decieved homely interventions!

EPILOGUE
That's precisely, the way we throb as engineers. Abominable but trend setters!

Bikes and bunks,
nikes and punks,
NFS and slam dunks,
girls and junks,
Engineers are the sexiest chunks!

Hail Engineers! Hallelujah!
Viva la Engineering!
Cheers!

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Oh Darn you!

Volatility of Innocence!

2009-09-09T08:33:00.000-07:00

The word's becoming Plutonian! As we step into the "rugged portals" of humanity, the idyllic innocence appears battered and raped. Prima facie, it speaks idiosyncratic. Childhood was so distinct! Mumbles were open and gambles were blasphemous. The mind was earnest and the soul was honest. Unprejudiced! Un-conglomerated! Love was clean and rustic, fathomable and straight[pun intended]. It had no designations, no architectures. Impromptu! The very benign smile of a cherub is the closest one gets to divinity, they say!
Adults on the contrary are so adulterated! Marijuanated! Treachrous! Tyrants who usurp, friends who ditch, vengeance that crussades. Innocence appears exterminated...at streets, at Parliamentary seats, while dining on meat...Sullen juxtaposition in the hygiene of the jugular vein, now and then!

What is it? Is the maturing mind a delirious phenomenon? Or is it a mode to dismantle the equilibrium of our karmic account whilst we throb? What simlates the karmic account? A sin? How would you define a sin and set parameters to categorise an act, as an act of sin? Does contempt of court result into a negative balance in our karmic account? A court devised by the humans for the humans, with boundaries and borders differentiating the various intra human laws? The transgression of religious laws into the realms of state laws is anomalous. As an instance, there are nations that permit polygamy and nations that loathe it legally. Ultimately, what would polygamy do to our karmic account? Is it some bijective function of the nation in which we reside?
U-N-C-A-N-N-Y!

Our group had dashed on alloys to Bhojpur, some 40 kilometres from our college. The place was celibate, primarily because it was a village. The beauty with which that place stands could arise prolix posts in it's appreciation, though I'll keep it to brevity. We were all agog by the virginity of that place and I sort of inferred that innocence generally pulsates till something/somebody does not come under the influence of humans/civilisation! Once "polluted", the place/person loses it's arcadian ways!
I DON'T KNOW IF IT HAPPENS FOR THE GOOD?

*ponders*

Hostel Gags...

2009-08-24T10:33:00.000-07:00

This post could be a mundane revealation to a book of secrets. Though I admire the mysticism hanging yonder over the beings making their tentative extrapolations languish on tenterhooks, I thought I could publicise unprecedented tricks of mine, just an 'J'aswant Singh did on 'J'innah, as I do not fear expulsion or expungement from the Bhartiya 'J' Party!

Secret #ash 1: I have an electric heater at my hostel room. Now that might seem to have a tinge of insipidity(infact a spoonful of blankness), but the true punch n panache of this inside-the-safe story can be understood only by a boy living in a hostel. The mess food is as unpredictable as the monsoon this year. Amidst such a crisis, Karvachauth-ing every couple of days can be bizzare for an unmarried gymming male. Just as the citizens have to lift the broom to brush aside a cockroach(terrorist), when the GOI is snoring(courtesy: A Wednesday), we resort to cooking up our own kichchdi(not literally) when the mess turns poopy.
I can do a lot of stuff with edibles you see, to scratch off! I can boil eggs with prowess sublime, I can boil milk without a drop on the exteriors and I can do what every youth of this country can...expend "2 minutes" of my life conjuring up yellow curls of what is believed to be a Chinese chao-mao-xing-xang; noodles to put it simply.

Secret #ash 2: If women today, can venture out at night, why can't boys' cook? Now, I know something about maggie noodles that kept deprived, kitchen tycoons like Sanjeev Kapoor . Haha! I am too humble and mumble to accept your applauds and accolades!
The tip is, while cooking maggie, if you put in a gigantic pinch of sugar, thou shall experience divinity! Heavenly ecstacy! Thrilling!

Jests apart, life in a hostel has its own moments. I don't know where to commence. I never felt so comfortable with ETs(people outside my house!). Jibing at zany shopkeepers, watching 5 movies in a day on a Saturday with the finale culminating at 4 in the morning intertwined with Vivek's noodle mania, detergenting robes together, fighting, abusing, trashing, easing back with a 100 decibel laughter, never sleeping at our allotted rooms, and above all, being there for vice versa at acute moments.

I had an accident today with an event at the literary club to be hosted in a day's time. Oh! I sound frivolous rather than jocular at such an odd hour isn't it? My friends have been giving me blue blood treatment here which makes me too nonchalant to be haevy with pain. They've run errands for me, assisted me in pasting the event's poster and have upped the ante on laughter. Holy! They made an accident sound, a sexident!

This boon of camaraderie is indeed bond worthy. It's a bliss, something that I could never inculcate till the previous year owing to my own anti-positives. My present co-passengers in this voyage of life induce a vouch of being together till the terminal stoppage. Friendship is indeed FOREVER!

Piggy Fables...

2009-08-12T10:06:00.000-07:00

"Always remember, a cat looks down on a man, a dog looks up to a man, but a pig will look the man right in the eye and see his equal.”

O yeah? It has been an incongruous, incompatible, shabby cold war between humans and pigs! Since the Indus Valley Civilisation, pigs have been debarred from their birth rights of sustaining hygenically with meagre amounts of detergents. The way they have been throbbing since then might seem a task too exorbitant to scale but pigs are smart, naturally! They know how to make merry in puddles and splash all sorts of slush on sapiens. Humans started gulping down pigs similar to a carrot and pigs were at the back foot once again...A tête à tête between the swines and hens(the male cocks are domestic!!) ensued. The rendezvous turned amicable and fruitful and together the victims of human atrocities unleashed a plan...ghastly and gory!

Recently, I read somewhere in the news that the Indus Valley tunnels have been traversed by the humans as they crack one of the oldest scripts and manuscripts of civilisations. Sweet victory for humans over their arch rival swines? Nopes! It's a jinxed situation, a predicamant for the refrees observing the war between the two pedigrees! Pigs strike back at the humans with err...what?, let me give another bird's view(I am going to regret having written "bird" here...) to my TOI, yea, right, S-W-I-N-E F-L-U! Wasn't bird flu satiating enough for money lusted doctors? I read further, "It has become a pandemic catastrophe!!". Whoa! Now that's a sour revenge by the pigs over the sweet victories(now insipid) of humans!
Swine flu is spreading acres of land per seconds, congruent to the Arctic glaciers melting at 3 Belgiums per day! Prima facie, it might seem a news of lesser importance to a lay man, in comparison to the "bigger" issues like Saif's D&G shades robbed! But giving an intricate glance rather than a cursory glance shows the dilemma in which countries are today! Talking of a week prior, most of the "aloof-from-current-affairs" youth would have given a fcuk to such pieces of chelparks! How selfish is the rudimentary mentality of humans! Just when onlookers began to rush and tamiflu no longer remained hush hush, we became wary of every eerie details about the disease! We gathered information on the net, accumulated prices and courses of tamiflu, garnered masks and preventive measures and REGRETED for the first time the unprecedented arrival of flu on the planet right of Venus!

The scene at my hostel is Kafkaesque! The stu-mob is in a frenzy yet "delighted"(grotesque!!) at the arrival of a new hullabaloo in the insti! You see them igniting rumours at the possible suspects who once upon a fairy time had mild fever. The brouhaha-mongers and people who believe in abstentations have reasons to call emergency meetings at the VVIP rooms to make preparations of yet another forced bunk from the college and move back to our domiciles till the flu is conquered. As i type this, I am aided by melodies at 120 decibels to the likes of "Kadi te hass bol ve...Aahun Aahun Aahun". Oxymoronicals! How could you pacify us to giggle amidst crisis? A few mates who have their reports pending with the sarkaris are precipitating in their respective cocoons! Rest are dancing at their tips with safety masks on, giving an impression of Halloween's being celebrated at an odd hour!(Oh! They are imps indeed!)

The government? Huh! I tried to refrain myself from commenting on this but my patriotic quotient creeps in and rushes my blood to blurt out a line and sit satisfied! An article of an NRI whose daughter is fighting swines out there in the sarkari USPATAALS paints a dim picture of the government laxity in stocking tamiflus, providing optimum infrastructure like labs(18 labs to be precise for a billion cupids!) and controlling the electric flu! After all, babudom in India needs Gandhis to fill their own piggy banks before fighting the piggy infection! Our country is faring the worst in combating the swine crime as the escalating deaths continue to silence the din. The U.K manner of banishing the disease is just a phone call away. Why not we?

The pigs have surged ahead of the humans for the moment as tamiflus deteriorate in number. It's a scray movie, the Earth, presently though it appeared a spoof a month ago! Life hangs on tenterhooks as people drive SUVs to test their babies rather than watching Love Aaj Kal(If at all a "kal" waits for us to travel the titan watch!). Education is the need of the hour, for the citizens as well as the officials under the knife! We need to array together against the swines and bring out our Earth from a premature Apolcalypse!

The Colossus in making...

2009-08-03T09:07:00.000-07:00

Hmm...I screwed! I screwed the exam for a niche in the editorial board. Sullen Hell! I missed what i wished the most! Penning is something I regard as my territory! Every human being has this bestowed-in-born skill wherein (s)he feels the strongest if not supreme! When it comes to inking the snow(a white sheet of paper), I feel so Antarctic-ic in my blood! The whole ferocious adrenaline rush simulating my muscles to move a parker in my left limb entangled between the joyous fingers is the moment i feel at my best, where no matter how bizarre the circumstances in the ambiance, I shall'eth emerge crowned and shall'eth dismantle every other weak spot in this whole equatorially-bulging-poles'-tapering Earth!
With such pinnacled confidence, tripping is harrowing! At first, it seems like a hallucination! This whole nexus of neurons is a zany thing! At first, it fails to deliver and then it tries to cocoon the whole fiasco in a shell of hallucination, far from anti-virtuosity.
The repercussions are all the more distressing! The next time you fuel your pen and enter the snow, the petrol inside the pen freezes for the first time. It seems to falter while braving the chilling whites around! You choke, you're broke, your mirror reflects a dork, that tantalizing aroma, that you sniff when you leak your pen is missing! You starve, you appear derelict, raggamuffined and the unhealed wounds stop you from raising the sword again.
NOW WHAT? Is it a/the (b)end in the/of the road? These are two lines that have tied the nuptial knot right from t=0(forgive me, all the math repellers)! At this juncture, where the mind ain't without fear, the co-passengers in this ordeal-within-the-voyage, play a protagonist. These co-passengers could be your pals, a book or a movie! Like in my case, I was un-traumatised by a friend who explained what those guys had missed by overlooking me! I was consoled and nose-wiped(aah! sorry! Just an expression!) with an ice-melting statement that talent can be appreciated by people who have the membrane to laud! Myriad instances were pointed out to me wherein even geniuses to the level of Einstein and Bill Gates sucked at the premature stages. There was Witherspoon, Rowling and 'clones' who played their roles in seducing my cranium with red hot, fiery examples. As the engine was heating back to its throb, my mind too became agile as it recollected instances of Obama being jibed at school. I saw this film, "A Beautiful Mind", describing John Nash's predicamant and his strength whilst times of dilemma.
I am back at the F1 circuit emulating Schumi! I pick up my weapons again just to be deadlier and more venomous!
So what was the sea drift? Just a motivation and a companion by the side to ignite the fuel once again; a belief that, to fall and rise is an initiative of winners, not the prerogative of losers! Trust thyself and you shall be the Michael Phelps of swimming, the Usain Bolt of sprint, the Vishy Anand of chess, the Schumi of racing, the Obama of world! Regret the rued chances, for it needs a warrior's heart to cry, but emerge out of it with hues intense as the rainbow and win the world all over again!

In Pursuit...

2009-07-15T06:30:00.000-07:00

Here I am once again, I'm torn into pieces; can't deny, can't pretend.....(COURTESY: Album Breakaway). I hate plagiarism!

I am scribbling on my cell phone to post on my deserted blog which is extracting pounds of flesh from my body. My blog that I call my soul companion, appears crestfallen and in a silent interrogation over the manner in which it has been rejected after being nurtured with its vital ingredients in the recent past.
But i am sure my sweetheart shall'eth forgive me because it comprehends my present dilapidated predicamant. I feel absolutly shattered today as I see the world through my own optic nerves!

After being a frog in the well ever since sucking teethers, i realise how mistaken i used to be when i used to slam my ever smiling father over petty snags and procrastinations. I am sorry pops! You've been such a dude!
Cooking up a life for myself, this time as a solo singer makes me realise what it is to live by oneself. After waiting for some 10 days to get a "new room"[fucking oxymoron intended] wherein we slept in tight closures figuratively one over the other, eating food at places that don't even know how to make a typical punjabi tandoori roti, standing in queues that taste like the 100 mile road in order to get a mere signature from a corrupt babu whose attendants and bloddy office bearers still incorporate papered registers in the era of e-registers, shedding water from the body in oceanic quantities while waiting in mercurial lines thus making substitutes for a bath, a bath which sounds like a mirage in a water deprived city like Bhopal, i realised how painstaking life becomes at times. To be masquerading in a clanestined cocoon at home and to carve a niche for oneself are two different shores of the same ocean.

Talk of corruption, the mitochondria of humans, residual rooms are sold away to people with hyper jacks rather than deserving dogs! There are still underdogs left who would now have to lurk in the murk owing to a bloddy jerk who is corrupt despite the perk bestowed on him ever since he was a clerk!
This film, "In Pursuit of Happiness" is a landmark in Hollywood ain't it? Probably one of the best I have seen in recent times! Will Smith finally defies the economic crisis to emerge from dust and rise to somebody. The movie ends there leaving a stark reality of how tough life is, how every moment ought to be earned to reach the pinnacle of happiness, how failures cloud more in number than successes. Life ain't some Bollywood flick which depicts some , "And they lived happily thereafter" kind of cake walk. It's like a 100m hurdles race where every step has to clear an obstacle. When those hurdles get over, it's time to leave the earth for the heavenly abode!

Aah! I just came back from dinner after having 10 pooris, 2 bowls of kheer(you start liking kheer in a hostel) and an omelete to do the stomach garnishing! Lol! Man you must be speculating a split personality, is it? No! I am just trying to be happy in the face o⁯f adversity as some people asked me to do so! Cheers!
Oh! As i write this, I find my ad hoc room usurped by some 'ole. Damn! You can't even sleep at peace here. Silly budheads hijacked my temporary resort!
But I have my friends with me sailing yonder in the same yacht! I am emulating some of our queer friends who speak like dormant scumbags! Lol! We are happy despite this ardous life!

Quite an eventful post i think! A blend of philosophy, social drawbacks, tried-forceful-humor. Let's see if i can squeeze in some Bollywood directors. Yash Chopra? As soon as you read my post, meet me in my offi...err hostel room! Asap! ⁮

A season of melancholy!

2009-06-30T22:55:00.000-07:00

the ducking sun, the rising moon,

the seeping heat, the crawling rain.

when shrill lightnings and thunders loom,

and gravity defying scorch sets in vain.

the lost gaiety, the pall of gloom,

the missing jibes, the birth of pain.

when sullen cries and catastrophes bloom,

and perturbing melancholy brings tears insane.

lost in the wilderness, in a trance like state,

becoming oblivious of past and destiny's fate.

the season of blue funk is going to end soon,

till euphoria arrives, I'll masquerade in a cocoon!

Forgive The Almighty!

2009-06-23T10:32:00.000-07:00

During my tryst with several communities on orkut, I made an outlandish observation. The number of atheists in most of the intelligentsia communities or communities that required churning of your grey cells was manifolds when juxtaposed with communities of the mob[n00bs]! This once again made bells to chime in my brain to what dad often says, "Where ignorance is a bliss, it is folly to be wise!". No this post ain't any recursion to my previous posts lest you might drowse this time hearing my crap!

I had a chat with many of the atheists initially. It was my grave attempt to pacify those innocents, to make them believe that demanding scientific explanations for the existence of God is foolish and it is better to remain ignorant about scientific theories discarding God! People argued, that if Higgis Bosons are discovered, probably by October,2009, religions would be shattered! May be yes! But God? He is above all sciences. Moreover, science is an everyday maturing concept. There may develop some other Boson theory that proves Higgis Bosons theory wrong!

Those people refused to budge an inch! Explanations changed to arguments; arguments metamorphosed into cosmic battles which in turn transitioned to abuses! This is where, I decided to terminate my forced influence on these morons. I signed an MOU with myself not to try and influence an atheist; fetish of arguments fall futile and what made me stop this attempt was, in the process, it was the innocent God that got squeezed like a McDonald's burger's filling! The whole discussion circled around existence of God and in the end, He was abused, criticised, ridiculed for reasons that He too is not aware of! He never wanted people to idolize Him, to perform rituals, to even follow any particular religion. He just wanted to be remembered during the thick and thins of a sapien's life, to do an act of kindness and humanity to serve the purpose of praying Him, to banish and vanish all sins, to listen to one's conscience strikes before a venture! As Helen Steiner Rice once said,

"thy life's path at the crossroads lead,

which way to choose canst thou decide?

ask thy conscience, He's at hand,

knows every tongue, make Him thy guide!"

But humans by nature have this habit of finding profits and dividends in every piece of work, no matter if it's God! This on the whole spoilt the very existence of God as God began to be traded, commercialized, thus leading to a break away group called atheists.

God resides in every heart, He is present in the good and the bad, in every proton, electron and neutron, in every muons. He has no religion. Religions are mere paths leading to Him[Swami Vivekananda]. He demands nothing but respect for every creature on this planet. To sum up, God resides in Faith!

When I used to come back from school after a brawl or after being mocked at my someone, my mom used to pacify me and say, "People have not feared from offending God, you are a mere human being!"

I find it useless now to enter into a debate on God. I feel satisfied just giving my opinion than to "discuss" and rape my ideals! As Jesus Christ has said, "O Lord! Forgive them, because they do not know what art they doing!"

People have usurped governments in the names of God, they have mutilated His existence, many use God in a harrowing fashion by classifying it into religions...humans are so undeserving of the craniums they are gifted!

To end it, faith continues to live/die in this world. No amount of pacifiers or influences can make a person believe or disbelieve in Him. The voice has to come from within oneself to change opinions. Till then, the mind of an atheist would remained clogged and stagnant!

Note below : My post may evoke vehemence amongst people who disagree with my views. But as per the Einstein's theory of relativity, nothing is absolute[other than God]. Views synonymous to mine are welcome but an atheist's view shall be discarded! I as the owner of this blog have the right to exercise this authority. For me, giving an eardrum to atheism has crossed the Plimsoll line!

Euthanasia - Giving Life to a Dead!

2009-06-20T12:35:00.000-07:00

Life is an adventure, perilous and gay

And Death, a long and vivid holiday!

- Louis Untermeyer in his poem "Swimmers"

Body, what is it? A machine! A machine to do work! A machine to help you out in locomotion! A machine that we often lubricate in a gym to attract machines with longer hair! But this natural machine is different from the artificial, man-made pieces of junk! There lies a red ticker inside. The crimson water oozing in and out of arteries and veins is a symbol of remaining crimson throughout your life! The throbs signify God's creation and every beat inside should be respected!

Death on the other hand is an inevitable gift of God! Gift, because, death takes you away from the tight chains of chagrins, pain, sorrows!

Euthanasia or mercy killing is a kind of respite for people who are suffering from incurable diseases which are too painful to live with. To such people, lethal injections are given under strict medical and legal scrutiny. A person who has terminal illness, death for whom is at arm's length, is drowning in a pool of immense physical pain! Isn't it absurd? Why should a person bear that pain when he knows he won't come out of it till death? It appears like a blot on humanity if we keep this person to life; the word life for whom is now like a mirage, looming on his pyre! Why not to relieve such patients from a life worse than death so that they may rest in peace? Their life becomes a mutiny within themselves as it becomes a testing time for his/her loved ones who are waiting for death to come naturally!

Natural death? Destined death? What is it? If a person is subjected to mercy killing, is it not a destined death? It is! It was in his destiny to die this way, to die without inflicting much pain on his body!

However, Euthanasia has endless legal implications, which is the reason why it is presently practiced partially only in countries like, Switzerland, Belgium and a few more! With the crime sector flourishing in the world, Euthanasia could be a way of nurturing crime! Today, when even a suicide becomes a suspected murder, practicing Euthanasia can be catastrophic! Strange ain't it, human beings do not today have the freedom to live/die today owing to their own development of crimes and murders?

There arises a natural question. Why don't we humans have the right to die as per our own whims and fancies? Why is suicide illegal? If we are fed up with our lives, why can't we surrender to death with legal aid in order to avoid complications further? Why do we have to wait for our expiry date in order to detach ourselves from misery? Strangely mysterious. But that too would become grotesque. Teenagers, people losing their jobs, losing their loved ones would get a nice way to escape.

To recapitulate, I personally believe that mercy killing ought to be made legal in every country! I agree, one ought to fight in life, fight pain, distress, mutiny but what is the use of fighting a battle which would produce the same result as mercy killing does? At least we, the humans who would still live after the sufferer's death can do an act of philanthropy by releasing him from unending sorrows!

I was just retrospecting on this topic and found something queer! The same humans who crave to live more and more, who fear death approaching towards them with it's sharp claws of time, when land in a terminal disease, start fearing life, start craving for death, start desiring time leaps to happen somehow!

Human nature is indeed strange!

Pulchritudinic Uncertainty!

2009-06-09T00:42:00.000-07:00

Future pandits? Astrologers?

Not moved you desi-peg-taker? Fine!

Taantriks? Babas? Chandalikas[not really certain about this!]? Those parrot mongers[what do you call them?]?

I once had the traditional cable connection in my house which had this "City Channel" in it! Apart from remaining flooded with marquees, this channel had a special advertisment; something like this :

Kamal Khan Bangali. Desire to get back your true love? Vexed with another woman in your husband's life? Want to turn tables on your distressing future lines?

Contact the award winning tantrik, Kamal Khan Bangali!

Fee : Rs. 101

N.B. : Any person from anywhere if successfully contradicts my prophecies, i'll desert my job!

Phew! It actually extracted an extra pound of flesh from my body, translating their advertisement in Punj-indi[Punjabi+Hindi] to English!

Talking sane now, the variable X in our life, denoting uncertainty, remains constant forever in our lives. What say? We humans have this natural yet grotesque tendency, call it curiosity, to know our future, the clandestined puzzle. We resort to any measure in order to acquire the faintest curve of our future. Futile isn't it?

Life is so beautiful with its uncertainties on, don't you think? Who will win tomorrow's finale?, who would be the next P.M?, will the character ABC of our favourite K-soap die and then resurrect like Jesus?, how are we going to fare the approaching exams?, how shall we perform on our first date?, our first kiss?, when shall we give evidence to our mortality?

There are so many question marks in our life at every single moment which is bound to propound vestiges and goosebumps.

We call our life boring and pissing. Try pondering over such questions; life is the most exciting gift of God. Yet, we desire to know more and more...

My dad, he is actually a dude! He often recites quotations that seem ineffective then, but when retrospected, are deeper like the Pacific. He often says, "WHERE IGNORANCE IS A BLISS, IT IS FOLLY TO BE WISE". Sometimes, it is better to remain ignorant than to try and discover untouched corners of your life that may harm your psyche. Picture this,

You get to know one day from your domestic tantrik(haha!!) that you are going to die in a month. For you, it is the end of the road. You spoil that precious one month of your life and it is almost certain that you will die of depression in less than a month! Uncertainty is a bliss!

One of my favourite movie, "yahi hai zindagi" has a dialogue delivered by God[wink-wink] during His rendezvous with a person, "Dear human, if I tell you how much you have to repay for your sins in the years to come, you will certainly die".

Fine! Enough of moral lectures! A message! Live for the present, and live it like there is no future; and that's how the past was perfect, and so is the present, and so will be the future! Relish now, today! Shrugg off those silly babas and budheads! Life is short. Make it adventurous, exciting, spine chilling at every stage! Hail the uncertainty in your life. It has been unintentionally giving you lifelines. Don't get tensed by the future tense. It's only a tense[pun intended strongly]! Remain ignorant forever! Don't go to a tantrik; if at all you go, stuff cow dung into his mouth and kick him on his arse!

Is uncertainty beautiful now? Think before you answer. Give some respect to my fingers which are constantly working against static, dynamic and limiting friction on the keyboard!

zzzZZZ...

2009-06-04T23:57:00.000-07:00

Good morning! 7:30 am! Good morning! 7:30 am! Good...BAM!!

*SLEEP...zzzZZZ*

Good morning! 7:40 am! Good morning! 7:40 am! Good morn...BAM!!

*SLEEP...zzzZZZ*

8:00 am :

"Vivek! You are getting late for gym!" My mom is wriggling a soul in peace! Ho! She is not doing the right thing!

One thing i hate about my life ever since the delivery, is to be woken up from a deep dark slumber! The world of imaginations is so magnetic, that I hate to shift back to the real world. Call me an escapist from reality or whatever, i don't care! But to be shaken violently and be brought back to the real world is the first thing, I would detest!

If the dream is not a phantasma, I am just like everybody else, the chief protagnist of the dream. Almost everything in my mind after the day's events that lie untouched in reality, lose their virginity in the virtual world, my world!

In my dreams, I am sometimes the lead member of my rock band, some name, XYZ[the name of the band changes with nights!]. In the band, I have my subordinates in the likes of Farhan Akhtar and Arjun Rampal on the guitar, sometimes the Queens, or Nirvana, or Strings! I rule them all! My voice sends shivers down the spines of the audience, who leap like frogs. My actions on stage govern the tickers of everyone as I see people vying to take a glance of me.

Take 2! I am a tennis player, a born genius! I have won every grand slam I have played till date and I have been holding the numero uno for the past 6 years. Assumption in my dream : Roger Federer retired 6 years ago! My opponents weep past me as I stand like a Colossus on the court, looking at every petty player with pity! I am pretty humble with the crowd as I make sure I sign all autographs! I can see children wearing tees bearing my name and image! A movie is being made on me, "Vivek, the stroke of genius!" ;P

Take 3! I am a model! I sizzle on the ramp as every other model fizzes with envy! Aah, the girls! I have a swarm of "bees" surrounding me everytime, as I decide upon my next girlfriend! So many choices? It is a sweet pain! I have almost everything, money, fame, status, lady-luck. I still do not remember how many dates I have under gone!

Take4! I am a Debatist! Duh? I am swimming in crores as I host talk shows and participate in them too. People piss in their pants when I rebutt them and make them feel short of answers! I am now about to acquire NDTV 24-7, with Barkha Dutt and Pranoy Roy as my assistants! yEy!

A cricketer...

A writer...Not Salman Rushdie. *Fear the fatwas*

A Painter...How about Jack Dawson? uh.. MF Hussain? *Fear the unruly mob!*

A business man...I am Ratan TATA!

Take 786! I am a philantropist. I am giving my wee bit in making this world a better place to live in! I am helping the poor, making donations to NGOs, funding research organiztions for the cure of gigantic diseases! I am a genorous person who is making people around, happy!

No matter how impractical my dreams be, I still live them more happily than my real life! They give me pleasure, How does it matter if they are not real? Life is so short after all. After his death, Einstein was no more a scientist. Why? He's dead! The point I am trying to make is, there is no harm in dreaming big, for 2 reasons. One, only those who dream big know the importance of being big and have the guts to make it big. Two, the transience of life! After death, you are zilch, nothing! All your achievements are left behind on the earth. So how does it matter, whether you made it big in reality or in the virtual world, your dreams?

Ok...Time for me to sleep now! Let us see, if I can get a girl this time!

Courage-In The Face Of Adversity!

2009-06-02T10:52:00.000-07:00

Game, Set and Match-Roger Federer!
Holy cow! Federer was two sets and 3-4 down in the third set! To come up from such an ebb in the game, requires extreme courage mingled with the never-say-die-untill-death kind of will power!

Roger has been always like this, ever since I saw his match against Pete Sampras and became his till-last-breath fan! His skills are ofcourse fantastic, which gave him the numero uno for a record number of weeks! But what has intrigued me about this guy is his mental toughness even in the most bizarre moments of a match! For a person who is at the fag end of a big defeat, when a loss now just remains a formality, you will see this player emerging from sub-zero to win the virtually-lost match! This is a true trait of a champion! As they say, becoming world number one is difficult but holding on to that elite position requires an extra pound of flesh.

Federer is perfect! What makes him perfect is the fact that he knows he is not perfect and it is important for him to rediscover himself everday, prove himself day by day, minimize those weaknesses, keep on advancing on the journey which has an unreachable destination, PERFECTION!

The match i just talked about in the beginning! After Federer lost the opening two sets, I switched off the television in disgust and disappointment. Though Federer had been under such catch-22 situations before, I just couldn't see my role model being thrashed severely! When I got up after an hour, with a palpitating heart i switched on the television. I had mixed feelings and when I read the scoreline wherein Federer required just one more game to win the match, I felt elated but bad too at my loser attitude! That man, who was actually under the knife had ressurected!

That is the true hallmark of a champion! Not being afraid to die, never saying die, budging that extra inch towards victory. With this attitude, destiny too starts favouring you in the positive direction!

As i saw Nadal losing in his alter ego court, I realized how tough the journey must have been for this seasoned champion, Federer. Winning matches after matches then seemed uphill!

What is even more astonishing is Federer's attitude both on court and off court. On court, you'll never ever see him smashing racquets, abusing, or showing disgust, no matter how catastrophic his predicamant is! All you would see him doing on court apart from playing, is motivating himself, do walk that extra mile! Off court, he is the most down to earth player I have seen. No arrogance in public, adhering to media's perennial requests, opening "THE ROGER FEDERER FOUNDATION" to support poor people who wish to do something in tennis, all this is remarkable for a human being!

Nobody can predict the outcomes is sports. Nor do I know how Federer would fare in the matches to come in his playing career, but Federer has all the ingredients of a champion! His resilience is a lesson for everbody!

I know, lawn tennis is just not for me, considering the way I dozed off, when Roger was passing through the lean patch in the match, but he certainly instigates me to strive for success, to have that self-confidence, the right attitude and above all, courage in the face of adversity!

India Shining

2009-05-27T10:30:00.000-07:00

Life's been zilch this past week. No eye-ball-turners, no adrenaline-rushing-events, an absolute insipid life! Whatever happens in my life, the blog must go on, just like my life. So, out of utter boredom and inability to write something innovative, i sprang up with a topic.

The other day i was driving on the seductive roads of Chandigarh. Don't get me wrong; for a person who loves to drive, Chandigarh and Ahmedabad roads are the only neat pieces of tar and coal collaborating amicably, that have suceeded in driving drivers crazy. On such roads, clocking 90+ is a drivers' dream and a phantasma for the traffic police. Though the stringent traffic rules are abided by the citizens of Chandigarh, controlling the accelerator pedal is like restricting yourself from quenching your thirst in a desert.

To be back to my mind from my soul(read : Chandigarh), I had this long straight strip of road infront of me which seemed abandoned during those peak hours. I pushed the pedal with zeal and ecstacy as the car rushed with might. Soon, it clocked 95. Desire is desire. That urge to become Chandigarh's Lewis Hamilton(atleast Kimi Raikkonen) still kindled as I thought of 100. That may not be my result 3 years hence when i give my CAT, but 100 is surely for me on the roads.

The pedal had moved barely a nanometre, when a group of people in khakis stopped me. Who were they? Never saw any government official in khakis! What is khaki after all? Traffic Police? Novel terms coming before me. I was never aware of anything known as "traffic police"!
*kidding* These interrogations probably indicated my predicamant and the uneasiness i felt then!

They had this radar system, which could note speeds of confronting vehicles. Man! The creators of technology, our fore-fathers, are gonna make life on roads hell for us! Radars are meant to be used on the moon or in space. Why are they being wasted here on the roads meant to be ruled by the youth?

I got off my car under the Tuscan sun. Police was actually astonished to see 96 km/hr on their radars. They don't often get such dude violaters. A chalan, call it a policeman's love letter, was to be issued now! It was Rs. 700 with my license being taken to the police station which could be collected later. Now having jacks is a great help for citizens is what i believe. I tried to convince the inspector and said, "Sir, hun taan galti ho gayi...sorry. Chud do sirji...jaan deo..". That was said in punjabi to make an additional impact. But the man won't budge an inch. Pretty obvious.

"Sir, main twaadi gul ethon de DSP naal kara dinda haan"(Sir, I'll make you talk to the DSP). I knew that guy, some Cheema, DSP, Chandigarh! Such aquaintances are supreme sources of energy and are the ultimate ways to evade from catastrophes.

I know many of you must have decided the course of events that would take place. I mean, the inspector melting because of the pressure and agreeing to let me off with just one Gandhi! Or maybe, talking to the DSP and letting me off for no Gandhis! Right?

No! The inspector did talk to the DSP and what he said literally erupted smoke from my ears. When the DSP asked him to leave me, he retorted, "Toh theek hai, chalan main tere khaate ka banaa deta hun..." This needs and should be translated. "Fine, then I'll issue a chalan in your account!!"

An inspector being so honest and sincere, even a DSP's persuasion fell on deaf ears? It might be gratifying for me then, but I felt proud that day to be an Indian. There have been many other occasions in which i escaped a chalan by some dishonest means. But that man, that day showed us all, the honesty with which one ought to work and the conscience strikes that are to be listened while committing a blunder intentionally! Standing in that sultry ambience, he was doing his duties perfectly. More so, he had the guts to shrug off a DSP's command!

I also felt proud to be a citizen of Chandigarh. Rules are seldom broken and are dealt with sternly(does not matter if its me!). It is the only place that i know, where even the pillon rider has to sport a helmet. The only place, where wearing a seat belt is on everybody's mind once they step off their WELCOME doormat at home. The only place, where license and speed limits are regulated and imposed strictly. The only place where people piss in their pants before breaking the red lights. The only place that seems to be paying back the tax given by its' citizens. The street lights, the roads, cleanliness, planning and restrictions in constructions, every bit of Chandigarh is plush!

Viva la City Beautiful! Viva la Chandigarh!

The Zombie's kiss!

2009-05-18T23:30:00.000-07:00

Dwelling in proximity, dwell our lips,
moist are the eyes from the romantic sips.

She is so near yet so far,
without her, it was so bizzarre!

But now she rests in my arms,
tireless, motionless, serene and calm.

Happy and satisfied she looks in my shadow,
oblivious of the blood oozing from her window!

Before she deserts me, i aspire a kiss,
invigorated she becomes with an eternal bliss!

She raises herself from crestfallen,
her face once again, becomes golden.

One final time, we lock our souls,
our lips synchronize, our tongues drool!

Her lips then smile and distances increase,
tears run down like a sullen breeze.

Vexed is my heart with destiny's tryst,
etched are the memories of that zombie's kiss!

The Dead End

2009-05-11T11:19:00.000-07:00

"THE MAYANS BELIEVED THAT THE WORLD WOULD END ON DECEMBER 21, 2012"

I think i should pause for a few lines here. For those who read this for the first time, they might have been taken aback!
I am not Grave Nestor please! I am not a sadist either.

I read this line an year ago, somewhere. I just rubbished off this statement owing to my disdain for superstitions. Just a few days back, this line popped up again infront of me. My anguish for supertitions is still Effiel Towered, but my human mind deviated a few radians this time at the possible blackout, call it, The Armageddon or say The Apocalyptic Catastrophe!

I laid back in stupor and pondered over the after-effects; there won't be anything "after" for Earthians then,i know, but let me see how I can tackle this word!

If the world ends by 2012, I am bound to lose my blog. This virtual world of mine after all is not aloof from such catastrophes. The optical fibres under seas and oceans that have been nurturing and feeding my blog tenderly like a mother would become a victim of this apathy!

Then, there is my cellphone, Nokia 7210 supernova! How excited i was, when I first touched this cellphone after my long stint(which became a hiatus) with the black and white Nokia 1100! The touch was eternal, the camera boisterous, the headphone-sound quality flamboyant. Oh thou 7210, would our association terminate forever by 2012? Jeez!

I "was" expected to complete my engineering by 2012. But after this news, I would probably be left stranded during the final exams of the VIII semester! phew! I slogged out like an ass for two years after I passed X just to get into an Institute of National Importance. My efforts were rewarded but its heart rending that I'll die 'un-graduated'! Krist!!

There is so much to lose, infact, talking sanely, everything would just be over! The Insurance companies that make tall claims of their customers' security would themselves be off to timbuktu! Happiness would be 'eradicated', joy and mirth would become unheard, oceans a mystery, life a history; unimaginable isn't it?

Here comes the moral science lecture of percieving a half-filled glass! Whether you see it as half-filled(optimistic) or you see it as half-empty(pessimistic) or you see it as twice as large as is required(an MBA student) is your wish.

I have been pessimistic all through my life and I don't want to vile away this oppurtunity of noticing the half filled state of H2O! So here i go...

If the world ends by 2012, it would be a bliss isn't it? For several centuries, mankind has been living on and on for just one solo-motive~to die forever, to be freed from the chains of rebirth, to attain Nirvana! God would be kind if such a thing happens! All organisms, locomotion-oriented or movement-oriented, animals or plants, humans or non-humans, herbivores or carnivores or omnivores, autotrophs or heterotrophs, living or non-living, everything would be blessed by the Almighty with this gift called Armageddon!

Terrorism that has been ruining harmony for the past so many decades, corruption that has seeped inside humans like the seepage in walls, the grief and the disappointment of losing one's loved ones, the resentment and apartheid-like intra-human feelings, distinction between slumdogs and Bill Gates, everything would nullify right?

I don't know, what is going to happen in 2012, but its consequences, if at all, they do take place, should be gulped down optimistically. If we remain alive till 2012, it should make us feel proud as to have been one of the 10 billion people that were present at the time of Apocalypse! Our names would be engraved in golden letters in history books! You must be having a question in your mind, "Would those history books be able to brave the catastrophe?"? Well, History can never die...its immortal!

Cease firing at Destiny!

2009-05-08T00:23:00.000-07:00

After I returned from my gym today, I just bumped into this movie "Outsourced" on Star Movies! An American who has been 'outsourced' to India for his job as a call centre executive, is shattered by the way things are going on in his life here in India! Food that does not interest him, toilet without toilet-papers, unhygenic conditions at home and the workplace and myriad other grievances! In pursuit of happiness, he meets another American and moans about the uphill task he is facing staying in India. The American gives a patient eardum to his problems, recounts his experience and says, "The only way to live here in India, is to give in to her demands". The line seemed ineffective then but it almost transformed that person's life. He started blooming at work, lowering down the MPIs in his filthy call centre, and eventually develops an indispensible love for the country!
I paused at that moment, and felt my life had been virtually the same in the past year! I left Chandigarh for my engineering in Bhopal last summer. My life was hell there in the first semester, as i craved for good food, hygenic bathrooms and rooms. To add on to my sorrows, we had terrible ragging sessions as I felt strangulated in that place. The first semester was a nightmare for me as i shed 7 kgs in that course of time.
I came back in the vaccations, having succumbed to this hideous dream. My parents consoled me, and said a similar thing to me as that American was told. I won't say I changed myself willfully, but something, some kind of positive aura seeped in me when i left it to destiny to govern the rest of my life in that college.
The consequences lied on the positive side of zero! Life somehow became a bliss in that college as we had the most memorable moments of our lives in our hostel. The food remained poopy as ever, conditions as unhygenic as ever, ragging accelerated as I had to bear some 80 slaps and 25 belt-shots, yet my happiness quotient superceded in the second sem, my melancholy! I experienced a more congenial environment around, as we played and romped the hostel corridors till 3 am.
Destiny is an indelible curve in our lives. It cannot be altered no matter how hard we try. What is the use of sulking in sorrow and desiring for that mirage known as 'happiness' when we are not aware of the time it would come. We often waste precious moments of our lives in depression and in lurk for happiness. Why not to take life as it comes?
My dad often says a short but a deep line, "Even this will pass away!" Think logically. You are happy in the present but that happiness is as transient as the tough times in your life! If you are sad today, then a day would come when hard days are over and you are happy again. A day would eventually come, when you are dead! If life is so short, so transient, then why to waste it languishing in distress? One should feel sad as well, it is an expression bestowed by the Almighty, but running after desires and spending precious moments of lives in depression is synonymous to the expenditure one has on drugs and royal stags!
So, live every vibrant colour in the spectrum to its fullest. Forget the bad days! A bend in the road is not the end of the road! Give in to the tough times if they are with you at present. Leave it on destiny. Do not use your brains to do Destiny's job! You won't be paid by the cruel Destiny!

God Bless!

God's hated child...

2009-04-30T07:35:00.000-07:00

Nobody likes being hated, being ridiculed, being slammed for every petty thing one ventures to do. If i am different from others, does this mean my foresights into the insights deserve no respect?I feel like a slave today, shattered by the atrocious remarks of people over my beliefs. My beliefs, my ideals today stand on weaker grounds as they cry for support. Creating a trail for myself does not seem to be coming easily today...I am forced to bear the brunts of those treading on the normal path.

I feel dejected, rejected, alone in a population of trillions. Faith today is interrogating my presence. Why am i different in a way, that i am being hated? Is there nobody to squeeze me out of this perturbation? Is there nobody amongst the zillions to protect me from drowning in a pool of tensions. Have humans reached this far, that they have to confide in a non-living entity like a blog or a diary?

Aaah...How lonely i feel today! Nobody to console me, nobody who can lift up my spirits or atleast give peace to my soul. It feels today, that i better become friends with lonliness, coz its the only thing that has walked with me all through my life...

When Grandpa pranked on April Fool's Day...

2009-04-02T20:55:00.000-07:00

It was April 1, 2001. I was lying in a deep slumber in my house in Simla. I don't remember correctly but, i guess, the dreams made me smile. The night before, we had all gone out for a dinner. My maternal grandpa however had his hip bone fractured making him immobile for the rest of his life.
My grandpa had a passion for sweets. The night we had partied out, he was promised his fond 'laddoos'! He relished them later with extreme satisfaction. Soon, he slept, with that aura of contentment, still kindling. It was a memorable day, 31 March, 2001 for us. Peace and tranquility persisted that night. Who could have figured out "the lull before the storm"?
April Fool's Day arrived! I expected some queer pranks that day. May be all five of us had plans. But it was my Grandpa's plan that got executed with umpteenth success. The trick was so grave, hideous, bone-numbing, spine-chilling, goose bumping etc etc, that it was the last time, April Fool's Day was celebrated(read:mourned) in our family.
That day, my grandpa passed away in stupor. How can i forget my sister's sobbing face which woke me up and said, "Vivek! Naanu is no more!"? My nervous system and the sensory nerves choked as they lacked the instincts to react to such a situation when i was still opening my eyes. I rushed hurriedly to Grandpa's room and saw his cold face lying on the pyre. No! It was not a joke. It was a stark and murky reality about the inevitable death, but so unexpected post night's fervour and granduer.
As we solidifed back to normal after his soul had left for the heavenly abode and his body reduced to ashes, we felt, God had been kind. Apart from the hip injury which made him bed-ridden, he had myriad grievances. Asthma had ruined his harmony completely as he reached for his inhalers from time to time. Of lately, his asthma became so intense, that it adversely affected his eyes and he fell prey to cataract.
In his heydays, my nanaji was a dude. A six feet tall man, who dressed like a gentleman and maneuvered English and Urdu with elan and such a high quotient of proficiency, that it dumb folded many. I barely understood his prowess then, but as i read his letters today, i feel proud to have been his 'grand'.
Eight years and three days down the line, his grotesque jocularity still remains the last and the most realistic episode ever played in our family. Naanu! you must be jibing at me up there in the firmament, isn't it?
Naanu often retaliated to my 'good night' with his Shab-ba-khair...
So bidding aurevoir in perfect naanu style, its, "Shab-ba-khair Naanu"!

Rest in peace!

Nostalgia

2009-03-29T08:56:00.000-07:00

The state of convulsions stops being docile,

When brain gives shelter to memories of my domicile.

Where mysteries are publicised with my dear sister,

And every perturbation has a stress-buster.

Where mom's divine touch terminates the pursuit of happiness,

And this insipid life becomes a blend of bliss and bless.

Where dad is like a dude, a reason to cheer,

And the dictionary kicks out, the synonyms of fear.

Where dinners are like parties... everyday,

And sumptuous meals leave behind the neighbours in the fray.

Where conversations are more of a catharsis,

And solutions are optimum enough to deal with the masses.

A home away from home plutonates my being,

as i aimlessly search for the sciences of fleeing.

Life becomes murky and looses its sheen,

ticker oozes venom, making me unclean.

O thou Home! Bring me near to thyself,

I cannot break the shackles of nostalgia...myself!

Laissez Faire

2009-03-24T11:36:00.000-07:00

At certain blind curves in life, when i am left craving and dejected; when my relentless efforts to make sombody smile go in the bin; when the voyage seems to terminate abruptly; all that i have to say is, "Let it be so!".

Water-levels have crossed the Plimsoll line, the rigid threads of love are stretched out of bounds, the pulchritude in our synergy has faded away to timbuktoo; heart is sobbing, sinking and seeping in a black hole, brain albeit has taken a stern step, "Let it be so!".

Live for the present, and live it like there is no future; and that's how the past was perfect, and so is the present, and so will be the future. It's time to replenish my spirit by cherishing the fond memories of the past; I guess i can now merrily say..." Laissez faire", isn't it?!?

'Phantasma' ~ Pining Mumbai's Tale...

2008-11-29T07:39:00.000-08:00

The past three days, my television has been accustomed to only 2 channels- Times Now and NDTV. But you know what, when you see those channels, you are left interrogating ~ do news channels show action packed thrillers?

This unprecedented terror attack on "the never sleeping city" has left our country crestfallen. It oceanates ones' eyes to see innocent mob crying helplessly infront of the rampaging terrorists. The terrorists have been gruesome and have potrayed an ugly face of humanity. What do they gain by disturbing the harmonious ambience is a question changed to a mystery.

The hideous attack was exceptional in its own way. It was ofcourse unprecedented but one thing that dazed me was that the sufferers were for a change, people from the "silver-spoon" class. Previous coverages of terror attacks(for that matter even calamities) showed slum people and people from the lower strata crying copiously for their loved ones. But this time, terrorism even managed to squeeze in some celebrities thus proving that it has adversly affected all and sundry.

What was heart-rending was that these daredevils had fortified two of the best hotels in India-The Taj & The Oberoi Trident. If they had the prowess to reach these top-notch, high profile hotels, one wonders and ponders about the security of thousands of other undergraded hotels in India which are languishing in awe of terror.

The politicians as always remained rotten Mona Lisas! Living in India to me now seems, toiling hard, earning hard-earned money and "wasting" a portion of it as....tax. TAX, a mere euphemism for the money going into the pockets of these sinners. People wished that India was even half as well prepared to this mastermind attack believed to be the brainchild of the Deccan Mujahiddeen. Poor infrastructure, lack of one central anti-terrorists organisation and above all internal divisions and disparities amongst the politicians was all that gave these terrorists the audacity to enter our boundaries and thus create an out of bounds attack which has left an indelible mark on India's glory.

In these black clouds, the only silver lining was the army, the police and the valiant mediapersons. The NSG commandos and the police force fought bravely to save the lives of many, thus proving that patriotism in our country is still throbbing. Mediapersons toiled hard and stood on dangerous grounds continuosly for 60 odd hours just to keep everybody informed.

As i recpitulate, i feel proud to see the unity of our country, but the only blot on our country's strength is the bloody politics played amalgamated with loads of corruption. Had the politicians spent some money in this dimension instead of filling their infinitly long pockets, the attack could have been minimised if not averted. What is now required is a voice, louder than all previous whispers against terrorism, against politics. My resoultion never voting has gain stronger grounds after this incident. What is the use of casting your vote if all political parties are of the same blood. We the youth today have immense power and stamina to carry out a movement and thus make India and this world free from the chains of terrorism ~ my appeal through this inefficient post!!

Replenished Love...

2008-11-18T03:07:00.000-08:00

Sulking sadly with a shattered heart,

was walking aimlessly inside a mart.

A b'ful new heart left me dazed and awestruck,

a committee of organs was appointed to debate my fickle luck.

My broken heart stood against the proposal,

because the previous heart had driven it cynical.

The liver beneath lauded my new crush,

as this sweet heart was tempting like a slush.

The lungs grossed at the possible heart transplant,

this healthier heart may leave no space for it to flaunt.

Rusted eardrums rejoiced at the soothing heart beats,

clear were their intentions about this music so sweet.

Intense addiction addicted my otherwise flirting eyes,

Such was the heart's craze, that they could pay any price.

Appendix remained useless as ever in this meeting,

sat listlessly inside me with irritation creeping.

Mt cranium voted for my new love with resounding reasons,

it believed in a life with a variety of seasons.

The complete 'me' thus favoured the brain's enunciation,

and the broken heart was happily left for renunciation.

Today's heart loses its sheen if it's monochromatic,

vibrant colours replenishing it make it all the more dynamic...

Happy B'day in advance...

2008-11-11T10:41:00.000-08:00

Live Long life, cut creamy cake, Blah blah blah... Tell you what, I badly require a strip of disprin with me on 13th October, my birthday(possibly, my death day too). Not that i recieve millions of phone calls on this day(i hardly get 5), but i have always been hesitant to wishing or recieving even the few i get.
It makes me feel terribly grossed whenever I am supposed to recite those cliched lines to the b'day boy(for girls, I am a little less uncomfortable...[wink-wink]) and it is equally atrocious for my ear drums to bear such calls. Not that i don't wish somebody's welfare but i feel it is more important and worthy to pray for that soul than to call him at the stroke of midnight. Emitting those formal, prewritten, prememorised sentences simply fakes off the entire thing. Such things are certainly justified in a professional atmosphere(where being fake is the moolah), but an intimate relationship demands a whole hearted prayer followed by a bash ofcourse.
Yes! Hearty prayers and midnight calls in tandem are great guns blazing but the essence still lies in a prayer. The motive behind remembering someone's b'day should not be to show off that you care for him an inch extra.
There would be many willing to launch missiles on me for all this, but again it is the intention that supersedes everything. Being formal with your near ones is something nobody appreciates. A plain "Happy Birthday" for me is enough a signal that the other person cares for me.
Finally, all those who may have their b'days in future(ofcourse it means all of you...nobody was born on 30th February), here i am, being formal one last time. Happy B'day in advance!!

ALONE...FORLORN..??!!..!!

2008-11-06T08:42:00.000-08:00

Journey into this life started... alone and forlorn...

Met passengers during the course, yet felt... alone and forlorn...

Developed proximity for none as i remained... alone and forlorn...

Acquired camaraderie with one...was i alone and forlorn???

A season of joy and mirth ensued, i guess i wasn't...alone and forlorn???

Life glittered to its umpteenth vibrance... sure i wasn't alone and forlorn!!!

Forgot the omnipresence of Divinity because i wasn't...alone and forlorn...

Deep dark clouds brought along the harbinger of lonliness, felt...alone and forlorn...

One radiant power, one supreme energy still residing inside, saying...ur never alone and forlorn!!!

Journey of life proceeding towards sunset, but i'm never...ALONE AND FORLORN !!!

Transient Happiness

2008-11-01T09:51:00.000-07:00

Life had always been melancholic and dull,

Was waiting eagerly for the storm, after this long lull.

A sudden wave of happiness took control of my life,

I believe I had overpowered the inner war and strife.

The gigantic wave played with me, tossing me in the air,

I fell in love with the wave, its smile and the layer.

I was feeling ecstasic to have defeated my desolation,

The wave, my first love, deserved all the appreciation.

Destiny mocked as the wave of ego swept pass me,

The wave of happiness wept, as it departed from me.

I tried to grab happiness with all the binding energy,

But the wave of ego and destiny, had a very strong synergy.

Sitting on the beach, lonliness has again dawned on me,

Waves are still rising, but none evoke my inner sea.

A new wave of happiness is not what i wish for,

The old wave, my first love, is all that i crave for.

My heart still cries for that eternal bliss,

My brain however sighs, its transient happiness....

(Never let your ego supersede your love, your source of happiness. Because ego brings with it, a plethora of destruction...)

Excuse me........Aunty!

2008-10-26T07:57:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer(really??): The following "piece of art" may evoke vehemence amongst the delicate sex, but honestly, it is something i experienced with my close relatives and the mob around. All characters are non-fictitous but their names have been clandestined to protect their identity(read : respect!). Any coincidence with any of the protagnists is actually my fault and i deserve to be pronounced as a juvenile delinquent but then, who cares about the laws in India, isn't it?

There has always been a hitch when it comes to making a salutation to women. One can never make out whether a particular female is to be called an 'aunty' or a uh......'didi'! The other day, I was out on an errand to bring vegetables from the market. A seemingly old fragile woman was out there selling those lovely brinjals. "Aunty! What is the cost of this?", i enquired pointing out in the direction. What happened next is something the name of the topic can explain better. I was refused those forbidden purples on the pretext that they were booked already. And those frowns on that 'didi's' face gave intense signals that she did not like my way of calling her. Call it coincidence, my mum went for a similar job the following day and when she asked the price(no! not brinjals this time), the vendor replied, "Aunty! It costs Rs.20/kg". Wow! Sweet revenge there by these shopkeepers. Well, mum has never visited that shop again no matter how satiating the vegetables appear. Now come on, all those raising their eyebrows to more than a millimetre, who can pacify a woman's heart?
Such incidents have now attained a fair amount of popularity and a lot of hullabaloo is raised at the venues where they are witnessed. A deeper insight into their intricacies reveals that women are always opposed to ageing. They never appreciate being called someone who defies her age in the sense opposite to what they desire. A sexagenarian may be a replica of an octagenarian but she never feels shy carrying off herself like a sweet 16(exaggeration there.. please forgive). Well that's how women are made. God must have taken a lot of pains in making these mysterious sapiens, isn't it? If female to male sex ratio is on a decline today, it is partly because God takes atleast twice the time to make such artistic versions of humanity. The brain i guess is the most time consuming organ for the divine power.
And then their are the tiny tots who hate being called so. Girls might not have become sophomores yet but they respect suffices nothing less than a 'lady', 'mam' or may be a 'hot chick'! All in all, communication with the enigmatic-sex requires a by-birth skill or may be a gift of gab is enough to (man!)handle the "she-issues"..eh?
*pondering*...