Can I ?

I can't expect everyone to behave the same way as I do. Can I ?

I can't expect everyone reciprocate my acts of friendship. Can I?

I can't expect to be accepted wholly for who I am. Can I ?

I can be lonely even when I am not alone. Can I ?

I can't stop feeling used and discarded. Can I ?

I can't always be the detached emotionless person, that I seem to be.Or Can I ?

I can't afford to see through people . Can I?

I can't give up fooling myself. Can I?

I can't expect the tears to dry up each time I cry.Can I ?

People 3: Small Wonders

It’s my life.

The lady of the house bathes under a half laid pipe. Clothes on. Her husband watches guard. The sky, their roof. The morning sun fingers the scaffolding. Rubble pierces their hardened soles/souls. ‘Hurry up’ yells the fore-man. The day’s work waits. Hunching herself into a human ‘U’ she rushes into the shack. Her youngest wails.
Others idle around, sunken eyes and sunken bellies.

The bus of the corporate they are building to grow, whizzes by. A shirtless little man jumps up. His eyes light up with excitement. Up and down, up and down. He does a little jig of joy. Milk white teeth flash. A new day has begun.

Motion.

A national highway. The lifeline of the soft city. Chocablock with vehicles. Thick grey smoke clouds the atmosphere. And the minds stuck (in the traffic). Some lose patience. Some lose interest. Some others lose lives. The national highway. A life-line of the soft city. Chocked.

A sub-urban school. All of two rooms. And a neem tree. Routine deaf to the road gasping outside its gates.

Bell rings. Freedom.

Four nimble feet. Pushing the wind on the divider. A tight chase. Movement in the middle of stagnation. Giggles. Pursuer and the pursued. Taste of free air.

The traffic stopped. So did everything else.

Note:

I was listening to Bon Jovi’s “It’s my life” when I saw the exhilarated little fella. I couldn’t think of anything more apt for a title.

Yours Humbly

In response to a rare compliment on certain aspects of her looks, a wildly popular someone said,

"Ah! Shush... Real beauty is a reflection of the spirit. But then again, one shouldn't exaggerate much. After all, my spirit might have some miniscule failings...”


Some people are born modest.

People 2: Gourmet Glimpses

Perfection

It was a soup stall. “Pasumai Thamizh Soup Nilayam”. (Translated as “Lush (could also mean evergreen/refreshing) Tamil Soup Stall). All of four shiny stainless steel pots and a burning fire. The radio in the bus blares. The health ministry ‘s awareness broadcast. “ Insist on clean utensils and covered food”.
A man in spotless white behind the 30-inch frame . There are no customers. But he is busy. He places one pot on the fire. Opens the lid just enough to insert the ladle. Stirs. Deliberate circular movements. Removes it off the fire, with a towel whose whiteness would put a swan to shame. His hands move at rigid right angles. Robot-like.
Puts up a new pot to heat. Bends down to inspect the surroundings of his stall. Clears a little dust here and there. Pushes a scrap paper aside.

Is this perfection? Or a novel method to tide through the lean periods of trade?. Is it his first day at work? Who is he trying to impress? Am I getting impressed? Would I prefer his soup to the one at Subway? How long will he be able to do it? Wont he get bored soon?

Satisfied with the ambience, he gets back to his kitchen. A few yards away, a potential customer relieves himself of his fluid waste.

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

Mastery

A dingy market corner. A rotting wooden box. Upturned. Spreading behind it is a huge figure. Squatting on the ground. Dark and hideous. Perspires in gallons. A fiery fire on the pump stove. With sweaty palms, he pulls and pushes. The dough is putty in his hands. Magic pours out his fingers into the bubbling oil. Hot jilebis. Orange spirals of sheer delight. A motley clientele waits. Mouth watering. He pushes aside his messy curls. The flesh of his dark bulging arms reverberating with the effort.

The jilebis look tempting. My mother can never make such good looking ones. Such craft. In such a setting. Perhaps the sweat and the grime adds to the appeal.
Yewww… how disgusting can I get!

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




Acknowledgement:

The last one about the jilebis is second hand. Was related to me by my mother. But the closing commentary is solely mine. The reaction of course, was hers.

People 1: Pavement Pictures.

Gaze

She sat on the pavement. It was a busy Monday morning. Rush hour traffic. There was a school behind her. The children rode their bicycles on the platform to avoid the menacing vehicles. Some losing balance and perilously wobbling about. She sat there.
With her little cloth bag. Her worldly possessions. Her gaze unflinching. She stared at the world around, and beyond. Horns honked. Irate commuters traded tempers.
Silver in her locks, face wizened. Clocks seemed to have stopped long ago. She sat there. Timeless. Dead and Alive.

Was she once a little girl? Red ribbons and blue skirts. Hopping and skipping in some dry southern village. Care-free and happy. Was she once a dainty maiden? Dreams in her eyes and a future in her hand. Was she ever a loving mother and wife? Raising little ones and running a home. She sat there. Why was she there and then?

The signal turned green. She sat there. I moved on.

**************
Beats

A triangular isle. A lone inhabitant. Deluge of yellow headlights all around. Whirring whirlpools of gold. He was ecstatic. Dum! Dum! Dum! He beat the plastic bottle to time a cosmic rhythm. Soot and black camouflaged his contours. A sepia smile adorned his euphoria.

An undisputed King reigning from the fringe, reclining on a throne of dirty gunny sacks. Watching the teaming drones burn themselves out. Watching with detachment. With amusement. Beating his bottles to express something beyond grasp, or to kill his ennui.

Was he a mystic? A nomadic mendicant of the myths. Was he a madman? Gone bonkers. What is madness? Who is mad?

The indicator flashed. I turned, his cadence lingering.

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

Acknowledgement:

This was inspired by a conversation I had with a friend on street photography. His passion for it was infectious. Not that I started watching people after that, but just that I thought it would mean more to me, if I captured those sights and insights in some manner.

Sol's soup for the Soul

The greatest fear is the fear of failure.

Go on, get on with your lives... Dont worry about me, I'd be alright.. (And leave me alone, for Godsake!)

The best kind of tribute is silence.

There has to be something good about everything.The question is, whether one wants to see it or not.

The best time on earth is when one can own every passing second.

The bigger picture is always better;The details being miracles.

Music becomes melody when the words dont seem to matter.

The strange can become familiar, and the familiar strange. Time is the greatest trickster of all time!

Love is a flattering feeling.

Its easy to be mysterious, but tough to be open.

We are all born with a burden, that of pleasing ourselves.


Disclaimer:

Some of these are my two cents on life. The rest, unforeseen consequences of too many Prav's world forwards .

Differentiating Difference.

This morning, was a sleepy one. Reluctant to let go of the last shreds of my morning nap in the bus, I stepped out dreary and bleary. My senses were rudely shaken by the chitter-chatter amongst the fellow commuters, eager and enthusiastic to start a new day. In my meta-state, I imbibed all the words that be-fell my ear, like a sponge. After, a considerable phase lag, I could make out at least five different languages being spoken. I was pleasantly amused at the diversity that I encounter day in and day out, without realizing it. This led to the train of thought that follows.

The school that I studied in was owned and run by members of a certain caste-based group. The quality of education, I must say, was above average and the school produced many an achiever. However, the culture that it professed was largely tuned to suit that particular community, and presence of others, was largely ignored. I was almost a frog in the well, not knowing how to interact comfortably with people beyond that community, with no inkling of the world that functions outside it. Amongst the students, at least in the years I spent there, a vague sense of caste linked differences prevailed, although nothing was explicit.

Once I passed out of school, and pursued my collegiate studies, the afore mentioned community's presence was reduced to a minimum, and those members that were, seemed to have much more open mind. People from all over the state, with different backgrounds, economical and familial mingled, and differences relating to caste gradually blurred. There still remained a certain criteria for affinity, that of belonging to the same district or region of the state. But this was amongst some members of the staff, and fewer of the hostellers.

It so happened, that I had to shift to another city that being a supra-cosmopolitan one, for work. People from all over the country swarmed in, and a mini-India was constituited. Here, caste, creed and region lost their significance. One had to be from your home-state, speaking your mother tongue, and the ice would thaw faster.

In all the above situations, I followed the norm, rather than dare an exception. I don’t see any anamoly in this, as it is but human nature, if not anything else. I have not ventured beyond the shores of India, perhaps when I do, I might find the state-based differences evanscent, giving place to nationality, and race based ones. Extrapolating, if men were to begin a space colony, even these would disapper, replaced by planetary differences. On the highest rung of this collectivistic ladder, maybe, all men are one, so to say, before the Supreme, a tenet shared by the ruling religions of the world.

I have not discussed religious differences yet, because it is one that transcends all levels and is omnipresent. The irony of it is, faith and religion are things which should, by principle be agnostic to such disparities.

Men cannot exist without differences. Each human is unique in his or her own way. But to be straddled with qualities which you were born into, and do not have the option to alter, can be extremely stifling. Some people fight throughout their lifetimes to free themseleves of such tags. Some others condition themselves to identify with these qualities, and start believeing that these are things that define their personalities. Pride and shame in things where one can’t place a righful claim on are nothing short of a sham.

There is a thin line between pride and prejudice. Pride that stems from one’s achivements is an exhilarating feeling. Whereas, pride that one cannot own deforms into prejudice. Shame in one’s attributes that one cannot control is a delusive emotion. Shame, on any other account, is guilt. Guilt again is a consequence of one not being able to relate or identify with oneself.

There has been no plan or purpose in what I have written till now. But it has been a subject that has intrigued me for several years, both on a conscious and an unconsious level. To understand the philosophy behind the differences which exist amidst the unity, is a quest that I can neither give up, nor end in fruitition. I know that there is much to unravel, and in the process I might end up contradicting myself. There are so many perspectives of the same picture, and each one is as illusionary and veracious as the other.

The Best Fit.

The confident I : I feel I am fit for everything.

The despearate I : I am fit for anything.

The persevering I : I must be fit for something.

The world : You are fit for nothing.

Voice: Doesnt anything and everything include nothing too ? Nothing is also something.

(Curtains down)

A Vanishing Art

Two of the blogs I often visit, carried posts of a certain degree of controversy this week. One was by a Bangalore techie, popular amongst the tamil-speaking blog junta. The post was on one of tamil nadu's yester year revolutionaries whose scent still smells strong in the state, and on the scandalous lyrics of a movie being made on the afore mentioned leader. The second blog was by an alumnus of two of India's most prestigious instituitions, on the vagaries of Tamil names and the way they are spelt and pronounced. A seemingly funny post on the noise introduced in the sanskrit -to-tamil-to-english migration of names that tamilians carry upon their persona. Both posts discuss pertinent issues and topics, worth a healthy discussion. But, the former ended up being acutely judgemental and the latter a kaleidoscope of disguised prejudices. In both cases, More than the writer, or his actual intent what disturbed me is the flurry of fascist sounding comments they provoked in their wake. I have often wondered about the dynamics and genesis of hate. Crude, barbaric and uncivilised hate. Got a glimpse of it the past week. I am not very sure if I shall survive the full view.

The post below is from an older blog of mine. On a dying art. The art of acceptance.


THE ART OF ACCEPTANCE.

Prejudices run deep. I have seen cats and dogs assert territorial sovereignty and try to be very exclusive. But, men, with the tell-tale sixth sense , the sense to discriminate right and wrong, ought to have , by the laws of evolution , matured beyond such pettiness and rightfully so.Youth of today, however keen on their personal betterment, should look at their world with an all encompassing attitude. The benevolence of a Mahatma is too much to ask for, but a rise above frivolous misgivings and misconceptions is but a humble request.In a country like ours, so rich in traditions and colossal in grandeur, the least influence its cultural wealth could have on us would be a sort of sensitization to our surroundings.Even animals, can sense frostiness, a lack of welcome, and alienation. Many schools in the west have racial clashes reverberating in their classes. Differences in religion, creed, color, wealth, status and grooming create a haphazard multi- tier system in every walk of life. The primal reason behind this malady would be a kind of evolutionary disorder, where people fail to realize that they are human beings, and that their existence lies in their progress, progress of the material kind, and more significantly progress of the mind. An eye that sees the inner beauty of every human ,a heart that resonates the inimitable beat of every other and a soul that realizes itself to be, even for a split second, a microcosm of the Supreme macrocosm, conjure the real human being. A being that is superior inherently, that glows in that supremacy. A person who prides himself for having great looks, a grandiose lineage, formidable wealth and power, declares himself to be a paragon of purity, basks in the borrowed glory of these possessions of his.Variety is the spice of life. Imagine a world where you would have to live with people who were clones of yourself. Maybe to add a pinch of salt, brothers or half brothers of your clones. Even then life would be hellish. The moribund dullness of homogeneity could be maddening. Yet, men don’t relish variety. They yearn in vain to make the world reflect their identity. Little do they realize, in this childish endeavor of theirs, they destroy the very identity that they are trying to popularize.I am not only talking of the fascists and fanatics, who under the incarceration of prejudice, go to extremes to establish themselves. Again the laws of evolution could justify their act. Survival of the fittest. Alright, you are fit, and you survive too. But why do you need to survive? To wake up every morning, to look at the sameness, the grey uniformity, the precarious bubble of your sanity at the very edge of its doom. What kind of a survival would that be? Death would be more interesting. If the Hindus went on destroying the Masjids and Muslim artifacts, would we have the Taj Mahal standing serenely as the symbol of eternal love?Prejudice and hatred create havoc and destruction in their wake, they destroy in the bud, many a potential friendship, and foster animosity in would-have-been genial relations.In its most virulent form, prejudice mutates into hatred, jingoism and fanaticism. But seemingly harmless too have their long term repercussions.A fetish nurtured by many amongst us, is the desire to stay exclusive. And more often than not, these exclusive closed congregations are mistaken to be elite.When you meet someone new, there is the instant wriggling of the nose, a Lady Bracknell attitude that sets in to nothing more than a mere digress from your tastes. There’s no harm in being self opinionated, but intolerance to differing views is a marked symptom of mental immaturity. An open mind is the most receptive mind. Many scions of royalty, have in the past, denounced their age old customs, which they saw in their true colors, as anachronisms. They are the true men and women who have grown out of the cocoons of adolescence.Every creature learns its environment by exploration. [even a Hobbit!!]. Man is an explorer not only of nature, but also of intellect. To see beyond differences, however indigestible, they may be, to explore the human mind, however tough the hurdles may be, is a supremely enriching experience.People who may crusade for world peace, equality of all human, and the burial of all differences, fail to acknowledge the mere presence of a subordinate in a public place.It’s a textual requirement of corporate etiquette nowadays, to follow a horizontal hierarchy as far as possible. The human mind is unfathomable, and it is the power of the mind, that decides the quality of human life. A curiosity to know what others think, how they think, how they perceive, how they express, is innate in every one of us. The thought process weaves its intricate yet unique patterns in every single person. A desire to discern these wonders makes you not only an amicable person but also a more enlightened one.You never know whether a novel idea lays buried in the most nondescript of minds. A stroke of brilliance can make a whale of a difference.The differences that have ingrained themselves have had their origins in unity. And its not these differences that are to be shunned. They are in fact the livery of civilization. Maturity lies in rejoicing in these differences, never letting them even once, to impair our progress.

“Civilization is the degree to which diversity is attained, unity retained” --W .H Auden.

Pra – nun – si - yay - shun.

I had tuned into one of the western music frequencies on radio yesterday. The RJ was chirpy and all that jazz, and the playlist was something that I could use to flavour my cuppa. Just then, the RJ decided to get democratic, and introduced a request section in his show. Someone requested for Greenday, and the RJ consents gladly, and announces through ether, “Up next, we have Greendayyy with booolivart of brookin dreemzz. What a song, the booolivart of brookin dreeemzzzz.” Cant help wondering whether the dude had actually listened to the song. Attempting to sport an accent is alright, but that doesn’t give one the liberty to go retching over a word like boulevard.
I ,for one, have waged a losing battle against the vagaries of pronunciation that characterize the English language. Being a South Indian, and having been brought up in a household where a word in English is uttered only when one runs out of expletives in the native language, much of my vocabulary originated from books and other such reading material. The dictionary with its encoded pronunciation guidelines was seldom used, semantic guessing games, adding more fun for dear old lazy bones. Indisposed to watching movies and TV shows (baring a few light sitcoms), the opportunity for me to hear the spoken language, was reduced to Spartan levels.
This reminds me of an incident that took place sometime back in college. There was this lady, who happened to hail from an affluent background, and was a very cosmopolitan, globe-trotter. An avid reader herself, we had the opportunity to have a few extra-curricular interactions, (despite the obvious mis-match of our backgrounds) due to the fact that our names were adjacent on the roll. (That’s the best thing about college, people from different strata can jam in.., although differences still remain).. On one such occasion, fully engrossed in the conversation, I happened to say something which made her go gaga with laughter. And mind you, this girl had a very high pitched and shrill laugh, which came out in bursts and peals. A sizeable crowd had gathered to join in the merry making, leaving me confused and flabbergasted. When she had finally calmed down, and was able to speak again, she asked me to repeat my self. Nervously, I obliged. “ I used to be a fan of detective novels and stories of yes-pi-yo-nay-jjj. And Lo!, another shot of laughing gas went up her system. I was almost on the verge of tears. Then she explained herself. And showed me how to pronounce espionage with a franco-greeko-latino tint to the na`and the ge… I didn’t bother to check it up in the dictionary and took her well traveled and worldly wise expertise as a reliable reference.
But the maxim, once bitten twice shy finds an exception in me. I still venture out with tongue twisting words, which I still don’t bother to learn how to pronounce, and still end up in embarrassing situations. But the espionage incident taught me a valuable lesson in life. A mistake made is always a lesson learnt.
So folks, keep making mistakes and learning more valuable lessons in the year to come. Happy New Year!

SOS from Space.

Day 1:
Hit the sack @ 1.00 am
Rose and shone @ 6.00 am.

Day 2:
Zzzz time: when the clock chimed a dozen in the dark
Brrred awake by Banglore chill : 5.30 am.

Day 3:
Curtains down by half an hour beyond midnight.
Up and shivering by half past six.

Day 4:
Slipped into slumber land at 11.45 pm
Migrated to a transcendental stupor at 6.00 am

Location: Office

9.00 am: Winked, sorry worked at a document with eyelids half mast .
9.05 am: Found this piece of alien Morse code to have materialized* mysteriously in my document.
Hjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjh
9.30 am: Hard at work trying to figure out what the hapless Extra terrestrial tried to communicate. If any one can crack it, please let me know ASAP. A poor soul is in distress, albeit alien.



* : Key boards make very lousy head rests.

All that Noise and All that sound...

I am endowed with awe-inspiring skills in planning and execution. Realizing at the Nth moment that I don’t have tickets to go home on an upcoming “long” festive weekend, and finding out that only a handful were left, I sprung up from a lazy Friday morning at work, with the excuse that I had some personal work that suddenly came up. Chuckling inwardly at the curious glances that my departing repartee invoked, I scurried past the office campus to make it to the single-‘man-handled’ railway booking counter in the city within a village, vis-à-vis Electronics city on the fringes of Bangalore, fondly referred to as EC, ensconced in tranquil beauty alongside the internationally renowned (read notorious) Hosur Road. (Cant help wondering why, but something tells me that this is going to be one long and winding post***….)

Huffing and puffing ( I hadn’t sprinted or anything. Just that I wasn’t used to all that scurrying, my daily routine consisting of mild to ultra mild calisthenics of my fingers on a keyboard .( That same something tells me that this post is going to be so long ***, that I am going to forget what I wanted to write.(And Yes, I am back to writing within braces, footnotes pushing my volatile memory to the extreme and me ending forgetting why I had wanted the foot note in the first place.( Funny, dental braces restrict uncontrolled growth of teeth, but these braces don’t seem to restrict my erratic train of thought(s)))))*, I reached the counter, heaving a sigh of relief (that got lost in all that huffing and puffing) when I found that the queue was surprisingly short given the peak hour. Shoving myself into a chair, after miming (I was still huffing and puffing) to the single-‘man-handling’ the counter that I needed a reservation form. Progressing to Rani Mukherjee-ish huskiness, I managed to communicate to a lady beside me that I would graciously grant her the privilege of borrowing her pen. (Continuing in conformance to first principles on my planning abilities). Believe me or not, one of the toughest challenges in today’s world is filling up a form printed on recycled paper with fonts that make English and Kannada like twin sisters, using a borrowed ball point jetter pen with a stuck up spring (you cant even curse the lousy writing implement, since there some basic (read unwanted and absolutely unwarranted) courtesies that are a part of the Borrowing protocol). It was then that real ordeal began. There was this tiny old man (probably a blue collar worker), and a younger chum of his, who took it upon themselves to act a whips pushing the lethargic white collars (ignoring the fact that most of them were collar-less.) to keep the queue on the move. I was transported back in time to my PT class, where the instructor with a waspish voice and lethal look drove us in troves around school grounds under the unrelenting Chennai sun. My vocal chords regaining their senses, I complied with a more than audible groan. In came a yuppie from one of the biggies in EC, with a debonair swagger and a classy (read garish) wave to one of his colleagues waiting in the line. Mr. Debonair Yuppie deemed the wait opportune to embark on a public discourse on what in his humble opinion, is the appropriate way to conduct business in their biggie company ( yours truly infers that he must be contemplating a couple of offers to switch firms and hence his loyalty),by way of a little tete-a tete with his colleague and buddy. Having heard similar conversations week in and week out, I started to find this one an abuse to my auditory apparatus. Another blue collar bunch entered and was so fascinated by the list of trains painted on the wall in vibrant hues, that they actually began discussing each and every entry in the list in all the detail that they could think of. A splitting headache invaded my cranium from nowhere amidst all this cacophony. As the seconds ticked by, I had second thoughts about whether all this torture was worth it. What if, I didn’t get my ticket? What if someone is searching for me at work and my unexplained absence becomes the talk of the day? Just then the single –‘man-handling’ the counter disappeared. There was a murmur that transforms itself into mayhem, in a matter of minutes. The blue collar whips try their best to restore order. One white collar blue tagged individual, with great consternation, steps out of the queue, after declaring to one and all present and absent, that the chair he left was his, and that he fully intended to return to it. He bravely ventured to peep inside the counter to find the single ‘man-handling’ the counter stealthily gobbling his breakfast up. Thank God for such brave Samaritans who keep volunteering to do all the peeping in the world. Satisfied, our volunteer returned back to his seat, keeping intact the great consternation. The single ‘man-handling’ the counter then hobbled out of his cabin to drop the left-overs in the trash. 20 pairs of eyes intently followed his every move. As we all settled back into our seats, now that the queue would resume its dynamics, the single ‘man-handling’ the counter hobbled out of his cabin again. 20 exclamation marks materialized atop 20 startled heads. (Yep, yep I have been suffering from an over-dose of comics, since child hood…). The cacophony reached a crescendo, neck to neck with the splitting headache, closely followed by the rapidly building up anxiety. Yours truly was by now truly a wreck. The single ‘man-handling’ the counter abandoned his hobble, and gracefully sashayed across the waiting area to a red monstrosity resting sinisterly in a corner. He bends in double and is lost behind it, oblivious to the cacophony and mayhem around him. Yours truly is in shambles. All of a sudden, like a thunder bolt from Zeus, a strident din emanates from the red monstrosity and yours truly was dragged/drugged into a stupor. All the cacophony is drowned, and yours truly is mesmerized. The lights blinked themselves back to life, and single ‘man-handling’ the counter sashay-hobbled back to the counter, and jumped up to his seat. The queue was set into motion, the whips became doubly active. The anxiety and head ache vaporized magically, and yours truly was found humming a tune, with the strident din of the Red diesel generator keeping the beat. Yours truly ( like this reference to myself better than the trite “I”, the longer the better) emerged rejuvenated from the trance, slowly increasing the decibel level of the “humming”, adding a few impromptu lyrics now and then (I can never remember lyrics and dialogues, once made up my own in a school play, although pertinent) . No one seemed to notice the amateur bard; the white noise from the generator camouflaging the singing. Yours truly now started to shake a leg or two in beat (still remaining seated.) Yours truly became completely engrossed in this melee, and at one point closed her eyes and strained hard to get a particularly high pitched note right. A gentle tap brought her back to terra-firma. “Don’t worry ma, the queue is moving, I can see that you are anxious (owing to all that eye-closing and frowning to get that cussed note right) and impatient (concluded from the leg-shaking), On top of that, this annoying generator makes so much noise!”, ejaculated the aged whip. Yours truly gave a truly yours truly sheepish grin and “Mum was the word” till the counter. Mum continued to be the word till the ticket was purchased, even if Yours truly had to shell out an extra couple of hard (!) – earned ATM –crisp hundreds. And Mum continues to be word, still. **


* : Couldn’t resist it. Had to add a footnote. Well, mmm…. Lets see… Ah, Yes... This one was to mention the personal record in the number of brackets used at one go.
**: Mum helped me (Oh, she always does !) , (but this time it was Mum, the word, and not the Mum as in mother(It’s become an obsession, not able to give up the braces, even in the footnotes !))in winning empathetic glances when I went back to work after my “sudden personal errand”.
*** But since Mum was the word, I was compelled to write this long and winding post.

Fate of a Flower

O, Flower of spring by the footpath
That the little girl bends down to pluck
Frozen for the future with a click
Wow! How so picturesque!

O, Flower of spring by the footpath
Crushed by mighty feet
To a messy pulp on the street
Cruel, Mean and brusque

I, a Flower of spring by the footpath
Between Slow death in a porcelain coffin
And a needless euthanasia, Enfin,
Mine Creator, when will I fructify?
- L.B

Hideous Me !

Dont know what this conveys. But drew it when I was brooding over things that happened yesterday. Doodling is a great stress reliever.
But dont want to doodle often, and definitely not for the reasons that resulted in the above. (Creating a category, just in case.)

For some godforsaken reason, blogger too takes off the color from my life. A divine conspiracy, perhaps.

Of Curd Rice and Life…

One of my favourite dishes of all time is the good old curd rice. I do not try to comprehend the raison-d-etre for this penchant. It could be because, I refuse to let go of the evanescent strings that attach me to my infancy and the general disposition towards mushy things that defines that particular stage of man’s life. Or it may be due to the undisputed fact that my mom happens to be a lousy cook ( she’s a lovely mom, otherwise ) and curd rice is the only edible thing she wasn’t able to leave her signature upon..( touch wood!).

My loyalty to curd rice was given an impetus due to a conversation I chanced to read in the comments section of a blog I like to visit every now and then.And hence this post.
It was a fairly serious conversation, which I belive is on the choices people make in life. (Atleast, that’s what I think it was about…!! ) . Somewhere the commentator quotes Calvin, of C n H fame :
“Some people are pragmatists, taking things as they come and making the best of the choices available. Some people are idealists, standing for principle and refusing to compromise. And some people just act on any whim that enters their heads. I pragmatically turn my whims into principles.”

And the author of the blog responds with this analogy:

I was having dinner yesterday -- curd rice -- and the guy next asks me, "Is that good?"

So, now, of course, what choices do I have -
1) Quote a universal, objective specification about how curd rice should look, feel, smell, taste, compare it with what laid in front of me, and pronounce a judgment.
2) Spend some time with the guy, understand what he means by "good", learn what standards he uses to judge curd rice, whether he likes it cold like me, whether he likes it a little sour like me, and so on, and then give him an answer.
3) Compare the quality of the curd rice I was eating with the standards that I feel "good" curd rice should possess, and then give him an answer.

Now I like to think of myself as pragamtical, idealistic and whimsical (....) and so I decided to make the best of the answers available, at the same time refuse to compromise on the correctness of my answer, and bring my own whimsical notions about curd rice into the picture. So what did I say?

"It feels good to me. I like it a lot."

Of course, you're darned right when you say human experience is the last resort, because all theories fail at some point or the other.


Though I got lost in the middle of all this high talk, something caught my eye near the tail. It was this thing about curd rice.

What would I do, if someone sidled up to me when I was relishing the most divine of delicacies, and asked “Is it good?”

Well… I d probably be so engrossed in eating, that I d answer something supremely unintelligible with my mouthful , with all the ensuing sputtering sending the questioner miles away --- getting rid of the choices, my way :-) (maybe by questioning the premises ?)

Or offer the other person a spoonful and let him/her deciede for their own. This option has 4 sub sections.

1. Other person feels its good.
Soliloquist feels its bad.

-- Soliloquist offers the whole of it and looks up into ether to see the halo around her head.

2. Other person feels its bad.
Soliloquist feels its good.

-- Soliloquist twitches her nose in contempt and says “What a snob, not being able to appreciate the simple things in life”

3. Other person feels its bad.
Soliloquist feels its bad.

-- Soliloquist encourages the other person to join her in her lamenting, cursing the cook, the farmer who cultivated the rice, the lactobacilli that curdled the milk, the weather conditions which supported the curdling, the milkman who supplied the milk, the cow that produced it, and so on and so forth. To be concluded with a well-synchronized sigh in chorus.

4. Other person feels its good.
Soliloquist feels its good.

Soliloquist does a Little Miss Muffet, the other person suddenly transfiguring into a Spider.


Last things last, the gist of this post is that each one has is entitled to his own perception, and that there is very less point in trying to theorize a generality out of it. Choices in life, good or bad, ultimately boil down to an individual’s perspective. How much ever we might deny it, it is always the self before the rest. I can put up with something as long as the tolerance thereshold of my comfort zone to environmental blows isn’t crossed. I would rebel if my peace of mind is disturbed beyond my capacity to recover it. I could be wrong , I could be right. But the thing is, the choice is mine to make, and mine to live with. Afterall, curd rice is curd rice. Nothing can beat it. Yum.

Estranged....

Thanks to the Karnataka bandh, and some unusual shrewdness on my part, I got to spend 5 wonderful days at home. As though an evil eye had been cast, my vacation was marred by a blocked sinus, and an infected eye.
But all that couldn’t take the fun out of the neighbor’s and relatives visits on the last days of Navrathri. For once, I didn’t seek refuge in the recesses of my room, leaving poor mom struggling to create extraordinary yet very plausible excuses for my absence. As a matter of (utterly useless) fact, I actually enjoyed playing the host. I was found answering the same questions over and over again , asking the same questions over and over and over again and bestowing a gracious smile upon the blessed of the men folk (/grinning away to the end of the world) to perfection that someone even told my mom that I was coming of age, at last.

Though I managed to escape my standard chores during the festivities, by almost feigning a wheeze, the task of dismantling the Kolu (a doll display, the highlight of the 10 day long festive season) fell upon me. Surprisingly, I liked doing it, and it so happened I was pretty efficient at it.

The last day of my vacation proved to me and the world at large that there was nothing really surprising about my surprises. I was home-sick. Dreadfully home-sick. I, who was sick of home 730 days back was finally and phenomenally home-sick. Not having spent more than 3 days at a stretch with the family the past 2 years, had eventually wrecked its havoc on me. And every moment of these 5 days, was so precious to me that I couldn’t bring myself to sulk even for a second, much against my true nature. I was so anxious to make the best of the time I had at home, that I didn’t even crib about having to leave.

On retrospect, just as I was bemusing over my fate, weighing with utmost graveness, the pros and cons of my estranged existence, the “fair” side of my self, murmured “Think of all those girls who visit their families once a year, staying far away, atleast you have the luxury of going every other weekend.” But still, self-pity is a strong emotion. Crushing the fair one, it loomed large, clouding the days to come.

That’s when, one Ms. R.C, who happens to one of those “girls-who-go-home-once-a-year”, sent me this poem. It appears, that she started to write on “childhood dreams”, inspired by a conversation with a collegue, and came up with this lovely piece.

And the fair one had the last laugh.



P.S: Ms R.C happens to be a talented poetess in hindi too, unfortunately I don’t happen to find a translator at hand all the time, to appreciate her works. This is the first one in English that was brought to my perusal.

P.P.S : I had always wanted to do something with the publishing industry, but considered myself too naïve for the field. But this time, continuing the trend, I surprised myself with a tactical move, reeking with originality. Before she could think of syndicating her writing, I pounced upon the guile-less poetess with an absolutely tempting (!!!) offer to feature her in my blog.

Time-less

I left my watch at home
And my mobile under the pillow
Bid adieu to the seconds
As I swiped out.

Plunged into a book
Reached home in a jiffy
Inspite of a sad traffic jam
Time-lessness feels great !

Lunatic Bard

The Rubber Stamp

The first citizen of this Nation has always been a puppet, with multiple strings. But one man chose to differ. He, himself is a living example of pure honesty, sheer intellect and endearing simplicity. Definetly not a man of our decadent times. I happened to read an interview of President Kalam today,some excerpts which caught my attention:

Young India:

What do you feel about the innumerable interactions you have had with students all over the country?
Well, I have met children and youth throughout the country from all walks of life. I have seen students in islands, north-eastern States and tribal areas. One thing I find uniformly among 150-170 million students of 17 years age is that they want to perform. Their enthusiasm is very high and they want to live in a competitive India. No one can beat the youth power of our country, which is the most powerful resource. But, it is understood very little in the mechanism of our political and bureaucratic system.


All this rhetoric about the youth power has never sold well with me, for I believe the youth of today are so consumed by consumerism and are blinded by slefishness on all 360 degrees, that even the very immediate social circle, vis-a-vis the family blends into the background.

Quelling my pessimistic sentiments, is the Prez's response to another question.

In recent months, the IT and ITES sectors have taken away the cream of students around the country. How will the manufacturing and other sectors manage?
We are generating 3 million graduates every year. The migration to IT industry is only 1-1.2 million. Even if the IT industry absorbs one more million, there are graduates for the manufacturing sector. The shortage is imaginary. Like in the IT, Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology industries, challenges have to be created in other areas also. Focus should be on the Small Scale Industry that makes an impact on the nation's economy. The whole IT industry is a result of youth power. Similarly, in the manufacturing, agriculture and other sectors, youth power is required.

Despite one's leftist misgivings, one has to hand it to the IT industry for bringing the radical and exponential growth that a devoloping nation with a humungous population such as India's desperately needed. Inspite of a growth that was not ideally equitable, the very same consumerism which I so badly loathe, gave into a number of supporting services and products,generating employment oppurtunities, hitherto unimagined.

The Political Milieu:

Politics shall always be dirty. Power makes shenanigans out of good men. People who have climbed the rungs of the political ladder have done so, trampling innocents at every step. Even the so-called elite politician, can, by no reasonable means, boast of an un-stained hand. Politicans cant help being dirty. And Politics shall remain dirty. Poaching the predators with a shot-gun , ala RDB style, isnt practical and doesnt solve a single issue, and instead giving rise to unwarranted militancy and misleading naxal movements.

Working against the system requires strength of will,muscle and money. Working with the system will drag us into depths of degeneration. Working a change within the system, is probably what the most pragmatic of us would do. And thats what the scientist turned Head of the State, has tried to do.

You have addressed Parliament and several legislatures. What do you feel about the quality of debate in the Houses? Do you think live telecast of the proceedings can contribute to a more orderly conduct of the Houses?
No, I don't want to say much about it because everything is beamed (live telecast) directly now. But I have two things to say that will electrify political/Parliament activities and development missions. Politics has two components — political politics and developmental politics. The political politics concerns elections to the Assemblies and Parliament. Developmental politics is about the plan to develop the nation on different fronts. Elected representatives should focus 30 per cent on political politics and 70 per cent on developmental politics. The nation is bigger than political parties.


One book, that left a mark on me, was "The Man" by Irving Wallace. It describes the trials and tribulations of the first black man to become the President of United States, in a racially torn America, the forces around him that fabricate an impeachment case and how he survives the ordeal, never, even once compromising his character. So deep was the impact of this book, that I ended up wishing for such a man to lead the country I lived in. Guess my wish was granted, albeit within the system.

Wonder why...

Ever wondered why we sometimes feel lonely even though we are not alone? Why a crowd doesn’t provide the same merry and cheer as a few special ones do? Why things that we take for granted with some, need to be spelled out to the rest? Why some people can give us unconditional care, while it’s a marriage of profit with the others? Why is it that a few people can make you discover how beautiful we are, while others cant? And why we don’t recognize such people till they are gone? Is it the short while that they touch your life that makes them special? If they had stayed on, probably we wouldn’t treasure them as we do now. Or is it a cruel trick that destiny plays, to keep us longing for the fulfillment that was lost? Why does even the most gregarious of us feels as desolate as the congenital recluse? The rhyme/poem below is an attempt to picture my thoughts on the good and the great of buddies.

The Good and the Great.


I have many good friends
But a mere handful of great friends
Words don’t bring out the difference
Between the two, in any sense.
My good friends are always around
To make my life smooth and sound.
My great friends stay only for a phase
Special sojourns in a maddening race.
Even if my great friends revisit
My life to make up for the deficit
More likely would they become
Just good friends, in the days that would come
Seperated by Distance, space and Time
Images from the past, resonant chimes.
This nostalgia , Is it a comatose stimulus?
Or a distant lullaby beyond the milling chaos?.
Days are many, that I spend with my good friends
Wishing all along, for the great ones to pop up near the bends
Peek-a-boo, they would say, and I shall wake up
Breaking my somnambulism, Hey, Times up!
But that’s not to be, dreams shall remain dreams.
And my longing grows monstrously, pushing the seams.
“Life’s like that. Isnt it?” They say.
“Yeah”, I agree .Nothing is here to stay.
Oh Blossoming buds, I retreat from you,
Fearing the moment I shall be filled with rue.
Darkness beckons, “Come into my folds,
I shall protect you from the light and the golds”
I respond, in the affirmative, using adages to skip worry
Aloud I say to myself, “Better safe than sorry!”
To escape the thorn, I give up the rose
The body over shadowed by the Ghost.
“That’s not right, my little chum”,
Said a voice as sweet as a sugary plum
One of the Greats, she is, my friend
"Riches of the rainbow are always in the end.
Good ones can become great
You have it in you, to change your fate".
Smiling and hopeful, I look into the sunny rays
Eager for the next oasis to come my way


- The Lunatic Bard



This poem is dedicated to one such great friend. I had written it in a moment of despair, acutely feeling the void created by her absence. I had sent it for her perusal. Her response made me add the last few lines which end it in an optimistic note. Now I really know what makes great friends great.

Sunday Stories

Saw Lage Raho Munnabhai last weekend… My roomies resorted to a tactfully conjured concoction of bribery, blackmail and sheer muscle force to make me wake up on time for the 11.30 am show, the fact that it was a Sunday morning not to be missed in the fine print. Finally yielding to sustained pressure from multiple dimensions, I agreed to comply, provided they didn’t mind taking me along, without a bath. On my part, I offered to spray a copious amount of deo and perfume upon my bodily self. Thus the deal was struck and we set out on our flight to fantasy.
Not a brilliant movie in terms of technique, but a pleasant watch and of course with lots of take-home wisdom.
Sometime back, somewhere near the latest blast in Mumbai, I left a comment in one of the blogs I read on and off. The write-up was on the spirit of Mumbai which rises above the embers of violence, everytime and on the commendable job of the NGOs in a moment of crisis. It was a fairly good post which spurred me into thought. All that brouhaha about the spirit of humanity is fine with me, but why in the first place should the threat spring up from within? What makes a man kill so many innocents? Personal vendetta garishly mixed up with ideological megalomania could create an explosion that reverberates far beyond its times. The collective memory of the masses is phenomenally short lived and is perhaps what we dub as “the spirit” of the human race.
Life goes on. Because no one cares, as long as it doesn’t happen to them. And if it happens to them, they would go and perpetrate it to some one else. And thus the vicious circle sustains. No one bothers to find the starting point of this maddening race and no one wants to end it where it started. What makes a man who is capable of immense love, harbor lethal hate? Why don’t any of the world bodies spend sufficient time and money on studies into a terrorist’s psyche?

Well, the comment I left on that post, was somewhat on these lines. I ve always belived Gandhiji to be a myth. Someone glorified beyond reality by his admirers. Or someone not so relevant to the current state of affairs. Though I have deep respect for the “myth” of Gandhiji, the lurking doubt in the corner of my mind never vanished.
Lage Raho Munnabhai, is a simple story, spluttered with stray incidents from real life. The solutions provided weren’t very realistic, nor did they reach deep within. But there were essayed in such a manner, that they created little ripples which had the ability not only to reach far and wide, but also permeate beyond the petty superficial prejudices. In the heart of the plot, lies the spirit of the Mahatma, seen by the hero as a hallucination. The capacity to forgive, the strength to tell the truth, the patience required to wait for it to bear fruit, the stamina to take the straight route are simple lessons that when learnt in spirit and practiced in essence could solve many a burning issue. Above all having a constant view of the bigger picture, would show how small and insignificant our problems, hopes and dreams are, and yet how potentially constructive or destructive they could be.

Though all this sounds incredibly unrealistic and impractical, if when imbibed in the little things we do everyday, life tends to be a lot easier, for us and for the world.

I am still not able to dispel the doubt I have about Gandhi, the man, but the movie did clear a little bit of the haze that clouded Gandhi, the philosophy.

That evening, we went strolling in the lovely Bangalore dusk, and stopped by a roadside shop to have some snacks. An old man, probably in his seventies, picked up a conversation with one of us. The others were in a mixture of suspicion, mild amusement, and complete detachment. The “uncle” ended up inviting us for tea with “aunty” the following weekend, and even pointed out his house to us. The old man looked dignified, spoke flawless Urdu (according to S.N) and his house was a tastefully done brick and plaster upper class residence, all of two storeys.
We bid a polite goodbye, promising to keep up the appointment. As we were returning to our home, the myriad of emotions were given voice. The doubts, appreciation, and dispassionate musings were raised.
S.N, the lady who had engaged in the conversation recounted above, said “ He seems to be a nice man, even reminds me of my grandpa, and it is so rare in these days that someone invites a stranger to their house for tea. But still, we can trust no one”. Letting out a feeble sigh, she continued “Too bad we live in such times”.
And all the chatter died a natural death.