It’s fascinating to see my pen making contact with the sheet of paper that I’m writing on. I write slowly, tentatively. The curvature of each letter and the slight untidiness due to lack of practice make me want to keep looking at the way my hand moves. The ballpoint pen’s blue ink that manifests itself in different shades depending on the amount of force that I apply at the tip of my pen makes my handwriting unique. There are curious stares from the people I’m in the car with. I never write, let alone write in the presence of my family in a car. But, I’ve been so wrapped up in a little blanket with small, intricate patterns that they think I’m building a fort around myself. No one possesses the courage to say it but there is realization written in everyone’s eyes. The realization that these are training grounds for life after college starts. We are too used to doing things together. I try to pay attention, to be interested in the little things. The anecdotes that seem meaningless and the stereotypical questions about what’s going on in each of our lives; things that are essentially embedded in car- drive conversations. These are the conversations that are being sketched on an easel placed in my head. I’ll probably never remember them, as they are at this instant. When I try and look back, it won’t be a sketch any more. It’ll be a painting. It might even turn out to me a masterpiece. A contemplated memory that’ll provide me with light at the end of any dark tunnel that I might have to travel in. I try. But then, I haven’t had this desperate an urge to write for so long that I decide to block myself out from the voices around me. And they let it be. Tacit understandings within families don’t happen too often and so, it’s a very gratifying feeling when they do.
The idea of having to make my own decisions is a little scary. I haven’t really allowed myself to feel the impact of the idea, yet. There are so many things to come to terms with that some times- no, most of the times I convince myself that it isn’t really worth the effort. You clean out your closet with painstaking determination and the skeletons just keep coming back. But, I would rather start at some point and make sure that I’m more careful the next time, even if it involves visiting occasional states of gloom. The aftermath of getting unexpectedly bad results is like having an over extended period of Monday morning blues. It’s slightly irritating to be so fickle minded about what I should be doing with my life for the next four or five years. Some times I think that it doesn’t really matter, all I need is a little initial interest to build upon. But these times are rare.
Time crawls past you slowly. On one hand you wish it would take in some Glucose and speed itself up while on the other you stand by and just watch. Who knows when you’ll get the chance to watch time again? If I want, I can divide twenty-four hours into different sections. I could allot one for Southpark, one for Kafka, one for Sylvie and Bruno, one for foolishly played bad tennis, one for other people and maybe one for myself; but this sort of thing poses so many dangers of turning into routine that I don’t watch time at all. I close my eyes and play music in my head. I suppose the future’s too enigmatic to think about. It’s a tad too challenging and so, I think about the past.
Last week, when I went to collect some documents from my school, the place was already performing the rehearsal of a play called nostalgia. It of course, still needed a lot of brushing up and finishing touches. I don’t really feel like paying a tribute to it right now. I’ll just tell you about the huge banyan tree that stands about hundred meters from my school gate.
I breathe in the air around it. It is the same air that I’ve breathed in the moment I enter my school, for the last four years. Like always, it reminds me of an ancient age. It has the ability to make me believe anything. Old things seem to have this strange attribute of making you forget that they were like all of us, once young. It views the world as a silent observer. It looks at it as though it could go on that way forever. Always being a part of the coherence and yet slightly alienated from the current. Every sway of its leaves, every movement in harmony with the blowing breeze speaks to me of its wisdom, of all that it has seen. I think about it and the noise in my head is silenced. Yes, that is exactly how I remember the banyan tree, at peace with the world and more importantly at peace with itself.
I feel a sudden jolt, look up and see that we’ve reached Kabini. I wouldn’t call the place untouched by civilization but they try hard to give you that impression. And if you have to pay them two thousand bucks per head for one day, who wouldn’t? We stay here for a day. They give us a programme that says Check- in- time 12 p.m, June 13th, Chuck-out time-11 a.m June 14th. It costs my parents a lot of dough. They make it a point not to mention the tariff rates. They tell us once so as to make the impact of the place more powerful. My family doesn’t believe in planning and fitting in schedules, moods and happiness into one frame. It decides to do something and goes ahead and does it. I’ve doubted the validity of the entire statement for a while. But right now, I’m just happy to be here; after a beautiful car drive, after a refreshing day in Bandipur, with the people that I love.
We dump our luggage in our cottages and rush to take a look at the place. I discover a comfortable rock by the riverside and sit down. I listen to the river for a long time. And then, I open the book in my hand, Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse (here, you have a perfect justification of the phrase, ‘what’s in a name?’) and start reading. I have never done book reviews on this blog and I don’t intend to do one now.
But the book meant a lot to me. It was a gift from my Dada and it was too precious to leave behind. Anyway, I’ve a strong attraction to good- looking books. This one’s hardbound and black in color
A day’s gone by already and I sort of got tired of my journal style of writing. I get tired of things too easily. But the interest’s revived back at the same rate as its disappearance.
I’m looking outside the car-window. Shifting my eyes laterally from frame to frame of scenery. Each frame’s different from the next or the one before it but is a part of that stretch of the road, a part like the tree of coherence. I look at the four people that I’m the car with. The music’s been turned off at my request. I want to remain silent and they let it be. Tacit understandings within families don’t happen too often and so, it’s a very gratifying feeling when they do. I think about the last year and the diverse people that I had a chance to interact with. I think about how I’ve been influenced in a varied range of things, about the books that I’ve read, the music that I’ve listened to and the movies that I’ve watched. I think of this year and think about the major events that occurred in the last six months. I think about the number of photo albums that have been stacking up in a tiny cupboard in my head. I think about victory, happiness, flight, disappointment, sadness, denial, complexes, confusion and failure. And then I think about love, friendship, passions, blue skies, green trees, grey smokes, terrace tops, energy and hope. I think about how conveniently our brain can be partitioned into segments and yet function as whole, a part, if I may be allowed to say so, of the coherence. I think about this blog and realize with a slightly sinking feeling that I don’t possess the drive to update it anymore. I may of course come Bach. But right now, there is too much to catch up on, too much love to offer and to receive, to many things to set right.
For the first time in the last so many months, I feel like things are beginning to fall into place. I look at the road ahead through the gap between my dad’s seat and the car’s door and feel a finger nudging my shoulder a little roughly. I turn to my left and hear my brother asking me why I’m smiling like a half-witted ape.
cogitated thoughts
I'm in love with the eye.
Yes, you ARE right. We all know that we've seen those two faces someplace else. O where art thou Douglas Adams?
It must be the glossy tinge of light that all magazines have, I would have never thought that a bell could look that classy.
motley, motley, MOTLEY!
exclusively beatlemaniacal.
There wasn't really any space left to write out band names...
I have been thinking about redoing my room for a while now. In my opinion, familiarity doesn’t exactly breed contempt but it does possess this knack of making you want to be dynamic. The feeling, like so many other feelings, sets in a little later than it should. In my case, it has set in at a time when the chances of my going to a hostel are fairly moderate if not prodigiously high. The kind of chances, you will agree, which narrow down my need for reinvention.
My room, in over-used words is a ghost from the past. One of it’s walls even has a Guns n’ (‘n’ ’ smirk) Roses poster on it. So I suppose you can imagine how far it goes back.
I would have been unaware of the walls or the atmosphere in my room, if it weren’t for a certain video I happen to have had the privilege of watching a couple of days back. The video, you see, was of a room. Queen’s English knocks on my head with her fist and asks me to be more precise. The video, you see, was of one of the most beautiful rooms I’ve ever seen.
Most of the people on my very eminent friends list feel that rooms are no big deal. They do exist after all for the sole purpose of giving you the chance to make them unclean. But as most of them belong to one-of-those institutions, which support the word ‘unclean’ with banners, hands up signs and trumpets, their opinion doesn’t really amount to much.
Even the thought of bare walls makes me feel like I’ve had my first viewing of the Ring.
So yes, bottom line: a room is where your heart is.
Along with the just-turned-teenager-I-want-to-be-cool attribute that is splashed across all over my room, there are a number of memories attached to it.
It was in this room that I celebrated my Tenth std results and it is in this room that I have now moped over my Twelfth std ones. Everyone tells me that it isn’t that big a deal, which in a matter of speaking is well and good. But it’s the first time that I’ve managed to miss a hundred marks in a goddamn exam and that is of course not a very pleasant feeling. In the short span of 48 hours, jaws have dropped, eyes have been strained, indignation masks have been put on faces, silences have been spoken into telephones and wild queries of true identities have been made. ‘‘Was it really YOUR roll number that you typed in?’’ And to all this I would like to say, ‘‘DUH! Shit happens’’.
I sincerely wish that it didn’t happen to me but it sincerely chooses to wish other wise.
I’ve been trained not to brush things under the carpet because of which, it wasn’t that hard to let the 80% slap me on my face, shake me up for a while and make me break down for a little bit. So, I patted everyone’s head and told them it was all right, made others pat mine and tell me the same.
There was nothing else to do but to call up the cousin-with-most-guest-appearances on this blog and ask her to please bunk college so that she could come to my rescue like one of those United States Marines Bertie Wooster keeps talking about. The place you are in, moulds your conversation to quite an extent and this was justified in ‘Rice Bowl’ where both of us treated ourselves to some nice Chinese food. The place as such is a cosy, quiet restaurant…the A.C, cushioned chairs and of course the food manage to give the dim lit place a certain feel, which makes you feel warm, laid back and that sort of thing. But I think they have an exceptionally bad DJ or whoever- picks- their- playlist because they had this crazy CD/cassette on which seemed to be a mixture of the most horrifying music that anyone can possibly be subjected to. Imagine Britney Spears, Christina Augielera, dik chik remixes and a not-so-good-percentage stuffed into one paper bag, then burst right in front of your face and you WILL genuinely feel as if ‘‘ AUGH! I’ve been shot.’’
Oh well, I’m afraid I’ve been digressing for a while now. Do accept my apologies and allow me to welcome you back to whatever it was that I was saying. (Scrolls up…Ah...oh…uh huh... yes) So, all that manages to mould conversation, making it the inane, rugged thing that technically isn’t supposed to happen between two people between whom silences never get uncomfortable…especially when there are things to be said and intensities to be evoked. The REAL thing is thus, built up, allowed to gain more energy and has a strong, structured foundation. If it’s done the right way…it can EVEN have a PLOT.
So, when we had finished lunch, made a customary visit to Blossoms (That was after Shalu promised me that she WILL NOT allow me to buy any thing as she likes my house and probably didn’t want my parents to disown me on accounts of prospective bankruptcies…she obviously ended up buying two books for herself.) and aimlessly walked the streets of Brigade Road, we found ourselves drifting towards the Barista on St Mark’s Road. By the time we’d ordered our coffees and laughed at the morons who actually managed to screw up a 5 lettered, easily spelt, clearly pronounced name by calling me ‘Snaiae’ or something of that sort, the REAL thing had grown and developed a voice of it’s own. If I’m not mistaken, it was at around this moment that time came to a dignified, silent, unseen stop. The words were heart felt, the emotions were genuine, the silences were comfortable and the frantic phone calls from both our mothers, asking us to get ourselves to home this instant because it was thunder storm-y and terribly cloudy were unheeded. Someone must have finally come and pressed the pause button because time had decided that it had had enough of inertia, making us realize in a simple, yet not abrupt way that the intensity had been sucked out, transported some place else and goodbyes were due.
There was something about the wind outside that didn’t quite feel right. It was too strong, powerful…a tad too icy cold. The world outside the stone walled, subtle Barista seemed to be in a chaotic mode. There was a lot of noise, too many traffic jams and a lot of people hurrying up. I realized then that this wasn’t going to be Rain Supreme. It was going to be something else. It was going to be Tempest-esque...
It doesn’t help in such situations, if your direction sense is close to zilch and your knowledge of bus routes is worse. These factors basically mean, auto zindabad and auto zindabad means raised eyebrows when you tell the driver ‘Old Madras Road’ and in a somewhat unhearable mumble, ‘Beninganahalli’. I finally did manage to find an auto and bid a goodbye to my cousin who suffers from no such ailments and got on a bus, reaching home about one and a half hour later than I did (Ha! :-P )
The auto had moved just a couple of meters when it started raining. Raining is actually understating it and doing it a whole lot of injustice. It wasn’t the sort of rain, which starts slowly, gradually turning into cats, dogs and all that. It was the kind, which thought that Darwin was basically a jobless man with a mid-life crisis and wanted to rebel with theories of evolution…making you wonder ‘what the (what’s that four letter word that begins with the same letter as fancy does…well…ahem, can’t remember) thundering typhoons?’ The auto driver immediately decided that the rain was MY fault. I immediately decided that I was going to go home broke...penniless…pleading ‘no, NO…not mea culpa’.
This time, my good friend, ‘time’ decided to slow down. It wanted me to contemplate, mix and match occurrences, question myself, question the heavens…. it wanted me to THINK. And for the next hour, that is exactly what I did. It was crazily cold and there was a constant spray of water hitting me. There was so much electricity in the air that I actually started feeling that things were following a synchronous pattern. Every time my thread of thought changed, something around me would change. Oh fine! little voice inside head, you been reading the Alchemist or something? But, I swear…the moment I decided that I HAD to do something about the walls of my room, they started a hail storm….
I needed yesterday. I needed the terribly sweet coffee. I needed the REAL thing. And I needed the wash. The rain that wasn’t a tempest anymore but more like a prequel of Noah sitting back with all his animals on a sunny island. There are no defined answers yet. But, there were at least questions. ‘Quo Vadis?’ you will say. And I will tell you to open your eyes and watch it rain...while I wait silently…wait for the mists to clear.
My room, in over-used words is a ghost from the past. One of it’s walls even has a Guns n’ (‘n’ ’ smirk) Roses poster on it. So I suppose you can imagine how far it goes back.
I would have been unaware of the walls or the atmosphere in my room, if it weren’t for a certain video I happen to have had the privilege of watching a couple of days back. The video, you see, was of a room. Queen’s English knocks on my head with her fist and asks me to be more precise. The video, you see, was of one of the most beautiful rooms I’ve ever seen.
Most of the people on my very eminent friends list feel that rooms are no big deal. They do exist after all for the sole purpose of giving you the chance to make them unclean. But as most of them belong to one-of-those institutions, which support the word ‘unclean’ with banners, hands up signs and trumpets, their opinion doesn’t really amount to much.
Even the thought of bare walls makes me feel like I’ve had my first viewing of the Ring.
So yes, bottom line: a room is where your heart is.
Along with the just-turned-teenager-I-want-to-be-cool attribute that is splashed across all over my room, there are a number of memories attached to it.
It was in this room that I celebrated my Tenth std results and it is in this room that I have now moped over my Twelfth std ones. Everyone tells me that it isn’t that big a deal, which in a matter of speaking is well and good. But it’s the first time that I’ve managed to miss a hundred marks in a goddamn exam and that is of course not a very pleasant feeling. In the short span of 48 hours, jaws have dropped, eyes have been strained, indignation masks have been put on faces, silences have been spoken into telephones and wild queries of true identities have been made. ‘‘Was it really YOUR roll number that you typed in?’’ And to all this I would like to say, ‘‘DUH! Shit happens’’.
I sincerely wish that it didn’t happen to me but it sincerely chooses to wish other wise.
I’ve been trained not to brush things under the carpet because of which, it wasn’t that hard to let the 80% slap me on my face, shake me up for a while and make me break down for a little bit. So, I patted everyone’s head and told them it was all right, made others pat mine and tell me the same.
There was nothing else to do but to call up the cousin-with-most-guest-appearances on this blog and ask her to please bunk college so that she could come to my rescue like one of those United States Marines Bertie Wooster keeps talking about. The place you are in, moulds your conversation to quite an extent and this was justified in ‘Rice Bowl’ where both of us treated ourselves to some nice Chinese food. The place as such is a cosy, quiet restaurant…the A.C, cushioned chairs and of course the food manage to give the dim lit place a certain feel, which makes you feel warm, laid back and that sort of thing. But I think they have an exceptionally bad DJ or whoever- picks- their- playlist because they had this crazy CD/cassette on which seemed to be a mixture of the most horrifying music that anyone can possibly be subjected to. Imagine Britney Spears, Christina Augielera, dik chik remixes and a not-so-good-percentage stuffed into one paper bag, then burst right in front of your face and you WILL genuinely feel as if ‘‘ AUGH! I’ve been shot.’’
Oh well, I’m afraid I’ve been digressing for a while now. Do accept my apologies and allow me to welcome you back to whatever it was that I was saying. (Scrolls up…Ah...oh…uh huh... yes) So, all that manages to mould conversation, making it the inane, rugged thing that technically isn’t supposed to happen between two people between whom silences never get uncomfortable…especially when there are things to be said and intensities to be evoked. The REAL thing is thus, built up, allowed to gain more energy and has a strong, structured foundation. If it’s done the right way…it can EVEN have a PLOT.
So, when we had finished lunch, made a customary visit to Blossoms (That was after Shalu promised me that she WILL NOT allow me to buy any thing as she likes my house and probably didn’t want my parents to disown me on accounts of prospective bankruptcies…she obviously ended up buying two books for herself.) and aimlessly walked the streets of Brigade Road, we found ourselves drifting towards the Barista on St Mark’s Road. By the time we’d ordered our coffees and laughed at the morons who actually managed to screw up a 5 lettered, easily spelt, clearly pronounced name by calling me ‘Snaiae’ or something of that sort, the REAL thing had grown and developed a voice of it’s own. If I’m not mistaken, it was at around this moment that time came to a dignified, silent, unseen stop. The words were heart felt, the emotions were genuine, the silences were comfortable and the frantic phone calls from both our mothers, asking us to get ourselves to home this instant because it was thunder storm-y and terribly cloudy were unheeded. Someone must have finally come and pressed the pause button because time had decided that it had had enough of inertia, making us realize in a simple, yet not abrupt way that the intensity had been sucked out, transported some place else and goodbyes were due.
There was something about the wind outside that didn’t quite feel right. It was too strong, powerful…a tad too icy cold. The world outside the stone walled, subtle Barista seemed to be in a chaotic mode. There was a lot of noise, too many traffic jams and a lot of people hurrying up. I realized then that this wasn’t going to be Rain Supreme. It was going to be something else. It was going to be Tempest-esque...
It doesn’t help in such situations, if your direction sense is close to zilch and your knowledge of bus routes is worse. These factors basically mean, auto zindabad and auto zindabad means raised eyebrows when you tell the driver ‘Old Madras Road’ and in a somewhat unhearable mumble, ‘Beninganahalli’. I finally did manage to find an auto and bid a goodbye to my cousin who suffers from no such ailments and got on a bus, reaching home about one and a half hour later than I did (Ha! :-P )
The auto had moved just a couple of meters when it started raining. Raining is actually understating it and doing it a whole lot of injustice. It wasn’t the sort of rain, which starts slowly, gradually turning into cats, dogs and all that. It was the kind, which thought that Darwin was basically a jobless man with a mid-life crisis and wanted to rebel with theories of evolution…making you wonder ‘what the (what’s that four letter word that begins with the same letter as fancy does…well…ahem, can’t remember) thundering typhoons?’ The auto driver immediately decided that the rain was MY fault. I immediately decided that I was going to go home broke...penniless…pleading ‘no, NO…not mea culpa’.
This time, my good friend, ‘time’ decided to slow down. It wanted me to contemplate, mix and match occurrences, question myself, question the heavens…. it wanted me to THINK. And for the next hour, that is exactly what I did. It was crazily cold and there was a constant spray of water hitting me. There was so much electricity in the air that I actually started feeling that things were following a synchronous pattern. Every time my thread of thought changed, something around me would change. Oh fine! little voice inside head, you been reading the Alchemist or something? But, I swear…the moment I decided that I HAD to do something about the walls of my room, they started a hail storm….
I needed yesterday. I needed the terribly sweet coffee. I needed the REAL thing. And I needed the wash. The rain that wasn’t a tempest anymore but more like a prequel of Noah sitting back with all his animals on a sunny island. There are no defined answers yet. But, there were at least questions. ‘Quo Vadis?’ you will say. And I will tell you to open your eyes and watch it rain...while I wait silently…wait for the mists to clear.
Alright! So, everyone knew this was coming. I’ll just hand out a couple of invitation cards, make some welcome speeches, assign you all a few mood- codes (you there, its your turn to be the clown of the day, and you, YES! you thought you could avoid my powerful gaze if you twiddled your thumbs and looked at the ceiling? You have my sympathies, but it’s your turn to be the miserable creature that sits on the last seat and looks at all the glamour around him/her, longingly…well I’m certain that you get the drift. Beg your pardon? What is it that you whisper amongst yourselves? Have I like….uh…lost it? Well, let me put it this way, everyone anyway seems to be going slightly mad…. and poor, wretched me isn’t really the trend setter here…
We are suckers for punctuality on this show, due to which you have just a little time to put some powder on that radiant face or spray some perfume on that majestic double-breasted suit.
So now that we are all ready to receive the mawkish queen of reiteration, I might as well make an appearance and deliver my piece. And since allusions aren’t really a language on their own I assure you that I’ll try to speak some English which, I suppose, would make it a tad easier for everyone including my lovely Sunday newspaper critics.
When I was a little kid, I used to have this crazy hobby of collecting stones. I used to pick up stones from all over the place (my favourite haunt was a construction site; they had the best shiny and glossy stones) and put them in these plastic bags and keep them in my cupboard. It was good fun till it started freaking my mum out…so one day, when I brought this circular, absolutely symmetric, black and glittery stone, home and told my mother with a pronounced mysterious drawl to my voice that the stone was going to bring us bad luck and destroy the world MUHUHAHAHAHA, she must have figured that this particular hobby was not doing much good to her imbecile daughter and in the matter of a few moments, the babies of my months’ efforts and devotion were thrown outside, lying like victims of the accident that was the big bad world. I was needless to say (yeah Mr oh-so-smart Alec now that I’ve admitted that there is no need to say it I AM going to go ahead and say it) devastated and bitter. But, that was still manageable…even for a 7-year-old kid. What I couldn’t manage though was the biting feeling that it had been a waste of my time and more importantly a waste of my mum’s. I could have ‘utilized’ that time to do other things with my gazillion friends… And when you are forced to concentrate on unpleasantness like that, you start blocking out the parts that really matter. The ones that were the cause of the dreamy looks of fascination in my eyes, or the ones that made me believe that any thing was after all possible… If She could encapsulate such interesting stories about an ancient age on a miniscule stone, then how much could she do with a whole world…
For a couple of days now, I’ve been waking up from dreams that consisted of people that have been or are a part of my life. But, the strange thing was that they were always set in some vague place…like old forts and riversides. It’s been pretty difficult for me to check myself. I would suddenly find myself thinking about those dreams as if they really happened and confuse it with what was happening in real life right now; because you see, the people were real…
And they’ve always been real. It’s not their existence that’s the problem…it’s mine. I wish now, that I’d realized where and when to fold the page into two. But, as is the case with most of the things that you know you are supposed to be doing but don’t do because it’s less complicated this way; I chose not to realize it. It’s not really my fault though, I’m just a juvenile idiot…I got so carried away by the pats, the smiles, the modified quotes, the rush, the file transfers…. that I didn’t bother differentiating. And when there were uncalled for goodbyes with the deer being sent on a hike, I chose not to understand it… Someoneonce told me that we were just nobodies in here…and damn me for not having listened then.
‘‘They press their lips against you
And you love the lies they say
And I tried so hard to reach you
But you're falling anyway
And you know I see right through you
When the world gets in your way
What's the point in all this screamin'
You're not listening anyway’’
--Acoustic#3, Goo Goo Dolls.
Well, it’s about time too. But, if I try and analyze every thing that I’ve been doing for the last four years then I would choose to regret it. I would choose to be unfair. And I don’t like doing injustice to choices. So I would rather just move on, thanks for all the bananafish. Seymour's still around to show them to me anyway.
In the words of a young man who claims that his momma told him that life is like a box of chocolates, that’s all I’ve to say about that.
I dare say that my head would have been muddled up for a long time but I thankfully experienced some thing yesterday, which saw to it that I don’t dwell upon things for more time than is actually required. It was more like a series of events actually…
I’d just finished an excruciating exam and they’d given us a break of an hour and 15 minutes before we could be belted, squished and trampled again.
My dad drove down to Cubbon Park and we were sitting in the car, eating the Tomato Rice that my mum had lovingly packed for the two of us. Dylan was asking Mr tambourine man to play a song for him. And at this exact moment, there’s no escaping what time it was; it was 12:15 P.M, I saw this family right ahead of us…there were seven people; five of them children (all of them were boys), a lady and another man which I assumed was the head of the family. The H.O.F was clicking photographs and the rest of the family was sitting on one of those benches-that-are-found-in-parks. The kids were doing crazy poses and all that. There was nothing particularly interesting about this whole thing except for a tiny, little detail, which I of course being the kind-hearted writer that I am, am going to disclose to you. All the members of the family that belonged to the sweatier, gory, darker sex, which if you recall, amounts to a total of six people, were perfectly…bald. I nudged my dad and both of us sat staring at this strange group, at the way the sunlight rebounded from their shiny heads, till we started smiling, grinning and finally ended up laughing. Not those loud laughs, or the crack-you-up till you feel like your sides- would- split laugh or even those subtle ones that are marked with politeness. It was just this really pleasant laugh that you do once in a while when you are peacefully happy about some thing. It makes its way through the clutter in your head reaching the epicenter and once it gets there, it starts generating waves in all directions so that by the time you are done laughing, your heads been sprayed with some fresh water and isn’t really that muddled up any more.
I don’t know if you’ve had the feeling of being in slow motion. Kinda like the Matrix bullets funda. It usually happens to me when I’m sitting in the car and looking outside the window. Dad will be speeding up. My mum will be chanting some shlokas under her breath, seemingly soft but loud enough for my dad to hear and figure, my brother will be sitting around doing nothing and suddenly I’ll see the world whiz past by me in slow motion. Maybe it has some thing to do with the fact that it’s night and there are neon lights all around…The world’s still moving…but it’s moving slow, it’s moving at a speed that will make me notice just about every thing…Neon lights, apparent high speeds, music, skylines, buildings, traffic signals, people…lots of people…and thoughts. Like a disembodied entity once observed, ‘Things began to come to him. Not drawn by a pull, but just passing him by almost as if suddenly they'd given him the permission to live in their world.’ It’s not a very nice thing to happen often but to happen when you are on a low, it’s just as good as it gets. Everyone deserves it once in a while, because it involves clarity. Things just have to make sense from time to time. It’s a defective need but that’s how it is.
It’s about concentrating on the tiniest piece in the frame. Looking at a worm crawl past by you, or a flower moving with the breeze, or seeing the way water flows into your open mouth from a bottle or laughing at bald people posing for photographs.
And I think that the ability to do that with any success is something that disintegrates with age. So, I like the way things are right now. I don’t mind the fact that I get to be called ‘juvenile’ by someone at least twice a day. And I’m not giving up on my teenage fantasies at least till I’m 21 if I can help it.
After periodic pleas from the, Pul(r)p(l)ish Fiction fanatic I finally got around to hearing the joke that wasn’t really funny but was told if we wanted to hear it anyway. No, of course I’m not going to tell it you here. Lets just say that it involves tomatoes...and well, ketchup.
So, basically ‘all we have to do now, is to go get that five dollar milkshake’.
‘‘So, if I decide to waiver my chance to be one of the hive
Will I choose water over wine and hold my own and drive?
Whatever tomorrow brings,
I'll be there with open arms and open eyes, Yeah
Whatever tomorrow brings, I'll be there..I'll be there.’’
--Drive, Incubus.
We are suckers for punctuality on this show, due to which you have just a little time to put some powder on that radiant face or spray some perfume on that majestic double-breasted suit.
So now that we are all ready to receive the mawkish queen of reiteration, I might as well make an appearance and deliver my piece. And since allusions aren’t really a language on their own I assure you that I’ll try to speak some English which, I suppose, would make it a tad easier for everyone including my lovely Sunday newspaper critics.
When I was a little kid, I used to have this crazy hobby of collecting stones. I used to pick up stones from all over the place (my favourite haunt was a construction site; they had the best shiny and glossy stones) and put them in these plastic bags and keep them in my cupboard. It was good fun till it started freaking my mum out…so one day, when I brought this circular, absolutely symmetric, black and glittery stone, home and told my mother with a pronounced mysterious drawl to my voice that the stone was going to bring us bad luck and destroy the world MUHUHAHAHAHA, she must have figured that this particular hobby was not doing much good to her imbecile daughter and in the matter of a few moments, the babies of my months’ efforts and devotion were thrown outside, lying like victims of the accident that was the big bad world. I was needless to say (yeah Mr oh-so-smart Alec now that I’ve admitted that there is no need to say it I AM going to go ahead and say it) devastated and bitter. But, that was still manageable…even for a 7-year-old kid. What I couldn’t manage though was the biting feeling that it had been a waste of my time and more importantly a waste of my mum’s. I could have ‘utilized’ that time to do other things with my gazillion friends… And when you are forced to concentrate on unpleasantness like that, you start blocking out the parts that really matter. The ones that were the cause of the dreamy looks of fascination in my eyes, or the ones that made me believe that any thing was after all possible… If She could encapsulate such interesting stories about an ancient age on a miniscule stone, then how much could she do with a whole world…
For a couple of days now, I’ve been waking up from dreams that consisted of people that have been or are a part of my life. But, the strange thing was that they were always set in some vague place…like old forts and riversides. It’s been pretty difficult for me to check myself. I would suddenly find myself thinking about those dreams as if they really happened and confuse it with what was happening in real life right now; because you see, the people were real…
And they’ve always been real. It’s not their existence that’s the problem…it’s mine. I wish now, that I’d realized where and when to fold the page into two. But, as is the case with most of the things that you know you are supposed to be doing but don’t do because it’s less complicated this way; I chose not to realize it. It’s not really my fault though, I’m just a juvenile idiot…I got so carried away by the pats, the smiles, the modified quotes, the rush, the file transfers…. that I didn’t bother differentiating. And when there were uncalled for goodbyes with the deer being sent on a hike, I chose not to understand it… Someoneonce told me that we were just nobodies in here…and damn me for not having listened then.
‘‘They press their lips against you
And you love the lies they say
And I tried so hard to reach you
But you're falling anyway
And you know I see right through you
When the world gets in your way
What's the point in all this screamin'
You're not listening anyway’’
--Acoustic#3, Goo Goo Dolls.
Well, it’s about time too. But, if I try and analyze every thing that I’ve been doing for the last four years then I would choose to regret it. I would choose to be unfair. And I don’t like doing injustice to choices. So I would rather just move on, thanks for all the bananafish. Seymour's still around to show them to me anyway.
In the words of a young man who claims that his momma told him that life is like a box of chocolates, that’s all I’ve to say about that.
I dare say that my head would have been muddled up for a long time but I thankfully experienced some thing yesterday, which saw to it that I don’t dwell upon things for more time than is actually required. It was more like a series of events actually…
I’d just finished an excruciating exam and they’d given us a break of an hour and 15 minutes before we could be belted, squished and trampled again.
My dad drove down to Cubbon Park and we were sitting in the car, eating the Tomato Rice that my mum had lovingly packed for the two of us. Dylan was asking Mr tambourine man to play a song for him. And at this exact moment, there’s no escaping what time it was; it was 12:15 P.M, I saw this family right ahead of us…there were seven people; five of them children (all of them were boys), a lady and another man which I assumed was the head of the family. The H.O.F was clicking photographs and the rest of the family was sitting on one of those benches-that-are-found-in-parks. The kids were doing crazy poses and all that. There was nothing particularly interesting about this whole thing except for a tiny, little detail, which I of course being the kind-hearted writer that I am, am going to disclose to you. All the members of the family that belonged to the sweatier, gory, darker sex, which if you recall, amounts to a total of six people, were perfectly…bald. I nudged my dad and both of us sat staring at this strange group, at the way the sunlight rebounded from their shiny heads, till we started smiling, grinning and finally ended up laughing. Not those loud laughs, or the crack-you-up till you feel like your sides- would- split laugh or even those subtle ones that are marked with politeness. It was just this really pleasant laugh that you do once in a while when you are peacefully happy about some thing. It makes its way through the clutter in your head reaching the epicenter and once it gets there, it starts generating waves in all directions so that by the time you are done laughing, your heads been sprayed with some fresh water and isn’t really that muddled up any more.
I don’t know if you’ve had the feeling of being in slow motion. Kinda like the Matrix bullets funda. It usually happens to me when I’m sitting in the car and looking outside the window. Dad will be speeding up. My mum will be chanting some shlokas under her breath, seemingly soft but loud enough for my dad to hear and figure, my brother will be sitting around doing nothing and suddenly I’ll see the world whiz past by me in slow motion. Maybe it has some thing to do with the fact that it’s night and there are neon lights all around…The world’s still moving…but it’s moving slow, it’s moving at a speed that will make me notice just about every thing…Neon lights, apparent high speeds, music, skylines, buildings, traffic signals, people…lots of people…and thoughts. Like a disembodied entity once observed, ‘Things began to come to him. Not drawn by a pull, but just passing him by almost as if suddenly they'd given him the permission to live in their world.’ It’s not a very nice thing to happen often but to happen when you are on a low, it’s just as good as it gets. Everyone deserves it once in a while, because it involves clarity. Things just have to make sense from time to time. It’s a defective need but that’s how it is.
It’s about concentrating on the tiniest piece in the frame. Looking at a worm crawl past by you, or a flower moving with the breeze, or seeing the way water flows into your open mouth from a bottle or laughing at bald people posing for photographs.
And I think that the ability to do that with any success is something that disintegrates with age. So, I like the way things are right now. I don’t mind the fact that I get to be called ‘juvenile’ by someone at least twice a day. And I’m not giving up on my teenage fantasies at least till I’m 21 if I can help it.
After periodic pleas from the, Pul(r)p(l)ish Fiction fanatic I finally got around to hearing the joke that wasn’t really funny but was told if we wanted to hear it anyway. No, of course I’m not going to tell it you here. Lets just say that it involves tomatoes...and well, ketchup.
So, basically ‘all we have to do now, is to go get that five dollar milkshake’.
‘‘So, if I decide to waiver my chance to be one of the hive
Will I choose water over wine and hold my own and drive?
Whatever tomorrow brings,
I'll be there with open arms and open eyes, Yeah
Whatever tomorrow brings, I'll be there..I'll be there.’’
--Drive, Incubus.
When you want to write something about a dish you just cooked,
I think the wisest thing to do is to write immediately after you are done with the process; when the strong, yet not so offensive smells of garlic, onions and a various assortment of spices still linger stubbornly in your hands, nasal passage and just about everywhere else. One of my wildest fears used to be that my kids would have to survive on Maggi/Top Ramen and eggs. It is thus with a distinctive contentment that I now announce my prospective menu card to the public. My kids will have to survive on Maggi/Top Ramen, eggs and….trumpets, drum roll……..DUM ALOO.
I was spending my day with my head in the clouds, reaffirming my faith in the fact that anyone who watches 12 Monkeys on Star Movies starting from 11:05 P.M must be slightly touched in the head, (Boy! N.U.T.S I tell you, I wonder who that could be) lazing around and doing what I and a lot of people like best, namely nothing…when I suddenly had this crazy idea of cooking something. Poof went the nothingness into thin air and bang came the smug, angelic expression on my face as I trudged along to put forth my wishes to the one person who could help me accomplish my goals; the virtuoso when it comes to food in the Nagesh household, the chef extraordinaire, patience in culinary matters impersonated…my mother.
So after about an hour packed with burning eyes, silent shakes of my mother’s head at seeing a certain nutter we-all-know-so-very-well-by-now try and peel the potatoes, broken peelers, jammed mixies, dirty dishes and a lot of sweat and grime; a nice looking bowl, containing the dish created by my sweet self was placed at the center of the dining table.
It’s one of the most marvelous feelings in the world to be able to take a spoon, dip it in the gravy and bring it as close to your nose as it is required for you to smell a delicious aroma, then realize that you are the one who’s created it. And when your mother takes a sniff, a taste and then gives you a small smile which you interpret as ‘Atta girl! It’ll take a while for your kids to get bored of this’ the feeling is so satisfying that it’s worth all the sweaty effort and of course it deserves a dedication on your blog.
Good food is one of those things that add a little more flavour to our lives...but it takes more than rich smells and gravies for you to remember the taste of whatever you’ve eaten. Yesterday, I went to my cousin, Shalini’s place. My aunt, Shalu and me were sitting in the semi-dark-cloudy light that is characteristic of rainy days and days bestowed with power cuts, both of which had decided to make an appearance yesterday. Shalu and me, both had a plate of akki rotti (akki is rice) in our hands. Now, akki rotti IMHO is one of the most nicest rottis any Karnatak-ite has ever come up with. But a very few people have the ability to conjure it up perfectly, crisp in the right places, not too oily and the right amount of thickness. My aunt is of course one of those people. And for a couple of moments, we forgot about how we are supposed to tick away the moments that make up a dull day and wait for someone or something to show us the way. We talked and we laughed and we ate and we listened to it rain. There have been many akki rottis in the past and there will be many of them in the future but I will remember how right it tasted yesterday for a long time.
Rainy days have already been dwelt upon by a countless number of writers/4th std kids (it’s them teachers’ favourite ‘‘essay’’ topic…that and my ambition of course)/poets/bloggers. But, when you are compelled by something like the fear of catching a cold before an exam and have to force yourself to disregard any thoughts of performing a yo ho ho and a bottle of run-tribal dance-thing out in the rain, windows play a mighty role in taking your spirits for a walk high up in the hills. Car windows, in particular have mastered the art to perfection. When raindrops fall on closed car windows, they form patterns, webs, designs; they end trains of thoughts, start some more…they are so clever that they can make me forget about everything else, so much so that I become oblivious to my dad and brother’s voices which are discussing one of the how-does-that-work questions that 12 year old kids keep coming up with or for that matter to my favourite Knopfler- song- in- the- car. And before I know it I am on one side and the entire world is on the other. It’s like everybody just decided to show me a free movie. Everything seems so perfect that it almost kills…dark looming clouds that make you forget what time of the day it is, black glistening roads, lush green trees, raincoats, drenched clothes, vehicles splashing water, almost intoxicating smells and oily rainbows. Suddenly the world’s not only beautiful anymore…it’s also pretty.
And being aware of that fact polishes my day. Perfection doesn’t kill anymore. It just installs itself in my head as a temporary boat ride. In a matter of few moments, it’ll be gone, showing someone else how the ripples move or helping something else to become pretty. Maybe it’ll pay a visit to a lake or to the kids in my apartment who get all excited when it rains…
‘Another turning point;
a fork stuck in the road.
Time grabs you by the wrist;
directs you where to go.
So make the best of this test
and don't ask why.
It's not a question
but a lesson learned in time.
It's something unpredictable
but in the end it's right.
I hope you had the time of your life.’
- Time of your life, Green day.
Kids can get excited for just about anything. A couple of days back, I was sitting on my bed with my guitar and playing this song called I’m the highway by Audioslave. It didn’t matter that the song didn’t quite sound like how it’s supposed to. I just needed a little energy so I was doing my act quite loud…singing it loud...playing it loud and when I finished I let out this satisfied-with-everything deep breath. I was aware of some movement to my left that sounded unmistakably like applause, so I immediately looked to my left and discovered four faces held close to my window’s mesh. Vinnie’s friends aged 7,12,12 and 6 respectively. The sort of age when you can get excited if someone can play ba ba black sheep on a guitar, when just the possession of a guitar by your friend’s sister is ‘cool’, when promises are meant to be kept irrespective of any external exigencies, when disappointments hit harder than they should…
Yeah, we’ve got a lot to learn, don’t we? And like I always say…learning can be a tad unpleasant sometimes. But optimism is a stubborn thing and has a loud, clear voice that says that they are quick learners…them kids…
‘I used to think, as birds take wing
They sing through life, so why can’t we?’
-I’ll take the rain, R.E.M
I think the wisest thing to do is to write immediately after you are done with the process; when the strong, yet not so offensive smells of garlic, onions and a various assortment of spices still linger stubbornly in your hands, nasal passage and just about everywhere else. One of my wildest fears used to be that my kids would have to survive on Maggi/Top Ramen and eggs. It is thus with a distinctive contentment that I now announce my prospective menu card to the public. My kids will have to survive on Maggi/Top Ramen, eggs and….trumpets, drum roll……..DUM ALOO.
I was spending my day with my head in the clouds, reaffirming my faith in the fact that anyone who watches 12 Monkeys on Star Movies starting from 11:05 P.M must be slightly touched in the head, (Boy! N.U.T.S I tell you, I wonder who that could be) lazing around and doing what I and a lot of people like best, namely nothing…when I suddenly had this crazy idea of cooking something. Poof went the nothingness into thin air and bang came the smug, angelic expression on my face as I trudged along to put forth my wishes to the one person who could help me accomplish my goals; the virtuoso when it comes to food in the Nagesh household, the chef extraordinaire, patience in culinary matters impersonated…my mother.
So after about an hour packed with burning eyes, silent shakes of my mother’s head at seeing a certain nutter we-all-know-so-very-well-by-now try and peel the potatoes, broken peelers, jammed mixies, dirty dishes and a lot of sweat and grime; a nice looking bowl, containing the dish created by my sweet self was placed at the center of the dining table.
It’s one of the most marvelous feelings in the world to be able to take a spoon, dip it in the gravy and bring it as close to your nose as it is required for you to smell a delicious aroma, then realize that you are the one who’s created it. And when your mother takes a sniff, a taste and then gives you a small smile which you interpret as ‘Atta girl! It’ll take a while for your kids to get bored of this’ the feeling is so satisfying that it’s worth all the sweaty effort and of course it deserves a dedication on your blog.
Good food is one of those things that add a little more flavour to our lives...but it takes more than rich smells and gravies for you to remember the taste of whatever you’ve eaten. Yesterday, I went to my cousin, Shalini’s place. My aunt, Shalu and me were sitting in the semi-dark-cloudy light that is characteristic of rainy days and days bestowed with power cuts, both of which had decided to make an appearance yesterday. Shalu and me, both had a plate of akki rotti (akki is rice) in our hands. Now, akki rotti IMHO is one of the most nicest rottis any Karnatak-ite has ever come up with. But a very few people have the ability to conjure it up perfectly, crisp in the right places, not too oily and the right amount of thickness. My aunt is of course one of those people. And for a couple of moments, we forgot about how we are supposed to tick away the moments that make up a dull day and wait for someone or something to show us the way. We talked and we laughed and we ate and we listened to it rain. There have been many akki rottis in the past and there will be many of them in the future but I will remember how right it tasted yesterday for a long time.
Rainy days have already been dwelt upon by a countless number of writers/4th std kids (it’s them teachers’ favourite ‘‘essay’’ topic…that and my ambition of course)/poets/bloggers. But, when you are compelled by something like the fear of catching a cold before an exam and have to force yourself to disregard any thoughts of performing a yo ho ho and a bottle of run-tribal dance-thing out in the rain, windows play a mighty role in taking your spirits for a walk high up in the hills. Car windows, in particular have mastered the art to perfection. When raindrops fall on closed car windows, they form patterns, webs, designs; they end trains of thoughts, start some more…they are so clever that they can make me forget about everything else, so much so that I become oblivious to my dad and brother’s voices which are discussing one of the how-does-that-work questions that 12 year old kids keep coming up with or for that matter to my favourite Knopfler- song- in- the- car. And before I know it I am on one side and the entire world is on the other. It’s like everybody just decided to show me a free movie. Everything seems so perfect that it almost kills…dark looming clouds that make you forget what time of the day it is, black glistening roads, lush green trees, raincoats, drenched clothes, vehicles splashing water, almost intoxicating smells and oily rainbows. Suddenly the world’s not only beautiful anymore…it’s also pretty.
And being aware of that fact polishes my day. Perfection doesn’t kill anymore. It just installs itself in my head as a temporary boat ride. In a matter of few moments, it’ll be gone, showing someone else how the ripples move or helping something else to become pretty. Maybe it’ll pay a visit to a lake or to the kids in my apartment who get all excited when it rains…
‘Another turning point;
a fork stuck in the road.
Time grabs you by the wrist;
directs you where to go.
So make the best of this test
and don't ask why.
It's not a question
but a lesson learned in time.
It's something unpredictable
but in the end it's right.
I hope you had the time of your life.’
- Time of your life, Green day.
Kids can get excited for just about anything. A couple of days back, I was sitting on my bed with my guitar and playing this song called I’m the highway by Audioslave. It didn’t matter that the song didn’t quite sound like how it’s supposed to. I just needed a little energy so I was doing my act quite loud…singing it loud...playing it loud and when I finished I let out this satisfied-with-everything deep breath. I was aware of some movement to my left that sounded unmistakably like applause, so I immediately looked to my left and discovered four faces held close to my window’s mesh. Vinnie’s friends aged 7,12,12 and 6 respectively. The sort of age when you can get excited if someone can play ba ba black sheep on a guitar, when just the possession of a guitar by your friend’s sister is ‘cool’, when promises are meant to be kept irrespective of any external exigencies, when disappointments hit harder than they should…
Yeah, we’ve got a lot to learn, don’t we? And like I always say…learning can be a tad unpleasant sometimes. But optimism is a stubborn thing and has a loud, clear voice that says that they are quick learners…them kids…
‘I used to think, as birds take wing
They sing through life, so why can’t we?’
-I’ll take the rain, R.E.M
‘A flight of fancy on a windswept field
Standing alone my senses reeled’
-Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
I think I was in 8th std when I heard this song for the first time, that is, when I was consciously aware that I’d heard it. (My father’s interests in bands like the Beatles, Queen, Dire Straits and Floyd guaranteed that I would be subjected to music that had foundations built with guitars and percussions; not just plain showbiz and pretty lads). Back in the days when Bryan Adams used to be a favourite and when my music choices thrived on certain other boyish bands whose names I won’t even bother mentioning now, Pink Floyd was evolution thrown at me with a huge thrust. ‘Learning to Fly’ was the second song on ‘A momentary lapse of reason’, which was this rusted old TDK tape that my dad had recored in Dec, 87 in one of those shops that you could record music in for just a little dough and time (the latter being available in decent quantities and hence canceling out any lack of the former whatsoever)
(From here on, you, my dear reader will, in all probability, experience an undeniable sense of déjà vu. The sentences in inverted commas are mostly from my favourite posts written by you. It shouldn’t, honestly speaking, take a bloggiversary to hand out credits but such is life and a spectator can hand out a thunderous applause only when the curtains drop and it’s the end of Act 1. )
Maybe the year and the month had chalked out this brilliant plot amongst themselves, maybe there is something remarkable about being able to hear a cassette that had the unmistakable buzz of age and time or maybe, I just needed a change from the drab, stark, empty music that I’d been listening to. You’ll know that you’ve heard a good song, if whenever you type out the words of the song or try to remember them; the music comes to your head along with the words. Lyrics never sound complete without the rhythm.''There's a distinct nip in the air and the gentle breeze rippling the lake, sets its waters into a steadily rhythmic movement, in parallel with my thoughts.'' Leads.Bass.Rhythms. Drums. Sound Effects. Vocals…
That’s probably one of the reasons why I don’t fancy the idea of mixing poetry with lyrics. Poetry, in most cases, is this abstract structure of words…lyrics, on the other hand, have this pact with music. I’m strictly talking about bands like Floyd here, not instrumentals. ''Accompanied with the growing up is the inevitable sense of loss. A sense of having left something precious behind''…but why regret when there is so much more before us…when ''there’s a full day of possibilities'' and ''it’s a magical world, Hobbes, ol’ buddy.''
But, this is not about how my choice of musical artists has changed in the last few years. No… it’s about marking things. You see, I have this maddening desire to stop for a while and catch my breath…to survey words that were written…to recapitulate thoughts that were thought…to acknowledge discoveries that were initiated/discovered and to put a book mark in the book I’m currently reading; not remember the page number or fold the page end or anything book-vandalizing and silly of that sort but to actually put this nice looking book mark in the book so I can open it anytime I want and catch hold of some of the strings that were lost, forgotten…so I can have this radical conversation with ghosts from the past.
Q: So are all these substitutes, or is this amalgam the real thing?
It’s almost too crazy a thought sometimes, how words can make such a big difference to your life. An interwoven land of personal touches, moments captured on a url and before you know it, reading words here is even more gratifying than reading them somewhere else. ''It's not true that we live only one life; if we can read, we can lead as many lives, and as many kinds of lives as we want.''
There are times when you wake up from a dream and it takes you the night’s silence and a cursory look at your bedroom’s ceiling fan, rotating periodically as if it has been doing just that from time immemorial to decipher that what you’ve woken up from, was a dream and not the other way round. The line demarcating the boundary is but a thin one. If life is about experiencing then isn’t that what we do even in our dreams? The most blissful sleeps are those that you have after having this absolutely excruciating day. Dreamless…quiet sleep. But there are others… when you wake up after having a nice dream and don’t feel the difference… you carry on with life as if it were a continuous, spontaneous package.
A: Certain things are inherent in the life that I’m living now. This amalgam is maintaining a balance between things and I’m grateful for that…
Because… ''I do exist. How you ask? Well, when you ask the question, refer to me by name, and I'll exist. I exist in the minds of my friends, of people I've met''
''And it is palpable to most that life is naught but strife and that the human spirit needs a beacon to guide it onwards.''
What a comfort to be able to learn from other people’s mistakes and not your own…to be able to walk in the stars and let others walk in the pot holes for you…to have a catcher in the rye in handy…and I love the visits but there is no need for any undue concern, doc…
''Together, temporal and spatial separation help you cleanse your doors of perception, so everything appears as it is. Time and distance are like a burst of fresh air that dispel the smokescreen formed by jumpiness, excitement and anger that are a residue of the turbulence in your life.''
Most of the time we love things because of comparison, relative grading…retrospect.
That is why evolution is such a fascinating process…from cyano bacteria to man…
From Backstreet Boys to Bryan Adams to Mukesh to Kishore Kumar to Pink Floyd to The Beatles to Vai to Satriani to Mclaughlin and then to Shakti.
(I do have the rule of the thumb and guitar pro, you know:-) )
''This morning, as I walked along Penny Lane, listening to Penny Lane on my discman, Penny Lane was in my ears and in my eyes. And for a few minutes, when the sun was shining, there I was, beneath the blue suburban skies.''
And so I looked at the pictures…felt like I was the one who’d been to Liverpool…
''Impressions.... they creep in, unnoticed, unannounced. They make us what we are; they make us believe what we believe. Perhaps it is only for the best.''
''I have always wanted to experience frenzied pleasure, one that inspires you, fills you with a million words for the while that it lasts. Like violets. Electricity. Caramel. Champagne. Free fall. Dizzy.''
And so when we were having this lovely time together…us and them… and the bulb decided to blow a fuse, I decided to replace the bulb with a custom made lamp shade, with a 15 Watt Bulb (As Rincewind told me, candles are distracting…such a beautiful blue flame…always the last to go out) so that it looked prettier…(Yeah, we care for ambience…sure we do…us philistines)
''I have one-second images flashing before my eyes, which I observe and ignore at will. They are enough to trigger a million memories, which lead to a million more. And when I get sick of thinking, I switch to playing songs inside my head.''
So this is it…the end of a tribute. I will now raise a toast to the blogs I’ve known…(spoon tapping glass) to the people who have been reading my rants and commenting on them, to those who still read them, to some of them who don’t, to those who do but don’t comment, to those who are reading them now, to quotes, to seasons, to enthusiasm, to mutual back thumps, to dedications, to acquaintances, to friends, to brothers, to love, to life, to death, to pleasure, to time…to happiness being a warm gun…
''That’s the thing about beauty. Sometimes it just rushes at you with so much force that you don’t even have time for thought. You just let it fill you up and suddenly there is no room for anything else.''
Standing alone my senses reeled’
-Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
I think I was in 8th std when I heard this song for the first time, that is, when I was consciously aware that I’d heard it. (My father’s interests in bands like the Beatles, Queen, Dire Straits and Floyd guaranteed that I would be subjected to music that had foundations built with guitars and percussions; not just plain showbiz and pretty lads). Back in the days when Bryan Adams used to be a favourite and when my music choices thrived on certain other boyish bands whose names I won’t even bother mentioning now, Pink Floyd was evolution thrown at me with a huge thrust. ‘Learning to Fly’ was the second song on ‘A momentary lapse of reason’, which was this rusted old TDK tape that my dad had recored in Dec, 87 in one of those shops that you could record music in for just a little dough and time (the latter being available in decent quantities and hence canceling out any lack of the former whatsoever)
(From here on, you, my dear reader will, in all probability, experience an undeniable sense of déjà vu. The sentences in inverted commas are mostly from my favourite posts written by you. It shouldn’t, honestly speaking, take a bloggiversary to hand out credits but such is life and a spectator can hand out a thunderous applause only when the curtains drop and it’s the end of Act 1. )
Maybe the year and the month had chalked out this brilliant plot amongst themselves, maybe there is something remarkable about being able to hear a cassette that had the unmistakable buzz of age and time or maybe, I just needed a change from the drab, stark, empty music that I’d been listening to. You’ll know that you’ve heard a good song, if whenever you type out the words of the song or try to remember them; the music comes to your head along with the words. Lyrics never sound complete without the rhythm.''There's a distinct nip in the air and the gentle breeze rippling the lake, sets its waters into a steadily rhythmic movement, in parallel with my thoughts.'' Leads.Bass.Rhythms. Drums. Sound Effects. Vocals…
That’s probably one of the reasons why I don’t fancy the idea of mixing poetry with lyrics. Poetry, in most cases, is this abstract structure of words…lyrics, on the other hand, have this pact with music. I’m strictly talking about bands like Floyd here, not instrumentals. ''Accompanied with the growing up is the inevitable sense of loss. A sense of having left something precious behind''…but why regret when there is so much more before us…when ''there’s a full day of possibilities'' and ''it’s a magical world, Hobbes, ol’ buddy.''
But, this is not about how my choice of musical artists has changed in the last few years. No… it’s about marking things. You see, I have this maddening desire to stop for a while and catch my breath…to survey words that were written…to recapitulate thoughts that were thought…to acknowledge discoveries that were initiated/discovered and to put a book mark in the book I’m currently reading; not remember the page number or fold the page end or anything book-vandalizing and silly of that sort but to actually put this nice looking book mark in the book so I can open it anytime I want and catch hold of some of the strings that were lost, forgotten…so I can have this radical conversation with ghosts from the past.
Q: So are all these substitutes, or is this amalgam the real thing?
It’s almost too crazy a thought sometimes, how words can make such a big difference to your life. An interwoven land of personal touches, moments captured on a url and before you know it, reading words here is even more gratifying than reading them somewhere else. ''It's not true that we live only one life; if we can read, we can lead as many lives, and as many kinds of lives as we want.''
There are times when you wake up from a dream and it takes you the night’s silence and a cursory look at your bedroom’s ceiling fan, rotating periodically as if it has been doing just that from time immemorial to decipher that what you’ve woken up from, was a dream and not the other way round. The line demarcating the boundary is but a thin one. If life is about experiencing then isn’t that what we do even in our dreams? The most blissful sleeps are those that you have after having this absolutely excruciating day. Dreamless…quiet sleep. But there are others… when you wake up after having a nice dream and don’t feel the difference… you carry on with life as if it were a continuous, spontaneous package.
A: Certain things are inherent in the life that I’m living now. This amalgam is maintaining a balance between things and I’m grateful for that…
Because… ''I do exist. How you ask? Well, when you ask the question, refer to me by name, and I'll exist. I exist in the minds of my friends, of people I've met''
''And it is palpable to most that life is naught but strife and that the human spirit needs a beacon to guide it onwards.''
What a comfort to be able to learn from other people’s mistakes and not your own…to be able to walk in the stars and let others walk in the pot holes for you…to have a catcher in the rye in handy…and I love the visits but there is no need for any undue concern, doc…
''Together, temporal and spatial separation help you cleanse your doors of perception, so everything appears as it is. Time and distance are like a burst of fresh air that dispel the smokescreen formed by jumpiness, excitement and anger that are a residue of the turbulence in your life.''
Most of the time we love things because of comparison, relative grading…retrospect.
That is why evolution is such a fascinating process…from cyano bacteria to man…
From Backstreet Boys to Bryan Adams to Mukesh to Kishore Kumar to Pink Floyd to The Beatles to Vai to Satriani to Mclaughlin and then to Shakti.
(I do have the rule of the thumb and guitar pro, you know:-) )
''This morning, as I walked along Penny Lane, listening to Penny Lane on my discman, Penny Lane was in my ears and in my eyes. And for a few minutes, when the sun was shining, there I was, beneath the blue suburban skies.''
And so I looked at the pictures…felt like I was the one who’d been to Liverpool…
''Impressions.... they creep in, unnoticed, unannounced. They make us what we are; they make us believe what we believe. Perhaps it is only for the best.''
''I have always wanted to experience frenzied pleasure, one that inspires you, fills you with a million words for the while that it lasts. Like violets. Electricity. Caramel. Champagne. Free fall. Dizzy.''
And so when we were having this lovely time together…us and them… and the bulb decided to blow a fuse, I decided to replace the bulb with a custom made lamp shade, with a 15 Watt Bulb (As Rincewind told me, candles are distracting…such a beautiful blue flame…always the last to go out) so that it looked prettier…(Yeah, we care for ambience…sure we do…us philistines)
''I have one-second images flashing before my eyes, which I observe and ignore at will. They are enough to trigger a million memories, which lead to a million more. And when I get sick of thinking, I switch to playing songs inside my head.''
So this is it…the end of a tribute. I will now raise a toast to the blogs I’ve known…(spoon tapping glass) to the people who have been reading my rants and commenting on them, to those who still read them, to some of them who don’t, to those who do but don’t comment, to those who are reading them now, to quotes, to seasons, to enthusiasm, to mutual back thumps, to dedications, to acquaintances, to friends, to brothers, to love, to life, to death, to pleasure, to time…to happiness being a warm gun…
''That’s the thing about beauty. Sometimes it just rushes at you with so much force that you don’t even have time for thought. You just let it fill you up and suddenly there is no room for anything else.''
Some posts are best written on the other side of 21st March 2005. In the month LONG, excruciatingly painful process of writing exams that were pretty okay, if not bursting with brilliance and breezy scores, there have, of course been innumerable instances when thoughts could have been cogitated and some others when the areas of ‘physical’ or mathematical woes could have been cautiously treaded on. But, fortunately the author of this blog firmly believes in establishing the fact that the 12th std Board Exams for the academic year 2004-05 are things of the past and on no account, can any queries/solicitude regarding the aforementioned issue expect any thing but a severe shake of the head and a hard, long frosty nosed stare.
As you may have observed, most of my posts over the last year have been written after a couple of academic pursuits and about the celebrations that followed. It is but natural for me to thus, embark on this journey by presenting a narrative of the course of events that followed 6:30 P.M on the 21st. After taking down a small list of some of the books that I should read with recommendations from my dear grinning Mephistopheles, my foremost desire was to go and park myself in Select but on discovering that it closed at 6, Blossoms it had to be. I rummaged around for a blissful two hours there and then met my dad who suggested we take packed dinner home. It was, an enjoyable day to say the least.
It’s a great feeling – having to do nothing at all unless I want to (Woo Hoo for Shamanth). I think, that there is nothing but concrete, satisfactory, heart rendering joy involved in being able to hear Joe Satriani on my lovely computer once I’ve come back from the exam hall, flung my bag in the most farthest corner of my room and am turning the pages of a somewhat ancient and dilapidated looking Catch-22 that my aunt has kindly lent to me for the 3rd time since it takes a while for blundering buffoons like me to get used to crazily out of the world writing like that. The deliciously scrumptious icing on the cake has the following ingredients:
1) A strangely pleasing knowledge that in all probability I don’t have to write a Boar-ing exam tomorrow or ever again.
2) I’m finally going to complete reading Catch-22 and have full confidence that it’ll manage to find a place amongst some of my favourites.
3) Joe Satriani is coming to Bangalore on 17th May.
Almost all the time, we tend to anticipate events and things, attaching higher happiness quotients to them than they truly deserve; But, Calvin’s dad has something to say on this subject and I heartily offer him my assent, “You know, Calvin, sometimes the anticipation of some things is more fun than the thing itself once you get it.” (Things like Knopfler, of course, are anomalies in this well-planned scheme of things).
I could have planned it all out more thoroughly, waited for the right company, the right frames, the right scenes and the right celebrations but there are things that are best done at the spur of the moment. Reading Catcher for the first time, playing Dear Prudence in my head when I was sitting in the auto that was taking me home from my exam hall with special emphasis to the lovely bass and feeling the yayy-exams-are-over-ecstasy that I once mentioned, closing my eyes while listening to Al di Meola’s Mediterranean Sundance, feeling happy for Father Stone for seeing Him in the fire balloons, discovering the book I’d been looking for in some corner of Blossoms after I’d been searching for it for about an hour, feeling sad for a dead raccoon in a modified comic strip sent to me in the form of a card ; because the one time that the beauty of any thing really hits you is undoubtedly the first time. Even going through the sequence of events again, trying to narrow down its effect to words or trying to reproduce it for the benefit of your blog isn’t the same. There are feelings, that are deeper than the written or for that matter even spoken word; provoked in you so that you can experience them in a particular way, completely only once and so I may be forgiven if I tend to be a little capricious in doing things some times.
When you bungee jump, there is this part right after the initial horrifying, ear splitting, oh-hell-my-intestines-are-finally-giving-way-to-gravity screams; when you bobble up and down and can see the sky stretched out infinitely, beneath your feet. All your screams come to this stagnant, abrupt stop and you are reduced to a overpowering silence; the sort of silence one experiences when he/she is suspended by a cord in mid air, with the sky beneath his/her feet. You see, its about clouds, losing yourself, free fall, gravity, feeling cool breezes hitting you at high velocities, room for space…. space for you.
Technically speaking, the time when I can actually sit back and view life with a Van Gogh-esque, ‘aha!’ is still a far way off. The closely spaced entrance tests, scheduled to take place stubbornly in the next two months, guarantee that I shall not get a full fledged bite of the ‘aha’. But this is now and I’m content with just the aroma.
''For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed''-Gibran
As you may have observed, most of my posts over the last year have been written after a couple of academic pursuits and about the celebrations that followed. It is but natural for me to thus, embark on this journey by presenting a narrative of the course of events that followed 6:30 P.M on the 21st. After taking down a small list of some of the books that I should read with recommendations from my dear grinning Mephistopheles, my foremost desire was to go and park myself in Select but on discovering that it closed at 6, Blossoms it had to be. I rummaged around for a blissful two hours there and then met my dad who suggested we take packed dinner home. It was, an enjoyable day to say the least.
It’s a great feeling – having to do nothing at all unless I want to (Woo Hoo for Shamanth). I think, that there is nothing but concrete, satisfactory, heart rendering joy involved in being able to hear Joe Satriani on my lovely computer once I’ve come back from the exam hall, flung my bag in the most farthest corner of my room and am turning the pages of a somewhat ancient and dilapidated looking Catch-22 that my aunt has kindly lent to me for the 3rd time since it takes a while for blundering buffoons like me to get used to crazily out of the world writing like that. The deliciously scrumptious icing on the cake has the following ingredients:
1) A strangely pleasing knowledge that in all probability I don’t have to write a Boar-ing exam tomorrow or ever again.
2) I’m finally going to complete reading Catch-22 and have full confidence that it’ll manage to find a place amongst some of my favourites.
3) Joe Satriani is coming to Bangalore on 17th May.
Almost all the time, we tend to anticipate events and things, attaching higher happiness quotients to them than they truly deserve; But, Calvin’s dad has something to say on this subject and I heartily offer him my assent, “You know, Calvin, sometimes the anticipation of some things is more fun than the thing itself once you get it.” (Things like Knopfler, of course, are anomalies in this well-planned scheme of things).
I could have planned it all out more thoroughly, waited for the right company, the right frames, the right scenes and the right celebrations but there are things that are best done at the spur of the moment. Reading Catcher for the first time, playing Dear Prudence in my head when I was sitting in the auto that was taking me home from my exam hall with special emphasis to the lovely bass and feeling the yayy-exams-are-over-ecstasy that I once mentioned, closing my eyes while listening to Al di Meola’s Mediterranean Sundance, feeling happy for Father Stone for seeing Him in the fire balloons, discovering the book I’d been looking for in some corner of Blossoms after I’d been searching for it for about an hour, feeling sad for a dead raccoon in a modified comic strip sent to me in the form of a card ; because the one time that the beauty of any thing really hits you is undoubtedly the first time. Even going through the sequence of events again, trying to narrow down its effect to words or trying to reproduce it for the benefit of your blog isn’t the same. There are feelings, that are deeper than the written or for that matter even spoken word; provoked in you so that you can experience them in a particular way, completely only once and so I may be forgiven if I tend to be a little capricious in doing things some times.
When you bungee jump, there is this part right after the initial horrifying, ear splitting, oh-hell-my-intestines-are-finally-giving-way-to-gravity screams; when you bobble up and down and can see the sky stretched out infinitely, beneath your feet. All your screams come to this stagnant, abrupt stop and you are reduced to a overpowering silence; the sort of silence one experiences when he/she is suspended by a cord in mid air, with the sky beneath his/her feet. You see, its about clouds, losing yourself, free fall, gravity, feeling cool breezes hitting you at high velocities, room for space…. space for you.
Technically speaking, the time when I can actually sit back and view life with a Van Gogh-esque, ‘aha!’ is still a far way off. The closely spaced entrance tests, scheduled to take place stubbornly in the next two months, guarantee that I shall not get a full fledged bite of the ‘aha’. But this is now and I’m content with just the aroma.
''For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed''-Gibran
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