Fragrant Echoes

2008-12-17T10:20:00.001-08:00

Merged into Frozenthoughtz
I had for some strange reason in those old days created two seperate blogs and then believed that one was better and merged them into wordpress.

Now with the blogger's import export feature I've merged my Frozenthoughtz and Fragrantechoes so that the blogger one is pretty much the same as the wordpress one and there is no need for two blogs esp now that I write relatively less.

The fragrantechoes blog is left undeleted but it wont be updated.
From henceforth its
FROZENTHOUGHTZ.BLOGSPOT.COM or FROZENTHOUGHTZ.WORDPRESS.COM

2008-11-11T05:22:00.001-08:00

I did try to write a few things since last month - since typing on the PC was not working i tried writing it down.In fact when Saurav announced his retirement I almost scribbled 4 pages but as was not in a mood to type it.

And now I just dont feel in a mood to type what was scribbled.
My last post was about seasons changing in a very general perspective.
But now since then so much has changed irrevocably in this world.
There will be more dawns,
more flowers will bloom but what moved on will never be back.
There's my favorite words from that beautiful song - Zindagi ke Safar me guzar jaate hai jo mukaam vo fir nahi aate(The destinations that you pass by in the journey of life will never pass you by again)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Phool Khilte hai(Flowers do bloom)
Log Milte Hai (One does meet people)

Magar Jo phool patjhad me murjha jaate hai
Vo baharaon ke aane se khilte nahi(But the flowers that wither in fall do not bloom when spring arrives)

kuch log ek roz jo bichad jaate hai
vo hazaaron ke aane se milte nahin(Some people from whom we seperated are not found even by meeting hundreds of people )
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So much has changed with nothing changing on the surface.
Somewhere far there's euphoria over a new President elect who people believe will bring in change.
The problem with such euphoric changes always is what change is not exactly anyone wants to think about.
You want to numb the pain and any thing like tranquilizer is good.

But nearer home and nearer to heart is a much smaller change the loss of our very own tranquilizers I guess.
It was a strange feeling this whole australia series.
All the time thinking more of the past series I was.Its taking some time to sink in.

No Sourav to watch any more...Kumble wont be around...
And people are after Dravid now and he being in the form that he is if one thinks by the head he better go with respect.
He has done a lot good and it would be sad to see him have to be thrown out without grace.
But when you think from the heart you just want it to last just a wee bit longer.May be till another abroad series.

Of course the last cut whenever that comes would be the hardest and its kind of a dread.
Cricket for my generation at least for me will never be the same without the Fab Four and esp the most special of them Sachin Tendulkar.

I dont like to write much on it because of huge nostalgia and stupid sentiment involved here.
Watching his cricket was the brightest light in my darkest days.

The Team photographs watching them together for may be the last time reminded me of my collectibles from college.
One being the Outlook magazine with the cover of the three of them as the Trinity.(I must have wallowed on this previously too in my blog)
I still look at it and think over the huge turbulences that happened esp since Chappell stepped in to scatter them , but it was so heart warming to see them all together at their felitications.

There seems to be a philosoper's calm descended upon me or may be i just am acting it to myself
to prevent looking back.Change does that to you at times.

Will still watch cricket after Sachin too signs off but it will just be a nice game.
There wont have tears anymore for a loss or for a wicket or a crazy joy within. Just pure fun.
There wont be any need to hate Mom for switching off the TV late in the night that is if i stay up till late.
Ironically she never does that now but then can I tell her its too late for the compromise or nicety or whatever.

May be there will be better players somewhere down the line lets see but I doubt if anyone can arouse the emotional attachment.

As Oscar Wilde put it
"The soul is born old but grows young. That is the comedy of life.
And the body is born young and grows old. That is life's tragedy."

Our era is pretty much over.....the generation signified by the Fab Four in cricket - Shahrukh /Aamir and a few in Cinema - a time of optimism - open economy - where being a world citizen was the buzzword.

Now there's change - Dhoni - Abhishek/Ranbir kapoor etc and way too many - aggresiveness is a mantra - protectionist economies - and localite populism to the core is the keyword.

Not that I dislike so many of the current . I enjoy them but just that they fail to have much of any original identity beyond being young and upcoming or leave any lasting impresssion except may be Dhoni for his unflappable calm if nothing else.
You look at Sreesanth and almost feel like supporting the opposition at times and thats the terrible thing.

In mainstream Cinema almost every heroine looks the same and heroes are trying to also fit into the same mould.
Of course the offbeat movies now are quite a joy compared to what was available before.

"In a crazy world, it's only your insanity that will keep you sane" -=-Leo Buscaglia.

So Right now I am getting nostalgic being immersed in reading all articles on net and news and stuff on TV about them just like I used to before I had a real job and all and a future to work for.
The future anyhow wont be coming soon anyways so I let it hang in suspension and spend time looking up the tributes all around from equally stupid people(who make me feel so sane) who even in such a state pen emotions so beautifully . I empathize and even sympathize.One awesome piece is here on cricinfo.
There is only 1 time that i ever failed in my board exams and
I did nor care much about it that day as India had won then - so states my diary - Ah my life.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I also got a scanner at home so I finally somehow decided to destroy my juvenile chronological personal diary.
Its presence caused useless trouble of misinterpretations at home once which makes me empathize with
Ekta Kapoor's storylines of misunderstandings so I did not want it.
You open it , read the hurt the pain and you see how ultra sensitive you were in a practical world.
So yes when I look at it I know I have grown up - becoming the cynical realist if nothing else.
Though one must say juvenile poetry is horrible to look back on.

So much of the writing is self focused. Someone said that - I said this - and then the quarrels the environment - the fears.
My blog now kind of like radiates my thoughts about others from me.
My diary was more like how the world around me and everyone's actions radiated themself in to hurt me.
I can only laugh at how long its been since I believe that I as a story should have been done with by now - by the creator.
But the best part of it is - It shows my descent into agnostic behavior from a beleiver.

My dark future imagination actually has remained mostly intact from my diary days to my blog days except when I write of books.
I always seem to start with some tragedy of mine except when there was a India win or Sachin century.
None of my fears were baseless or unfounded just that I have always underestimated my resilience once I have lived and cried over them and overestimated their ability to finish me up.
So yeah I am quite a survivor till now though where this journey ends will decide if its any worth - this survival.

2008-10-01T11:43:00.000-07:00

Noticing the seasons over a weekend

Every year its the same seasons for us and they come and go whether you notice them or let them pass by busying yourself in the necessary activities of our mundane life .

Yet there will be a day - some day when you some how suddenly see it or rather feel it - That the season's changing and then feel as if its something to be noticed.

It was a late Saturday afternoon and after being tired working on a issue which seemed worth exploring walked into the balcony .
The light sun seemed to shine specially on my nearly wilting rose of pink and white hue and then slowly the sun started setting and as I spent time lazing around - you could feel it all in the air like YES!!! Winter is starting and enjoy it for a while.

And then the wintry chill of memories takes you over . Things start flashing in your head - its been such a boring long life most times and yet you remember.
Of childhood gardens -
Of childhood taunts -
Of the stormy dust wind rounded up right in front of the rickshaw as you came home from school -
Of things you've given up on
Of people who made you smile
Of times when you hoped
Of times when you believed

There isn't much to be sad or happy about - its just a day - its just a season I've seen for three decades and yet may be its those decades that weigh you down .

2008-09-22T11:38:00.000-07:00

Old and Nostalgic

Time just surreptitiously takes away your life - a day at a time and before you know you have nothing left.

Did want to write something from quite some time but its just that have been unable to zero upon anything.
Books I tried to speed read - a few non fiction,
movies - well a few but need some discipline in my head to write anything
the world around you crashing in different ways and means - floods ,stock markets, terror attacks and yet I seem to have become sort of lost in my very cocoon , once again.

Work when its open ended makes you feel busier than when say its target oriented. Work centered around evaluation / exploration of stuff seems a cool thing but in the end it strains you a hell lot more than when you work towards getting done with stuff to acheive a target thats set.
Handling such things then becomes more of an attitude thing i.e how you as a person want to take it based of course on your position in life and workplace and universe too i guess.

You don't have the pressure of targets - so if you have a take it easy and anyway we can cook up a story and such get away kind of attitude life is pretty cool in such work scenario.

Problem starts if you take it as though you want to put across something substantial for the exploration/stuff you have been working on and you hit roadblocks at everything, and you never know where to stop , what is enough or is it good enough.
Being at a new workplace in such a job sort of makes you more intent on the second option and thus I've been feeling a bit like a workalholic.Not that many will believe at my office since I walk in pretty cool at 11 .

Sometime last month again I went through living my usual yearly stress - of avoiding people forced to wish me happy birthday and asking for treats and cake and all that drama. Not that I dont do it for others , but they seem happy about it. I pretty much may be mistaken about them.Who knows.
For me I never since childhood enjoyed it and with time I tried my best making people miss it which kind of had a strange effect.
They missed it that one time and after that never really. So the best way out was join the exuberance and say oh people would like me to be at home and avoid all and then give some treat just any other day to make them feel I was normal enough.

People who somehow crowded my life with their affection, though I never looked or hoped to get it all have dissappeared with time and its cruel ways and it is now you feel the vaccum.

I've never minded being alone and loved solitude since childhood somehow but as they say

How sweet, how passing sweet is solitude.
But grant me still a friend in my retreat,
Whom I may whisper--Solitude is sweet.

When I was a child I never had the friends - so may be it never meant that much
but now after these years of cribbing complaining and sometimes escaping a set of people I miss their presence.

But oh I'm older - did not some Ted Koppel say
It becomes increasingly easy, as you get older, to drown in nostalgia.

Or May be I've been born old - an old soul - hmm cause I seem to have been drowning in nostalgia since forever. Over 3 years of nostalgia on this blog seems a testimony to that fact.

2008-07-05T10:07:00.000-07:00

As i Enjoyed Jaane Tu ya Jaane Na

This is what you do when everything in life is horrid and you feel doomed....Escape
and what better place than Bollywood.

It somehow seemed so long since we had a pure college romance in Bollywood after Kuch Kuch Hota hai. There was Dil Chahta hai

but it wasn't standard bollywood fare.In fact even KKHH is not standard Bollywood stuff. The last i can remember was Jo Jeeta

Wohi Sikander in school and those were heady days of college romance for Bollywood , till Shahrukh and Aditya Chopra roped in the family romances.

So it was with that thought that i walked in into Jaane Tu ya Jaane na.The best part is there's absolutely no curiosity about the story and yet you go to watch it to see it in a different view.
As long as you watch the movie its good fun.
You like the simple characters , and esp the banter all around .Naseer and Ratna pathak are great joy throughout.Genelia's

pretty as ever and thr group has enough bonhomie.
Smita patils's son acts pretty fine but he might be cast into villianous stuff in mainstram cinema due to his looks which would be a pity.
No foreign locations no designer looks just the lyrics and the actors and yet it makes you like the movie. But the problem is there was something lacking . I am yet to put a finger on it but when you dont hold any experience of the movie once you are back on the street something must be missing.

Of course they irritated me for a second by screaming out one of my evergreen favorite songs "Tera mujhse hai pehle ka naata koi" (Oh those vividh bharti days)but thank god they did not make a alternate title track and ruin it.

There was something of a 70mm experience missing for me. Dont know if it was because its been a decade since i am out of college or because of my cynicism(I dont usually switch it on for Bollywood unless there's overacting or over sermonizing). A feel good movie , unless you do not think about watching it again invariably has missed out on something.Its far far better than anything we have on around currently but yet you remember times when you liked a movie and you wanted to watch it all over again and for a few minutes and sometimes a few hours after the movie is over you enjoy it in your mind.

For one the songs were not used well esp the picturization and the second half needed a song more.Bollywood is never and experience without its songs.

P.S:

Well for now whats on my mind is the trailer of Bachna Ae haseeno and its partly its song and partly the well crafted picturization of the sneak preview. Its been a sooo long since i bothered to relook a trailer.
What the movie will be or how it will be is not of interest its the awesome pure stupid aura it creates since you had that Kaho na pyaar hai, never found anything else as much to bother about.Ranbir Kapoor suits that song damn well and some of the shots i am sure will have the young girls quite swooning like we loved the shahrukh scenes in DDLJ where he waves to Kajol and all and
my sister and her friends even have postcards. Oh those days.....sigh.
Of course its the song...Hmm RDBurman Rocks any day.
For all of Rehman's raving fans i can just say well that is a classic.
Aditi song is good lovely but people have a tendency as i said before to use great too easily. One needs to get the difference.

And even if its the other way around using Mark twain's words i can say Rehman may be exotic wine but our old songs are water and fortunately everybody drinks water.
Even if its a remix, Ive never been able to get it off my lips for a week and its stupid of
the filmmakers to release the second slow song when the first one seems to keep the thing so awesome.

2008-06-29T07:09:00.000-07:00

Watched becoming Jane

Jane Austen was the flavor of the fortnight i guess for me.

Watched the Keira Knightley version of Pride and Prejudice again.

When it was released I happened to watch it by a happy last minute instinct which in itself shaped events of my professional life.I an V were then in a small seperate subset of our team and we used to really enjoy work . We all wrapped up work very fast as she was quite adept by then of that work and so we left by say at 3pm one fine day and watched this movie. This happened at a time when the rest of the team was kept extremely busy with their streched out days of work. Someone surely was upset by our having fun and made a complain which ended up the team size being decreased and i being moved out of it in the name of
additional responsibilities of importance.That move affected my resume for sure.

Anyways I do not enjoy this newer version of "Pride and Prejudice" as much.Its fine for just one watch. The BBC series is way too good .Keira Knightly gets on your nerves at times with her giggly smiles at times.The Elizabeth in the BBCseries was not as pretty but she grew onto you.
As for Darcy well no one can match Colin Firth at it.

Then i watched "Becoming Jane" a take on the young Jane's rumored affair with Tom Lefroy.Anne Hathway is extremely pretty and i liked her much better than in the eminently watchable "Devil wears Prada" .
The essential thing about such such stories is that they are so very same at the core - from those near victorian times to these so called modern times.

The ponderable quote from movie itself was from Jane's father
"Nothing destroys spirit like poverty."

Well in the end its a nice take and what makes such things special is they are puzzles never to be solved and anyone can take whatever take they want on it.
The truth's well beyond the reach.
Austen might be credited with being the real inventor of chick lit but the fact remains her characters have survived generations and hundreds of years effortlessly capturing the readers heart.
Whether she wrote of experience or imagination,
whether her relationship was a boyish love as somewhere attributed to Lefroy or a firm lasting affection
is a open debate to spice up our boring lives with.
But i like the fact that for all her ironies she gave her books mostly a happy ending implying a sort of spiritedness a sort of belief despite being cynical at the exterior.

As they say "The best love affairs are those we never had."

Hope, deceiving …..

2008-05-16T12:40:00.001-07:00

Unspoken Kindness in faces scares you

when you know you are not destined for such.

Some moments are destined to break your heart

Life has a way of scraping the wounds

"It could have been" is such a deceiving phrase in the realm of existence

When you reach the end of some horizon

you know it in the heart - the end that is

and yet…you wish

you had that betrayer of a friend , called hope by your side

for as they say

"Hope, deceiving as it is, serves at least to lead us to the end of our lives by an agreeable route. " Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Fortnight of whiling away time at movies…..

2008-04-13T11:42:00.001-07:00

The last month or more specifically the last fortnight i seem to have watched more movies than i ever do these days.

Yesterday caught up on Ajay Devgan's U Me aur Hum. Though i dont like to admit I liked some parts of the movie not the whole though. But i wont recommend it to anyone looking out for a relaxation or fun at the weekend.
The sad part may be that i like the tragic parts of the movie much more than the comic parts. The comedy was stupid and irritable. But whenever esp in the seconf half Ajay devgan gets into his guilty and cynical mode i liked him. I liked that frank acceptance that everybody likes oneself the most - the self defence part.
As one grows older hum bane tum bane ek duje ke liye seriously seems stupid and the way he enacts that feeling i really liked it. The best thing about the movie was definitely the bonhomie of friends in every scene(though Divya dutta surely makes loud scenes wherever present..when its just the three of the guys it seems pretty much how guys seem to hang out), its a welcome relief from saas bahu behen and maa at every hospital scene in Bollywood.

The real person needing appreciation for this movie is the marketing department. If they had let it out before that the script was related to Alzheimers i doubt even the first week would have had any collection. It was packaged through and through a Kajol romance and its truly a Kajol movie whenever she's in the frame .But when she's not around the rest carry it through without being too sombre.

One mistake i did was watch this movie in a normal theater and not a multiplex where crowds are relatively quiet. If one needs to understand what Indian majority is like you just need to see them in dark theaters and the way they behave. I can get it when they laugh at crude joke or at the hero or whistle at the heroine but what is so funny about a baby drowning is beyond me as i listened to laughter at that scene.
So if one does want to see it better watch it where people keep quietly to themselves or at least act as such.

Other movie i watched is to be watched in a theater where you get the real Indian audience. shouting whistling screaming, throwing torn paper. Yeah the movie is made for it and is good for a weekend watch without thinking much about it.
Race is one such movie which would get on your nerves if everyone around you was too quiet and thoughtful. You have to be sort of blind and the mind being nauseatingly immersed in watching the cool strutting heroes and sexy scheming heroines.The plot may be a mystery to some , to me though it was more a question of how than what?
"What" kind of suspense stories are rare in bollywood.
There are cars, there's the sizzling Bipasha and Katrina and the pouting Sameera. Then there's the cool Saif and Anilkapoor(Gosh he's just looking dashing these days and one can only laugh when one sees the old song one two ka four) There's Akshay Khanna too but thats hardly noteworthy.

Then I watched quite a few older ones of the past year i missed out on. Some like Dhol were fun and some thoughtful like Halla Bol which i blogged previously about.
Some were like fine for the time being say Saawariya. I think Bhansali is just a child who likes to paint but got into movies. Saawariya you can say my expectation as a movie was so low that i ended up liking it if only for the look and feel. I mean i expected so much gloominess in that blue as i watched the trailers and heard the story that when i finally saw it i though Sonam's Kapoor's laughter and Rabir Kapoors childishness sort of seemed to make me feel as though i was watching some Hans Andersen fairy tale. There's nothing that remains though after you watch it except a blue haze.

Then i watched Namesake. Tabu's fascinating is the first thing that comes to mind and then the movie. Well the movie's good but it won't be the same without Tabu. The best part of it is though its less of a commercial movie it never drifts into the sullenness that some art movies do.It has a upbeat feel to it even when sad and Kal Penn is also enjoyable and considering its a diaspora movie i liked the honesty of it, the generation gap and the final acceptance of it once you are in US.

In India they will fight it but once you get to US a helplessness added to the loneliness i guess makes one accept the differences of generation much more ,though the hurts i guess linger on and that exactly i guess the NRI's suddenly become more religious and traditional than ever in that far land.

My favorite moment was when Tabu is asked by her husband (after being married for years and they return to India for a vacation )"why did you say yes to me" she says that because you were the better of what was on offer…and then laughs and says what did you expect me to say "I love you" as in America. Its a beautifully honest moment i felt.

Then I just watched two of my all time favorites again like My best friends wedding and Casablanca.Though i like Julia Roberts in general this movie is sort of more than her. I sort of love it a little bit more whenever i see it. I laugh at myself remembering that I was in college when it released and then there were no multiplexes and i watched this movie thrice(something i only did for Sharukh's yash/karan johar flicks).
I just liked Rupert Everett though i then did not know that even in real life the guy is not straight.His part is really charming especially the whole sequence of talk in the end when he calls her up and gets her to dance at the wedding reception. Of course the music is very beautifully used in the movie and even the hero (Dermot Mulroney )is nice and touching.
The best part inevitably has to be the conversation as its a given with any movie i really like esp with ones i watch again and again.

Casablanca i guess i've just blogged much about the movie but i love watching such movies again when its late night somehow. you sort of belong to a different world.

Notting Hill is another of those nice weekend watches that keep you warm. I like the whole sequence about a bunch of non acheivers. It sort of reminds me of that one line that i used to think fits perfect for me."Who said nothing is impossible. Ive done nothing for years now"

At times it does get a bit loud though but i enjoy Hugh Grant quite a lot there…esp the garden and the song. You say it best when you say nothing at all.

Not sure when i will catch up on the rest considering i have a new job to get used to from tommorow.

My friends ask me constantly hey you are at home for nearly a fortnight , aren't you bored . I seriously cant explain to them that NO I am not. I'm just loving it. I'd have loved it more if i got to Travel but even without it honestly I am not bored.

Ive my books and there are blogs(which i keep to myself ) and then there's cinema once in a while and then there's sleep always. Ah to be lost to this world till the sun is right above your forehead. It'll be long before i get such a break (i.e to wake up by 11 am) and it just went by …hmmm.

Weekends roll by…as i while off time watching stuff

2008-03-09T01:34:00.001-08:00

Saw Jodha Akbar sometime before last weekend and what do i say its for me just another movie only the sets are like of another era. The language put me off ,the dialogues make it actually worse than it is.It feels like todays's chit chat, nothing
royal about it.

When i said its was just the same love story set in a different era , a friend remarked well all love stories are same. True but its how you treat them that makes them different.

The Rasoi dialogues and stuff are simply out of Ekta Kapoor's soaps i felt .And now this reminds me of the timesofindia article " What woment don't want" wherein Ekta Kapoor says "I have always been a very focused person….And my career is my focus now . I see no reason or incentive to reprioritise and focus on marriage instead"

This is why i love the woman and hate her soaps. She simply doesn't believe in what she puts on her soaps and yet has a nation believing in that bharatiya nari covered in kilos of jewellery thing.She fools scores of people and makes loads of money. I guess it gives her one huge kick out of it.

I must say Ekta Kapoor's key strength is her comedy which she adds in all her soaps but still if Ekta Kapoor had made Jodha Akbar beleive me she'll make it more romantic than Gowarikar did .(He made Swades so realistic which was
awesome esp in terms of what made Shahrukh do).

There was that scene of Hrithik doing sword fight practice showing off, and Jodha impressed by it. Thats ok but then if thats all then why do the film fraternity go to town that the movie was made to showcase Jodha's strength of character and
blah blah.
It was for this scene that that many girls and even guys(adds my sis) see the movie its said.His face never matches his abs somehow for Hrithik i always feel.If abs are to to one's taste John Abraham is the original and the better.

Anyway the pair is beautiful enough(guys around say Ashs's old now ho cares …well i think it is now that she's looking pretty , rather than plastic earlier) to watch the movie once as stretched out as it is once but anyone who calls it a classic is just being too much.

Watched "Runaway bride" and "Four weddings and a Funeral" again on the weekend and just keep thinking why by the the time many English movies end you are so impressed by the hero/heroine though at the start you never think much of him/her. I first got this thought a decade ago i guess when i watched Speed. Keanu Reeves looked just nothing on the poster to me but by end i liked him fine.Therein lies the acting and direction difference i guess.

P.S: Then there was the end of the Australian tour, I was delirious enough to disturb by buzzing on messenger a friend in US working hard towards a release.When in college we were like so thick friends only about cricket, we belonged to different groups and all but it cricket esp that Australian tour in 1998(warne's nightmares being my cherished dream), the world cup in 1996 that our memories really start off and i guess this starts the end of them.
Its wonderful to see all the new ones but nostalgia is a damned thing for the mind as much as it cajoles the heart.

2008-02-16T01:30:00.000-08:00

Time just goes by...

Since the last fortnight i've been trying to write something or
rather do something substantial, i mean read if nothing .

But i did some all old and new but definitely stupid things .
Its like those lines from that poem by Rahat Indori

Mere maji ke zakhm bharne lage hain(The hurts from the past have healed)
Aaj fir koi bhool ki jaaye(lets make a mistake again)

This post is a hotch potch of almost everything in my life.

I need a job change and the market is quite down where i am so i need to brush up my skills
so that i get in somewhere else as just another engineer .
I am for now put off being a manager or anything really. If i did i'd very easily have had been here.
I refused them all and all i think when i think of career is money.

And that is getting scarce outside , unless you have niche skills. I tell myself i will start off that
4Test and Rational etc etc which i am into but have been very rusty.
It doesnt help when the stock market too is down in dumps.

But nothing helps . Since the day i found myself going blank and woke up in ICU
with saline bottles around me i just have found myself more unable
to focus( as it is i lack that) on goals and such.

Work was never so bad ....As they say when troubles come they come from all sides .
I have the slowest system in the company i feel. ...
its like stress testing in QA parlance: low resources how can you perform.
I am told by my lead i have to make a noise about it she has tried on her side....
as if in this cost cutting mode someone cares.

I watched those Test matches and went late to office - not that ever go early.
I don't mind a few words to get an hour or more of sleep or watch Sachin.
I don't know about Sachin Tendulkar but for my life I will regret he was not part of the wiinning team
of Test series in australia and he never had a chance to hit McGrath really really well . It was my dear dear wish apart from the world cup . And like many many i too feel good that we live in the same era as he though unlike those days when i passionately fought any one saying a word against him i just grew up to a wry

"bandar kya jaane adrak ka swaad"(A monkey wont realize what taste ginger has) expression.

And then i come home at 10(before 2008 it was never later than 8:30 if i did not go out for personal work)
take those damned pills which make me drowsy and still instead of sleeping I browse how my stocks are dipping or blogs orfor a few days skimmed through some online M&B which i do rarely.
But honestly they are great tranquilizers for sleep in general(not that need any more than what my doc prescribed)) and you dont need to pay attention in such books.
Everyone knows the story its all wordplay and so i like ones which have a bit of that
not those steamy ones (which are replicas actually not similar )which irritate me .
I just can't read forget technical not even some good books which i do usually.
I plan to start off on a book by Chekov i got from the library. Lets see if i manage.

My sister found her old school friend on orkut happily married with two absolutely sweet kids and
she's gone off to while away time and recall those good old days.
My grandama died and my parents went away for all those formalities.
I have some peace finally to myself this weekend so i managed to write these words.

Even music seems noise at moments.
But then i found a site(damn slow though it is) and watched Casablanca after almost
don't know 6 or 7 years and what a special movie its is.
I know i am partial to romantic comedies or dramas of subtle kind in books and movies.
Last year i guess Jab we Met and Cheeni Kum are the only movies
among what i saw .Rarely do i like much off the other kind but then i watch a few movies .
For example i liked Aamir's Sarfarosh though it hardly was a romantic movie and then there is
"The Bridge Under the River Kwai "- An excellent book of those world war time nothing romantic.

Coming back Casablanca is such a beautiful movie. I guess one should find seperate places to read reviews of that movie
but watching it again made me love it even more. Actually i wanted to see it again after watching the you tube video
of that wonderful song by Bertie Higgins "I fell in love with you watching Casablanca".

Ingrid Bergman is so classically beautiful......reminds me of Madhubala almost and Bogart's acting is awesome.But again its the wordplay in the movie that floors you.
When the prefect of Casablanca says to Rick ...
"I suspect underneath that cynical exterior of yours you are a rank sentimentalist"...
I actually thought of myself.
I try not to be sentimental......i have such a cynical view of the world in general but some are wired that way.

Some review said it became a classic due to the chemistry of the lead pair.
Well I guess quite some movies are wonderful due to just that .Jab We Met really has nothing new or speacial and
i hardly like Kareena of Shahid much but i love that movie as a whole really.
But i guess i liked almost every one in casablanca may be because i like things understated though definitely stated. i.e

(I dislike people not stating thing s to me :))

So yeah Chemistry plays its part but still casablanca has a special feel to it and then
black and white movies and pictures themselves feel so classy.
I dislike colorised versions. Only Mughal - e - azam was a bit fine.
But therein characters overpower everything else i beleive.
Ah the fights between Dilip Kumar and Prithvitraj Kapoor - I mean you just can't take sides .
Both seem right in their own context (Dilip Kumar's rebellious words were based more on Individuality rather than romance for me
and Prithviraj's words were all about the larger picture in the context of the world) and i really love that movie.

Talking of chemistry the other thing i accidentally ended doing one night was browsing the you tube for the whole Kashish Sujal videos from "kahin to Hoga" serial and there are lots of them . I mean whatever trash ekta kapoor dishes out when she wants she can make really charming love stories and the best part i like is the way she uses music i.e hindi songs with them.

So many of them she starts on a great romantic notes and then it denigrates to the usual scheming saas bahu divorce remarriage rape dramas.

Sujal is one heck of a strong character Ekta Kapoor ever made and no wonder in some interview she said thats the kind she would like. The guy is good looking ...fair enough but what makes him good is that characterization - no where else he is so attractive.
Kashish is so damn irritating in general and she's always on the wrong side yet his unwavering loyalty to her and strength of character is quite well depicted and then there's the music added....its better than what its in the movies of the songs.
I used to watch her serials for the first four to six months and then stop now i dont bother.

Then today alone staring at the sky from fifth floor window - i suddenly somehow remembered (for all our prim honest behavior at malls these days ) of days a little more than a decade ago of the only time we were or rather I was a thief.
Just after school in college outside the gate were sold cards. Greeting cards were so special then though not as beautiful .
No e cards nothing.
Then lay hundreds on long blankets outside and we used to put few of them and letter pads in our note books
buy one and then sit together in the hostel room and admire and share our booty.
Cheap Rs 4 or 5 cards and what a charm. I can't remember where they went if i gave to someone .
I went back opened by old time savings trunk its real funny stacked with books and old cards and
letters(its so fun reading them...letters from friend giving me what % each person we knew got in Std X and
of DD Tv serials which i suddenly had no access to when i went to a hostel).

I have one letter pad, though never used ,It only has an autograph of a Chemistry teacher i admired .
Who that day wrote for me as i was quite too simple then.
"Nothing is more simple than greatness.Indeed to be simple is to be great "
But then life was simpler then with hope. It ain't now. I am still simple at heart but everything else is so complex
and i just don't like to think any more and then i let each day go by and so time goes by.

I have no charitable heart so I look at some old and men and women begging on the street and
wonder curiously what motivates them to live ..... what ..what could it be at the fag end of a miserable poor beggar's life.

P.S : I hope no one looking for chemistry subject ends up here i 've used the word so many times in this post.

Poetic Lookback

2007-12-06T10:14:00.001-08:00

Interpretation

Somewhere within your loving look I sense,
Without the least intention to deceive,
Without suspicion, without evidence,
Somewhere within your heart the heart to leave.

When i feel the least like writing or even reading something new i read the old already read books and poetry but then i love them all over again and wish to post them.
I guess this blog has lot of Vikram Seth's fine poetry on it which i post cause i love just rereading it.

Another lovely one below

Across

Across these miles I wish you well.
May nothing haunt your heart but sleep.
May you not sense what I don't tell.
May you not dream, or doubt, or weep.
May what my pen this peaceless day
Writes on this page not reach your view
Till its deferred print lets you say
It speaks to someone else than you.

Fragmented musings at year end

2007-12-01T11:28:00.000-08:00

It been a useless year, i exclaim
cannot explain what useful would have been
but the conclusion is just the same.

If one is worthless
in every scheme of this world
does one lose the right to exist
should one give up the right to exist?

The more crowded life gets,the lonelier it gets
The sweeter it seems , the falsified it becomes

With time everyone's heading towards constancy and stability
as i hurtle towards my instabilty.

2007-11-23T11:34:00.000-08:00

Forced Ambition? (Kabhi kisi ko Mukammal jahan nahi milta)

If you cant avoid something you can surely delay it ….
seems i’ve been doing just that but everything has its limits and mine seems like been reached.(That might explain such a huge post).
It all started off on a bad day
You get up early morning and see your goldfish die…swear that no more of them (umm at least for a few days)
You login to you mail and there’s a mail that the project you worked on just isnt running at the client end.(Never mind that clients dont follow instructions…You just hit the run button and whoosh alls supposed to work…thats why we outsource. )

You just login to your demat account to see your great string of losses all because of one days senselessness.
And then started the real one..the real dilemma the real pain.
I am called in and told i MIGHT have to go to US for 1 or 2 weeks as there is some need in a domain i really am not much into.
All this since i was interested in an onsite project(Gosh that was 6 months back to escape well something else……..damn but well how do i escape now……what an escapist i am)
But then it wasn’t something i was prepared to risk and so i really outdid myself in finding some very perfect words to convey that i wanted all options open and by going onsite for 15 days i am not willing to risk that.
When the sr lead says many things can happen i latch on to that beautiful line
“Yeah many things can happen and so i cant commit”.
So at least from my end i did what i could so that if something does work out for me miraculously at least i am not blackmailed saying i ‘ve not been commited.
It was a beautiful ploy though from my leads…send me for 15 days and tie me up for a year
or 6 months….and if you are greedy enough its what many would die for.
But herein lies the catch….i am such an escapist , lazy slob who relegiously reiterates
“Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy” (as in this post).

When i ask why me esp since this involves less work and more knowledge transfer i am told that i should be looking towards my next goal i.e Lead
Now when i say i am more technically inclined(i dont mean it really…this depends on my mood…i just am moodily inclined to many things) i am told that unless you are a genius(which i clearly am not i admit unless i factor in Calvin’s definition of a misunderstood genius ) everyone must get into management and grow.
Heck why must i ….why am i force fed your definition of growth and then you call it an individual development.
Now herein lies my root cause of angerWhy do we have to grow to the level of our incompetence(Ok i personally dont beleive i will be an incompetent lead but than who wants the stress of being a competent one or the heartbreak of being one more of those sucking incompetent ones i’ve always maligned).
Everyone in the team though finds me either weird or that i’m being a tad too smart ….
but what they dont get is my definition of success varies from theirs.
They think on the lines that why does this uninterested girl get an opportunity that we’d kill for.
Anyways i am a hopeless sceptic….
I think going onsite in December sucks…its so cold here it’d be frozen there in a small remote town all by myself.
I will have to do manual boring stuff and deal with a set of subordinates once i am back who expect me to answer everything for months on and on just because i met the client for 2 weeks.
All this when i know nothing is CONCRETE it is all still a requirement.

My friends tell me of a job opening somewhere and i say oh well thats too far to travel in this traffic(She says you are ridiculous…first go and get the job .)My take is plain why put in effort when the reward does not interest you.
This friend of mine has a job in one of the most prestigious MNC in India and she is unhappyas she has too much free time (root cause here is she does not like the people she has the free time with) and gets bored and depressed as no work.

I just find it so nonsensical …i mean heck who cares what people are…i enjoy myself soo muchand i can do so much if i just have the time.(Read books , Browse /Write blogs if nothing else).
Anyways finally i managed to watch ‘The Devil wears Prada’ and i liked it a lot really though the line to toast for me in my mood was“To jobs that pay the rent“
I could add …allow me to have a room/ internet/ buy books and so on….

But then the fact remains one never gets what you want andmost importantly when you want it.
All this so touching written by Shahryar and sung beautifully my that great voice i love of Jagjit SinghAn all time favorite of mine and every line in this poetry is so very true.I will try to transalate it to the best my ability.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
kabhi kisi ko mukammal jahan nahin milta
kahin zameen to kahin aasmaan nahin milta
(No one ever gets an easy world…
Some dont get their share of earth and some their place in the sky)

jise bhi dekhiye vo apne aap me gum hai
zuban mili hai magar hamzuban nahin milta
(Wherever you look at one is lost in oneself….
youve got the ability to speak but keep longing for someone who understands your language/words)

bujha saka hai bhala kaun waqt ke shole
ye aisi aag hai jis men dhuaaN nahin milta
(Who has been able to quiten the revolution of times,These are fires which dont have smoke)

tere jahan men aisa nahin ki pyar na ho
jahan umeed ho is ki vahaan nahin milta.
(In your world it is not that love is nonexistent
you just never find it where you expect it from or want it from most)
—————————————
Such Truths of life….sung so melodiously

2007-11-14T08:01:00.000-08:00

Weekend - Jab we Met

Circumstances caused me to have to wake up at 8:30 morning on a Sunday(which is like a rarity in my life) to catch this movie around 10:30. ...and i walked in few mins late but in the end it was worth the effort .
I loved it quite a bit....I cant think of anything special to say about the movie honestly - except that its quite refreshingly sweet - and yeah by the end of it you wish Shahid Kareena stayed together in real life too.
Their chemistry was real cool and that i beleive was what i liked most.
Shahid Kapur also was looking quite nice apart from that business suit look which was a bit too much for his frame.
I enjoyed the self indulgence in a way of Kareena's character in the movie. And then u just hum
Yeh ishq hai...baithe bithaye jannat dikhaye....

One of my friend who watched it in US (in US they watch it somehow earlier than me always)buzzed me up to say how much it reminded of her own self eons ago...so i am told i must watch it and then we'll talk.....
and so talk we did all about 'ghar ke parde' dreams gone haywire.
Life is comically tragic in its own way as they say.

Another friend from college days came over from the US and i take her around and come home as late as i am allowed. She's been seven years in US and is visiting after 4 yrs though she hardly looks any different from 7 yrs ago.She's amazed at the way people spend out here...down there in the US indians hardly spend she tells me.In fact indians are more prettily dressed out here in cool tops than in the US she tells.
Then i'm given a quick lead of how i should move over to US too for all our very own woes but i remain indecisive as a pendulum in this matter.
Its funny how you lose touch in just a few years ...when people started walking out during the interval in the movie i am asked how much time will be the interval...30 mins..
I say yaar 15 mins only and she quips how will all these people who go out get back in so fast..hmmm.
Then though i tell i dont want it , i get that shiny bronze nail polish...we've moved over to matte colors since college ...
but friends lovingly remember you just as you were.
We move around in restaurants and look back on our college days when we used to count pennies for a cool drink after the tiresome mechanical labs.
Our outlooks vary ...our perspectives vary...its our memories that remain etched.

Last week was all about how to invite stress into your life.....movies friends and then WORK
I mean work had to be finished but life gets tougher when it has to be done in a place with poor infrastructure but well i am stuck here for n reasons....and everything i touch out there fails these days...
and I'm hating it.

Just want to get well soon and then think of what to do with myself - my job that is -
cause i know i wont get to do anything really with myself.

2007-10-21T10:31:00.001-07:00

You know you've read a good book when

you turn the last page and feel as if you've lost a friend.

I just loved this wallpaper and feel i dont need to add more words for it.

2007-10-21T10:29:00.001-07:00

Degeneration methinks…

Fame however unwanted i think if forced uponpeople adjust but then itmight be very difficult to get over.
That is the only reason i can think ofwhy Rowling has done what she did.To again become front page materialnow that the last book mania is calming down.
I have nothing against her revelation about Dumbledore being gay(except a lurking feeling that in the west the concept of friends is really being killed by giving every relationship a name.) .Her revelation is simply is irrelevant to the story and hardly makes a great difference to Dumbledore lovable and wise character.It would have been good fun and enjoyment to all those Potter adult fiction fans to spin tales on it…but why does she need to confirm it….simply to drum up attention on herself.Its really sad how much people get dragged down by fame.
If this every time new revelations goes on she may very well ruin all the othercharacters too, or may be she has changed her thought process to…well before someone else ruins my characters let me ruin them.
Nevertheless some characters outgrow their author and Harry Potter series is a great example and for us simple fans ……it will always be the original books …no matter what Rowling degenerates into.

2007-10-17T13:05:00.001-07:00

Pomegranate

The most impassioned of all trees,
The home of three intensities;
Gnarled trunk, dark concentrated leaf,
And flowers that burn in love and grief.

These are part of those haunting lines by Vikram Seth and
i really dig them too much and they kind of get imprinted on the mind.

This was a small draft i saved somewhere and i just though i better get over with it.

Last year when i had to walk 10 mins home everyday across some lovely houses with gardens- there used to be these trees with the sweetest orange flowers....and most of us know its the Anarkali.(Sad if we can only remember Salim now).

I have been so off mood that i looked back on my own blog
and then thought ....
why once upon a time i was so better at cribbing ....
now its such a boring rant....
Almost all in life seems so hopeless....
dont know whats the fuss is all about ...
its not just me...most people just go on living ....and on.
But then i realise we create our own hypes...
our own passions which keeps us going....
the movies and movie stars/cricket and cricketers /Harry Potter/TV shows/Stock

markets /chat forums/hours of gossip/ambitions and even blogging for some.

But honestly what i still like when i look back and reread are my favorite poems

and my thoughts on reading books.
Actually thats what it seems is missing....its been so long that i read a pure
fiction story apart from Harry Potter.(Well i better not start on it again...).
I need that escape ...my books else this is how i become .

Bad memory has its pleasures.
I was looking up some old selected quotes and found this quote

"People who are not in love fail to understand how an intelligent man can suffer because of a very ordinary woman. This is like being surprised that anyone should be stricken with cholera because of a creature so insignificant as the comma bacillus."
Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past, vol. 2, "Swann's Way: Swann in Love"

Some people have an awesome way with words....Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh
Comma bacillus ...ROFL...........

A bit of nostalgia

2007-10-12T09:21:00.001-07:00

Nostalgia is a file that removes the rough edges from the good old days.
~Doug Larson

Last fortnight i can recall two things which made me very nostalgic.
One was a movie which was a glossed out fairytale of a college life i have never seen anyone living (forget being part of it myself ).
Its not that i don't enjoy romanticized stuff in movies but when i see too many people talking of that in real terms of those good old days i feel absurd.
Very few people(and yeah a few have it partly do i agree) have had the real fun and hep college life displayed in most movies but everyone talks as if they did cause we like to think the past was better.....we forget that the troubles we faced then , and which we laugh at now actually felt monstrous in those days.

The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealized past. ~Robertson Davies, A Voice from the Attic

Yes its so very easy to idealize and gloss over past and if i let myself get carried away by such versions in my imagination i can see how easy it is.
Luckily my cynicism keeps me safe from such these days.

Other very unexpected nostalgia was a chat (it might have been a one sided recollection by me actually once the topic was triggered ...the topic of days when i was a huge cricket fan...
not that i am not now ,
but its not the same...
no one but i know the difference.)

about some very old ,simple but immensely passionate joys.....
joys i rarely speak of in the present,
for i fear they might be soiled by the present....
It isn't those events it is what we were then to
derive such happiness from such .

2007-08-26T10:25:00.000-07:00

Some musings on the Charm of Appearances

The world is governed more by appearance than realities so that it is fully as necessary to seem to know something as to know it. ~Daniel Webster

“It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.”- Oscar Wilde

While being politically correct we can hold on that appearances being just the
surface , they do matter though may be not as most people beleive they do
but then but one can never say they do not matter.
Of course when you've known a person deeply by chance and circumstance ....
appearances dissolve into irrelevance at times.

But whenever one has a choice of knowing a person appearances will matter....
how they matter is individuality but then
some appearances appeal/repel universally,
some to very few very strongly ,
some appearances grow roots and slowly but surely hold you intrigued.
Well why i got thinking of that...
Hmm quite some time pass on two of my all time favorites and a movie i saw made
me think of it.

I'm quite fond of that evergreen universally loved Austen novel hashed and
rehashed everywhere, but as much as the character of Mark Darcy is fascinating
in Pride and Prejudice , one must agree that Colin Firth simply increases it a 100
times. He's way too dashing as Darcy....

I've been spending the whole of last week downloading The BBC mini series from youtube and really beleive he simply enhances such a enchanting character. No wonder the fan following.

Then there is the most complex character in Harry Potter....Severus Snape.
He has a amazing fan following for a character so nasty at times at least till Book6.

I liked the complexity of the character and admired quite some stuff but no i did not
really feel deeply affectionate for him till Book7 wherein you cant do much but sob
off for him....its a pretty tragedy woven in there.

But then i did not watch the movies as i wanted to wait till book7.

And now i see Alan Rickman and while i wont say in part1 i love him ....One cant help liking him ... he's such class and so very addictive.and as some one on the Amazon forum said

"he cast a Confundus spell on half of the population?"
So Rowling clearly is dead right when she posed the question to someone who confessed to love Snape. "Are you thinking of Snape or Alan Rickman?".

Because lets face it till Book7 (here its a final shift and whatever be the face you
just would have to agree with Harry at the end), if you dont see the Harry Potter
movies it is very very difficult to like Snape.

You can trust him...admire him ......beleive he's is Dumbledore's man and

has reformed or whatever but to like or love him he has to get the face of Alan Rickman.

Well Snape gets appealing truly as Alan Rickman i guess.

Then there is this movie Chak de ...that i saw I liked it and enjoyed it enough to watch it twice a rarity these days for meBut the thought that played on was simple ....would the movie be the same without SRK. We'd have better actors...some of the girls in there were also as good.But some appearances can capture the imagination more universally.

If it was not SRK also the movie i believe would be good but would only be
watched by some very genuine movie goers and admirers .

Thus i will end with another quote

Appearances are not held to be a clue to the truth.

But we seem to have no other. ~Ivy Compton-Burnett

2007-07-22T12:06:00.001-07:00

Some lil things

Weekends have been extremely tiring since a little over last month since i decided
to look out for jobs. You almost feel like giving it up the whole waste of
time....of the whole day for 15 to 20 mins of chit chat.But anyways i'd decided to give it a break so tired i was (ah the advantages of having some employment).......but then got a call and
trudged along.Nothing much happened beyong the regular nonsense i'm used to
but well a nice visual kinda stuck in mind.

Last year at nearly same time in the house where i stayed there were these
monsoon flowers and i'd been so happy to se them blossom randomly in the rain
and i kind of was happy enough to gather them nad take a snap of my vase with my then new cam.

This weekend a year later where i went for thr interview i saw similar flowers cultivated beautifully in front of the impressive huge glass building.Cultivated as wide borders in pink white and yellow these flowers of the rain and oh how pretty they looked.

Nothing in that huge state of the art building could match them .I almost was tempted to take a snap of them with my webcam but you never know who would question you so i refrained.

I mumbled to myself that quote

"The Pyramids will not last a moment compared with the daisy."
Well they won't....all these great things man built ...inspire awe, admiration and sometimes make one proud may be , but to feel that joy you need something that seems effortless ....its wonderful to stumble upon somethings that bring that happiness. There's so much to be said abou the tiniest things in life.

Being Hopeless in General

2007-06-15T11:59:00.001-07:00

What makes you figure out that you are hopeless in general

Something like this When I
worry and wake up hating to wake up on such a pleasant cool morning
and go to office
worry about the work to be done
worry about all stuff at office
worry about not having enough money
worry about how to invest money and save taxes
worry about missing out on books, movies etc
worry about no good job offers
worry about confusing and devils dilemma kind of job offers
worry about catching up with on all those new technologies for interviews
worry about brushing up all the past stuff you've put on resume
worry about all the nonsense they ask on seeing my resume
worry about how to deal with all this headaches at home
worry about studying to somehow pass that part time Mba exam you've
paid up stupidly for
worry about not getting enough sleep
then suddenly find a online book website and

Somehow just glance up at Pride & Prejudice and read it (a book I 've
read quite some time back , seen a movie seen serials based on it and
yet!!!!!) late into night till 2 pm.

I've given up on myself

Coincidental reminders

2007-06-12T11:24:00.001-07:00

Read through the lovely poem below by Elizabeth browning and then i
suddenly remembered one of my favorite song by Jagjit Singh - "Pyaar
mujhse kiya tumne to kiya paaogi" from the movie Saath Saath.
(Its the only cassette which i needed to buy a second time as it was
overused before the free mp3 days. Chitra Singh is too good in Arth
and Saath Saath songs. Adore her voice somehow as much as Jagjit
Singh's....esp that Tu nahi to zindagi me song.......hmmmm)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Can it be right to give what I can give?
To let thee sit beneath the fall of tears
As salt as mine, and hear the sighing years
Re-sighing on my lips renunciative
Through those infrequent smiles which fail to live
For all thy adjurations? O my fears,
That this can scarce be right! We are not peers,
So to be lovers; and I own, and grieve,
That givers of such gifts as mine are, must
Be counted with the ungenerous. Out, alas!
I will not soil thy purple with my dust,
Nor breathe my poison on thy Venice-glass,
Nor give thee any love--which were unjust.
Beloved, I only love thee! let it pass.

---elizabeth browning---
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

pyar mujh se jo kiyaa tumne to kya paaogi
mere haalaat ki aandhi mein bikhar jaaogi

ranj aur dard ki basthi ka main baashinda hoon
ye to bas main hoon ke is haal mein bhi zinda hoon
khwaab kyoon dekhoon wo kal jispe main sahrminda hoon
mainjo sharminda hoon to aur tum bhi sharmaaogi

kyoon mere saath koi aur pareshaan rahe
meri duniya hai jo weeraan to weeraan rahe
zindagi ka ye safar tum pe to aasaan rahe
humsafar mujhko banaaogi to pachtaaogi

ek main kya abhi aayenge diwaane kitne
abhi goonjenge mohabbat ke taraane kitne
zindagi tumko sunaaegi fasaane kitne
kyoon samajhti ho mujhe bhool nahi paaogi

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Even reminiscences can be coincidental

On Being .......

2007-06-08T09:37:00.001-07:00

Instinct
Instability
Undependable
Emotional
All rolled into one and defined as unprofessionalism.....
when seen by an onlooker
Being human is a sin somehow

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

How i wish i could be positive

When all you are surrounded by are negatives

How i wish i could be positive

when a question is asked because its needed to dispel the negative

Theres some dark abyss in life

I see it again

somehow i am quite positive

about its presence

How i wish i could be negative about this

Cheeni Kam

2007-06-02T08:58:00.001-07:00

Well it was a bad day … Friday despite watching this eminently watchable film…too much unncessary stress, we like to build it up in office these leads of ours.

Anyways since we had planned an extremely covert exercise in the old college style of bunking to go for a movie during lunch went ahead with it….and watched Cheeni kam…and came back to office and then took up the headache. The whole experience did not even sink in.

Its a treat the first half. It is not that Amitabh romances but the difference between class and doing something that tiltillate the masses (i.e Nishabd - its stupid to assume anyone watched it to understand any emotion. The leading lady has great legs and thats pretty much the movie for a layman which implies most men??? ) is visible .

You really enjoy watching Amitabh and well Tabu is so very classy and charming.Amitabh great at romance i always say but they baked him into a angry young man

Ok well like many i am still a sucker for bit of a classy romance and this movie has it.
Never mind the ending scenes which are gross.
The ending where Amitabh clings to the pillar saying mujhe sexy chahiye is a perfect example of how the best can be spoiled by one single nonsensical thing.

It could have been so better handles the second half. The way the word sexy is used …i mean heck why be gross about it.Tabu looks great and the right word would be classy all over .Its not like she aint sexy or being branded sexy is equivalent to cheap but the class of Tabu in the movie is so much more than sexy.

Well her character ah its amazing i ever saw a character in mainstream Hindi cinema.
I mean she doesnt buckle to emotional blackmail????.
A diabetic father threatens her if she goes ahead with her marriage and she does not even budge or lie even for a moment despite the threat.
Heck even heroes are not supposed to be so stubborn in Hindi movies. The moment doctor say unki jaan khatre me hai , or mom or dad says agar ye hua to mera mara munh dekhoge it like sacrifice started.From where did this character arise?
She stays by her fathers side but not even to humor him she budges from her standpoint. Oh welll…..movies do change …very slowly but well they do ….OOOh.

Of course apart from that most of second part is crap…even amitabh's speech to Paresh Rawal on his stupid fast is irritating. When he points that he is within societal limits …that reason is unncessary and wrong way to justify.The love or togetherness and fun should have been enough reason to justify their marriage and not the way he goes on how marrying an older man is quite with social sanction especially in these times when older women marry younger men.

But hell blink it off…especially if you love watching romance purely just as some like watching action purely go along enjoy it the first half. It a sheer treat.
As i said in my review of Honeymoon travels our directors these days start off with lovely ideas but then get lost in making up a marketable products
.

Some boring and yet amusing chitchat

2007-05-19T12:11:00.001-07:00

With power cuts on weekends you really get some time to

wonder about the everyday chit chat we go through some by

necessity and some just by chance.

Last week sometime in tea break with the lead away ,the only 3 girls now in the team of three diff age groups (each 4 yrs older than one)sit together and try to chat up.We dont have much in common though in the worldly perspective pretty much the same.
Its a boring chat sort of but when i look back on it with no power and from a dark balcony i am amused.

A electronics company had put up some television at our office for employees for the day and Baghbaan was playing we noticed.

Me: oh god now in office they play this
Su: Salman overacts a lot in this
Me: When does he not
B: yeah its like for granted

Su: Only in HAHK he was good
Me: No he was good in MPK too

Su : As movies increase they get this way
Me: yeah acting to overacting

B: But then Shahrukh too overacts frankly yeah
Su: Yeah but he's great in romantic movies
Me: True and it depends on the director to control, i

liked him in Swades.
Su: yeah but i did not like him in Don(plain obvious she

loved his romantic lines…ah but then dont we all)

Me; But i liked him in Don …i mean i guess i cant think

of anyone better
B: No no one than Amitabh
ME; yeah Amitabh is just him but other. Sharukh looked

most stupid in khaike paan banaras song.

Su:I even like KBC with Shahrukh
Me: yeah me too
B: No i dont, dont u think he's sarcastic

Me: Oh well that he has become even in interviews.

Thing was to me at least it seemed we all knew Shahrukh hams and has become sarcastic but we all remember our memories …the Sharukh Khan for whom first day first show was worth it(those days when you stood in lines of theaters no multiplexes). ….for whose movies bunking college was cool.Now we dont care if we watch in theater - forget first day.

We were open to critisize him but we still love his flattering romantic lines ( forget kkkk kiran )and soulful eyes in Kuch Kuch Hota hai.(I avoid that movies these days like hell coz i simply keep finding flaws as i see more…that simple charm is gone with all this repeat telecast).

And then at home someday had watched koffee with karan and my sis and i laughed at how wonderfully both Hema and Jaya said Shahrukh with such certainity given different choices.
My sis was like how much women of that era love that flattering fellow. Well sure they do and so do we .
Some people may be good or bad but you like to have such people about you.They have a charm about them - the people we call the life of a party ,a house , an office a generation or whatever.

And then i was happened to watch the last hour of Kabhie Kabhie somehow and yeah i love earlier part of that movie especially.
Amitabh looks so very charming….and well its a lovely movie.I just tell my sister kya angry youmg man ka tag laga diye usko. what a romantic young man he was in this movie.(I absolutely love to hear amitabh reciting poetry.)

My sister was like "kar raha na re ab romantic man movies amitabh ".I was like hmm demented romantic is it…and we laugh.

At the end i just remarked such bold and charming touching movies yash chopra made then….and now he's gone reverse gear.Culture overload or absolute mass choice stuff.

Then the power went off in the eve and i had nothing to do but wonder at all these things and laugh at my own self.

2007-05-07T11:35:00.000-07:00

Why i love the storm in the air

Ah….Yet to get over that wonderful line by karla in Shantaram
“i take everything personally….thats what being a person is all about”
That book seems to be the only nice thing i can think since quite some time.

But i found some lines of mine from a few days back fair enough to post.

Why i love the storm in the air
I don’t see the huts it demolishes
I don’t see the homeless shivering
I don’t see the trees uprooted
I don’t see the devastated look it leaves on civilization
What i see is what i feela rage against this very world
So i love the lashing rain on my window,
the gales hell bent on smashing the glass around,
and when its had its sayi see the fresh green emerging
the peace sought all around echoing
So i love the storm in the air

2007-05-01T11:46:00.000-07:00

Some banter

I have been like too busy worrying about too many possibilities of worry in life and did not know what to pen down. So thought on penning some very strange non worrying discussions recently .
My dear sister has a way of sudden out of the world ideas and her memories of Hindi movies old and new are like superb.

So as we banter on about films here are a few for collection’s sake.I go to flower seller ask how much gerberas are he says each 20 rs. I quietly walk away .. At the bus stop my sis starts laughing to herself.I ask why and i get this…

“you know there was a movie called rajnigandha where the heroine wonders see i have two guys in my life…one brings ONLY flowers (they were thought of as cheap those days)and one guy brings such expensive gifts.Think sis in todays time what could heroine think like that …everyday flowers the bunch would cost the guy how much 12*20= 240 bucks everyday……how dare she rate him stingy or poor.”
I was left perplexed at her range of thoughts.

One day during KBC there was a questionwhat is ‘zalzala, in english. Usually i am right or rather expected to be right so no one even challenges but this day sis was like
“What do you say …i say earthquake” she says
I thought of the other option but rarely ever in academic questions she
is so sure. She insisted Earthquake. when she was proved right i got my dose of gyaan.

” You see thats why i say watch movies…..it improves knowledge…there was old movie of kimi katkar called zalzala and in the end earthquake happens and swallows up all the loot..”Gosh she is amazing

Then on a serious note one day this was our discussion.
“Hmm i dont like Ash and Abhishek” she says“Preity and Abhishek would make a great pair. She would bring so much life and bubbliness and add to them.”

I counter…

“No Aishwarya is right for that khandaan. quiet head bowed …..just what they want..and she gets what she wants security and name…. Preity is too lively and strong and these people would only ruin her spirit.They cannot add anything to her as a person…..”

I liked Amitabh but this whole fiasco ruined much of the personal admiration i had for the chap.
And so we banter about the people and things not affecting our lives cause there’s nothing much we can do about whats affecting it direct.

2007-04-03T11:38:00.000-07:00

Some SRT Nostalgia as Unfashionable as it is

This is something so precious a feeling i mostly wont put on my blog much....but came across a few posts and it brought back that overwhelming nostalgia and just for a memory of that feeling i write this post.This post is purely that nostalgic feeling .

Its been disturbing the way this whole campaign of drop Tendulkar drop Tendulkar is being conducted all round in the media....as much as you try to ignore it.Some use the reverse make him captain...ah more suitable to publicly humiliate...no please.

Oh well i do wish they drop him...at least for the Bangladesh tour please.So much unnecessary humiliation....lets have our young blood and lets see ....how fortunate this generation will be.
Its so sad how we love to put up a statue and then throw stones at it.

Our times were really fortunate...for all said and done we've had a wonderful time watching Sachin Rahul and Saurav until the media and finally Mr Chappell may seem to have succeeded in spoiling the whole thing.Divide and Rule someone said...Well!!!!

Watching Cricket has never been the same for me in the past 4 yrs since i started working but oh those days when i watched it....such joy was bestowed by this cricketer.

I came across the article by Rahul through Jaiarjun and can say i too share the same irrational feeling. Another link from the above blog to this lovely piece by Nirmal Shekhar.

Oh yeah drop him by all means but please don't negate or question the sheer happiness he brought to a few like us who unlike many remember.Yeah except this world cup the last 3 world cups it was he who shone and i remember it well enough.

Its true as pointed out by both “I could never be as EMOTIONAL about India as I have been about Tendulkar.”

I enjoyed it when Sehwag was hitting or Dhoni was slamming but it never
felt the same....i've never been emotional about it. It was good fun.But then they were the new heroes of the new set hooked onto contests and Mandira Bedi and what not..... not those who loved to hear Boycott and Harsha or even remembered those Henry Bloefeld Sharjah days of earrings.

Somehow rather than those multitude of Sehwag's or Dhoni's sixes the six i remeber best is the one by the most unnatural hitter of sixes...Mr Dravid to Allan Donald in South Africa.

Yeah this is all nostalgia. No ones asking this to be taken into account for our great team's selection and such high brow things but i do wish this demeaning and humiliation stops .

Don't worry he will retire he sure will later if not sooner and what a vaccum it would be ...nah not for cricket...it will find its own...but for the people and media who like to make gods and then malign them.

He is human ...... and thats why its so much more joyous.He is not the world's greatest cricketer anymore and may not be ( as hard as i find to say it) but he is someone who once brought more joy to more people than the world's greatest do even now.

some more blogs i read long ago and yet look back - and love
Like this

"We are really blessed to have been part of a time when we could witness someone like Sachin at full flow, and we are fully justified in flattering ourselves into believing that as long as he chooses to be around on the cricket field, there is a miracle round the corner, waiting to happen."

Ok many will quip ...yeah it did not happen the miracle.
Oh yeah...we don't believe in miracles as they say we actually rely on them -
so when they don't happen things go awry.

or this -

"Today, even though most believe he may not score many more 100s, should one doubt his intent? Questioning his intent is a slap at our belief and everything we once believed in. ........ And any good cricketer will tell you, the timings just not right. You either believe or you have never watched Sachin Tendulkar bat. Get a life. "

Oh yeah we sure had a good lifetime.

Oh well let me end this....rather than going on in my nostalgic drawl ...... thats why i stopped watching too much of the game ...last world cup in 2003 i got hooked again when i watched Sachin and was scared it would be repeated again in 2007 ..well if it were not for his probable last world cup i'd even bat an eyelid.....coz if without miracles pure cricket is to be considered India simply were never the best not even when they won it.
Its the miracles of certain days and some people that make this world so special.

2007-04-01T11:49:00.000-07:00

A Nice Reply

There are times when you are so very lost in the wonder of something and someone or something so simply bring you back to reality .
There’s a quiet charm to it.

Read some lovely lines from somewhere and hence wanted to talk of it to a friend
——————————————–
Me: These lines are lovely isnt it
“Every novel is an equal collaboration between the writer and the reader and it is the only place in the world where two strangers can meet on terms of absolute intimacy.

I have spent my life in conversations with people I have never seen, with people I will never know and I hope to continue until the day I stop breathing.

It’s the only job I’ve ever wanted.“

You know what thats also the job that i want..you see i don’t even love writing in general(forget about code) as much as i love reading.But who would pay me for it hmmmm

Answer: True very true….and u know something…. lot of times… things that interest oneself are the ones which we have to pay for.

————————————————————

Ah i felt isn’t that what life and jobs all about…

Quite Nice an answer and i was out of my wonder of the lines as lovely as they were .

2007-04-01T11:34:00.000-07:00

Weekend at Namastey London

As a movie it does not even give you a headache its simply unaffecting except of course in one or two parts where i was impressed…by the dialogues or the discussion.
Best was the argument between Rishi Kappor and his wife wherein he keeps blaming the wife for the daughter becoming as she has and the repartees by the wife are excellent about Indians in general and men in particular.

Parts where there is the statement how they want to live in a cleaner
London but want to keep up their own traditions.
The movie though at points is wonderfully honest…like when Akshay tells his father in law …that now that they are in London…he can’t do a thing …his own daughters complaint might land him in jail…pretty much implying that in India such complications are never an issue.

But other than that mostly its the same nationalistic triumphs and harping on India’s glorious past….and how foreigners can be never loyal and counted upon..and that love at first sight thing of Akshay in the movie sucks…and then that committed waiting….as if all Indian men would really wait for a runaway bride.

Somehow the movie reminded me of the book by Meera Syal…”Life isnt all haa ha hee hee”. rather than such movies about London or the expatriates i liked the realistic and ironic and comic potrayal of the trials , dilemmas and troubles faced by such. I guess there’s a BBC drama too on it.

The books showcases more deeply why a relationship with a foreigner or even someone from a different state or strata sometimes may really leave you regretting.
One beautiful example in the book is wherein Tania living in with a foreigner who’s quite nice and loyal but she observes how her friends husband calls her ‘Jaan’ and she misses it. For all that she has she misses the connection that word brings.

The different associations and falsities they live through.Best though i liked the way the character Tania in the book who pretty much never tries to look or be Indian in the traditional sense says……among people and places where they all try to find out about the exotic stuff and all associated with India…she says something to the effect “i don’t need to put in on or act it or learn it and prove it ….because i am the original…i am Indian”.

That is why the scope of books ever exceeds a movie but more than that these days whenever i see a movie i feel our new directors start off with a brilliant idea but don’t have the courage to follow it up and give in to the same tested formulas….hype jingoism and comedy for the sucking masses.I felt the same when i watched Honeymoon Travels. I
t was a nice story which could have been oh so much more and quite a few such movies these days which have some brilliant or honest part in them and then they get lost in the requisite ingredients of Bollywood.

Not that i dislike Bollywood formulas for a weekend fun if directed properly but one does wish that something more when you see a good idea.Takes time i guess…

2007-03-24T11:48:00.000-07:00

Our Cricket - Shakespearean Dramas

Time changes us some say
It does not it only unfolds us some say.....I am not sure and it surely can be a matter of another post but yeah times have altered perspectives truly.

There was a point in time years ago when half of what happened yesterday had happened. India were knocked out of the semi final in 1996....it was a moment for grief...it was funny how passionate one can be when young.Sort of remind me of those lines from the poem "Evening Solace"

But, there are hours of lonely musing,
Such as in evening silence come,
When, soft as birds their pinions closing,
The heart's best feelings gather home.
Then in our souls there seems to languish
A tender grief that is not woe;
And thoughts that once wrung groans of anguish,
Now cause but some mild tears to flow.

And feelings, once as strong as passions,
Float softly back a faded dream;

Well so yesterday it was sort of very cool this time ...somehow quite expecting them to lose...only some part of the old heart buried deep peeped out for miracles.
But reality sure was the flavor of the day and at no point was there any belief that India would be through...and the team did nothing to change that.
Sad part is unlike those days when some or the other unfortunate thing could be ascribed to failure...umpires ...pitch..here it was so plain blunt clear we were just not good enough. Something had somehow blunted out the passion of the whole team....Somehow i usually even in worst moments dont imagine Sachin out but felt so casually that it was gone and thats how it was - gone.

Somehow it seems fitting and actually good that India is out. The whole real passion has died out i felt ...sometimes i ask it it in general or specific to my being old enough to always reflect back on the older days.
I had only one reason to even bother to watch this world cup(huh bother ...there were times i dared not use such a word about watching cricket.) ...this would be the last World Cup of probably the generation of cricketers we grew up on.
Sachin Sourav and Rahul.I agree they did not do well here and if some
says drop them oh well please go ahead do it.

I just have one question in mind though ....and that is the matter of this whole post. Its a job for them in the end and lets say we do badly at our job at some time or actually most of the time......or rather not as well as say someone else is doing how many of us will go ahead and resign?

But yet we clamour that one should retire or give up.I too felt passionately many times esp in the past and do say stupid idiots when they ruin the whole day by some horrid stuff.....should be given one tight slap and other expletives but problem starts when one starts beleiving in them as super heroes.
They would be playing cricket in whatever way they can good or bad just like quitely our other sportspersons play their sports if we did not love them and the game as much...We put them up as heroes as there's nothing as easy because our lives lack them in reality but when they turn out as vulnerable as us we hate them with vehemance.

"They are responsible for a whole set of fans who suffer so many things and watch them and love them" ...
yeah i said that a decade ago.
I wonder to what extent today would one take as much responsibility for the job you work just because all team members and leads adore your work and depend on you...but something somehow needed presently were were beyond the capabilities possessed.

They are humans just like you and me ....and if you ask me a bit better than you and me...cause i am not sure how many among us can resist the huge temptations that are offered to this bunch of cricketers by us or in us the fans name by the real businessmen of this world.

This is not to defend their game but to defend their right to live beyond their job....
Yeah i still say they deserve to value their job a little more and keep up its spirit because after all how many of us have the fortune of having a job we love and enjoy.

One good thing about their losing is this....

This match despite so much money on it in the end was NOT FIXED...
why simple for anyone who watched it.
If India had won almost everyone would have somewhere ascribed it to being Fixed.
Whole day prior to the match i was sick of hearing ..."these bunch of jokers no good will lose if the match is not fixed."

Yeah Sad a relatively(this word is very important) nice bunch of cricketers who gave us joyous moments once will retire without fulfilling dreams....... neither theirs(honestly even a cricketer who might be a match thrower sometime would like to win the world cup once
cause that is the dream you begin career with) nor our dreams fulfilled.

I guess thats why so many writers say cricket is the closest to Life in its intricacies and fortunes...and its Tragedies....and Comedies.

And India Pakistan take it somehow to the heights of Shakespearean Drama.Woolmer's murder confirms that.........Its unbelievably tragic......and somehow so very Shakespearean i guess.

2007-03-18T09:19:00.000-07:00

Flowers of India....

There are somethings you come across once in a while and you feel so much gratitude and happiness. They are such simple and silly things some may say,....but neverthless
I had already blogged about how i wished to find about names of certain flowers i see esp the local names and so on here.
In those days i probably spent hours and rupees of carefully allocated time and money on internet searching for something like this and never did find it.Sometimes i used to look them in the University library but how mch can you find in a university thats more a technical one. Then last month i found the site http://www.flowersofindia.net/ by sheer chance . Its a lovely site and it wonderful to see some on compile it so lovingly.Flower names in Indian languages with pictures.

Like it was so nice when i saw that blue flower i often looked at and wondered what to call ..... it is called "Aparajita" or Butterfly pea.Sadly very few people know the Indian names . We are so used to the names we read in English.

And one tree i always wanted a snap beneath but never seemed to happen somehow is this very pretty Amaltas. Its so very pretty.

Or there's a flower that i sort of loved a lot as it has memories of my childhood. The harsingar or Parijat...the orange white flowers we used to pick when we were children.
There's this stupid fantasy of standing beneath it while they fall down all spoiled by my friend when she remarked...oh there are way too many worms and insects in that tree they all will fall too. Now i'm too scared to try anything like that ever.
But In the last home i lived there was one just outside the gate and every morning i used to find my path strewn with them.
Here's a pic i took then.Hmm i miss em......

Its so wonderful to be able to put in such effort and come out with such a site. It looks like nothing much but i am sure it gives immense personal happiness. Just seeing the site made me quite happy.

2007-03-17T05:08:00.000-07:00

Oh well some common wishes

well I happened to mention to someone that i have lots of materialistic wishes left and hence not
yet feel like charity . ...which required an explanation......
Well actually i am quite uncharitable why will be a seperate post.

So as they say time changes everything so here for this time what i think are my materialistic
wishes.
Firstly i ask myself am i materialistic ....well not exactly i know
but i wish i was ...life is so simple that way.

I am soo swayed by emotions ......and to have it my hearts way if i can which is mostly never
i try swinging it using all logic...thats the way i seem to have become these days.

Materialism if if only if that were the only thing is so simple and defined.

Anyways what is materialism ...is it being money oriented...Well lets put it my way as of today.
Its not money that is loved...its is the sheer ease of life it brings in so many ways especially
in a country like ours.
Money buys you the most inavaluable thing of all "TIME"
of course more so if dont spend the time earning it...huh sadly its not so in my case.

Money allows you to hire a cook a maid and hence time and energy saved.
Money allows you travel with ease esp if you dont even have to drive again time saved.

Actually money even saves you the trouble of being charitable...they just deduct a small part
from your salary and you are contributing to charity(How terrible can corporate culture
get....if ur not interested remove your name from list on the intranet....huh as if one is going
to do that )

Now in the Time saved if you love to doze off or watch prettier things in this world instead of
making this world a better place done by charitable people in that time saved you are
MATERIALISTIC i guess .

All the materialistic things specifically i can think of is a lovely house which i wish to spend
a lifetime filling with all the pretty little things i love to shop around.

I used to have this dream of a very small house with a very big garden...with the real estate
prices the way it is its sooo far off. Hard to own an apartment forget a house with garden wellllll.

I'd love to just wander and travel all around the world....or live in some nice beautiful cottage
in the flowery hills(ok thats a straong Ruskin Bond stories influence)......
and this needs money yeah yeah you can go around the world in just a few dollars or whatever but
i mean for real without looking like a freak which needs what MONEY.
Money means you avoid nosy neighbors , colleagues who need explanation of what and why
where you come and go and offending them is a strict no no due to family and that extended
family called Office.

I dont add my absolute crazy idea of owning books almost like a library with glass shelves
ahhhhhh...this just doesnt seem materialistic in anyway ...books cant be associated with
materialism no not in my mind.
And anyway i will fulfill that dream anyway one day though with my progressive myopia(Doctors
they are the most scary people in this world to me with the terms they hand to me) how much i
will be able to use them by then is another thought.
But i trust in science as well miracles so that should be just fine.

Of course to each their own .......
My sister really beat me to it when after quitting her job standing at the balcony she said.”You see that building i m sure that is a office stupid people why did they not build it fast so that i could have tried a job here...i'd have worked for a few bucks less. So nice so near to our house.
Come home for lunch have a sleep and go....kya life hotaa..
I dreamt of this since school days when schoolmates living behind school used to go for lunch.”
The kids been as lazy since ages then its proved....but she made a wise choice unlike me
HR is the place to be for such wonderful dreamers like her.

2007-03-11T12:31:00.000-07:00

Weekend Browsing around

I have a very good habit... whenever i have to meet a friend and then
plan how to spend the time i usually prefer to set the meeting point at
a bookstore or mall with a bookstore. It saves me a hell lot of
impatience and irritation with my friends because most of them are
lazier than me and never come on time. Rather than calling them and
asking them to hurry up or feeling bad about being stupid to turn up on
time and wait...i actually make myself so comfortable in the bookstore
that even if they don't turn up my day has been well spent.

Such was the case this weekend. As i browsed around the bookstore...it has been long actually this time...since my last visit to a bookstore.

So i looked up all the new books ...i always try following a pattern but thats about it TRY. my eyes sort of never want to do it so methodically...they love an absolute quick scan and then wander around to their interests. Books with lovely covers...interesting themes or reviews i'd read about.
The new cricket world cup book shaped like a ball and such stuff in new arrivals.

I also have this so very queer habit of a very stupid game i play with myself. Close your eyes and open a page and whats the first word or line you glance(I used to try this on the dictionary at home earlier). Anyways a book which has been praised a lot i guess i will look it up some day is " The Last Song of Dusk ' by Siddharth Dhanvant Sanghvi...I'm delaying it mostly because it seems so exotic but i tried my little fun on this book there.

It was a lovely line which i read goes something like the below...i've forgotten the exact line
" may be thats what Innocence was meant for - to be lost and may be that is how love essentially is - something to be longed for "

I guess i agreed quite a lot and liked it enough to decide to read the book at the first chance .

Then for the moment i started off reading "Inspite of Gods" in there...again a interesting book...i mean even the title is nice Inspite of....

You really have to know Indians and India well to use that word INSPITE ...they succeed inspite of all oh so many things....not because of them...though after success we always say the reverse....."that it is the GOD ...that it is the well wishers and good intentions of all and sundry".

Hmm finally i wandered off sometime into the Glass and candles and such artifacts segment...my favorite. I do love clear glass and all the shapes its moulded into..something again i feel crazy about with no specific definition.
God bless those people who once in a while let you wander in peace without that wonderful gesture " May i help you ".

Then at last arrives my friend and she just has to ask hows life and i start off all the dramatic stories of my professional pains.
Finally i realise we had met actually to discuss her side of the story and so i keep my mouth shut and she tells her tale....ah well its the same with a different twist.
Then we wander off into a artifacts expo and i feel like immersing all my hurt in the beauty of the oh so many lovely things and i shop...well i look more than i shop...and its a torture for my company at such places...she inevitably says...you are worse than me at such shopping.

I advise her to leave for the day ...as i'll spend some more time...she's so nice not to leave me but i oh so wish she did...as we leave half way through.
My sister at home adds the perspective to it. well your friends dont know you love to wander off and browsing/shopping all alone and so may be she'd have been imagining how bad it feels to leave a friend and go and hence did not go but you have such strange ways. Ummm yeah.

This year though is gonna be very lonely i had though at the begining and it sure seems to be going on the same way.Friends move on to different places...different worlds...i'm moving on ...
or rather should move on.

2007-03-09T12:11:00.000-08:00

Not all who wander are lost....not all who are lost wander i guess

I am amazed at people who remember every joke from movies seen decade ago and actually it seems the only timepass for quite some....an evergreen rehash of the jokes esp in regional cinema. I feel inadequate to comment on this being good or bad them but yeah a whole of them are not to my taste. I mean relating every thing in life to some movie comedian.
I saw some last hour of this movie and well it was a nice one of a different era. What i remember
is though some of the last lines of the movies. rarely do i remember dialogues from movies or
even books. Some just strike a chord......and just stay on.
One was this from the movie "Monalisa Smile"

Not all who wander are aimless
"I've heard her called a quitter for leaving......an aimless wanderer. But not all who wander are aimless. Especially not those who seek truth beyond tradition...... beyond definition..... beyond the image."

Re-read this again and considering my aimless feeling it sort of touches.I deny that i seek some
great truth or want to make a difference but yes i wander in my own spheres of mind,aimlessly in
this very sharp aiming world for some reason something beyond my words.......some thing that i
seek out beyond what seems traditionally perfect..it is not selfless...in fact it is something
very selfish.At least ive been very clear on that in the past few years of my life.Yeah i seek to wander out but when i cant in reality i seem to wander in my mind and hence have been aimless.
Anyways that led me to the original quote...thats the charm of google for me
All that is gold does not glitter,
not all those who wander are lost;

Another very nice point i pondered upon......

Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's
self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance,
learn so easily; and why older persons, especially if vain or important, cannot learn at all.-Thomas Szasz,author, professor of psychiatry

Why even even the best after a point stagnate.Self esteem's not a bad thing to have unlike a
super ego but for learning further yes even self esteem may be need to be sacrificed at some
time......only point here remains how much and of what you are willing to learn.Ignorance can be bliss in oh so many cases....Learning is painful.
Choices...its all our choices....
to be meek, nice to others and lose oneself...to be kind and get pained....
to be brave for oneself and may be hurt others.......
to give up a lifetime's peace for a moments charm.....
to give up own dream for a chance to be a part of someone's dream.......
to wander...to lose....to be aimless.

2007-03-05T11:53:00.000-08:00

Hyper emotional day

You tell yourself that you’re professional

You’ll take things in your stride

You seen quite enough of corporate workplace/jargon

You’ve gotta give it straight to them

And yet if you’re emotional

You just are it

After a whole range of self motivating nonsense

You know it when you almost

Have a lump in the throat due to being upset during an appraisal meeting.

No one knows and would know that its actually an after effect of

The messy past week in my life and not this bloody appraisal discussion.

But heck why did it have to be triggered at that moment.

Probably that’s why I don’t practice this useless nonsense of telling myself all’s gonna be well when it isn’t.

It all comes off pouring out at all the wrong moment and then you seem so stupid and vulnerable.

I hate myself 2 hrs after being in those ultra emotional moments. But it’s the way I’m wired. Too old for change….But aren’t old people supposed to get calmer and have a hold on their emotions. Hmmmmmm

Areas of improvement: Positivity among many more

Sure Sure I need it because if had that honestly I doubt I would have been sitting there, I ‘d have gone out and found a positive response but I lived on with my fears my negativity …not that the events in the past week have helped me be any more positive.

But I hate myself …… heck how could I be so like deeply hurt and emotional….talking with people whose business is to be unemotional in the most emotional way.

2007-02-10T11:42:00.000-08:00

Incoherent Lines .....

What do you write when you can never write coherent phrases or sarcastic lines or cynical venom . You end up writing some strange poetry beyond your own understanding at times and sometimes its like silence.
One wishes silence could last.

At times i used to look at certain abstract paintings and wonder …
heck does even the painter know whats he had in mind
when he painted it.

It is at such times that i either don’t listen to music or listen to the loudest incoherent music….then i wonder may be that why so many people most of the time prefer loud blaring incoherent music.
They just want to forget…

I wish i could too ….
I wish i could learn to compromise…
“Compromise is the end of dreams”
I wish the dreams end
Or do i ???

2006-12-25T09:55:00.000-08:00

What a wonderful Lecture

Ah there are times you read something and you feel like....
thats it.... thats what.... .
There may be many excellent words to describe that feeling
but its rare to read some stuff and this weekend i felt great
as i read it... it was sort of wonderful as i re-read it.
Its a very long speech ... So long that i copied some reallly lovely lines
of it so that to find them i the time starved person needn’t
re-read it again and again.
But may be you shoud remember it anyway i thought
if you loved it so much .....
But then what you remember is a feeling ...
.sometimes the way the feeling is
expressed is a beauty unto itself.

I have not read any of his books....but just was redirected
while browsing to this wonderful complete Speech by
The Nobel Lecture, 2006 by ORHAN PAMUK.
The last para where he talks about ‘why do you write’...loved it.
I dont know how happy at heart he may be about the prize but
when i read the last line he made me happy....
cause thats why i write this blog
“I write because I have never managed to be happy.
I write to be happy.”
For people who love reading and are not scared of
scrolling long pages,
i would say the full speech must be read.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Writer’s secret is not inspiration—for it is
never clear where that comes from—but
stubbornness, endurance

If a writer is to tell his own story—to tell it
slowly, and as if it were a story about other
people—if he is to feel the power of the story
rise up inside him, if he is to sit down at a table
and give himself over to this art, this craft,
he must first be given some hope.

Now, many years later, I understand that this
discontent is the basic trait that turns
a person into a writer.

Patience and toil are not enough: first,
we must feel compelled to escape crowds,
company, the stuff of ordinary life,
and shut ourselves up in a room.

he must have the artistry to tell his own
stories as if they were other people’s stories,
and to tell other people’s stories as if they
were his own, for that is what literature is.

our literature, our local world, in all
its beloved detail—and at the other end were
the books from this other, Western world, which
bore no resemblance to ours, a lack of resemblance
that caused us both pain and hope.
To write, to read, was like leaving one
world to find consolation in the otherness
of another, in the strange and the wondrous.
I felt that my father had read novels
in order to escape his life and flee to the
West—just as I did later.

Is happiness believing that you live a deep life
in your lonely room? Or is happiness leading a
comfortable life in society, believing in the same
things as everyone else, or, at least,
acting as if you did?
Is it happiness or unhappiness to go through life
writing in secret, while seeming to be in harmony
with all that surrounds you?

For me, to be a writer is to acknowledge the
secret wounds that we carry inside us,
wounds so secret that we ourselves are barely
aware of them, and to patiently explore them,
know them, illuminate them, own them, and make
them a conscious part of our spirit and our writing.

What literature most needs to tell and to investigate
now is humanity’s basic fears: the fear of being left
outside, the fear of counting for nothing, and the
feeling of worthlessness that comes with such
fears—the collective humiliations, vulnerabilities,
slights, grievances, sensitivities, and imagined
insults, and the nationalist boasts and inflations
that are their next of kin. . . .

Why do you write?
I write because I have an innate need to write.
I write because I can’t do normal work as other
people do. I write because I want to read books
like the ones I write.
I write because I am angry at everyone.
I write because I love sitting in a room
all day writing. I write because I can partake
of real life only by changing it.
I write because I want others, the whole world,
to know what sort of life we lived, and continue
to live, in Istanbul, in Turkey. I write because
I love the smell of paper, pen, and ink.
I write because I believe in literature,
in the art of the novel, more than I believe
in anything else.
I write because it is a habit, a passion.
I write because I am afraid of being forgotten.
I write because I like the glory and
interest that writing brings.

I write to be alone. Perhaps I write because
I hope to understand why I am so very, very
angry at everyone. I write because I like
to be read. I write because once I have begun a
novel, an essay, a page I want to finish it.
I write because everyone expects me to write.
I write because I have a childish belief in the
immortality of libraries, and in the way my books
sit on the shelf. I write because it is exciting
to turn all life’s beauties and riches into words.
I write not to tell a story but to
compose a story. I write because I wish to
escape from the foreboding that there is a place
I must go but—as in a dream—can’t quite get to.
I write because I have never managed to be happy.
I write to be happy.

A Break

2006-09-27T12:38:00.000-07:00

Hmm finally i will away from this blog for some time....moving to a new house...have to get a new net connection first...will try to make it faster....and finally i will have my own room (after half a lifetime's wait....) where i can peacefully blog....hopefully!!!.

2006-09-09T00:54:00.000-07:00

just a day….a lil less caffeine in future….a lil more saline in present…

I am almost hopelessly completely depressed now i guess….
Its like something you tell yourself you beleive in and then it crashes down ….or may be its not even like that….It may be something you know will crash and break and yet after knowing it all you dont like to beleive it….you wish all kind of stupidities.
Yesterday went through like a breeze but when i settled down at at the end of the day it was like a tiring heartbreak…….
Two people with whom i probably spent the best part of last year left office and i could not even see them off…all the while all those new joinees were like one doubt come here…come here….wanted to like tell all of em to got hell….but well…..thats how things are…its no ones fault and yet…its strangely upsetting.
Probably thats what friendship is in a way.
They arent the kind of people i’d relate to much ….very childish girls very lively…very brilliant.I am not the kind of person they normally would relate to(books poetry…philosophy…no way) and if as real person knew me would cater to much but yet we somehow became friends brought together by fate and we went on ignoring in each other or even worse simply refusing to see anything beyond what we liked.
I never really understand people i have as friends except may be a few (with whom i dont have the good times these days but share the worse times by cribbing to them)….what they see in me or what i see in them sometimes….except for the fact that we have a good time together.
Probably thats the problem with judging people in entirety……you risk your own opinions…your own judgements.
Then theres this other thing… you so wish to meet what you left by…of memories which you simply go an sweeting more than they ever were and then one day if you ever face then again you realise the illusion was so much better .But i guess in my case i wanted to get rid of all illusions in life and whats happening is all for the best.
Yes i very much wished this somewhere in life so that i can move on….if theres nothing better left then so be it …at least i stop beleiving that the past will come back.There is always this wish i guess in people who leave the place they grow up in childhood to have that world back…beleving it lasts.But the world moves by…even if the place lasts the people do not remain the same but then do we ourselves remain the same…..People dont change ….not at the core i always tell myself…..but do they or rather is it like that people stop being themselves and take on a new persona…they dont change ….may be they just die….not physically but sort of killed of by the world…some become cynical like me..some become hopeless..some become wastrels…some become very successful….but what years ago made then so very special is lost.
and you dont really know them.It is then that you may wish that it stop…….this whole deconstruction of the past…..by the present.When the past comes to present and cannot live upto you the illusion, then one starts hoping it stops ruining the delicate beauty of the past.
I think this is the greatest risk of meeting old friends and acquaintances…….and yet we seek them out everywhere we can on cycberspace ….. in real world.And yet when we do sometimes it ruins al those memories…those beleifs that carried you through this turbulent present.
You look back at people from days gone by and wish that comes back but in the end when they do you realise what has gone back will never come back.This week probably drove that into me more firmly than anything.But it dissapoints
such shining hopessuch sudden twists frombright to dark………..with the faintest sleight of handthe alteration of all of life’s schemesand all its scope..all with one tiny turnof life’s KALEIDOSCOPE.Why do some of the best people lose to life…to this world…but they do and while it kind of
breaks your heart to see it…somewhere it tells you again that past is no promise of a future….what is there is all the present.
When i look back at my past i realise there is only one lesson ive learnt in my life….i’ve questioned and fought against most other wisdoms propagated.
What is there is Today…..What will be there is yesterday….What one better not bother with is Tommorow…and yet its hard when you are surrounded by people who talk abou planning…projects…..decisions…..life .
I keep repeating to myself…..“Smile coz it happenedDont cry that it ended”………….But then i my usual way i cant help it…i smiled when it happened…i cry when it ended.
I’ll get used to it…..i have a habit of getting used to anything as much as i hate it.
Both of them were going on with such bright hopes to a new place and it hurts sometimes when you know that just as others failed in what you hoped for them…..you you too fail others in their visons.
V and P were like looking at me and R…saying you stupid two ….We four joined together …if you two too had gotten another job…we’d have all left together…. what a classic statement it would have been.
The only positive part in this………..i’ll be drinking less caffeine …as no one is gonna drag me away to heated sh…sh….coffee room discussions.

2006-08-31T12:16:00.000-07:00

Life....Ironic ???

Life can be absolutely excruciatingly funny......or ironic.
Ah irony...where i learnt the word first....in school in Shakespeare and now here i saw it so perfectly.

It was a pretty surprise to find someone on the net from over a decade back....from my school i left far away in a far off sleepy town...and then to know that all the while ..that person was in the same city as me.
For some time i was simply wondering ....... it so strange...really.

But neverthless it was a nice look back on days past...and a reminder of the way life affects us....i remembered the person i was 14 yrs ago....the word probably used about me
fitted just fine "painfully shy"....i hardly am that anymore though i still am extremely hesitant to speak with strangers....and with acquaintances i just blabber a lot...by my standards if not everybody.
Also it could be due to the fact that im surounded my a chirpy bunch of freshers who unlike most of the people of my batch weighed down by taking up the responsiboilities of life .......have had the best in life early and are so very positive and yeah for me it helps to have such a kind around ....else i tend to drown in my dark observations......
V and P both girls would be done with their notice period this week and i'd be quite bored at office.....of course there would be lot of work this coming months but still those two were really sweet and smart and fun girls to have around......they never let you brood even for a minute...and when u tended to lapse into those dark thoughts and they buzzd you or teased you ....i sort of used to get irritated but then i a moment i realised they honestly what a difference they make.

yeah ive not changed at all at the core....i guess no one does...but ive moved on .....for better or worse.

oh by the way i have moved this whole blog to wordpress(FROZENTHOUGHTZ.WORDPRESS.COM) .Of course the blog on blogspot stays on....

2006-08-18T13:33:00.000-07:00

KANK: Stupid Movie but hell ....its a movie

Hmm Well I disliked the movie sure and so did many others but well what i did not like was the reasons actually they are giving for it. Its way too stupid the way its being projected as though if you just see that movie you’’ll think about ending your relationships.

While i thought the way the story was handled sucked big time but unlike others i think the theme was just fine....whats the use of continuing any relationship which simply adds on pain with every passing second. People comment saying that its so bad of Karan Johar to say its ok to walk out of a marriage even when a child is involved.
Well do these people ever think that it affects a child worse if they have a set of parents who stay together but always hate each other sometimes openly and sometimes indirectly.Its better if they go seperate ways amicably i guess and if the child is well provided for rather than subject a child to falsified marital bliss and then ask the child to repay one fine day for all the sacrifices made.
In fact the way Shahrukh treated his kid in first half i think he would be better off without such a Dad.But then thats serious stuff.

Actually one chap commented really well on Sulekha when he said do you ask Hollywood directors that did you see the aliens or dinosaurs then why torture Karan Johar saying why he made a movie on marriage without being married.
Well he made a bold attempt and its Classic stupid scripting but to say the least did anyone ever observe it is mostly stupid people who do bold things because sensible people think......and hence wont dare.

The only fine thing in the movie was when Amitabh says in the movie at least Rishi will have a chance to be loved truly by someone (Coz she being a hopeless case suited for that loser Dev...perfect match...............and yeah true even losers in this world like Rani and Shahrukh in the movie have a right to be winners in Love.)

So finally times have changed at least in movies......what could not be made by any director in Silsila days(though i think that ‘s the way you develop the story rather than the love at first sight way Johar developed..its a sin to compare these two movies anyway) is made by Johar in KANK.But whatever happens Indians love the regressive expensive Bhansali movies.....

Most funny though was watching Amitabh justifying his role on TV saying he’s open about all his activities with his son and not hiding it wow!!!!!.
In the end what we all forget is this is all BIG BUSINESS.....and its all about money honey...which KJ sure would’ve made enough.

Anyway all this talk reminds me of that excellent book called Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. If relationships have to be studied one must read it. It will make you see the futility in the end of most relationships i guess........Gosh its such a sad tragic book and sooo upsetting that i never can get myself to write a review about it.

2006-08-12T07:58:00.000-07:00

Kabhi Alvidaa....Abhi Alvidaa

Its probably only the second movie review on my Blog.I am not very good at this as i cant speak in all those artistic terms of cinematography and all that but well here’s how my KANK experience was.
After a long time i made enough fuss about getting tickets to a movie...hmm well did not manage to get them but my friend simply walked in and managed to get two in the afternoon. Well at the end of the movie i was glad all the fuss and energy i expended was on phone and net and not in person. Gosh what a kitsch of nonsense it turned out to be mostly.
Yes this is from a Shahrukh fan......this marks the begining of the end for Sharukh i guess as Bollywood’s best romantic.He simply did not look as good..its fine he fitted the part some may say but heck this movie is for Bollywood i guess and he should look good.
This movie is neither here nor there. Neither is this movie that beautiful chiffon saga which though absolutely unreal is great for people with romantic fantasies Nor is the movie a true class of art realistic story.

It simply irritates you.....its that stupid......its not like the theme is bad or zara hat ke or anything like that..... KANK is pure mixture of good intentions may be but terrible execution. It had what you’d call in software Integration issues(modules in themselves are great but they just dont work together).
If you just take Amitabh’s part as fun track he’s excellent but what the heck in this story is it needed and it seems so unnecessary and cheap.

If you want to know what zero chemistry means watch Shahrukh and Rani.Even the best direction will not make them look convincing as the most soulful lovers.

If you see this movie you will realise what difference Kajol makes to a movie.I thought K3G was a nonsensical movie but then it had such wonderful performances by Kajol and that part of the romance at least was enjoyable and beleivable.Though i hate amitabh’s chauvinist character in it very much.

Sentimentally of course i liked the scene where Amitabh asks Rani to leave Abhishek...honestly at least he would have chance to be loved which he deserved.

Abhishek ‘s great looks wise and acting wise quite touching and so was Preity as the strong one. Rani well i did not expect anything from her. Sharukh oh it was so dissapointing...he simply bored and irritated. What a hopeless character Dev’s character is.
KANK’s most enjoyable scene for me actually was when when Preity Zinta says at the end to Rani...”itni saza bas hai uske liye...nahi...abhi to tumhe Dev ke saath rehna hai”. Honestly living with such a character can be a torture...watching him was enough torture.

Actually the story i thought could have been written so very well if it had been written as a story and not a script which needs comedy, a Mother , a father and some humor and jokes. It was so ridiculous when Sharukh says he felt Rani was his soulmate when he met her on a bench.....Gosh.....I guess love at first sight is better handled by Mani Ratnam..even he gives it some time to sink in.
Even the song picturizations were not as good as usually these movies have.

Now i just am thinking how to avoid if someone asks me to come to see the movie again
as i had told people no issues i’ll come with you again when they asked me to wait till next week.

2006-07-24T12:03:00.000-07:00

Some old jottings

'There are two ways of writing,' " one of my favs Wodehouse had written. One of these is " 'a sort of musical comedy without music and ignoring real life altogether; the other is going right deep down into life and not caring a damn.' "

I sure started off the second way.....but some where deep down i seem to be so fed up ive graduated to the first one these days.I find life one sick comedy.

Another of those things i picked up from my old jottings...........
i find it amazingly funny to read now as i will find the whole of my blog one day i know.....cant beleive how numbed life makes you slowly.It was written i guess with lot of pain and now i guess about it what a joke...........................

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Can you run run fast run away
from this maddening place
this chilling fear this hopeless life
this frustrating fight
this writhing heart this troubled soul
how to run where to run from this world
of right and wrongs silks and gold
i used to run to my dreams blue skies fragrant air
vast encompassing life in bright eyes
hearty smiles in hope's own world
but they woke me up to this bonded ugly world
where there was no place to dream of freedom
to wish for those small cherished smile
to feel love simply love without the bonds
and the rights to feel the breeze brushing your tangled air
to laugh at your folishness
to love all crazy things
they all fought me to make me give up my wish
my beleif that my dreams would come true someday
sometime the weary mind sought peace and gave up
but did it find peace
the heart chose to be foolish but then it doesn't have eyes ears.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

2006-07-14T12:08:00.000-07:00

A Maze of thoughts

The last few days were like a whirlwind....of so many things...that put thoughts in my head...most of which seem lost.

I am no Soccer fan ...i dont watch it...yeah i am more a fanatic of the eleven idiots game and enjoy Tennis but not soccer but that Zidane incident really got me thinking soo much about stuff like why some things affect us more than other things....since childhood.
Its amazing why we think quiet people are calm controlled and all that.I mean i think the quieter you are the more rage you have hidden inside which is all the more harder to control and may spill over at the worst possible time.

Also i thought how you never get over your childhood hurts and past.The pain and troubles you suffer when an adult i guess is just that a pain.It is the hurts that you felt deeply when a child that remain and manifest in strange ways.They somehow never go away.

I always think a a happy childhood often makes people more happy life long rather than all the best things earned later in life.Because sometimes while people may succeed by hard work /chance or what not if they have had a hard childhood while they may eulogize to the world about their growth and acheivement from such pain, poverty....that hurt that pain never goes away deep at heart.Success is satisfaction...success is a slap in the face of all who called you a failure....success is acheivement but it is not happiness i guess.

But if you lived a happy chilhood life and the if you are a failure too later in your life all your life you have those innocent happy memories which will keep you smiling always looking back....however sad life may be today.Those memories never fade...in fact we simply add more to them just to make them more perfect i guess.Yeah they are the wastrels who dont acheive anything or give anything to this world i guess but they live in their facade of past happiness...

Its like that sweet song from Phir teri kahani yaad aayi

Aane wala kal ek sapna hai
Guzra hua kal bas apna hai
hum guzre kal me rehte hai
yaddon ke sab jugnu......

Then there were the Mumbai blasts.Well you read of blasts see them everyday and somehow they seem far from you.But these i think affected the people who think they wont be affected ......much.yes the upper middle class.most who died and were injured i guess were them.

I found it so strange and politically perfect statements in all channels and all over the papers they keep saying how resilient we are and so on and so forth....well what do you expect.what else will they do that will not be worse.
As Frost said it "In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on."

That 6 million people will stop living for 250 people.It seems harsh but that sadly is life .There's no other way.Most Indians live like that.....thats why probably we dont need as many pschychatrists as people in US need after any traumatic incident.We are used to the cruelty of life without needing blasts and terrorists.We live by that great law we named as Karma......

That city though has many faces......and it truly represents the eccentric mix called India.

The same people who save you one day risking all kill the other day.'Maximum City' by Suketu Mehta surely captured it beautifully to some extent and i liked that book.I just could not find its ebook now that ive returned it to the Library.
If all such mixed reflections were not enough there was high voltage tit for tat drama on at my office which left me in strange moodI am posting that seperately.

2006-07-08T01:32:00.000-07:00

Of No Solace

But, there are hours of lonely musing,
Such as in evening silence come,
When, soft as birds their pinions closing,
The heart's best feelings gather home.
Then in our souls there seems to languish
A tender grief that is not woe;
And thoughts that once wrung groans of anguish,
Now cause but some mild tears to flow.

This is a part of a really sweet poem called Evening Solace i had copied to my book some time ago.
It actually is so very true what we make such mountains of today.........................we do not consider it worth all the fuss as time moves on....or sometimes time numbs us so much that we just remember what passion it used to arouse at some time....but cant feel it anymore.

I really cant beleive what i used to get moist eyed about those days ....... even these days....actually.I once was almost in tears cause my mom pulled out a favorite plant laden with flowers with a small axe.I never seemed in a mood to forgive her for being so inconsiderate....and now i live in such a barren world and try not to see anything...that reminds me of my past home.
She hated our watching TV those days.......and considered it one invention which would ruin us ....................which she loves now and we hate it.

Sometimes you seem lost and ask yourself what you really want or at the worst do you want ....or you just want all this to end all this wanting and such nonsense......

I guess i almost get everything i want but by the time i get it somewhere down the line it loses its value and power it had of bringing that joy.I did not have a job for long.......by the time i got one it was like a job something to close that issue...it did not bring any joy.Then i thought of getting a bit more of a decent job ..i got it afte some time and yet by that time it was a norm.......and now i have decent job but nothing really great about it....everyone has a better........
I guess it is the same for everyone of us.
My sis's chairman had once once told her reminiscing about the way he built his business when i wanted 1 lakh i had 10000...when i wanted 10 lakhs i had 1 lakh and when i want 1 crore i have 10 lakhs.....its not that money could not be earned its just that its never what you want at any given point of time.

What i hate is the time it takes to get what i want takes away any wish i have left for it.I almost always get things after after i give up on them.Time steals like none.......I cant beleive i used to count every rupee spent to go by bus and internet was so expensive....and now i have it all over the place but no time really and its being there 24x7 is not as useful as it once would have been.

I always chat my friends when i had the whole time in the world to travel and shop selectively haggling and and learn some hobbies all that and this that i had no money..............when i have money i can spend i have no time .........so you just take whats easier.After some time again may be i'll slowly gain that time and comfort but then again money would have its own everyday needs and responsibilities.

But as they say Life is not fair and better get used to it......hmm tryin to...once used to like fighting it now just letting it be.......dont really think its worth all that helluva fight.
Life has remained just that..................a long headache on a noisy street.

P.S: As much as i hate Ekta Kapoor's serials(no i dont hate her...i think she's one helluva smart woman making dumb people pay for her nonsense)............I guess she's not that way off the mark about the the great indian family.I saw proof of it very badly.
We live in a house where the owners stay above and downstairs we saty and beside us stay the owners' brother(sick character who wud be described in some other post) and his wife.This brother basically is a parasite who does some business od knows what and has no qualms about it .The owner a hard working slogging employee brought a brand new Red car and was so excited as he showed it to us.Next morning we saw it scratched in the front completely and only one person could have done that as it was parked right in front of the brother's door....the sister in law....as no one else visited the place not even the servants. We were like shocked honestly....No wonder Ekta Kapoor reigns.

2006-06-28T08:40:00.000-07:00

The never changing Fixations....

Its been like a year now since i first finally started blogging after thinking about it since sooo long and i was juts looking back and its strange so much has changed and then so much has not changed. My blog started complaining about my managers and work and it still has not changed but what has changed is someone somewhere is also blogging or orkutting complaining about me i guess.

There was so much to write then and i guess i really loved putting it into words at the start ....now with tooo many more things on mind i never seem to get into one single track on which to write about and all my pages are like my life disorganised thoughts leading nowhere but i guess some lives are just that.

As of now after two weekends of travelling out of station and being extremely tired i found a sunday to sit at home and my net people did a great favor by disconnecting the internet ( he got an earful for that though with me being pretty upset...i mean no net for 5 days hmmm ) for the whole of the weekend hence i just write rather than browse around meaninglessly or do some useless stuff .

I was remembering what i had once wondered at a previous job when a customer had sobbed saying he had almost 20 GB of songs....we were like smirking does he ever listen to them all. Well today i seem to be in such a situation. With nearly 6 GB of songs and still downloading from here n there at every opportunity i asked myself how much am i listening to compared to those days when i used to play the Tape recorder at my bedside in the lowest volume .

I know i never read e books......as i hate reading on screen whatever can be read on paper. But with space constarints i love having ebooks as a reference when i return books to the library. And i keep searching them on orkut...esnips. But i hardly read books now as much as i used to read...for the first time i kept a book for whole of 40 days and did not turn a page and returned it. I do think i should brush up my technical stuff now that i am planning to apply wherever i can but i never do that...it took me a final interview to get to read up the geekinterview.com...though i messed up the interview at least i got started....it shook me from that lazy stupor i have fallen into.

Then as if 2 months of lull was too much i went on my shopping spree again....... As i sat down looking back i know what i was fixated on ....the village house where we stayed at........the trip to that lake was great but i can always say it was an outing but what makes me feel envy is the fact that someone has such a lovely house.......i mean it was lovely ....large pucca house double story with a huge courtyard with all kinds of trees....brinjals hanging and coconuts...there was television.....everything really and a much more servants there.

There were no cultured roses but yeah the not so looked after garden had been filled with lavender wildflowers......when i woke up at 8 in morning.My 1 mega pixel cam blurred the pic and turned them to blue flowers which hardly look as great here....By evening 5 they all close and it looks like a barren place again. As i described it to her and said it’d be lovely to be there she laughed and said as if it wont be hard.

I say why hard .......i mean i just am fed up of these small spaces...yes we live here because of amenities.......not sure what are those.........you can find much loyal and willing servants up there. She said yeah you can coz all you will do is have big room with bookshelves and a large garden and television for a change (ok she missed the computer) bas you would be happy.

We all have some fixations...If i love flowers in the garden my sister somehow says she loves a vegetable garden though she would not do anything for it she says she’d love if someone grew it. Her favorite she says is tomato plant. The way she says it in Hindi will her eyes rolling is amazing. ”Vaise lal lal fal latakte rehte hain na to lagta hai mehnat ka fal mila jaise bolte na waise mil gaya hai.” she will say. She says how much farmers must love to see their crops esp the ones with such vegetables.

So we argued and finally concluded that while living in village was hardly a cake walk but with money it would be great to have a house like that back to go back to when sick of this place , noise and traffic.

Thing is i want to go to office but i don’t want to work.....i need a break from work. Some people just are freaks. We have a small room with the coffee machine and we four girls kind of sit up on the platform and joke for 5 to 10 mins there when we trek up for coffee together. All this changed when one of the senior managers complained to our manager that this must stop as people were feeling embarrassed of coming and taking coffee when girls sat together as if in a college environment.....Hmmm

Seems like at office you should look like you are working hard and tortured not laughing or having fun and joking ...that’s what I remembered then....... lot of the people certainly have a problem if they see others laughing .....they simply don’t believe in that phrase live and let live. Neither do they live nor let others live.

2006-06-13T11:31:00.000-07:00

Just keeping track of the days.....

I really wanna move out of this place i am living in soon...since we've come into this house i have been losing things regularly.....sometimes small some big.
Well last fortnight some one had cut the mosquito net set at window near my parents room.A few days later mom woke me up by vigorous shaking.....that some one had burnt a nice part of the mosquito net of the front room and my computer beside it was turned towards the window rather than the opposite way which was normal.(Thank god this happened after my Dad's visit else it would have been a locked up life.)
She found CD's strewn in front of the door and my headphones lying beside the door of the neighboring house.

Now started the discussion....what was lost ....nothing we could not remember any.....neighbours above and beside came and so all feasible stuff discussed.Since no thief would throw a headphones and go what was the objective asked neighbors.... scaring?....oh this that and what not....do you people have any enemies....Gosh we had to try hard to remember something.
It took me 4 days to realise that whoever came had stolen my Sony Walkman .......and while running the headphones must've dropped.......(such is my memory and organization of stuff).Never was anyone at home so relieved to know that it was a thief afer all....though now i have to cook up something to tell my dad as i'll get some nice dose for being careless ....blah blah...earlier it was "you ppl cannot earn a penny....now the regular stuff is just bcoz u ppl earn a bit you dont understand the value of money".........Such is the way things go on....

Whole day today busy with nearly 300 snaps by oh so many people....luckily work pressure was less....wonderful snaps of the really amazing place.

While its easy to complain about so many things as i often do on my blog when you look back you realise some good things.It was a place i could never have visited normally....i mean its pretty much a unknown place and hence sheer good fortune that i happened to be in a team that had someone with access to such a place.

Added to it one of the guys had added comments and a documentary about the trip to the snaps in the local language which was like amazing.Very few people today can honestly speak in such wonderful regional lingo.Really enjoyed it.....hard though it was for me to read and understand it.

All this seems to suspend the time somewhere looking back ....as there is oh so many other things which are at a really bad turning point.. ........ With the way thing are though i am convinced that life is all about the present moment.......somewhere again but then you feel life is and was i guess all about moments....a few which you hope for a few which you look back on.
Its something i never can be sure of which side i am on.....living for.....todays moments?....or yesterdays moments? or moments you hope would be tommorow?
As if i have less confusions i seek out more of em......

2006-06-11T11:50:00.000-07:00

A weekend Trip

Its been sooo long i guess since i wrote but then i was like not getting the time to write when i had things to write in my mind and when i made time to write...i sort of lost the flow.....as there was nothing special..........just life and its strange ways and added to it my strange thoughts.

Well first some good stuff...i wish i would one day write a proper travel blog...........that is if i get enough time space and bucks to travel as i love to really.
So i just write as i write my woes about literally everything...............including this lovely trip last weekend we had to a small nearly not well known in the travel world kinda lake in the jungle....It was really beautiful....The way travel is commercialised....its amazing such places still remain....but it still showcases what marketing is all about.
Hmm i just had my Nokia 6670 and that definitely could not capture the lovely place from a moving bus balancing on narrow mud roads.So here is the only pics i thought was good enough....may be some more from my friends digital cam later.

Actually one of our colleagues happens to be a native of this place and hence this trip was arranged else its absolutely hard to stay in a place which is not on travel map and no guest houses or anything......
Actually one of our colleagues happens to be a native of this place and hence this trip was arranged else its absolutely hard to stay in a place which is not on travel map and no guest houses or anything......

Its a beautiful lake in the middle of a jungle over a mountain.....mud roads have just been repaired after neglect...it used to be some british place for resting while hunting ..... and lovely it was.I dont want to use the same metaphors for great , lovely again and again just sufficient to say it was very natural with absolutely no human pollution visible.
A cool lake surrounded by trees with very small pockets of sand giving it a beach like feel.

Now my woes.....

My new nokia 6670 screen got scratched badly when we were trying to get photographed while getting into the... ahem .... bullock carts for fun.

When you go to a lovely natural place you would want to sit and soak up the feel of the place...not play games and that too football/handball......but then some ppl and in our case the person who got it was a girl....what do i say.
I hate when such stuff is used for Team building.....it only ends up in Team breaking into new teams.
Some people as much as sweet they are i wish would shut up once in a while.....i really find it hard to understand whats so boring in keeping quiet for half an hour.....funnily i always surround myself with such people only....some flaw in me huh??

Why do guys drink on the sly ......cant they skip that in the pretty few rare trips that they have with their female colleagues esp when they cant hold it.....and start acting up. It was just one chap really but it irritated the hell out of all and ruined the mood. More so as he had resigned and had no fear of authority i guess so a bit too high.

Some people love to be spoilsport and suddenly put long faces...knowing well it'll affect everyone....

You go to some architectural temples and half the crowd is only interested in coconuts and the deity in the sanctum and other half in traveling to the next place.

It is fate that some one has such a wonderful and lovely large house with such expansive courtyard and such respectful village hands as we had stayed at....and what not and lives cooped up in small boxed out apartments.

Some gals were so excited at women drawing water from well...”isnt it lovely isnt it lovely” they chirp...well all i could say was...its lovely to visit and see them but hard to live with it daily. Though i adore the lovely calm...large spaces..natural surroundings...large courtyards...palm trees and all stuff of villages.....i am a little less fascinated by people there.....all that stuff of village life ....drawing water...bullocks and such. People are the same everywhere towns cities and villages...varied....but same.....manipulations...egos...powerplay,hero worship, love and hate....just the manifestations are different.

Hmm all in all it was a beautiful place though and considering the fact that i dont wish to stay here long enough for another trip with these set of people it was a good trip too.
But now that im back i have to get serious about all the issues left on the backburner.....
....i.e the politics of promotion in my office....that i guess iwll be next post....though the best way to say it was as one guy said as we entered the city and someone honked a horn bigtime....."welcome back to the town of perfect structures and honking horns."

2006-05-21T11:53:00.000-07:00

Brand of unhappiness

Its been so long i guess since i wrote...but them i feel i repeat myself and just coz
life repeats itself seems no good reason that i repeat myself here.
Life has gone from just one damn thing after the another to one damn thing over and over....
Almost everything i seem to do in the past few days seems to turn out badly.Well it happens a lot with me in general a lot but last week it happened a bit too much enough to be reminded of it in a special way.

I bought my new Phone a camphone 6670 but somehow after a struggling day i cud not find the color i wanted and then i compromised and then again somehow i just was not happy with it.Can't pin point and type ...many things i guess...just i was not happy.
Like why the heck does it need a key code if u want autolock....and it somehow after a 15 min conversation was warm enough to put me off....which was my basic reason to switch phones.

The way things are going i am living up to follow the following quote

"Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness. ~Robertson Davies"

Well i am searching for those treasures in my brand of unhappiness coz i for one am fed up of this search for happiness.Some flaw in my temperament i guess which is unrepairable and my surroundings....which i can't demand to be changed.

Friends at office say i've lost the smile on my face since the day i took charge for a bunch of ppl(they are nice and blunt enough to say that its a false formality smile when i smile wide at their comments)....well if only i could tell that thats just a miniscule part of my unhappiness.

2006-05-07T02:19:00.000-07:00

A State of unaffectedness

Its become a state of continuity in my mind , the state of complete unaffectedness..Its hard to understand or rather relate when i ponder about myself.I who could be affected by every small word voice, happening seem to be unaffected by none now.

Its like a sense of indifference has settled on the heart.Earlier everything seemed to affect a hope , a future i had a vision of....dreams you d believed would turn true. Its like nothing matters any more..Nothing in reality...who cares ,what happens...everything can be dealt with...there’s nothing left to lose that i can lose or i believe will lose....nothing that matters to the heart at least.

There are still somethings i hold dear but still i’ve nothing to fear...as they cant be touched...memories, visions ...unlived dreams.

I have no illusions left about this world but then it has become like one of those quotes...by who else by ultimate favorite in quotes respect keeping Oscar wilde aside.....Mark twain

“Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live. ”

They are gone now and the mind seems so unbothered about anything... now that the heart seems to be no longer the trouble it used to raise for the mind ....about everything in life.

2006-04-27T09:04:00.000-07:00

Friendships, thoughts and all nonsense

Last week was my Library day....i make a trek to the library however busy to get myself a dose of escape.....
and since i was way too tired to get anything which would tax me i opted for no technical books....honestly once you get a job i guess no one reads technical books...they are only for interviews when you have no job.
So i picked up a small poetic collection....basically its a collection of poems read on BBC's program "Something understood" ...it is based on those spiritual themes and all which i'll skip reading i guess...God's not pretty much my cuppa tea now.
It happens rarely with me but when it does i am quite amused.....
Well on thr front page of this book scrawled across in a childlike handwriting was "Page 73 and Page 107 Just Mindblowing."
Well one was the lovely Vikram Seth's poem i had posted earlier "All you who sleep tonight".
The other was just the opposite type god based i guess was ...oks "A Julian Contemplation" by Edwina Gateley.
What amused me was what inspires or rather whats on their mind when people scribble such notes in public books?

Neverthless i finally broke the jinx after 10 days and came home at 8 pm...wow gr8 and started reading the book a bit...
the friendship section had some very good thoughts and reminded me of a discussion with a friend.It was in reply to a Fwd: i mailed .

I hope my copying from the mails isnt an issue :)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

FWD :How Friends Break ?
Both Friends will think the other is busy and will not contact thinking it may be disturbing. As time passes both will think let the other contact. After that each will think why should I contact first. Here ur love will be converted to Hate. Finally without contact the memory becomes weak. They forget each other. One fine Day they will meet n blame one another. So Keep in touch with all your Friends.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reply:
yeah that's true
may be thats y friends break but one question i ask is is really friend ship that way meaning does lack of contact reduce interest?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Re:reply
It was just a fwd but neverthless good thoughts but contact does make a difference --- not to friendship that was --- but keeping up friendship with time.As we go on no contact means we only have memories no understanding of their current scenario , and sharing of thoughts or whatever and that is what defines a good friendship is it not?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

So when i read the below something spoken by a very old friend of MArk Tully D'Arcy O'Farrell.......
i felt as is always with me..."Someone Understood"....probably why i love books.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So often friendships wither and love grows cold because the initial excitement wears off and we do not persevere in deepening the relationship.It can only deepen by living through the duller moments, by arguing out the inevitable
differences and overcoming the distances too, as D'Arcy suggests.

"You must keep in contact with people and you must make some sort of effort.Its no use sitting around and waiting for the other fellow to come to y ou.And there's sometimes an element of sacrifice; you've got to be prepared to put things aside for your friend, somethings that perhaps, superficially , you'd rather be doing.If someone you're really close to wants to see you, you have to be prepared to sacrifice your own plans to be with them.
I think there is so much change and newness in life now, compared to when we were young, its much easier to have superficial friendships with people and then forget about themwhen you pass onto the next set.So i think it has become harder to retain and develop friendships because of the pace of life, but having said that, real friendship is a great rarity in life, and always has been."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To end the post some nice lines from the book...more from it later

"They that love beyond the world ,
cannot be seperated by it.
Death cannot kill what what never dies"

William penn

Hope they dont sound too morose..................but i somehow dont feel morose
about death.....I always think if it weren't for death there would be no escape....from the mess of life.......
thank god this will end surefire..........i feel when i think of death.But i guess thats for my ownself.....its not great to imagine it for whom you care for.
Now what to title this post as??....writing is not much difficult ....hardest is the title for me. they are so losely connected topics all in one post...............i scribble all nonsense....nah type(i hate typing and my typing is the greatest amusement of my team mates......but imagine i write so long a post when i hate typing if a post could be scribbled i'll write triple the length i guess)

2006-04-14T23:25:00.000-07:00

Good Friday Huh.........

Few moments of sheer joy and then a day of agony ,recriminations ,accusations seems is what i ended up with on this friday what i hoped would be a good friday.For those two hours it felt blissful as i lay on the cool floor as music played happily....Tere Ghar Ke Samne (its quite nice this song i like to hum it a lot) and more......I really love listening to music all alone at home..........esp those old songs my fav....... with mom and sis around its never the same.

It was nice really nice and i guess and that was all nice for the day and quite some time to come.
I just wondered how is this relaxation and happiness bad compared to going to some damn temple with fumes and what not ......bizzare repetition of some verses and that too in such noisy manner(some of them make it so much shrill)......but i guess i am unable to convince anyone around.
I dont know of love but Faith is blind.....no issues with it till i am not forced into it.....but people with relegious faith are never content with themselves being blind they want others for company.
To enjoy by yourself is sin and every moment no one will leave you alone lest you commit this sin of loving your own company.....and be lost to their world.Sane arguments are a waste in such case.....they only elicit more stubborn blind faith and emotional ekta kapoor scenes.Now one's worried about my going blind with the time i spend at my PC.....well they dont mind if it was at work but at home.What pays is a different story....thats one faith most beleive in .

Its ever the same with my ever awaited holidays.I wish i was back to my office where honestly i dont care....i may complain crib but nothing or no one there matters much...its infinitely easy you feel when such things happen.
There one amusing thing i noticed last month....a new word was commonly being used for me by both my manager and my colleagues.Everytime they kind of tell me....its ok ....."Dont Panic".Huh i think ....what makes them think i'll panic about this project.....then again i think do i really look so dedicated and tense and that people take it that way way....when my basic feeling is whocares.
Then i was left wondering .....Dilbert epitomises our offices.....what does that for our homes.
I shudder to think may be ..... Ekta Kapoor's serials....

2006-04-13T11:21:00.000-07:00

The world of reality has its limits.....sadly

I was kind of lost.............and did not know what to do as i sat at my PC....to stay away from it means other kind of troubles in this closed up house.So i just sat down staring at it till my screensaver came up a huge slideshow of all my hopeless collection of flowers and trees from the net.There are two pictures of two trees starkly different one with bright white flowers which i adore and one deep orange leaves, both i love and as they looped through i kept imagining standing beneath those trees....and looking up at the......it seemed lovely the illusion.

But in reality i found a tree with yellow flowers(reality is always different hmmmm) hanging down all over the tree near my office.I literally sat below it and looked up and i saw the lovely flowers and those bunch of fleas in there too and i got scared of them getting into my eyes and lenses and got away.Then i started wondering...may be thats the problem with me ....i see more reality than i wish to see.That is why i guess Jean Jacques Rousseau said
"The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless. "

This is one of those Classic poems from Vikram Seth,.....actually its the title poem of that book."All you who sleep Tonight"....It was long since i opened the book...i just enjoy glancing at it and playing my games of randomly opening pages.Since its long since a poem was posted by me and i am in no mood to write anything poetic ...... i'm like more in mood to write some thing caustic but let it be.So i thought of putting t his poem here.Words can be woven so beautifully or is it thoughts can be transformed so wonderfully i think as i read his poems.
--------------------------------------
All you who sleep tonight
Far from the ones you love,
No hand to left or right
And emptiness above -
Know that you aren't alone
The whole world shares your tears,
Some for two nights or one,
And some for all their years.

-- Vikram Seth
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2006-03-18T10:39:00.000-08:00

A book and an obsession and me

There are books and oh so many books.Some are special to everyone....not because they are classics or good books....some unread books too can be special........ The reason being they touch you somewhere ...or trigger a special memory......or just leave you perplexed......and then there are people who cite how one book changed their life.
I guess that one thing i am safe from.
But this week as i looked back at a book i had bought some four years ago at a very dark time of life.......it was bought as i buy things mostly by intuition.
I particularly recall a joke by friends on this habit...it was a tease but it was executed so well that i still smile when i think of it....We had gone shopping the three of us and R was the only one who was sure of buying something. the two of us were like if we like something. So as we shopped and went in and out of shops and i just was like in 5 minutes out saying lets go nothing here...they were like ok what do you want....what kind of dress are you looking for sequins....embroidery and all i could say is something i will like.....and they teased me endlessly yeah she shook look at it and love it....that’s how she will shop and strangely thats true thats how i shop. There’s no reason to my madness.I am amazed at how quickly in one glance my sister can judge the cut the flow and fit color and all that.I am like hooked onto something say the colour or duppatta and and i ignore everything else.
I was thinking how all i do is by default.I never can be clear about what i want...because i always am clarifying what i dont want.....probably thats my problem.

Neverthless getting back to the book.....I had read the First Impressions on it in The Hindu and thats all but one day i just saw it at the store (i too am like many book lovers with a fetish for covers) and as i just held it and flipped through i bought it.Its called “A Himalayan Love Story “ by Namita Gokhale. I will not review it or anything there’s enough such stuff if one googles.I just interpret my reaction and memories with it.....and i have a very strong one actually associated.This book somehow brought together two things i kind of get passionate about Books and Flowers.

Today as i look and think i guess the book is kinda ok.......good if you are someone who reads Indian fiction and such stuff else many people may be bored by it.
Like everyone has their crazy thing i always have a thing about finding out names of flowers...even though i did not study Botany and know no one who does....people still say come on...did you study engineering or Botany.

But before this book mine was limited to only some general flowers not poinsettias and such.The book is set in a hilly setting of Kumaon and Nainital and hence the author beautifully talks all along of flowers....and uses the Hindi names of some .This kind of made me want to find out the English names of all the flower names i knew in hindi and vice versa.
It kind of became an obsession that time.It was a time when internet was very expensive and i was jobless and yet i somehow saved some bucks from the little i had left after spending money buying such books though......i was really a bit strange...actually am.
There was a reference to magnolia flower and tree w.r.t heroine’s house throughout the book and while i seemed to have heard and known it i could not place it.....and did i spend time and effort on just finding it out heck.
I loved flowers always though i never make huge issue about it but my obsession with finding out their names kind of grew a lot after this book.I had enrolled for a part time course in Communication Engg which i never finished or rather attempted (just blew up the bucks) but i had some wonderful time in the University library looking at books on Flowers and reading Rushdie and Vikram Seth.

Then there’s the opening passage of the book.

“I have always recognized that i carry an emptiness inside me, although i did not first understand it.When i was a child i would look at other faces, at their ordinary expressions of laughter and sadness and tears, and wonder at the ease with which they juggled these masks about. All i ever felt was a constant festering sense of anger and unease. I felt trapped inside my skin and bone and circumstance, and for this reason i began at a very early age to avoid people.”

I felt it was what i could write of myself then and strangely do even now....though i do have to learnt with huge difficulty to carry at least a few masks....it leaves me uneasy and angry and so i guess i blog.

2006-03-13T10:27:00.000-08:00

Life's KALEIDOSCOPE and my Varied reading

My initial reading pattern actually was not the normal one...most people graduate from comics to nancy drew and famous five to Agatha Christie,mushy novels, Mills and Boon...popular fiction like Grisham, Archer , Sheldon.....Ayn Rand, Richard Bach etc and on to better stuff.

I started off differently....Readers Digest....Russian Childrens Novels, Nancy Drew(Oh i owe Carolyn Keene and i will write a post on this), and then went on to Jeffrey Archer and Ayn Rand and Grisham.Then i read Sheldon a bit...and then Richard Bach and then mushy of the likes of novels Danielle Steel and finally sick of life went on to Mills and Boon(Esp the blue covered Modern Romances....others are extremes they bore too much....they make no sense anyway but what the heck they are so stress releiving you just dont think....and a story just glides through and you fall asleep).
But that was then.....now i am stable at literary stuff mostly Indian Fiction or Literary stuff.

I read Danielle Steel books when in college....till i outgrew her or may be got fed up
Have a few novels of hers unfortunately not my favorites
I mean we friends thought she had a sadism the way she almost always kills the hero in the novel and the second one's characterisation never matches up the way she starts off about the original hero.
Its this thing that irritated the most but also over a time reading the same stuff bores you...i of course intersped reading her with Archer so i got through till i was saturated.
Anyway i read a lot of her books and some of them i think are extremely beautiful......
My favorites are The Ranch, Ghost, Granny Dan, The Promise, ........ and somei cant get the names and many others which i do like .... like say Zoya ,at least as i remember them as liking them a decade ago.......can't remember the finer details.though there is one book i think one should strictly stay off if you dont want to slip into depression.
Its too dark .... its about abuse...its called 'Malice' and its real mood turn off and depressive.

Anyway it is here i was thinking women have a distinct advantage over men with respect to books.Women can happily enjoy detective stories, Science fiction(only genre that i keep off but i know girls who love it), legal thrillers and all the genres by any author and of course sappy stories, romances, sentimental stuff ....unlike men (exceptions are the norm ) who just cannot enjoy most novels by women or women centric books.

I have a few of them still, as most of them were from library..neverthless i was arranging my stuff and things tumbled out.
I had written so beautifully in cursive handwriting a poem from one of her books called Kaledioscope...
I remember the storyline very lightly or rather hardly ...its about 3 sisters or so...what i remember is one of them unfortunately has an unhappy ending and an unhappy life throughout.

KALEIDOSCOPE means a constantly changing set of colors produced by an instrument.

the poem is beautiful and i always remember it esp the last five lines .
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To deepest dusk,
from morning sun
to twilight dreams
fantastic schemes
and lives that go awry
such shining hopes
such sudden twists from
bright to dark
from grim to grand
from joy to sorrow
always waiting for tommorow
and a twist of fate
a ray of hope
with the faintest sleight of hand
the alteration of all of life's schemes
and all its scope..
all with one tiny turn
of life's KALEIDOSCOPE.
Danielle Steel
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

2006-03-09T07:34:00.000-08:00

A hopeless feel of life

Nothings worse than self doubt.It sometimes though creeps in and destroys you.And then in such times when you see darkness around in life it simply adds on to the worst .Its very hard ....its not as much about anything....its simply when you feel for a time that you are worthless and the world can do without you.I guess the world can do without anyone actually even the so called best people but still there are timeswhen you just feel if only you could avoid this mess called life and its everyday duties....of living.

I dont know ...there are people i dont like much but it seems bad when you see how one can be the victim of circumstances even in those people. There was an analysis on and someone had asked me ok you read the document i mailed you tell us what was in there and i just spoke what i remembered first....I said the problem to be analysed had to be specified in a positive way. Now a manager there she immediately spoke out instinctively" its a problem and what positive is there".......then she clammed up and said "ok yeah so what shall we phrase it as to be positive?."I sensed it immediately only some one who can understand the negative side of life could see it ...even i think the same why do we have to put it that positive way if its that bad.

With time i got it...thats the way the world likes it............ rose colored glasses......else we wont be able to go on.
Sometimes even nice things and nice people hurt...Its kind of like that....I have friends who speak condemning things, life of others but simply turn a blind eye when i am doing the same thing or at the same position...I dont know how to take it.Do they really dont see it or do they make an exception for me....is it sympathy.....or what. sometimes its just as that song goes. Everybody hurts
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When the day is long and the night, the night is yours alone,
When you're sure you've had enough of this life, well hang on
Don't let yourself go, 'cause everybody cries and everybody hurts sometimes
Sometimes everything is wrong.
Now it's time to sing along
When your day is night alone, (hold on, hold on)
If you feel like letting go, (hold on)
When you think you've had too much of this life, well hang on
'Cause everybody hurts. Take comfort in your friends
Everybody hurts. Don't throw your hand.
Oh, no. Don't throw your hand
If you feel like you're alone, no, no, no, you are not alone
If you're on your own in this life, the days and nights are long,
When you think you've had too much of this life to hang on
Well, everybody hurts sometimes,Everybody cries.
And everybody hurts sometimes And everybody hurts sometimes.
So, hold on, hold onHold on, hold on, hold on,
hold on, hold on, hold on
Everybody hurts. You are not alone .
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`

2006-02-17T11:42:00.000-08:00

I the hopeless, Me the stubborn, My Time the precious

Isnt time the most precious thing in today's world.
Its the most valuable thing you have and should be given to what we love or we care for and not what we are supposed to care for and love.How rarely we manage to do it in reality.
I've always thought the same but now i am feeling the pinch of it a bit too much.
People try to take so much of it...
in the name of responsibilty
in the name of dutyin the name of work
and you fail to give it to what you love
what deserves the time of your life does not get it.
From birth to death you are given roles to play....
you may say you are irresponsible and
try to escape them...live for yourself but no one leaves you....
and the whole process of evading those responsibilities thrust on you
takes up the same time.
Why we cannot own our own time....
Why cant i use it for what i love
Why do people claim my time as theirs
by blood by money by coercion by fortune.
I feel so horrible...sometimes i feel i am so evil
so self centered....but i try to be just the same as i guess
i better be that than the nice one i once was whom everyone thought is doing a favor by acknowledging...i have come a long way since those days.
What a nice Obedient(nothing ever pleases people be it home or office more) girl i was known as those days and what a hopeless self-centered uncaring girl i have become as per people who've seen me through life.

Everyone from the TV i watched ,to books i read, to friends i have had have been blamed for my transformation though it was i who chose each one of the above.No one ever thinks may be i was the same .... just tried to live upto them but now am fed up and dont care.
where i am supposed to belong i am a thorn
where id like to belong i am a stranger
its some other world "my world"
again the same I ...My
I do wish i was such large hearted as some pretend to be and some may be really
why do i always think of My
My books...My friends..My flowers...My garden..
My room My world....My Time....My Life
All people have a flaw
A flaw which takes them to great heights or their Doom
No i dont think perfect people matter or are visible as anything... success or failure
Its the flaw in your mind..soul that you try to correct ....perfect
that makes people become what they end up as.
Mine is this My....I beleive in nothing worldly as much as i appear in harmony with this worlds ways.
Whatever good i do i relate to some My I think i'll be of any good in this world only when i think"My world"...As long as i think this is God's world..what a hell he has created......i will be the same.
(All this i thought up because after a miserable tiring week my mom lays a claim to my weekend and i protest and i am considered the most hopeless useless hard hearted person.I guess i am really terrible )

"What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960"

2006-02-11T11:18:00.000-08:00

too tired to read anything new...
too off mood to think anything good
too worried to fall asleep as much as i 'd love to
but needed a break and hence pulled out my collections notebook
and reread this poem by Vikram Seth and thought of just posting it.
---------------------------------------------------------
I saw him turn
With worried haste
And the world's fear
From me.

I shallThrough
month and year
will unlearn
The evident way.

The pain-dense tracks
Dark in the mist
Will see snow fall.

I will retaste
The tang of day,
The ceased belief
That paths exist
Outside this grief.

Vikram Seth
-----------------------------------------------------------

2006-02-02T09:45:00.000-08:00

I am the sorrow in everyone's world
all who are unfortunate to be named as mine without their choice
I am the pain in everyone's lifethe pain that ruins their happiness
I never did belongI never could belongto you O World
There's this deep flaw in me which sees through your flaws
So i can never belong to you or to your own
Those who live by you blindly--- the ways of you O mighty world.
You who denied me Happiness i never complained
but you who want to rob me of my right to live by myself in my pain
and not belong to your farce
the right to be me and not you....
You may win , you may win despite my fight
because you go onbecause you have the numbers
and i am a human unlike you which consists of a collective humanity
a sea where the an individual means nothing
you may win because you conspire with fate
you may win because i fight with handicaps
but you'll never win in my mind
this life and any other life ever
I may lose one day may be pretty soon in your sphere
but that day is the day you fear O world
For i will destroy all who conspired with my fate
being just that the sorrow the hurt
I who will have nothing to lose
I who will be the pain in all your own
I who will be the hated in all labelled my own
Will make you lose O world...
will live on to make you and your ilk lose.

2006-01-31T07:49:00.000-08:00

A menace in my life
Astrologers have been the menace of my life .Hence its no wonder that i associated them with Macbeth’s Witches (I am heavily influenced by my school education having a good dose of shakespeare)long before they actually caused the real damage.They’ve harmed me probably more than i can or would write about.So do i hate astrology...am a non beleiver.NO Not really and herein lies the issue.My views on fate i wrote about earlier in a post.So yes i do beleive in fate but not in the way most people do.Fate as i said determine what we have to choose from(which sometimes is devil and deep sea, bad and worse) but i do beleive we can choose.One book which i enjoyed(well i admit i am a bit just a lil bit partial to books which agree with my thoughts.I dont learn from books mostly i find great solace in them ...its like yeahh..someone thinks like me...agrees with me as weird as i think type) is ONE by Richard Bach though unlike him i think we are limited by fate greatly.
Anyway the main topic astrology lets assume is right and i actually think its an art if not a science.the sad story is 99% of the astrologers are not skilled in this intricate art and by claiming to predict and handle fate they doom lives(exactly what the witches in macbeth did).It seems a small thing but then “ It isn't the mountain ahead that wears you out - it's the grain of sand in your shoe.”
The witches thing is a really wonderful analysis
These so called pandits and astrologers are consulted and the first thing they’ll say is it’ll be fine if a small puja is done or this n that.Next will be a trip to some holy place ...if this too fails then the person will be himself/herself advised to do pujas fasting etc etc...making life hapless for a working person.If all fails they use the last escape route.Whatever you do you should do with shraddha else its waste...oh yeah then damn the late honesty.Its easy for me to trash them here but in the social set up that we live in i know how hard it is to ignore them.You may not care but family and people all around you do.
its not like i dont enjoy it as long as its for fun but their remedies..hmmm.I do check out horoscopes..play tarot..analyse my terrible numerology...dabble with people professing to be palmists but to have them change your life irreparably is a big risk...It is a big risk if you have people beleiving in such stuff blindly all around you.Its honestly beyond me to explain to anyone why me moved from a house we had been staying since long(for me i was terribly attached to my garden there) as all the holy men after explaining something or the other ended up on one line..this house is closed on east...so no progress in life...oh yeah damn them.So now we live in a place that has no privacy and no garden.(i’ll never get over this though i never admit).everytime one such person visits us it ends in a row. earlier it used to be just some external headches so i cared a fig but now i am roped into such nonsense and i hate it.
I hate getting up early morning since forever. Even my manager has stopped expecting me early but my mom is a eternal optimist and tries it still. Unbelievable she still expects i’ll change after 28 years of knowing me.(In fact thats the personal joke among us sisters...our parents are so very optimistic that we have been given none of it...same can be said of their being so energetic and we two so lazy).
it is not astrology i hate ...it is the Powerplay(there are two kinds some do it for money and some to feel powerful to know and affect others fates) that comes with it....and used by so called astrologers.Some can be excused esp the village and such uneducated ones who live a time wrap.....they still dont know that a jobs ...lifestyles and other stuff..yeah people are falling back to old world theories and astrology but is it really possible ...no people simply mould it....if its succesful ...its fine if not it was done with shraddha.Then we have technical and highly educated specialists in this fields after all astrology is a very dominant segment of the internet.
The thing is even if an astrologer reads or knows something correctly they will not say it right.they will not tell a man he will die even if they see it. They talk in riddles and ensure they have a escape route and each word they say can be construed to a different meaning (its is here that i related it best to macbeth’s witches .One can read a quick 1 page story here. http://www.bardweb.net/plays/macbeth.html )

Earlier for me predictions used to be of just one use.
If a good one they added to the feel good factor.
If bad they gave me a thrill factor—the thrill of hoping to one day prove a stupid person wrong.
(but then i know they’ll get away with 1 line...mistakes happen)
But alas this was before but now that all their strategies have run out i am targeted personally or rather my sleep....my elixir and my own personal time.
This is a ridiculous post may be but years later it will be good fun for me i guess.

2006-01-18T10:32:00.000-08:00

Positivity...my arguments

This is written for a friend ... a dear stubborn person (though a little less than me) who’s simply hell bent on making life hard ....added to it he says thats the
thrill of life.hmm
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Well i tried to write a positive post as you said .......actually thought but then i have just one thought what do you mean by positive.....its like saying yes this is good ....i may not see why it happened...its good basically in one line “whatever happens it happens for the good”.
Not a hard thing if you just want to put in words but what objective will it acheive...the immediate example: “yeah its good that my exit policy says two months notice ...now instead of being lazy i will focus more on exiting this trap.So i should be happy about it rather than curse the HR for such stupid mindless changes.”Well if thats positive dear i am definitely not into it.

Firstly id say i would have been happier if youd live beleiving in positivity ...
whatever negative happened with you saddened me( i know now u’ll say its not negative) ...may be my sadness is nothing compared to the pain of yours of losing your dream but neverthless it made me sad to see someone shaken from their beleif in positivity in ...self beleif...yes i'd still like it if you'd have that stubborn beleif that if not today someday u'll crack ur dream...but as i said life gets to you after a certain point.I would have been happiest to lose this point but as i said life kind of wins and i hate it....i really hate it.

I am not writing this in defence as i dont explain or actually i dont care to explain myself but its only for the concern you express that i am trying to clarify.
Negative people are people who belittle others dreams...people who only beleive they have only one perspective and think all others are wrong.It is never that simple.
I do not consider myself negative ... but yes my instant reaction to anything is to immediately see the negative aspect of it but i have always said..it is my mind which is negative . At heart i am very optimistic else id not survive the failures of this world.

The thing that i argue for...is also positivity but we have a difference of perception in seeing it.For you positive thinking is a denial of the existence of negative. You want to try to find a positive out look in every happening. In my case positive thinking is hoping and trying to be positive despite the existence of the negative and unfavorable circumstances. Its like this you see a cracked glass and say ignore the crack ...its a beautiful glass anyway...id say no it has a crack and still there are some ways of cracking glass which makes them look very pretty but neverthless there is a crack. Its never the perfect clear glass the way it was to be.It is here that our perspectives differ.

Positive attitude may make you succeed i guess more so in today's competitive world where there is no time to get over wounds true but then how it relates to living life i doubt.

To write only positive stuff when i relate something say on my blog is like telling myself what i choose to say...i.e like whatever i see i say yes thats fine ...thats right ...thats good. Its like denying the truth and claiming to be happy when you are not and constantly doing it trains one in those great areas of being unattached and unaffected.I think that takes away the pleasure of being a human being.Saints may be great but m not too fond of them.
The ability to feel is very important as per me.”To live with the saints in heaven will be eternal bliss and glory, But to live with saints on earth is an altogether different story!”
If given a choice between feeling numb and feeling pain i guess i will go for pain because pain symbolises you are alive.....it makes you hope for it to end and bring soothing.I hate the feeling of no feeling --- of no sadness...because then it means no happiness.I am not very fond of the nirvana state....beyond happiness and pain.

But all this is for me...there are people for whom it works better to cultivate such attitude of unaffectednes....its helpful....it makes life easy though its hard to cultivate the detached attitude.As for me no ..... i like to be angry....sad and then find something to be happy despite it and i can be that ...my greatest problem are always a bunch of people whose thinking is very negative with respect to my chosen ways and thoughts.These people are present in every sphere and while negative people are to be avoided is suggested its not posible in reality u have to deal with them.

The problem at least for me from your perspective is this ...if you deny the existence of negative and take all things as same as in your case positive then you stop feeling you start laughing and saying you are happy about everything this slowly makes you kind of inanimate in the sense that you lose feeling.

May be thats what all those great teachers preach the state of being unaffected by anything but personally i am not greatly in favor of that.Human beings are supposed to feel and yes if something goes to extremes one should handle it but taking all things as same as is preached in all our great stuff is not my cup of tea.
I dont find it great...this sense of unattachment of being unaffected...and your way of positivity is similar to that .Whatever happens you say may be something good is why it happened but all i ask is fine you are true but i think yeah but if it had happened as i had hoped it would have been very good.
My fault was by sulking too much on that “very good factor” i lose the “present good”.
The past few years surely changed that aspect.....i probably live more in the moment these days than for tomorrow...but somewhere i miss the hope for tommorow.
I never was negative dear...After all my favorite line was and is...
”Tomorrow is another day”.
P.S: All this is w.r.t me......you be happy truly as you are but never pretend to be happy.

2006-01-15T06:01:00.000-08:00

Memories Shared??

Read this somewhere........."Einstein said when two people observe the same event, because they're two people, they see things differently, it's not the same experiment".
Well i am not going to describe any scientific analysis of this...I have a tendency to look at everything from an individual 's point of view..what i hear ...what i see.not me as an individual but any one person...i dont look at an incident and assume how it will affect a generation ...a society...I hate generalisations of all kinds.I always look at something and wonder how it will affect me or her or one kind of person.
So when i read the above quote it automatically brought up the very interesting question that we think and rethink philosophically ..... einstein simply put it scientifically....."Relativity".The same incident...the same object means different things to each person however much we try to beleive in human cloning.The fact is people are always different...they just tend to a similar behavior to conform to society.I mean i rarely get a chance to watch TV..thats my sisters domain...as the computer is mine.So today when i chanced upon the remote and sawIndia Inc...there was an interview by Anu Agha of Thermax.Good stuff...inspirational as are all succes stories.I'll not delve much into it.What i remember of that show...well she was telling my husband said .....".Read...do something more productive ...dont sew...keep cleaning......Dont do all stuff that others can do".Ah how many women can be that lucky....but then i guess most women dont want to be that lucky too.They are happy to clean ....sew...cook.I just remembered my friend in the neighboring office cubicle whose husband would say Read..do things others can't do AND also cook and sew.
Anyway i guess i better leave this topic and get into what i thought about my above thought. The thing is of the few people who might have watched that interview ... i doubt how many would have remembered that line.Same things ...Same words and we make different worlds ...out of it.
But the best thing on this i thought was how we remember things...the same incident..the same day...every onehas different memories.I really found this subject very interesting.

So when few years ago i chanced a book on a subject similar to my thoughts i liked it.Its called 'Ignorance' by Milan Kundera and while i would not say its very good or great as people may confuse those words for a thriller...its actually a very interestingly presented account about the way we remember and accept things.Its about a man and woman who return to their country 20 years after living in a foreign country.They had a chance meeting 20 years back and while one holds it as such a precious moment of her life...the guy simply has no vivid memory of it .The book potrays excellently how incidents in time may be shared.......but memories are very personal.The subject is infinitely interesting than the book....but its a good book for people who like to ponder.

Funnily i remember i even tried out a test then..... i asked a friend what he remembered about the day we joined office for the pre job training.Well he remembered the rain......well it was a prominent thing but somehow it never came to my mindonly when we spoke did i rememeber how much it rained then and how lovely it was.My memories were all of guardedness.....in unfamiliar territory and the tree i watched from the window .It had beautiful lavender flowers (its called nili gulmohur-- jacaranda tree...yes!!!!! i found out....how i loved to walk by it...never could walk on them.....all lavender petals strewn on the ground).Now of course i too remember the rain.
Id like to write more about it (and another eccentric book by the author)but i dont have the book and ...what i have is a memory......of having read it spending a whole day in a library alone...eating 5 star bars for lunch.
Ah now i remember more amusing things....as i say this.I was arguing with my mom "see you ever tell me why you always still eat chocolates so much ......then finally i told her ....you know i saw a guy yesterday seriously walking alone by our office munching a large Cadbury's.So whats wrong if we still love chocolates."
Times may not have changed factually on the social front for real time...but some things have.So you see Shahrukh for lux......Fairness cream for men...and men munching chocolates and fighting for chocolates.

2005-12-25T23:28:00.000-08:00

Time the moments that fly by..
Time the ultimate thief...what it steals it is powerless to give back.
Time none ever mastered it.
Time that brings in happiness beyond expectations.
Time that brings in grief unparalleledTime which flew by before we could live it all.
Time which came by with wonderous gifts just when you though all was lost.
Time which leaves cherished reflectionsTime which scars the best of people in some way.
Time the ocean whose waves brought inthis special treasured gem of friendship into the shores of life.
Here 's hoping it'll stand the test of Time.
Cheers always

P.S:The most difficult if not impossible thing for time to steal are memories.Say what:)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I know he does not check out this blog though he 's the only soul who knows about it(not that i mind ...most of what i write here i anyway talk or bore him with it all the time).
Wrote these lines for him with his gift .Just thought of keeping a copy of it on my blog.Hope you are always happy dear wherever you travel with time.No gift i could find can express my happpiness at having a friend like you.
This week i literally lived that quote"Parents give you life, but friends walk you through it".
They sure do .

2005-11-13T05:52:00.000-08:00

Passing thoughts on fate

Fate : theres ever an argument about it.Some beleive in it some dont.
Some say the destiny is in our hands some say nothing is in our hands.

I once explained my view this way to my friend.
Life is like an algorithm already written by God and thats fate but where you end up in that depends on you ashe has inserted so many decision points in it.Thus you have choices in life but not infinite.In the algorithm for you he has written 'result 1' if you say yes and 'result 2' if you say no but whatever you do you cannot get 'result 3' as its not a option for you.

ha ha i sometimes pity my friends esp those who are subjected to such but then again they are a privileged few.With most of them i just chatter on.No discussions.

Anyway why i remembered this conversation was that last night i came to know something and could only wonder about fate.She's a good friend and she got the job in software finally with a great pay and i am extremely happyfor her because i rememeber the days we struggled together.Life somehow was cruel in similar ways to us.
So why did i bring fate in ........ well she got into the company i quit a year ago....mine was not a s/w job as they were then not into it.So i asked myself am i feeling green about it....no i have many faults but envy is not one cause i couldnt care less about what others have ...its always what i want that i am concerned.
So why was i a bit upset at heart.....i asked myself .....ok the pay issue........50% may be because i am upset on that.....the other 50% is because of the way fate plays games......i somehow have no affection for my current job......forget motivation ....job satisfaction and all that.But then after a lot of thought i reminded myself it was just a knee jerk reaction.....after all what i loved there were my friends ....people with whom i had shared good bad and terrible times unlike here where if there is nothing terrible there isnt much good too.
yeah the compensation stuff hurts but its always secondary if i like everything else though i never admit it.i just add it to the crib list when all else sucks.

Then i asked myself what is it or rather who do i envy and i could come up with only 1 person.
Deepti bhatnagar.......damn lucky is she not?
Early morning she goes around loveliest and serene temples in lovely chiffons and kanjeevarams and at noon she's all over europe and other continents looking fabulous in the choicest dresses.
How much fun travel is...esp if thats a job.................... ah i really envy her.

2005-11-10T08:37:00.000-08:00

a few cruelities of life
Why do people behave cruelly sometimes.......Why does a friend who has been on leave watch cricket and describe it while you are slogging it away....and why most of all my mom who has no sentimental value of anykind for things break my heart going on and on describing what she knows would invariably hurt me.She went to visit our old house....and she tells me tales even though i scream at her to stop."The roses you remember ...you planted ....it has grown so big...such big flowers all them six colors....even our old servant was saying ...when you people were there there were not as many now so many.The yellow hibiscus flowers you know they use to drop away the lady in the house say they bloom perfectly so well now."If someone's into too much philosophy they'l say this is the way of the world"Some one plants the mangoes some one eats".No wonder i hate so many ways of the world.All this happens while we stay with four flower pots where now that the rains are over hardly one blooms a month.I have a stupid and nostalgic streak but i really get upset about the fact that we moved from that house because of my moms wishes for varied and some unexplainable reasons .It was a beautiful garden i had grown there in the little space we had and esp last november december i had in just a spaceof 9ft x 1 ft grown so many varieties of flowers ....such lovely white daisises, dahlias...phlox..roses of course ....oh god.Then she rubs salt in my wounds by her happy descriptions.Now its like i hate it here and my next garden is years further what with us opting for an apartment.As if all this is not enough she brought two large momentos of roses and put them on display in the living room.Just how cruel can one get.My professional scenario is giving a hellishly irritating feeling.Came across this punchline...suited me just fine i thought

"I lied to them to get the job.They lied to me about the job.We are even."
then i realised .... i need to edit it
"I finally was honest about myself.They are still lying........"
That proves how things are at my job.

2005-11-06T06:49:00.000-08:00

A bueracratically festive month

It seems so long since i wrote any stuff on this blog and so many things just rolled on.Work in itself is tiring enough(oh just started browsing today and one link led to another and i found on a blog containing exactly what ran through my head when i saw the Tata Dicor ad ."I always wanted to quit on Monday morning"Absolutely loved the ad so much that while leaving on Friday evening while chatting with my manager i just say did you see that ad for Dicor....loved it.I really can be cruel.)
The whole of last month has been a lesson for me in bureaucracy.3 months after cancelling my previous postpaid they say it never was cancelled and the network is following me unwantedly everywhere.Then there's my current postpaid issues.But the best part was when i called up their cust careboth had a common service level.
One says our backend is down...
other says our servers are not up.WoW.
Then there's my issue with a bank who has discovered advertising suddenly and is going gung ho that it has themaximum ATM's in India.Well i never expected much but to discover that forget ATM's one branch manager could not discover phone number of the main branch in a different city in one whole month was news.After one month of strutting to the bank patiently requesting my manager for a few hrs leave the day i lost patience and expressed my displeasure im clearly told my place.
It is your mistake maam to lose the draft .........not ours..so wait till we find out if it can be cancelled......hmmm.......true...very true.Actually very true....i should never have bothered...went to the my only near to reliable source GOOGLE and in 20 minutes flat found the phone number and i can now continue my ordeal once weekend is over.
As if all these thing dont make you feel dead hopeless in life my mom coaxes me into taking a loan and now i have to discover all the stuff about form16's and floating and fixed.
Then i got a refresher course of my organisational political set up at office.More on that in later posts.Damn life i feel but then i had my silver linings.
There was such wonderful cricket and then i met up a few friends some very dear ones after it never seemed to happen and felt quite happy about it.Thats why i love so many festivals...birthdays...newyears..Perfect excuses to call or chat up friends as in general you feel sometimes so strange with no words to say as much as you want to say stuff.I bought a few more of those stones that are a girls best friend no matter what.They sure brought some sunshine in this extended rainy season.
Yeah i beleive in retail therapy now after all these years of resisting my sister trying toconvince me of it.I observed and discussed its wonderful effects on myself and in friends lives.

2005-10-16T10:17:00.000-07:00

Caesarean Conspiracies

Ah conspiracies amazing they are.....they simply show you how varied people are really.Why did i get into this...hmmm i ve always been fascinated by themwhy because i grew up on a famous conspiracy.Being a ICSE Student(now anyone from others like CBSE/STATE Syllabus must forgive me coz im i feel its the curriculum thats pretty varied....cbse is quite balanced i guess but well forget it..the state syllabus in southis a preparation for future engineers with their advanced rigor in mathematics.ICSE in fact had one book of lovely poetry ,one play Julius caesar , one novel which is a sweet one village by the sea by anita desai and one book of short stories called the' treasury of short stories' which is a real treasure i still treasure.No wonder ive turned out a literary engineer.the geography we had was so vast i knew australian cities as well as indian also helped by the fact that there was a world cup there then.)
when in school we had Julius Ceaser which we studied for 2 yrs so i remember it (esp antony's speech)still though i do not instantly remember my office phone no or my last completed work at office.What is more memorable is the way we were encouraged to criticize and view it from different angles the whole of the play.the words that i love or think today are a byproduct of those days.the variety of people ...Cynical cinna...anthony the master orator.....cassius the lean mean hungry look guysoothsayers.oh i guess i was lucky we happened to have such a complex play instead of some frivolous comedies which though enjoyable would not have lent much to classroom analysis.One of first ways to recognize hypocrisy was shown by my english teacher when he pointed outwhile brutus the honorable fellow would not take money like bribes he asks money from cassius who surely gets them by bribes.Flattery and flatterers i discovered it there.you can see the power of oratory skill how a mob who has no identity they are swayed from extreme support of brutus to antony(reminds you of the importance of oratory skill so precious for politicians to sway the fools who form masses and mobs with no individual thoughts.)it seems so funny when u remember the way the guys reacted to the only line in the whole playthey could giggle at ..."Portia is brutus' wife not his harlot".there is so much drama and mental conflict in the whole play its lovely.the first of a whole collection of quotes from the play so fond that for all my dear friends autograph books i signed the same
"Forever, and forever, farewell,
If we do meet again, why, we will smile;
If not, it's true that this parting was well made."

but why i got into this.on a sunday evening when u are fed up and tired to even browse and TV is troubling you and suddenly you get on discovery and watch the last 20 mins of 'who killed julius ceaser'.It brings out a fascinating discovery to a conspiracy that we wringed out in class for two years.Could caesar have engineeredhis assasination to make himself immortal and establish the Roman empire.quite enjoyed it and relived an era of life in a few hours.

2005-09-21T11:38:00.000-07:00

Just about a book

I bought the book "THE COLLECTED POEMS" about five years back when i was actually broke i mean almost three years of no employment and depression and how do you spend the five hundred bucks you are given on your birthday by Dad .... walk into a book store and you spot the lovely covered book by one of your fav author hold it and then
It was almost as though the book wanted to be taken and it seemed in my upset mood nothing would cure me.(I take that quote pretty seriously at heart it'd seem "If thou has a loaf of bread, sell half and buy a hyacinth to feed thy soul") well i took it and the most agonising part is i have no decent book shelf so i cover it neatly which i hate because it hides the cover i like but to take care of it i need to cover it.ah ....what complexities life has.

To think if my mom knew i spent that much on a book esp in those days she'd have finished me by now by giving the foremost reasons for my messed up life as ever i.e. stubborness, love of books,cricket and lazy long hours of sleep.
Neverthless i love them all and i love my books .About the author I enjoy his novels they are good..will write about them when i have more timebut its not his stories its the feel which he puts into words almost poetic and musical.For example his novel THE EQUAL MUSIC is so depressing in a way and you dont even like the characters sometimes but you love the book there's a lyrical feel woven into it.Thats why i love his poetry more esp the ones in "ALL YOU WHO SLEEP TONIGHT". Today was browsing through it again and thought of posting this

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SIT

Sit, drink your coffee here;
your work can wait awhile.
You're twenty-six, and still have some life ahead.
No need for wit; just talk vacuities, and I'll
Reciprocate in kind, or laugh at you instead.

The world is too opaque, distressing and profound.
This twenty minutes' rendezvous will make my day:
To sit here in the sun, with grackles all around,
Staring with beady eyes, and you two feet away.

by Vikram Seth
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

2005-09-16T04:44:00.000-07:00

Subtlety and some memories

Last weekend i was bored of browsing esp had a gnawing feeling that i'll be the victim of a carpal tunnel.So i flipped through channels and all i foundinteresting was was the ashes final test.I was watching it alone at home and it brought back memories when watching cricket had rated very up there in life.Books , Music ,Flowers ,Cricket that was what life was about.I am not very very comfortable being known as an avid cricket watcher in my current circle unlike then simply because everyone acts one esp its become to be thought of as a fad as if women have started watching cricket only after Mandira discovered it.
I loved to watch it with my Dad since i was a kid and was crazy about it though never played itmuch being an indoor kid.even now when he calls if there is a match on and he's travelling he always calls me to come to the phone to get the score.I very much enjoyed it and was fortunate enough to have a friendwho played at the state level.She kinda ensured that i knew what was inswing , outswing , flipper etc were.What fun we had during the 1996 world cup...some of the best times of my life.
Those days news always was to be read from the last page...it still is if i have time to go through the newspaper.In those days we had that enjoyable Indian express or Statesman and enjoyed Pradeep Magazine and others columns.
Now to discuss cricket is like a show off and so i try to keep off it.Why even my mom hated it.She drove me many a time to tears by her obsessive hatred of what she thought was a terrible game enjoyed too much by people who wanted to do nothing .i.e my dad n me.Now my mom is cool about it as its socially trendy ....now when i dont have the time to stay home and watch it.It feels cruel.
Well thats all past ...what got me into this flashback mode was this Ashes broadcast was it was on ESPN ..the commentators were simply talking about the game...none of the flashy nonsense you have to put up with(God i have to mute the TV while watching India playand to think there was a time i used to say quiet please let me enjoy the commentary too.)

Gilchrist was out just before lunch and so decently the relay ended saying " see you in 35 minutes after lunch" and that triggered off all my memories of how it used to be before Sidhu and co ganged up and we have beauties , contests and what not.In a way i guess it may be the way we indians are..our love for drama, melas and over the board gaiety.

We indians sure know how to make the world rock our way.Its like we tell the world sell what you want to us but package it the way we want.

MTV is now worse than Indian music channels in airing only hindi flopmovie full songs and trailers of hindi movies.In our college days you'd be lucky to catch a hindi song on it.Pizzas we made them stoop and bring variety to their bland fare.....forced them to invent tandoori/tikka and what not flavor.
There are numerous examples of organizations being forced to change their strategyto cater to us the land of maharajahs and what not where you have to go overboard for everything ...humor or sentiment.You just have to watch our advertising to know this best.

Subtle is not a word Indians like i guess sadly.

2005-09-13T12:00:00.000-07:00

A week of some nevers

Went househunting the weekend.tried to compromise by hopefully getting an apartment( though i Never am happy about apartments) but its not to be it seems.liked one a bit too much dont know why..rare for me to like one as much and convinced mum and all that this one'd be great.yeah id hoped id get my own room finally but it seems it was not to be.i was pretty upset .

Pr was very upset kind the whole week in fact our whole gang of 3 n me was kinda fed up.those 3 are like sick and tired of the job and wondering what next in life.they have a great future the kids really.....its just thebegining ...mine s a different story.then there was this whole appraisal business.the secrecy in which its done...did u get it no ....umm yeah ....in process...suddenly people who never bother to speak trying to extract info.its kind of hard to hide it with friends.no one is happy abt kc i guess but the fact is the work sucks firstly and if only that habit of getting too personal is decreased its kind of good for everyone in the team but yeah all have their demons to fight and their ways.i write so much against kc's ways but i guess the fact is a guide is needed for kc to be better.. ...which is lacking and of course authority but the fact is my managers manager is a damned terrible complex story.
there is so much unease all around....people feeling the stuck up kind.new people already bored.Finally had my appr discussion at end and ..... all said and done i realised again where i lackonly one place .... confidence .Self confidence ive but the confidence of taking iniative is lacking and yeah the manager did make that clear but point given ...it was fair i felt in a way....it was made clear ... ur skills in process and mangement are highly appreciated so better build on that as you work.dont bother too much about technical(there are way too many for that) just get the basics fine.and some more discussions.it was already late so cut short.

When i thought about it all i wondered
who was true in there...me hmm yeah 75% but does kc think well really of me,or we are both trying to outdo diplomacy levels.I know i dislike things about kc and very vocal about them bet friends and the blog but what i like is one thing the ability to learn and listen ...only no good people to listen to are there.

aru was telling me she envies kc. i was ummmmmwhat is there to envy yeah a Sr manager at a young age than aru and me but look at life... no good.i probably dont dislike some people personally...just that in the work arena they simply are not fine.i was simply wondering .... me of all the work getting into marketing....not exactly but thats what im getting into indirectly.
Life always teaches me the same lesson.
Never say never...

2005-08-28T11:45:00.000-07:00

SOUL

Across the spiked wall lay the world of wild freedom,
but beyond my reach was this heavenly garden
amidst the fragrant blossoms i wished a solitary abode
but brazen was i to beleive such life was to be mine
among the shattered reflections of broken glass
i discovered the need to be sublime
but brittle was my will
against life's daily mill
above the starlit sky i hoped to find the light
but below the dark earth claimed me with its might
across the horizons of despair i tread
beleiving i'll find hope but
beneath the gritty flesh
lies a soul weathered by life .
----------------------------------------
As i looked through my old stuff this weekend found
this poem i wrote sometime back and
i still could say the same.
Life goes on by sheer grit but its the
soul that suffers the grinding mill of life.

2005-08-19T11:15:00.000-07:00

Blinding light maimimg the night

The darkness of the night always holds a charm somewhat a lil more appealing
than may be day for me Ive always liked the calm of the night a bit more.

thats why i guess i love that song raat hamari to....from parineeta
but i wrote this poem sometime back getting irritated by light and today i
remembered it again due to the same reason so i thought of posting it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Blinding light- Blinking and blazing

that could only be a madman's delight.
but are we short of such lunatics
in a world deprived of their heart's sight
where the lovely dark night is maimed at heart and soul
by a day that never ends.
razed of its beauty by every bright light
she cries out only to be sounded out
by the ones causing this plight
its scarier than any darkness
this light still we take it in our stride
lest we remember that there used to be
soulfilling moonlight in the arms of what
used to be the dark beautiful night.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

weve got these airconditioned offices and are working
under the lights day or night
and i get irritated by them and its frustrating being unable to switch them off.
but even in general its so hard to see darkness
(forget the unsafe dark areas created by our city and town corporations).
if you are lucky enough to have a terrace which i had till few months ago
then also you will have the street lights blinding you.
(cant help it....they r absent where needed)
there is so much artificial lighting that its frustrating.
you just cant enjoy the soft dark night.

2005-08-13T23:29:00.000-07:00

Music in life - memories and musings

"Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life"
said a someone.
that i think is certain but i always wonder about the kind of music
preferences we have and the way we listen to it and react to it.

I have no knowledge of classical music and am mostly into ghazals ,hindi film music of all times
(where im a real Connoisseur) and the general english pop(where im not really very well versed).

Since in school i loved old hindi songs and hummed them and the first memory i have is that when my dad caught me
in fifth class humming "babuji dheere chalna....." and i was so glum.
Chitahaar was the regular discussed topic in school bus and really when the power was gone for chitrahaar it was upsetting enough to cry but those were days before cable television.now we laugh real time about it.
ive always loved radio and vividh bharathi esp simply because it gives you range of music across time unlike the repeat broadcast on other places.

Then there was mtv and it was good to listen to english songs too ......funny what mtv india has become now
we indians sure know how to indianise if we want to.
MTV 5 yrs ago played english songs with a smattering of hindi
now we have the same hindi trailers going on and on with cyrus the only respite.

but now with time constraints and a busy life the way we listen to music has changed its always in the background .
people listen while working ,driving ,cooking etc but
does some one with a normal job still get the time to sit and play some music and absorb it ,feel it i wonder.
The other thing i always feel is when im emotional i prefer the hindi music....
the english songs however good seem a bit detached.......so when im out anywhere or at office i prefer the english music
but at home i always love lata rafi kishore and jagjit singh voice is a great stress releiver since
college days(i had to buy a second piece of my arth/saath saath cassette i listened to it so much those days ).
one point i notice is generally music in our own language be it hindi or our mother tongue(if your are comfortable in it which unfortunately is not true for many people today) is more touching.
May its got to do with the lyrical melody.i always feel i have a penchant for that---- lyrics woven in melodyrather than just the beat and rhythm.

the most strange thing for me is classical music is said to be relaxing but whenever i listen to any instrumental i feel restless its kind of an unexplainable feeling for me------ as though i want to weave words into it.
it does not suit me but you give a song based on classical raag and i adore it.

its not as if i do not like loud songs in fact to my own surprise i do(the worst part used to be that
govinda's songs i hate are way too catchy) --- but its always in crowds,or when i do not like to think ,
or im too happy or want to block out things from mind - i play all those loud songs with beats ,rhythm and what not.
but what about those who listen to them always....like my sis has a commom refrain whenever
i play music ...is there not enough tragedy in life why play those sad songs and so she wants the
remixes, pop and fast tracks.

The other thing is there are some people who like listening to music on headphones and there
are some who like it playing around them not on a headphone.we sisters loved it when they played it nonstop
at the puja pandals where we stayed during our childhood.we still like it when some lovely melody drifts
from the window suiting our mood rather than specifically we searching and playing that song.
I do hate the stupid songs that keep barging from the neighbours house as much.
its so much nice when you are thinking of something or walking along and ur fav number is heard
and u feel something like a good omen and days when you wake up with a certain song on your lips and thewhole day you never quite get rid of it.then somehow i have my moments when i like silence not even music but quite some people like it nonstop.

but all said and done music never ceases to amaze me. suddenly i listen to a song and
the whole mood changes(the only instantaneous solution found
coz to read my other antidote takes time and effort)
when i am worried worried and feel crazy and suddenly i listen to
"rahi manwa dukh ki chinta kyun satati hai
dukh to apna saathi hai
sukh hai ek saheli jo aati hai jaati hai " its like im releived.

I really feel bad about people who do not care for
music of any kind ---- i mean any kind pop rap classical(its true i know some)
and i feel pity that they have been denied by heaven such a sublime gift.

with potter still in my mind i quote
Ah, music. A magic beyond all we do here!

2005-08-07T07:19:00.000-07:00

For friends who matter any day

I am not much into all these days that are marketed these days but then
I am not against them also because well its nice once in a while to
indulge ourselves and others whom we are fond of
by a special line mailed/emailed ,or a gift sent or just a wish.
We may love them always but its nice to take time on a day just to
let them know how special they are.
I myself have few people i can call good friends and fewer are ones i call close friends.

"Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances
will know you in a thousand years." -----Richard Bach

and there are times when you take time out to call them or mail them
but life is so boring i just wonder why am i bothering them.
So on a day like this its just an excuse
to wish happiness , remember good times
thats why i do not mind
frienship day or for that matter any other day.

"Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for awhile and leave
footprints on our hearts. And we are never, ever the same."

Happy Friendship Day

2005-08-05T12:03:00.000-07:00

Snaped by rowling

yeah finished off sixth book- harry potter and the half blood prince as usual in one go. i resisted it way too much till this week but the moment i knew i had time to read it through at a time i did it. and it truly was good as expected ....best after azkaban.I will not review it ...there's too much all over the net about it. but honestly its the charm of the way the book is written..........els whatever marketing you do u wud not find discussion board's and forums discussing the book.i really am wondering wondering....agitated ...damn it how long ...and one of my fav character killed....i expected it but still it was tragic u have to wait for the next book ...... its too much(i could not wait to finish my nancy drew since it was issued in the school library --- had to finish it in less than 5 hrs-----i hate waiting but i most of the time i wait for buses...for jobs...for people) but now my mind is filled with all kinda wizardology and whos the culprit thoughts Snape really is he truly the killer if the killing took place really....It seems too simple. It cant be......then i reread passages ...for hints. I was like this when Voldemort had renewed himself to some form at the end of book4. Horcruxes and snape is all i can think and therein lies the magic. For once i am not remembering that its been a terrible week with sunday work.... early starts to office and feeling sooo sleepy. Its been a strangely tiring week but the book really made me feel (sad and excited) else the daily routine of life was getting to me. There's magic anyday in books for me but this saga of magic by rowling is truly magical.

2005-07-29T12:41:00.000-07:00

Hell of a day...and i am through

just when i relaxed after being upset the whole day that i can have at least a day rest this happened.
I woke up early morning with just one thought in mind ...if only i can avoid working saturday and sunday ...o god i don't want to....
after resigning myself to it anyway for client...customer ...whatever satisfaction...
damn it ...its our project says my manager....hey the infrastructure ....should also be in place and.....because of resource crunch ...we have to pull in.....
...hey gimme a break.Once in 6 months you use it sounds good ...once a week is pathetic.

and then the end of the day magically we hear of a maintenance so no work at least on saturday im told.The manager has a long face...as we'r told...the way its delivered is this.....

"I have good news and bad news
Good news is ....how many of u were not willing to come on saturday?
well you may not come.
The bad news is our project..its gonna be affected" all this with a sad morose expression.
...yeah...blah ...blah

why was i sitting like mad at office while i had work ...because they could not get the required s/w resources.So when they beg/borrow it off on weekends i have to work on weekends.

There was other cold war drama too but thats in a different post.

So i came home at least a bit relaxed by 8.30.
had tea and was just resting ...i heard my sister's coming into the gate crying so much that i got dead scared....two guys on scooter had pushed her and pulled her bag
and fled.It had her Nokia a expensive piece she got from her first job savings.This in a town known as pretty safe(its an obscure word i guess in real life).

It was terrible...i was feeling so better after i heard that she was fine whatever's lost.Its hard to describe.Then we got on to the business of consolidating....
called up the bank to disable the atm card....damn these private banks..
...felt disgusted..they charge you so much..automate all stuff and then you have to listen to all stupid music when you are so upset for an hour just to get it disabled.
How cruel it seems.
well not much i realised when i called up Hutch to disable
my connection.It was so horrible....the damn guy is rattling off my dues(the dues are
less than the deposit i have with them)when i tell him i want it disabled immediately

the guy simply insisted it cannot be done till i pay the money...he means this at 9.30 in the night.

Having had experience in this service business well enough i did what i knew was best...disconnected the call
called up again waited till i got a better fella

told him he...first he said it will take a day ..then by night...the finally when you say this connection will never be renewed in such a case ...outgoing will be barred
within 25 mins he says..
all the while they play in the background ...raindrops keep falling....really how cruel and those recorded lines "we welcome your call/thank you for waiting...its sickening the recorded voices.

Its less to do with those executives there... more to do with the falsities propagated in the name of customer satisfaction...by corporations.

We did inform the police as one of our uncles wanted us to...but this is what the SI said to my tearful sister "So what if you are into Software...I am an SI but i keep a cell of 2000 ..why do you need a 14k cell" .Of course my uncle explained they joke like that ...dont take it to heart...but well thats about the whole story.

Its lost ...she's quite sad .... poor thing lost all her friends nos too as she was too lazy to keep em anywhere else and few she had in a tel book that too was in the purse.

It was a bad day in the end...i had my own struggles...lost my lens in the eye(how bad can it get)...i thought i had dropped it...but it was kind of hurting so i doubted...was thinking of getting back home from office at noon...but mom had left and no keys so stayed at office and after splashing water like mad at the eye i found the lens.

It was too eventful in other ways and quite bad --later on that.

But every one has their own way of looking at things.....after being sad for 2 hrs about the cell ...she says...i had my four expensive lipsticks in it(Im not as much into cosmetics and she loves em but the way she said it i was like ahhhhhh).
and i did not know what to say.

im wondering all kind of things about
this job..the money...the personal feeling when such things happen and all kind of whys.......

I myself have still not gotten over losing my cell..the oldest cheap nokia(i lost it when someone happily took it from my purse in a crowded shopping fair) and now this.
Its so easy to steal really...some do it because no work...some because they think who'll work and root causes of this.....Unemployment..population actually..this that....

and we go on living ....kabhi khushi..bahut gham.

2005-07-27T12:20:00.000-07:00

the days just go on....

well was feeling queasy so had taken a day off monday and now i know why it was fine
simple....i'll have be working the weekend....got it confirmed today.....thats enough to upset me.
anyway i left an half an hour early .......yet there were long faces esp my manager's.....i'd finished the work dammit....why should i just hang out there..chat on msgr...keep smiling...or listen to music(i'll do it better at home) and suffer them i know not.
anyway i had to pay bills etc did that and to better my mood went to the shopping mall nearby...
.......it was being renovated ...... lot changed since i used to meet up with friends there.....suddenly remembered them all......the place we used to sit around ...they 've stacked up decorative candles now.hmmmm well........
navigated across blogs...some of ppl who commented on mine...from there to their friends blogs and i ended up at the steve jobs speech at stanford site.
liked it quite a lot.....i fwd it just some ppl in office.....just a part of it....and (while i get along with all ---- only two people i like in some specific way though they are not in my team so have to struggle to meet but we chat on the office IM) replied back --- asking why do u not send the full text it was so good. it felt good that u know ur friends ...... and they like what you like.

2005-07-18T11:43:00.000-07:00

Upset about a.....

I was really upset early morning.
Really upset ....about what could seem to many a really small thing
after all there are bigger issues this world and what not.
but well i think its the smallest things that get you out of your mind. As goes the quote
It isn't the mountains ahead that wear you out, it's the grain of sand in your shoe.
well coming back why i was upset enough and remember it to write a blog.
Its all because of a Rose.
My lovely peach rose plant .the only one that survived my house move few months ago.(I still cant get over leaving that house where i had grown such a lovely garden to this morose house with hardly any place for them).
oh how i tok care of it ...i remembered to water it at the cost of being late a bit to office in summer. now its blooming and last four times in the fortnight everyday by the time i get back from office its gone and im left frustrated at this theft.
Today it was worse..i woke up walked out .it was oh so perfect ..nice curled up waking to the sun
and i got ready for office , went to look at it while leaving for office and it was gone.
Obviously the work of one of the servant girls in the houses within...
I was seething and fuming and really it upsets me so much......fifth time.....why does the rose have to bloom on monday my thoughts go awry in anger. I missed my one of my flower loving friends(now far in the us) who's one of those few people who'd understand how upsetting it is.
Since my mom knew there was no solution to this as they would not listen she moved the pot to our dark backyard where you can hardly see it unless you go there.
You can buy flowers sure i love them too but nothing like flowers of your garden. I never did like people plucking flowers except may be the fragrant ones lot of southindian women use for braids(I personally like flowers on the plants best or may be in vases inside never in hair but im not against personal choices).
What really gets to me is stealing flowers.
I can't remember now but i think it was Ruskin bond who said
"why do perfectly honest people think its fine to steal flowers and books".
Forget about dishonest ones...... Hmm i have many opinions on it and i'll continue this in my next post coz as of now i will only give lopsided arguments. After all i too don't mind getting a plucking out a few plants(not flowers though) from here and there not from individuals who 'd be upset ,.But then i sure got plants out from parks to my pots and saw them bloom better .
So so so what...... how dare some stupid woman simply dare to pluck n steal my rose everyday to adorn her hair.
I hate it.

2005-07-17T04:17:00.000-07:00

Its pouring now.......saawan ko aane do(july 9_2005)

what a day great.... its pouring n pouring from the heavens
and its my day off and
luckily not much work to do on weekends
hurrah.....lovely it is
my sis is simply muttering with envy
as she starts off for office
and i play on music nazron se kehdo.......
no one around ..... but its so nice really
if ever i beleived in enjoying the moment
its now..... i know it wont be much fun
this downpour when i have to trudge along to work on monday
oh the though itself is terrible
but as of now
saawan ko aane do...........

2005-07-08T13:14:00.000-07:00

Its raining........

It rained so heavily today in the day
its been sometime i could watch it and enjoy it.
had a team lunch away from office
and the downpour was amazing.
it was a fine sleet of water not huge drops
that lashed across the town and did i love it oh....but then....

rain makes things so special
the chill in the air,
the breeeze with water splashing across you
the sky clear yet broody
the trees swaying in joy.

but if your life's not goin great it hurts all the more
u feel lonely a lil more on a rainy day

it hurts to try to watch the rain
from behind the office blinds
when there's work.

it hurts to watch the rain pass by
when ud like to be cuddled up cozily
and hear the rain splashing the roof and windows.

it hurts to try to save ur dress and carry umbrellas
when best ud like is to get drenched in the lovely spray.

neverthless its exhilarating
Rain not only refreshes the weather
it refreshes the heart and soul esp the first rains of the season.

2005-07-05T12:35:00.000-07:00

a poem remembered

it has been a long sad past week its put me in a strange blue mood
all i do i ends up in some mess somehow or the other
and worse of all i could not think straight
some worry kept going through the mind
nothing to pinpoint
probably its all about the chore life has become
i thought about people ,colleagues,friends
there was none i could say was the culprit
all seemed trapped by their own life to trap me .....
i am not really very fatalistic
but there are times wheni feel its hold over my life
and i don't know what to do.
office is a necessary evil to get through life....
family u have no choice...
self u have ,u had but where's the time to be with oneself.
as i walked home all i could remember was lines from a poem from school

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate
Those that I guard I do not love;..................
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delightDrove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind....

weekend movie parineeta

2005-06-27T11:30:00.000-07:00

Saw parineeta the movie last weekend after so many days a movie in theatre i could see.

The movie is so very short but quite pretty.

Its more of a look and feel movie though i felt

of a lost era of a lost time

The heroine is beautiful no doubt but what i liked best about the movie was it did not go overboard with anything the over emphasis to make it more bengali than it is and kind of

stuff the kind ekta kapoor does whenever she shows a bengali family.

My sis with whom i usually go to movies did not come along as she felt at this point life

was tragic enough .so i went with a friend.we get along fine she's a bit direct person with no mush

kind so it was not surprising when at the end of movie she said

" why the heck did she have to go back to saif after so much insult ...she'd have been happier in

london" well not all suck up to mushy stuff i guess like me....

but frankly the movie script or acting does not capture you good though it is..it is the look that

does it ...a kinda lost world.

2005-06-27T11:20:00.000-07:00

these are a few lines i wrote as remembered those days when i worked the nite shifts.they were hard times but were made good times by some nice people.life has moved on to different places but i remember those nights well.

to dark nights i woke up to bright lights
to sunny mornings i bid adieu for weary slumber
to those shivering nights in shimmering color now past
to the honking horn the made one quiver
to coffee cups guzzled to keep the eye clear
to choclate nibbled and chips cracked to make all else mere
to the quick walks and hurried auxes
to endless talk and sugary voices that echoed in every chair
to hi's and byes that made this strange existence livelier
to friends and foes and all that left memories
to last I raise a cheer for i will strangely hold them all dear.