Saturday, May 13, 2006

Aankhon mein namee, hansi labon par...

It's all over. A degree called engineering, much vaunted about, but actually a pile of nonsense, is finally accomplished. The only part which was great about it was this place. Four years - the best days of my life; great friends - who made the life "best"; and our share of happiness residing together - it's impossible to mix up the ingredients again in whatever proportion and recreate the magic. Alas! Moments can only be cherished, they can never be replicated.



People have started leaving now. Each one to some strange unknown world as it seems. Doesn't matter whether or not they give me a destination address together with a contact number, it appears to be granted that they are "gone". I would be - as people say - "remain in contact", but technology can't bridge hearts - it can only try somehow mending the connection.

Today I bid farewell to the "first shipment" - Sanjiv and Thakur. Seemed like somebody snatched away a piece of my heart.

"Kambakht aankhen dagaa de gayee, warnaa dil to hamaaraa bhi mazboot tha..."

Couldn't stop tears. It sounds strange - as every other truth in this world - crying because a friend is leaving. At times, actions defy logic. Things just happen - viscerally, somberly - there is no explanation to it. All you have to show are emotions, nostalgia... and... "heart". Trying to laugh when I couldn't, trying to talk when I couldn't, it was even impossible to stare directly at their faces. I wonder how the guy called me became so weak.

I don't know what's still binding me with ISM. A part of my heart has no strength left to bid good-byes to more people; another part wants to devour the last moments - cherish every fraction of the seconds left at this place.




Sunday, April 23, 2006

Farewell

This is what I had quoted from Illusions (Richard Bach) in the farewell invitation I had prepared for the outgoing batch of 2005:


          Don’t be
         dismayed at good-byes.
   A farewell is necessary before
you can meet
       again.

                And meeting
              again, after moments or
                  lifetimes, is certain for
                  those who are
                friends.


It was easy to write at that time, it was difficult to face it “now” – the final nail in the coffin; stamping you officially out of this place which has been much more than just home for the four best years of your life. My odyssey at ISM had to come to an end – every good thing ends sooner or later – I would also be wrong in saying that I wasn’t prepared for it; yet, any amount of preparation always seems less when you actually confront it. The day comes, leaving you flabbergasted, shaking you from inside – wake up; you are about to be thrown into the mayhem outside, enough of the cocoon of hostel life – look how bitter and dirty the world outside can be.

The ceremony was great. Clad in my only black cotton trousers and a white shirt borrowed from a junior, festooned with a garland, drinking early and then dancing with the band they had arranged for, I thoroughly enjoyed the “informal” ragging and then the introductory sessions at Opal. I was overjoyed with the sudden downpour starting around midnight, exactly the time at which I was out for party-hopping – attending the two other farewell parties arranged in different hostels on the same day – giving myself a good excuse to drench when Chandra and Kundan accompanying me weren’t much interested in the idea. After this wonderful drenching-in-the-midnight-when-drunk experience, drank some more, danced some more, got everything above waist torn to tatters, ate a bit around 4:30 a.m. and then called off my day with a 5:30 a.m. RD session.

Its afternoon now. My muddy trousers are hanging in my room besides the torn shirt. The soaked up leather shoes haven’t dried yet. The socks are strewn on the floor. Everything says that yesterday night has ended. The mind knows its not going to come back. The adventure is up, the only reminiscences being the few pictures stored on my system. Yet a part of my heart wants to stay here “forever”.




Tuesday, April 18, 2006

PJs

After numerous senti blogs, getting back to my "natural" stuff. Inspired by the daily one hour postprandial PJ session at RD each night; taking liberty to assume myself to be one amongst the greatest PJ'ers;, here is what I can "manufacture" to be written immediately :

What is this?
a question mark...

What sucks the most?
tongue...

To "fall" in love (From an old movie): Chalo dildaar chalo, chaand ke paar chalo...
and I say moon's acceleration due to gravity is one-sixth of earth... you would "fall" with lesser velocity and it's better on earth...

You are sitting in a room with a pretty girl with no one in the house...
and you say : Kyaa aap mere saath coffee peene chalengi?

You tell a married girl that she is looking beautiful...
and you are making her April Fool...

It says : Shoot for the moon and you will atleast land up among the stars!
and I say : Why should I be disposed, I am not a nuclear waste!

A hotel room has glass doors... a couple is staying up in the night...
and you watch through the keyhole!

A dwarf wants to suicide...
and he jumps from the sidewalk on to the road...

You tell me to show a woman who can drive well...
and I show you a crooked No Parking board...



Saturday, April 15, 2006

Drenching in the rain





Rain rain where thou art
Bless the earth before it shatters apart

This unrepentant sun and this sultry sky
Gnawing my heart wherever I lie

My dry lips and my thirsty mind
And pains and agonies of all kind

My hands which could never learn to pray
And my heart which has only one thing to say

That its eternal hope sees that elusive light
That one speck among the existing plight

Move on where your dreams take you
Who says they don’t come true?

Treading forward on this thorny path
Whatever be the fury or the wrath

For, there awaits my dream, my soul
O rain! Drench me and make me ‘whole’.



Friday, April 14, 2006

Potpourri

Long time no blogging. Coming back after two months with a pessimistic note. What has been going on in my mind in the past few weeks is hinted by the following informations glanced upon here and there :

Two people in a small Himalayan village exhumed a dead body and then consumed it after cutting its head. They were "tantriks" who believed that consumption of a dead body would give them supernatural powers.

A woman delivered a baby in a lavatory bowl while answering to nature's call. The head of the baby was stuck in the hole of the bowl and by the time some fire brigade personnel broke the bowl and rushed the baby to the hospital, it was dead.

Around 50 people - whose charred bodies with a terrible stench were kept on ice slabs for claims - were engulfed in a fire which ran through three air-conditioned pandals of an exhibition in a city named Meerut.

In parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan, people have a callous carnival in which they cheer on attack dogs mauling at a defenselessly tethered bear in an arena for the bear baiting bloodsport. In parts of India, little bear cubs are blinded and neutered and then dragooned into dancing with thick ropes driven into their sensitive muzzles pierced with hot iron rods and other merciless multiple mutilations.

And finally, the protagonist Winston Smith of my present novel 1984 (George Orwell) is being tortured by electric shocks and blood thirsty rodents attacking on his face in the Ministry of Love of Oceania.

Bon Jovi's "Is it you and me or just this world we live in?" comes to my mind almost instantly. And then follows "Gonna take a miracle to save us this time"! Amidst all this potpourri of "strange" thoughts, I could reach to just one conclusion - the world is a dirty place and all our present actions are knowingly or unknowingly directed towards finding clean spots here itself, isn't it?



Saturday, February 11, 2006

Concept of God

William F. Buckley, Jr, founder of the National Review magazine says - "It is intellectually easier to credit a divine intelligence than to submit dumbly to felicitous congeries about nature."

Is that the reason why some people believe and some don't on the existence of a supreme power? For a few, it might qualify as a nice excuse to actually run away from the rhetoric counter-point used in such debates - "Hey, look at the stars and tell me how these arrangements could have existed without anything?" For any tangible object in this world, this camp would point to the inspiration towards its making rather than the creation itself. Beethoven's compositions, Leonardo's masterpieces... do all these exist because something else exists which inspired the physical being towards extraordinary works? I disagree.

I am not being solipsistic. There is much more beyond the self. But why should we move beyond the world? The scriptures state that the Reality is beyond the ken of the senses and the mind. Then why bother about it? There is enough one can do within the realm of 'senses and mind' and within this world itself. The problem starts when you try to define Reality. For some, it is God in a definite form or shape, for me, it is what we live in.

Chanting verses like the Gayatri Mantra and contemplating on the Absolute with meditations, wouldn't that have been a waste of time for Beethoven and Leonardo da Vinci? I am not a hard core nihilist. Religious rituals and practices are merely different means of one's share of solitude. But, exaggeragte that into a necessary and only path to achieve oneness with the Supreme, and you are moving away from yourself. You lost the very purpose of solitude.

This I believe : There is no need of a God for my present existence on this planet.



Thursday, February 09, 2006

Rang De Basanti




It says - A Generation Awakens... And it tries the best shot.

In this contemporary rendering of the legendary story of Bhagat Singh, director Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra passes on the message to the young generation brilliantly and almost effortlessly. In an unusual but highly effective format, the scenes shift from historical to contemporary settings flawlessly and it's easy to assimilate the smooth transitions. A.R. Rahman's music with Prasoon Joshi's lyrics create a magical effect.

With its great script, the movie keeps the audience spellbound. The imagination, however, becomes too much in the latter half of the movie when, in protest of Ajay's flight accident, the five young men shoot the defence minister and then broadcast their feelings on the radio.

The movie poses a problem - of the nation gnawed by politicians. But, leaves it at that without giving a solution. It fills the youth with enthusiasm, with aggression, with devotion, but stops at that. Swades, on the other hand, was more realistic with a direct message.

P.S. One particular line which I found more than impressive : "College de gate de is taraff, hum life ko nachaatte hain... to dujji taraf life humko nachaatti hai... dhim lak lak dhim dhim lak lak!!"




Sunday, February 05, 2006

Back again

It's been four whole months since I scribbled this space. I am personally convinced that this is my longest stretch of an open display of procrastination. Many events crossed by, many a times I actually got down to writing, but then...

Life has taken a U-turn I guess. CAT, XAT this that... all passed away, and now I am waiting for the 90 day countdown after which I'll be out of this place. New year passed without any resolutions or fanfare. Did nothing in the winter vacations as well; except yes, a few good books. Am feeling too lousy to write about them though.



Wednesday, October 05, 2005

A compelling novel

In this story running through three generations, covered beautifully in a 692 page work, one keeps on hopping from one facet of human relationship to other; each one so intricate and yet so minutely dealt with, that it keeps you stuck without even a slightest hint of boredom. An impressive novel encompassing everything called 'life'.


A few excerpts :

"Habit and awe are harder to overcome than people realize until they actually try to circumvent the conduct of years."

"And gradually his memory slipped a little, as memories do, even those with so much love attached to them; as if there is an unconscious healing process within the mind which mends up in spite of our desperate determination never to forget."

"And ignorance breeds ignorance; an unawakened body and mind sleep through events which awareness catalogues automatically."

"The land was so beautiful, so pure, so indifferent to the fates of the creatures who presumed to rule it. They might put their hands to it, but in the long run it ruled them. Until they could direct the weather and summon up the rain, it had the upper hand."

"Perhaps no human being is equipped to judge which is worse: inchoate longing with its attendant restlessness and irritability, or specific desire with its willful drive to achieve the desire."

"Every man has sadness in him, and it is no sin to remember a grief."

"We all have contempt for whatever there's too many of. Out here it's sheep, but in the city it's people."

"Love! What's love? Nothing but figment of women's imagination, thaf's all."

"For only those who have slipped and fallen know the vicissitudes of the way."

"Each of us has something within us which won't be denied, even if it makes us scream aloud to die. We are what we are, that's all. Like the old Celtic legend of the bird with the thorn in its breast, singing its heart out and dying. Because it has to, it's driven to. We can know what we do wrong even before we do it, but self-knowledge can't affect or change the outcome, can it? Everyone singing his own little song, convinced it's the most wonderful song the world has ever heard. Don't you see? We create our own thorns, and never stop to count the cost. All we can do is suffer the pain, and tell ourselves it was well worth it."

"No man sees himself in a mirror as he really is, nor any woman."

"Who on earth ever said people most moved don't weep? They don't know anything about it."

"Perhaps that's what Hell is, a long term in earth-bound bondage. Perhaps we suffer our hells in living..."

"It must be the demon of destructiveness in us, the impulse to poke the guts out of a fire. It only hastens the end. But what a beauriful end, isn't it?"





Monday, October 03, 2005

Do you agree?

This is a dialogue from 100 Girls which I was watching today:

"Men have this anti-intimacy force field around them.. that is powered by sarcasm, humor and a version."

Any comments?