HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!

Sometimes I just dont get it.

Why do people have double standards?Why does the same person moulded by the events,people and circumstances surrounding him react differently to similar situations.

I have seen people give a "What a disgusting person :~" look to those who smoke. And yet the same person is ok biting into what once was an innocent chicken.Butchered, strangled, stuffed in cages, cooked over grills , marinated
and dipped in butter, nevertheless he is perfectly at home munching onto it.

If Sania Mirza makes a bold statement, people would go to town burning her effigies, raise slogans , disrupting traffic as if the world is about to end.
And what happened to these very people when Abu Salem landed in India.
Several murders were not enough to shake their conscience.
All I remember is seeing empty streets in Bombay upon his arrival.

I dont know.
Sometimes I just dont get it.

The Sound of Silence

In the quiet comfort of a balmy night, I sit on my desk to write about the only companion I have for this night, the only friend who will see me through tonight - Silence.
My friend is dead in the morning hours when it is consumed by the cacophony of the office.But now at this sudden moment it pays me a visit, like it has always done.

Silence is the real conversation between friends, not the saying but the never needing to say anything is what makes the conversation golden.I am reminded of several instances in my life when I thought I was all alone and I was wrong.
A friend in school who relied more on pen and paper than his tongue once remarked to me - When you find it difficult with words,when they wont come
out and die down within your chest, when your lips quiver and your eyes melt - that is when you would want to write and that is when you could hear a tear drop, that is when you would understand Silence...

When you stand in front of a woman and the woman has so much to say, yet says nothing,the silence becomes deafening, that is when you get to know the mighty scream of silence.

Silence - The eerie stranger, the only argument which cannot be countered, the welcome friend, the parting gift, the very womb of music.

I end with this quote I read somewhere-
Silence is but, the music between the notes.

The Goodbye

When you board your DTC bus,
Or hop into the Metro train,
Please refrain
From looking back at me again
You would have nothing much to gain,
You will only see a face buried in pain.

The wheels roll by,
The clouds come along
Why should you care when the autumn leaves fall,
The spring of the west beckons one and all.

So leave,
Without saying your goodbyes
Coz I can't bear to see you go away
The rains will wash away my tears
The cold of the winter will heal the wounds
And I will learn to survive.

Please refrain
From looking back at me again...

The Parting

....They look at each other but dont say a word.
Thats how it is with friends,Thats how they part..
Last lines from a poem by Dom Moraes floating around in my
head surface today as a good friend said her Goodbye.

A lot has been said between us ,a roller coaster ride i should say punctuated by volcanic bursts and aeons of silence.
Sometimes i wonder why people come into your life and then leave you?
I guess the world runs on hope ...people leave you so that you learn to live and hope that one fine day your paths will cross each other.
Hope is that fuel which drives the world and this is one of nature's way to generate this fuel.

I faintly remember the movie - Seven years in Tibet where they show
the Tibetans tying small pieces of cloth in the nooks and corners around monasteries as they made a wish.It is believed that the winds will carry forward their wishes to the Gods that be.

This post is my cloth in the blogosphere..hoping that our paths met again...hoping that my wishes and my sorry will be carried forward to her.

The First Ride


This time around , Holi was everything it should not be ..dry and colorless.and the fact that it coincided with a weekend didnt help things.Kept sleeping through most of the two days , stared at the walls..it felt as if everything around me had lost its soul somewhere in the plumes of smoke as the holika was set to fire. My lappie isnt too happy with me, my stomach is making strange grumbling sounds even the strings of my guitar sound dead.

So i thought of adding some color here and there.I changed my guitar strings and it now sounds plucky.I walked out of my house and gulped down an ice cream.
Ice creams remind me of many things.Maybe becoz I have this habit of eating ice cream whenever I am overly depressed or excited. Every high or low in my life has to be accompanied with an ice cream and every subsequent ice cream that I consume is like a ferrari sprint across the memory lane. Ive been having a headache for quite a few hours like an animal throbbing inside my brain.

I sit for a while on a park bench below our apartment watching children play.I notice this little girl learning to ride a cycle while her father holds the buttof the cycle providing support as she hesitantly pedals forward.

Shit man I say to myself, I clearly remember the day when I was doing the same.I must have been seven then and was having a hard time learning to ride a cycle and despite my insistence my father would not allow me to add those little wheels on the side that prevent you from falling down. He used to say - Beta thats how you will learn, you learn by falling ..again and again.

And the day was there I was pedalling hard on that bright sunny day with the comfortof the realisation that my father is behind me holding the bike, running along the bike so I felt safe. So there I was unafraid pushing myself harder and harder as the wind blew through my hair.

And then for a moment I turned around to see my father and behold ! theres no one there.I then looked forward and chuckled with delight I would have thought it would be fear but no it was ecstasy. Me riding the bike on my own - the duckling finally learning to swim.I rode with great passion across streets I had never explored ,I rode at speeds I never though were possible for me , I rode as if there was no tomorrow , I rode as if riding meant everything as if you live to ride.

In my pleasure I forgot the fact that there is something called a brake to stop the bike.Not knowing how to stop it I crash landed on the side injuring my leg.The memorable ride finally coming to an end as I headed to have an ice cream to celebrate the event.

Cut to present I find myself smiling,the headache is gone.I roll up my trouser to see the mark of that wound on my calf.Its still there and will always remain there and boy am I happy to have it permanently embossed on my skin.The color is red.

At the end of it all a man is just his experiences and their memories.I may not have played holi with conventional colors this time round but I am more than happy to find such colors with me so that I can look back and rejoice.

Wishing Everyone a Happy Colorful Holi !!

Deja Vu

The unique thing about this post is that it has been written 15000 feet above sea level en route from Delhi to Bombay.Period.Other than that its the usual crap.

My trip to Delhi this time around was a shortish one,moreover the chilly winters made it seem even shorter.I just manage to catch up with a few friends and dig myself into a few steaming saucers of mom ka gajar ka halwa.I always make it a point to roam around Connaught Place whenever I am in Delhi.Buying some books, eating at some of my favorite joints and a bit of shopping is akin to reliving the entire "Delhi" episode of my life.

Its been a long while since I saw my entire family together.I was really happy to be there on my dad's birthday this time around.With my sis now posted in Gurgaon it was great to see all of us together huddled up in our quilts,my parents watching some soapwhich has been running ever since I was born.I dont get this.I have been around for 24 years and yet all these actors in these soaps never seem to grow old.Someone must be crazy out there.

I catch up with some of my Class fellows in Noida on Saturday evening.We play the guitar for a while( and it ocuurs to me its been quite a while since I flirted with my guitar) sing a few songs and talk ourselves to sleep.After talking to them and some other friends of mine I get this general feeling that the curves of our lives has plateaued.I dont know if I am seeing them or if I am seeing myelf in them...

My flight to Bombay is to leave at 6 am Monday morning.To avoid the fog I suggest my father to drop me at the airport at 3 am.OK its a stupid suggestion but somehow i was getting bored at home and decided to make a move.I start packing my bags and my mother started her usual chores of stuffing my bags with eatables, sweets , clothes and everything that can be found under the sun.I like to travel light but I keep quiet.I can see the general algorithm that drives parental behavior.
"Deja Vu" is the word or rather the feeling.

I reach the airport say my goodbyes, take a cup of coffee and sit down.I look around myself.I have been flying quite frequently on this route and it seems ive started to recognise the faces around me.The crew, vendors, the staff and even some of the passengers.Somewhere Sometime ive bumped into them before.
"Deja Vu" is the word or rather the feeling.

Now i have this habit of speaking to whoever is around me whether or not he/she likes it.I just cant seem to keep my mouth shut.There is this lady sitting next to me reading a book on poetry by Rilke.We start talking and it turns out she is a German.We decide to exchange our respective books to have a peep at the others'.I have been re-re-reading the autobiography of Marlon Brando titled - Songs my Mother taught Me.I have always considered myself too naive to understand and appreciate poetry but id heard a lot about Rilke so was rather curious about it.

Music what do I say to you.
I have always wanted to say a lot to you but I seem incapable of doing so. Rilke through his poem does the job for me.
Thanks Rilke.

To Music:
Music: breathing of statues.
Perhaps: silence of paintings.
You language where all language ends.
You time standing vertically on the motion of motal hearts.
Feelings for whom?
O you the transformation of feelings into what? --: into audible landscape.
You stranger: music. You heart-space grown out of us.
The deepest space in us, which, rising above us, forces its way out,
--holy departure:when the innermost point in us standsoutside,
as the most practiced distance,
as the otherside of the air: pure, boundless, no longer habitable.

This is all I ever wanted to say to the Gods of Music.
My mind rushes back to a rainy friday evening some five years back when a friend and me were driving back to our houses from college.Suddenly the radio started playing "Learning to Fly".the first Pink Floyd song I were to hear.
I was frozen.
How do I describe my reaction to it? It wasnt David Gilmour,it was ME singing that song.My long cherished dream of learning to fly being recited right there bang on my face.My deepest, innermost thoughts read loudly and clearly by someone else. How could this be?How can any other person read my thoughts so clearly and articulate them like I cant.
I sure am a loser.
It was Gilmour then ,and its Rilke now.
"Deja Vu" is the word or rather the feeling.

I have been given a lappie by my sis and I keep working over it during the flightYou should thank it or else you would not have been reading this post.The flight is halfway through, I am tired of typing.I look outside.

"Orgy" is the word that comes to my mind.An orgy of colors as I see the sun rise across the distance.The heavenly mocktail has just been splattered across the sky.The sun painfully caresses and leaves the horizon as if two lovers have just about finished their kiss.The sky is an indescribable orange, the sun is throwing out not sunlight but wine so the earth and its creatures can celebrate the onset of a new day.Its been quite a while since I saw something as beautiful as this.I look around and I see people dozing and I dont like it.I clearly remember the last flight to Bombay few months back when an elderly lady sitting next to me squeezed my arm, woke me up, smiled and said -"Look beta the beautiful sun is rising, nature is bestowng its eternal beauty on us humans and yet we are asleep to even appreciate this miracle ,rather we complain of it when the sun goes up in the noon".
I see a man sitting next to me sleeping.I smile and I know what needs to be done.
"Deja Vu" is the word or rather the feeling.