Reverses

There is a time in every man's education

2010-02-08T10:46:00.001-08:00

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.

The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes much impression on him, and another none. This sculpture in the memory is not without preestablished harmony. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray.

We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

If only

2010-02-08T09:14:00.000-08:00

If only I had known.

Or did I? Maybe I did.

Ah, screw it. Its over anyway.

Only fuckpots crib.

The one that wasn’t meant to be

2009-10-18T14:41:00.001-07:00

I ran, wondering if I could make it,

My instincts weren't sound enough,

I'd given up sleep for this and I admit,

I did not foresee the bluff

I hadn't a clue why I was taking it,

As I entered the cramming was on,

So was the last minute lifesaving shit,

Dint bother me, my moment was gone

I walked in uneasy; I'd made my peace,

I was just gonna let it pass,

Said he, the tall fat guy, 'Shut up please

Relax, no test today, I dismiss this class'

The death of the PPT

2009-10-14T09:54:00.000-07:00

Ah, what would life be without the PPT,
Empty audi and an emptier high tea,
With them done, life wouldn't be the same again,
The oh so lovely monologues of mck, bcg n bain

And the placecommer; spare him a thought,
This ain't what the disciplinarian had sought,
No one to order around, nobody to fine,
Blasphemy he cried, when the PGP1 dared to opine

As he sat back and recollected his spoils of yore
The pride, the 'audacity', the fcuk he kept in check before,
The harried PGP1s, their schedules, their mindspace,
Wonderful were those PPTs, sweet were the times of Place

These roses…

2009-09-08T18:34:00.001-07:00

These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones;

they are for what they are;

they exist with God to-day.

There is no time to them.

There is simply the rose;

it is perfect in every moment of its existence.

Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts;

in the full-blown flower there is no more;

in the leafless root there is no less.

Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike.

But man postpones or remembers;

he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future.

He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.

Self Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Blogging from Word!

2009-09-06T13:56:00.001-07:00

Another of those things that mankind should be grateful to Microsoft for (the others being windows/excel!)

I am writing this from the comfort of my word processor window! Nice J

But I have three projects and a BGS presentation tomorrow morning! and that aint nice!

Confessions of a comatose classmate

2009-08-30T15:20:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time in Bangalore,

Was a guy who just couldn’t sleep at night,

With projects, presentations and an ass so sore,

He’d gotten used to his sorry plight

Every night he'd lie and stare,

At the walls, around him and online,

And to think of it life's not fair,

Some classes were at 8! not fine!

He tossed and turned and you know what,

He tried every position he knew,

He even tried to exhaust himself,

And cut down on strong brew

And so he would tell himself, Dude!

I am gonna stay up through class today,

He'd fight it hard and still hit the desk

Coma, his nick, was damned to stay!

And on a not-so-fine day there was a PPT,

It sounded cool and he took notice,

But when they got to the boring slides, you see,

He napped a sec, but the placecommer just wouldnt miss

Life went on and so did he,

Another bunch of endterms at IIMB,

A vision then told him 'Its okay to classnap

Life is not all about classes, you see!'

He was last seen enjoying his nap,

Through some monologue or mindless yap,

No more struggles, no resistance anymore,

Life's fulfilling when you sleep through a bore!

My last thought

2009-07-20T13:15:00.000-07:00

I lied. Lied to everybody I knew. Until one fine day when I no longer remembered what the truth was. The truth, buried within people who could only be exhumed. People who had been brutally murdered. People who had once trusted me with their lives.

I am from the city of joy. The city couldn't afford me any, but I derived mine from my daughters. Everyday I watched them grow, it felt like a part of me was returning to the normalcy it had been starved of. I tried hard to give them a life they would’ve cherished. And harder to make them feel loved. I failed sometimes, for I had no idea how it was done. I was inclined to believe that I wasn’t meant to be a father. Yet, I never gave in to such thoughts of fate and destiny.

Often I try to remind myself of what I have been through, and I fail. Fail because I cannot withstand closures with myself anymore. Often I dream of the times that have been and the ones that weren’t meant to be. Places I now dread and people long gone. I feel time warps around me, only to let me experience what I have been through, again. Time was supposed to heal, but it has conspired in making every bit of me shudder in sheer despair as I unfold another of my hidden fears. I have given up on trying to beat the forces around me and confront the ones within.

I sometimes fool myself into believing that I’m happy now. I had loved those times when I suspended my disbelief and played with my girls, fed them, kissed them, held them like there was no tomorrow. But it is not tomorrow that scares me. It is my past that is holding me hostage.

Sometimes when I wake up in the nights, I feel I’m chained by invisible ties of blood and emotion. Ties that pull me down and choke me till I’m left gasping for thought. I feel the world passing me by and I cannot influence it. I experience the pain and I cannot shout. The only moments when I really wish someone would bail me out of my misery. I feel around for my mother’s warmth and I sense it for a second that fleets so swiftly that it leaves me miles behind. I am not sure if every passing day is helping me.

Life has been cruel to many people. I am not the only one and I am not complaining. I hoped to come out of the clutches of my past someday and live a life I had dreamt of, devoid of all the voids that fill my heart and bleed it. But the last bit of humanness seems to have ebbed out of me. I see no purpose, nor pain or pleasure. I can see myself losing it. The rest of the world seems to have left me behind. And I don’t think I can catch up in this lifetime.

In some other life, maybe...

The Summer Day

2009-07-19T02:46:00.000-07:00

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

- Mary Oliver

iRamble

2009-03-10T06:57:00.000-07:00

Had my IIMB interview last week. Realized last night that if I dint document it, it'd soon be lost like most moments in my life which I dint bother making notes of, mental/physical/electronic!

But then I'm too lazy to type out the whole thing now cuz I've gone through it so many times already that recollecting it does not make me feel good anymore(unlike it did then and unlike iimb interviews are supposed to make you feel). The two and a half hours I spent waiting for my turn werent all that bad at all. Had quite a few laughs and almost everybody felt good after his/her interview, so no consoling. Mine was the last in my batch and I guess that explained my short interview. They just asked me questions and let me respond.No stress though I was a tad too prompt in replying to them, in hindsight. Should have assimilated a little more. Any which way, I got a fairly fair shot.

The campus is quite nice and feels a degree or two cooler than outside. The buildings are lovely with the creepers covering so many of the walls that you wonder who got there first. But then you get closer to them and they look like unfinished structures that are waiting endlessly in their pursuit of distemper and paint.

The Tripping Pint

2008-06-06T15:59:00.000-07:00

As I sat on the couch sipping my beer, I could still hear them. The past few days had been torturous. I was not sure if it was my insomnia or my paranoia that was doing this to me. I had never believed in the supernatural but this was the first time I was to come to terms with it.

Life had been good till a few days back. I was a successful self-made businessman with a loving family and a spouse who understood my every need. Sanjana had always been supportive of all my moves, right from the day when I decided to sell my only inheritance, a dilapidated flat in Khar, to back my new venture. I must have taken close to three years to break even during which she even pawned her jewelery to keep the household going especially with the arrival of our first son, Suchit. Must have been really hard on her yet I never realised it. All that mattered to me back then was the company. But that was not to be one of my greatest worries

Life seemed good, for years later the company had grown and the family had begun to matter more. Sunny, my youngest son, was to graduate within an year. And Suchit had already become one of the most sought after lawyers in Mumbai. Sanjana was beside me all along, bringing them up and playing the perfect host to the numerous parties I'd thrown at ours. She was forty and gracefully greying at the temples, and serene. I had failed to realise how beautiful she had grown with age. Wish I had.

But those were the good times.

As I woke up on last sunday it seemed like a perfect holiday until I realised she wasn't next to me. Not in the room or in the house. I tried calling her. The lines were jammed. Someone was monitoring my cellphone. Three years as army engineer had taught me quite a lot about espionage. And beeps.

And then I heard her. Loud and clear and incomprehensible.

I was told she’d been there for a coupla hours now. Shouting and howling and refusing to be helped. Something was terribly wrong with her face. Distraught and confused as it was, it seemed very different from the one I’d known. Interspersed with her cries were words, I now know, telling me that she was scared. Of them.

Doctors diagnosed her with a rare form of schizophrenia, one where people heard deafening sounds that others din’t and the conundrum often turned them suicidal. And they had been right. Less than a week later, I found her lying on our bed, peaceful as her face had been. Only she had cut her veins.

It took them all. My sons left me soon after. Each of them showing exactly the same symptoms. I was told it was a curse on the family, that we had wronged someone who, in death, was avenging it. I refused to believe all that agreeing with the docs that such rare multiple occurrences in the family could be a result of faulty genes. For if they were right I might have been spared.

And then, to my horror, I began to hear it. Deafening beeps that I could hear at an alarming frequency. It was driving me mad. Just as it had done to my wife and sons.
I was not to give up so easily. A life of struggles was not to end this way. It seemed overpowering now and so I ran. Trying not to think of it I worked up the courage to face it. The more I ran, the louder it seemed to get. I could now hear it from all sides. The crescendo was getting to me, and when it did, it all came crashing down.

It was dark. I realised I’d drained the beer all over myself. The stench of alcohol bringing me back to my senses. As I groped in the dark I tripped over my jug, found my alarm and switched it off.

I walked to the living room where Sanjana was setting the table up.

It was time for dinner.

C(r)owed down !

2008-06-04T21:43:00.001-07:00

I woke up a little later than usual today and was in two minds about whether to go late to ymca just do my own sweat-it-out. Decided I'm better off doing the latter and so I took off. Ran up the western express highway flanked by the arabian sea all along,and further towards the site office of the bandra-worli sea link, touted as mumbai's largest/newest landmark in the making and rightly so.

The summer sun, however nascent, has this uncanny habit of showing up too early, too big. Relentless and staring at you in the face. But what sees you through is the cool breeze of the sea inches away and the impressive skyline miles apart. (barring the stench, which is another cons that needs special mention)

Braving it all, as I ran on the 'promenade' I reached a dead end with a metal frame blocking the rest of the route, probably to keep pedestrians and over enthusiastic joggers (read me) from the construction yard. Any which way someone had forgotten to lock a small door on the frame so I walked right in. And from where I stood the route looked just like those tracks unkempt/unattended to and condemned to disuse. The elephant grass dint let me walk through it so the only other option was to walk on the parapet braving the gust which fortunately was blowing inwards.

(Incidentally what I distinctly remember is how a certain crow perched on the parapet was trying hard to stay put but got blown away a coupla times till it realised it was safer behind the parapet on the track where the wind broke) There were close to a hundred crows there, a quick estimate told me, scavenging and crowing away. A hundred of any species is a big number but what can crows possibly do to you ?

It all started with one of them kissing my head a coupla times. I'd almost dismissed it as coincidence when the third time it tried I ducked and it still hit me hard and thats when the realisation dawned on me that it'd actually missed the first two times. Still not to be cowed down I decided to shoo it away and swore hard. The fact that no one was around to get offended helped but not much, cuz not later I realised that other crows were being called upon to redeem their struggle against the lone crusader of mankind who dared to challenge them in their own backyard.

I ran. Ran, not as much for my life as for my head and the hair that adorns it.I understood that underestimations deceive but most importantly the fact that however old that adage about unity and strength is, it still carries as good a punch as the peck of a crow.

Anonymity and martyrdom

2008-06-03T01:05:00.000-07:00

Quite often I have felt strongly about someone who did something anonymously. Graphiti, arson, defacing, electioneering, propaganda ... the list is endless. Yet I cant help but marvel at this amazing option that people have got.

One could dismiss it without much forethought assuming it to be cowardice. Yet anonymity strengthens our beliefs and the causes we stand up for against the perils of the society we live in. It is a source of strength. And there is a fundamental difference between cowardice and lack of strength. Endangering one's life for a trivial cause which could be fought for better is an exceedingly simple yet cruel waste of life. Life's not as short as we think it to be. There's a lot more to live for, certainly not die for. There's a lot more to see, change, experience.

Juxtaposing this with something said/done anonymously, the consequences are completely different. The protagonist gets to do what he wants done . Gets heard probably because of the element of interest anonymity generates. The antagonist ( if any) doesn't get to target anybody. But most importantly the idea is expressed. The doer heard and the objective realized.

So the next time you're fuming at a Mr X, think your way out.

It's not as bad an idea it's made out to be!

The flip side

2008-05-25T00:33:00.000-07:00

Often overlooked, eventually forgotten. For every angle that we delve into there is a flip side that we dare not to.
Not because it's uncharted territory but because our inherent resistance, this mental rigidity that physically surfaces probably only after death, doesn't quite let us.