Bidding Adieu to an era….and learning to let Go

Its been like the end of an era for me today in more ways than one.
I just walked out of a place i spent nearly 3 years - my workplace and no i did not even look back and walked off as though it was just another day.
I put in my papers a week back and to my utter astonishment I was relieved in a week when i had requested just a month early releiving (well when cost cutting is the mantra such things happen…my only regret being that if i knew they would be so nice I would not have spent almost an hour at the new company interview begging for a 2 months notice and instead bargained for a better package).

When i sit down and look back there is so much to cherish , so much to be thankful that it got over but yet I am not mourning .In fact i was almost tearful when two of my friends in the group left over a year back. I have changed it seems , that girl who used to get sentimental enough to sulk for hours and days when you leave a place/person seems to have finally after thirty years of existence gotten used to leaving things behind.
I have always since childhood had to leave things behind being the the daughter of a government servant transferred around, and every place it took one hell of a time to adjust and then when i finally did , we moved again and i became grief personified as a melancholic child.
Now i guess i finally have learnt to Let Go.
Is it because i have finally grown up , or is it because i have finally given up?
I have been wondering.

I dont know what lies ahead of me , and I being that worst scenario thinking person I do have my fears but i am so calm relatively.Then i came home and looked at my blog. I noticed that in the last 1 year after changing the project i have been relatively less bitter about my workplace esp my managers on the blog .

The reason being that it was relatively a much nicer project and place than my previous one but yet today when i gave my exitinterview i filled in the form in what i remembered bitterly .

After that i realized unfortunately that this might end up being used against my immediate project/manager rather than being taken as a collective feedback for the organization.
I spoke to my manager to let it be known and i guess she's pretty cool on that which made me feel better.
In fact even in my previous project i really appreciate my manager for the support (despite such a sick sr management…against whom i have the real issues) and all except for the damned possesiveness they possesed about letting people go their way and the dramatics that were associated there.

Somewhere it pained when was greeted with a "thank you for your services" line but then what can you expect from someone way up the ladder and had minimal intearction with you.

For a moment i felt guilty about giving any negative feedback of any sort considering the fact that while i have always been criticized for not doing something more, I have always been appreciated here for doing what was expected of me splendidly.
But then I always believe that one needs to do it for a future set of people who would come in and some who stayed behind.

Nevertheless I for one last time met people who would remember me fondly and so would I though the chances of us meeting were less .
I somehow felt fine about leaving . I sort of realize deep within finally that things change in any case, if i dont move on others will and we anyways will end up on different paths.

I will always remember this place for the friends i made here….friends who remind me of the quote
"Love is blind , but friendship closes its eyes".
So many of them did that for me , I 've never realized why ?

People who pulled me out of my quiet moods ,
People who put up with my temper,
People who for all their jokes on all around spared me ,
People who gossiped all around and had so many judgements of everyone but never judged me or at least always put up a not guilty for me.
People who for all the ease with which they speak on all other stuff to me become hesitant when they ask me , when will you marry ? or invite us for your marriage.
People who stood up for me even when I spoke against them.
People who trusted me and took my word instantly.
People who may have thought me miserly but yet adored me despite it and spent a lil bit more on me.
We all have dispersed slowly across companies , cities and continents.
I will miss them . As you go up that damned ladder one is forced to climb i know it will rare to get that same love ,that trust that loyalty,
but then for once i will be positive minded, for i did not expect all the above here too when i left my past organization.(I started my blog with a poem missing people from my past organization)
I know its hard , but yeah for once its not really impossible.

So here's hoping for the best and getting prepared for the worst.

P.S: I have now 2 whole months to fritter but considering i have only one offer in hand , to minimize the risk i am considering to request an early joining .
But yeah for the next fortnight i plan to just be idle and while away time , cause i no longer have a team i can go around with , and most friends are married and
have I have a family which does not travel well.
So i will get some books and enjoy them my greatest loves and traverse a thousand worlds.

Weekends roll by…as i while off time watching stuff

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.

As says my Tooltip for Books in Life tag on the wordpress blog my book reviews are not reviews but the feelings ,thoughts and memories the book puts in my head and heart and occasionally the soul.

After quite some days I started off reading Rusking Bond's Landour days this weekend. He is one author I love (and perhaps envy )for the sheer simplicity of life he has had is able to relate in his books.Except for his book "Strangers in the Night" which is absolutely a male fantasy kind of book different from any other book of his and I did not enjoy rest of his book bring into life an idyllic pleasure that I never have had.

His love for flowers and his description of them makes me so enjoy them . So when I started of on the introduction of this book "Landour days" – a writers journal I found so many of the things echoed and so many memories brought back .

The first line itself reminds me why I started writing this blog anonymously

""The habit of keeping a diary has led me into trouble more than once,""….."People love dipping into other people's diaries and….resulted in … ill-feeling."

It happened to me with someone of my own with just a few lines and no one has the time to read the whole ….just a few words that "I hate her" (Never mind the fact that she is the only one in this world I ever have trouble deciding to hate or love at any given time ) is all that was remembered and it probably caused a crack that though time has hidden has caused irreparable damage.

Then the story of his headmasters wife reminded me of the day in school when I was given some real insult as a child saying I was trying to forge.Funny part was I never understood what I was doing was wrong. On my lazy afternoons I just copied my teacher's signature a few times in my notebook and when it went again to her with the homework I was caught for An attempt to forge in fourth or fifth class I think. I recalled it as I read it.

His introduction itself is what I think I would like to write for my blog….

"I am a compulsive diarist…..In this way I have preserved much that otherwise would have been forgotten. Naturally there were evnts trivial in retrospect which are better forgotten but it is salutary for me to flip through the pages of old diaries…..and see how stupid I was at times or how I coped with difficult situations…..…Not everything that happens goes into the diary. The privacy of friends has to be respected. My own privacy has to be preserved, to a certain extent.But I am a subjective writer and much that I have written …has been from personal experience." I guess that's why being anonymous is best for this journal.

His lines about compulsive walkers –" who will walk all day here and there everywhere not in order to get somewhere, but to escape"……….Those of us who must work for a living and would love to be able to walk…It's a rat race for most people whether they like it or not." is another some surely can relate to.

In his advice to budding writers is a point 3 which convinces me of my limitations whenever I think of my writing in general

"Are you interested in anyone else other than yourself? Writing about oneself has its limitations"

The book and its simple funny incidents which are so believable and the idyllic morning and mountains reminding you you of times when you could dream of it at least .Many love the sea , but I like the mountains a bit more , theres something about them which fascinates me – hillsides covered with flowers may be that's what is my imagination – especially cosmos. As I walk to office I see the orange variety oif them planted in the traffic circle and they are so lovely standing up to the sun. I like the white and pink more but in the dusty crossroads I guess orange is suitable.Today one cant afford houses in hill stations . One cant afford them in these concrete jungles firstly.

Throughout the book he uses quotes like" It isn't life that matters , but the courage you bring to it" which put things into perspective which is something I love to do in my blog , never realized that till now.

I wouldn't write what he wrote of flowers they mean a lot more and so to me but ah the way he puts it.

"To me flowers are the most sensual of living things, or perhaps its just that they appeal to the sensuality in my own nature"

For me flowers are a hope , are a sign of living and blooming for the day and yes they appeal to me in ways nothing else does esp when they are on plants itself.

During my trip to Mumbai I traveled so much but what I remember is the flowers there , they are so cheap compared to here and so fresh and available in bounties. As I got down from Dadar station I saw a little girl with bouquets of red and yellow roses some 10 to 15 bouquets I guess as though they were so unreal all in her arms and that's all I remember. And then the African daisies you see green centered white ones that they pluck and sell at temples.I was so reluctant to give it to the pandit who would just crush and throw them at Siddhi Vinayak.Herein I see houses though where the pink bougainvillea wraps itself all over neem trees in such a pretty manner that I just stand for moments when I walk that path occasionally. I used to love the long walls for kilometers covered by bougainvillea a few years ago on roads which now have glass buildings.

"My faults and limitations are many but I've always accepted that I'm a most imperfect specimen of humanity, which means I've always been on friendly terms with myself"The first part of the above line I can write today but I hope I mean the second part too some day i.e I accept my faults and limitations easily but I can't be friendly with myself for them and none around me let me be.

It was nice to read something so simply joyful its always the reason I love his books, including the humor which does not get cynical and yet leaves you amused The part where he decides silence is the most sweetest sound is what I feel at time and cant bear to listen any music at all.

His stories set in simple people of Mussorie, Dehra and such hills remind me of what one can never have…its not just because of the financial factor but also because of the time that passed by.

The lines he writes for Dehradoon are what I guess one can write for anything or anyone one loves.

"Dear old Dehra : I may stop loving you, but I wont' stop loving the days I loved you"

P.S: The weekend I guess has been idyllic for me this time…Went for an interview which felt too easy except that the interviewer seemed more inrested in my education details or rather pulling out information from there. His wry look when he asked "how come your % dropped from 80% in school to 65% in Engineering- Too much studying eh was quite memorable" ….though I will forgive him rather for putting it humorously rather than the other chap at the Database company who found that some one from my college was supposed to be very active and god knows what.

Sunday was all watching Sachin and as that banner by some one in the match said thanks for all the memories. Not to watch him in live action is a regret I will live with.Then I had pre decided Monday was not right for office as I woke up idyllically at 9:30 am as I slept finishing this idyllic book late at 1:30 am and now write of it.

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.

Kuch Taare Jo Kabhi Na Honge Sitare

I saw  ' Taare Zameen Pe' and I think by now there are enough reviews of that movie and so I hardly need to write one  but what got me impressed  was a different but related thing.A comment on some channel or paper by Aamir to the effect that  if he started a movie about the troubles and pains faced by parents it would never end.

I remembered that line when in the movie the very troubled father angrily says "To kya karoon zindagi bhar ise ghar me baith ke khilaon kya".(What do I do feed him forever at home) .It seems such a heartless statement against such a cute boy right but think of a ground realities and you realize.

 A simple normal middle class nuclear  family , with one breadwinner though they love their child can only do so much. Unlike in movies there are few sympathies for anyone in this world who does not stand up and get counted in this rat race. You hate being in the race but you have no choice they push you in the line. (I felt this most boarding Mumbai local trains.) .

The usual answer is the government should provide special schools and provisions in transports buildings etc for differently abled people. Lets be frank , in the current scenario is it feasible for the next four or five decades for this to happen in our country (even with the best intentions) where even the strongest get tired  in our public transport.(oh yeah one visit to Mumbai taught me that). 

Yes I loved that child as he was sweet charming, but I wonder what if they shot the movie with a not so cute child, would our audiences lap up with equal sympathies. 

Also I had a general thought on the tagline

" Every child is special ". Is it?

So once you turn 18 you no longer are.

Why every human being is not special is what I lament about?

There's nothing wrong with loving children, they are adorable (and I confess I too like most enjoy them except some ever crying ones).In them unfortunately most parents  dream up their own dreams gone bad and some even sadly look them up  as old age investment.

But once a child grows up  do they no longer need the same things, as that child in the movie needed , affection ,belief , a bit of help, trust confidence.

I may not seem politically correct but I often feel that we whip up lot media hype on differently abled,  old aged, diseased  essentially , people where sympathy factor can be hyped. What about normal people who live with such.Life in world is very hard to survive and if anything I really admire the people who take care of people with disabilities and diseases with real hear felt concern and not as a job.

In fact its so sad to see teachers of today. Its like if you don't get any job you become a teacher and how the heck they treat children.

Ah our days were so better – at least 1 in 5 was admirable and inspirational.  

Even the movie showed a wrong point, "Every child is special"- Lets face it and it's a fact not every dyslexic child became Einstein or Picasso and in that school of Aamir not everyone had the same level  of ability. So again there's a race among the differently abled.  

So while we can never admire those boring people lets not be that unsympathetic to them

" Every Human being is special" if to no one to the himself , at least near and dear ones should emphasize that , its not just for cute children.

The pain of the child is true , but so is the pain of those parents.Not that I don't have issues with parents but as Aamir says that story never ends. 

Then I remembered our school days when so many of them wanted to be in the airforce. It was a passion like anything and today everyone wants to be a software engineer or a businessman.

Oh those days !!!

And how all ended up

A small discussion on Talent vs Skill

When I traveled last week with my Dad I unintentionally got into a very short interaction about the education system of our country with the Chairman of one of the finest Electronics Company in India.

 

He asked generically about my education and work and when I honestly said  "Electrical and Electronics" but I am now working in Software  as then I found no job in Electronics.(this could be the reason I wrote this old post)

  He asked a very tricky question you can say

"Did you use your engineering skills to polish your Software skills or learnt your Software skills for the job"

 He then lamented how when he interviews many freshers from Engineering Colleges  he finds them absolutely lacking in a practical understanding of engineering. I replied this is because in our Education system Engineering concentrates on theory and the Diploma candidates learn the practical skills and hence Engineers from small colleges  are never taught or allowed to really practice improve and experiment with real practical aspects of core Engineering. To this he retorted strongly  "Engineering cannot be taught, one should have a understanding and talent for it".I would have loved a very serious discussion of this but my Dad disliking my getting into my argumentative mode with his professional contacts cut me short as is a norm (as he too believes I am not an Engineer not an electrical and electronics one at least, since I don't understand the wiring of my house at all) with a wonderful change of topic . But if this topic had gone on I would have loved to ask that gentleman

Is it? Engineering cannot be taught, it's a Talent? , practicality and innovation being the key points– Agreed

 

But then sir why do you ask for Engineers when you hire for your Luminaries division?

Why not just conduct a workshop where whoever with may be Xth standard pass does the job you want in the best way hire them – why do you insist on a degree. Also what percentage of the so called real true Engineers with all the practical understanding etc get a chance for innovation. That can be done in research and what is the percentage of engineers who get a chance in research in here is common knowledge.  

In the end most jobs are repetitive and the finest will innovate and create anywhere but sir that percentage is miniscule. These creative ones may create a blue print for you great innovation but to manufacture you need second grade but committed people who will do your repeat uncreative jobs.

 So cheers ….And we all do that "To jobs that pay the rent/ EMI" etc etc……. It is for such that that wonderful quote by Stoppard was written "Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wicker-work picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art." 

Though my favorite example was and is this. Taj Mahal may have been designed and conceived by one or two or a small set of wonderful persons but to build it you needed thousands of boring people who simply carried and lifted bricks.

We may not love them admire them but lets never forget we need them.

A relook at life and then some plain nonsensical bitching

Since the last month when I posted hoping to be back with some nice travel notes life has shaken me me up in ways that simply reiterates calvin

"Reality continues to ruin my life" . and how it did….

But then it could have been worse I know all the spiritualists of this world would say.I will never say that cause

"Never say that it can't get worse because it can, and you're just tempting fate."

~Louise Sybing

 

So many things so many thoughts don't know what to start off with.

 

When I left on a 10 day vacation to Mumbai and Aurangabad where my Dad travels in lieu of his job , I had hoped for some change and a bit of shopping…..and when I return back a probable short  trip to US to add on to my resume if nothing else….  a life like mine could not hope for more. So when a colleague asked to join my family for the trip in I could not refuse and was like fair enough  some company is fine. More on all that later.

 

But what this trip ended as shook me up , fair enough I can get over with that but what I cant handle is , for a life with so few options it literally shut them all off.

I've been a rather healthy person all the thirty years of my life , and yeah with age life catches up….all that's ok, but for someone who never spent a day in hospital , ending up in an ICU with absolutely no memory of how is hard to digest.(Never mind my experience with the worst nurses ever who use injections like knives) .

Well doctors say its some thing in the head which will heal happily in 6 months medication no big deal. Hmm may be but what it does it this

I can't go anywhere anymore forget onsite not even another city for the time being  a few months, at least in theory it's a risk to be alone ….and funnily that's what I was hoping from life ….a simple independent peaceful life.

I am requested to consider, there is a urgent requirement to travel onsite and I have to refuse. Its not about career or anything for that matter …Health is Wealth indeed but its all about ending up dependent all because of a risk.

They say such experiences make you value life,

I wish I had something to value,

to me it simply makes me fed up all the more .

"Life is a long headache on a noisy street"

Yeah there are people who want it…….

People who have so much to live for …..

….and yeah if I could give it up as a trade  I 'd happily do so.

I just can't take the pain and then added to it be a hassle to a family to whom I will never be a cause of joy.

One of my sister's friend commented it seems that …are your sisters friends too like your sister who never smiles – "Well I wish I could explain to that lovely lady that no ,  some are born sad , they cant live off others , they cant find great joy just because they can afford to but a few dresses more or rather some one is willing to "

 

For me my current dilemma is what do I do with life

 I don't want a new straining job

My past is not easy to shrug off to get a cool job

I cannot leave the country for now for work .

I am supposed to live and afford it ……..

What a waste of earths resources I am it seems

But that's a common issue I believe…so I

Refuse to censure myself much on that count.

 

I know half of what I am writing is hogwash but then I have to write , I have ben trying to make time for writing this since the last fortnight…and now again I remember Orhan Pamuk and his evergreen adorable speech….Yes one writes to be happy

"I write because I have never managed to be happy.
I write to be happy."

When half my friends and family speculate as to what I do late at night and that they think is the cause of my strain(browse what??? Chat with whom?…i write this nonsense ).

 

Then there was this lady that accompanied me – oh a yeah in standard terminology we call them friends. She's had a some issue in her marriage and lives with parents I after a year of acquaintance never ask her what (hey come on she reciprocates too…she never asked me why I am still single). So when she requests is it an issue if she joins my family on the trip I say fine cause i am a bit dumb at times I guess and also it would be a change for her too.

 But I should have remembered the lessons of my past….

The lady is a bit strange and she sure upset my sister with her haggling ways at shopping , ….not that  it never happens with me…but then I get irritated but can live with it…cause I have few friends….most are acquaintances …….most of which start due to that standard need at work Team work.

But my sister who at least in our house is the sun around whom the world must revolve found it  a real turn off after the trip…she was quite nice during it thinking that she may be a great friend of mine cause she knows I usually in any other case don't invite people over to home. Anyways things went off in quite cool way but when we got back home and we sisters had the discussion I was asked how come you became friends with her she seems so not your type.

 

I explained that she was a good acquaintance and I know she's a bit self centered but so be it. As long as you don't fall head over heels(as do quite a few guys) for such kind no issue.

To me she was a team member and then at times after that some company

To go around, when all the married people are busy .

I tried to give some education to my dear sis about people not being black and white  and shades of grey but well I get asked  point black……If what she is not bad and greedy   what is - dad had to arrange a qualis instead of a small car because she was an extra member and yet she is so self occupied and greedy she says …."ooo wish we had arranged an Innova".

Well well people say things in jest…and yeah such is life….and then try to explain that bad is when people instead of being self centered become harmful and plot against you.

Also I tell her may be she's so ungrateful as  she thinks she's taken me out to Coffee day a bit many times.

 

I tell her that I live like this only dear….

And that's why I hum that sweet song

 

"Mile na phool to kaanton se dosti kar li

Isi tarah se basar humne zindagi kar li"

 

"As i could not find flowers, I made friendship with thorns

 and so I spent my whole life"

Not that my sister will ever get it…

She's had things and people ready to serve and

 finds nothing wrong in being served .Not that she's any happier though.

 Different people …different attitudes.

After all I cant explain her that I ignore most people who live in fantasies thinking that stuff ain't obvious.

Life's easier looking the other way.

 For example this lady above i spoke of often calls me over as a company to Coffee day to meet knowing well enough I care two hoots to meet at expensive places and will never foot the bill -  the real reason this all is to meet the guy in the team. The guy though is pisssed off and told her that why am I invited always when he wants to meet her. Some people can be real dumb.

Another awesome example : in gmail custom message will any idiot ever put the below as custom message for everyone to see"Should I smile because you're my friend, or cry because that's all we will ever be?"

That's meant clearly for only one person and any one who ever saw that guy and gal together and has an iota of sense will get it. There's nothing wrong yaar in such complicated affections and i at least believe the world loves or may be enjoys at least  to see people in love(again thats debatable) but when you use someone as a buffer at least be decent about it rather than act  as though it's a favor to me.

Gosh what I live through……

What a stupid and bitching kinda post…..

The next one hopefully I will be saner if not in a better mood.

Withered by Time

Words spoken in jest bring out what a person
would like to say or what one thinks
but would not  or could not say it straight.

So i observed always
The most recent one being a bit off context but neverthless was meant quite straight.
" Withered flowers dont need maintenance"
Yeah they dont .....Quite True
Then on a rethink on the words you wonder
whats wrong with with withered flowers....
they've had a blooming time
The tragedy is of the withered buds may be......Not sure
You need a bit of off the world perspective to see the difference
 Then again......
If the flower is happy to wither off on a branch
than become Cut Flower to be maintained in  living rooms
who are you to be bothered.

Pondering upon "The Unbearable Lightness of being" by Kundera

Amongst my varied reading which defies any sense most books that i read i either empathize or feel the book sympathizes with me or it simply puts the thrill and excitement of life into me or which makes me think.

Few books really give a new direction to ever wandering thoughts.This is one such book.On the surface
if you read it just as a story its all a series of infidelities and i hardly have much to say of the subject .But then it is the thoughts of the character and the narrators theories that are amazingly thought provoking.
Sadly though for a book with so much to ponder the story of the book as a whole seems focused on infidelities and such and is definitely not a great fiction read.Added to it there is a lot of physical descriptions which after a point get plain irritating in a novel with thought as its core.But then since the novel   was originally written in French one does let it be .

The book opens with a deep conflict in itself
"The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often perplexed other philosophers with it: to think that everything recurs as we once experienced it, and that the recur¬rence itself recurs ad infinitum! What does this mad myth signify? "

I rarely get coninced by categorizations but this one surely made a mark and i surely put myself in the fourth category

We all need someone to look at us. We can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under.

The first category longs for the look of an infinite number of anonymous eyes, in other words, for the

look of the public. ………………………….anonymous eyes……………………..

The second category is made up of people who have a vital need to be looked at by many known

eyes. They are the tireless hosts of cocktail parties and dinners. They are happier than the people in the

first category, who, when they lose their public, have the feeling that the lights have gone out in the

room of their lives. This happens to nearly all of them sooner or later. People in the second category,

on the other hand, can always come up with the eyes they need. ………….

Then there is the third category, the category of people who need to be constantly before the eyes of

the person they love. Their situation is as dangerous as the situation of people in the first category. One

day the eyes of their beloved will close, and the room will go dark. ……………………….

And finally there is the fourth category, the rarest, the category of people who live in the imaginary

eyes of those who are not present. They are the dreamers.

The chapter "A Short Dictionary of Misunderstood Words" is a real fine one though my favorites are surely what is written in for the word "Music" and "Light and darkness" and "Living in Truth"

MUSIC
Franz made no distinction between "classical" music and "pop." He found the distinction old-fashioned

and hypocritical. He loved rock as much as Mozart.He considered music a liberating force: it liberated

him from loneliness, introversion, the dust of the library; it opened the door of his body and allowed his

soul to step out into the world to make friends. He loved to dance and regretted that Sabina did not hare his passion.
They were sitting together at a restaurant, and loud music with a heavy beat poured out of a nearby peaker as they ate.
"It's a vicious circle," Sabina said. "People are going deaf because music is played louder and louder. But

because they're going deaf, it has to be played louder still."
"Don't you like music?" Franz asked.
"No," said Sabina, and then added, "though in a different era…" She was thinking of the days of Johann

Sebastian Bach, when music was like a rose blooming on a boundless snow-covered plain of silence.
Noise masked as music had pursued her since early childhood.
……..Music roared out of loudspeakers on the site from five in the morning to nine at night. She felt like rying, but the music was cheerful, and there was nowhere to hide, not in the latrine or under the bedclothes: everything was in range of the speakers. The music was like a pack of hounds that had
been sicked on her………………………………………………………..
"Noise has one advantage. It drowns out words." And suddenly he realized that all his life he had done
nothing but talk, write, lecture, concoct sentences, search for formulations and amend them, so in the nd no words were precise, their meanings were obliterated, their content lost, they turned into trash, haff, dust, sand; prowling through his brain, tearing at his head, they were his insomnia, his illness

LIVING IN TRUTH

Putting it negatively is easy enough: it means not lying, not hiding, and not dissimulating. From the time e met Sabina, however, Franz had been living in lies. He told his wife about nonexistent congresses in Amsterdam and lectures in Madrid; he was afraid to walk with Sabina through the streets of Geneva.

And he enjoyed the lying and hiding: it was all so new to him. He was as excited as a teacher's pet who as plucked up the courage to play truant.
For Sabina, living in truth, lying neither to ourselves nor to others, was possible only away from the public: the moment someone keeps an eye on what we do, we involuntarily make allowances for that ye, and nothing we do is truthful. Having a public, keeping a public in mind, means living in lies. Sabina
despised literature in which people give away all kinds of intimate secrets about themselves and their friends. A man who loses his privacy loses everything, Sabina thought. And a man who gives it up of his own free will is a monster. That was why Sabina did not suffer in the least from having to keep her love secret. On the contrary, only by doing so could she live in truth.

LIGHT AND DARKNESS
Living for Sabina meant seeing. Seeing is limited by two borders: strong light, which blinds, and total arkness. Perhaps that was what motivated Sabina's distaste for all extremism. Extremes mean orders beyond which life ends, and a passion for extremism, in art and in politics, is a veiled longing for death……………………………….
But for her, darkness did not mean infinity; for her, it meant a disagreement with what she saw, the negation of what was seen, the refusal to see.

Its hardly a great fiction read , too much gross stuff in between for people with puritanical tastes and lain boring in places but wherein it pauses and observes and ponders its simply amazing.

Poetic Lookback

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

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.

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

Some Appalling words....

L&T's chairman  interview in DNA now amused me no end and made me a tad upset too.Just because he is not finding enough Engineers to fulfill his plans the way he has narrated
his problems is sad.But what was worse was the way he was insisting that IT companies should not hire Mechanical and Civil Engineers .I was kind of appalled ….hey do you really think it is fair just because you need them badly and you can't afford them you deny them opportunities.
Is there nothing called free choice. After all whats the guarantee that if IT companies here dont hire them they wont move to the US or elsewhere. Also why this discrimination especially since the fact remains whatever be the industry what is taught in the colleges is hardly ever useful as it is
in whatever is the arena of work.
Also isn't it unfair that  if you had made a choice of mechanical/civil or even say arts at a young age…you are not supposed to change the stream forever and get cast in that for life.How can some one with such wide experience and visions speak such.

L&T definitely is a very admirable company for me more so than the famous IT companies but then when he complains that IT does not build India  our IT Engineers only work for US , one should remember the fact that L&T today gets opportunity to build India's infrastructure today because there is a need…a need kickstarted majorly by IT.
He needs to innovate and find a way to inspire those engineers, attract them and  not inspire others to cut off their livelihood and make it easy for himself.

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.

why isn’t it ever unfair in my favour?

So its Diwali and i am posting on this blog out here…..
That pretty much implies i am not into crackers
and i have had my share of watching the sparklers from the balcony.
The last 10 days have been a strain heavily on me …..
…..so straining that my only refuge was Calvin….and
i promptly updated my signature lines to
"Reality continues to ruin my life "(and it sure does…god or whoever
has such a bad imagination)
Does Calvin rock….or what…I certainly dont remember every strip of his
or all the names and stuff but his one liners i tell ya….Thats all
thats there in this world.Bill Watterson you just are great.

I got my much awaited and debated appraisal….
and i am asked Are you happy and then leaving no chance as the
expression my face
became clear i am told "You should be happy".
Gosh how people love to control other people's emotions too …
At home parents/family tell you …you should like what they select
/give.At office its the boss.

Damn i dont even get sympathy once i get outside with my pay
cheque….cause i am told and true it is that except for a few excellent
i've got the 2nd or 3rd best possible deal at my grade. Hmm the only
line i could think of is
"In the kingdom of the blind….one eyed is the king".

Whatever it is the thing is its over and i ve reached a dead end in my
career too apart from my life which seems to be perenially stuck
there.

Added to it my healths been at its lowest since probably years
and nothing really scares the living daylights off me than bad
health.My imagination runs riot …and i just congratulate myself once
more that despite being a topper in biology at school i never wanted
to become a doctor cause blood and gore and my imagination(developed
by unintentionally watching those UGC programmes on brain surgery
/skull drilling …i puke almost whenever i remember that).I would have
imagined all the diseases i studied on myself.
One of the best decisions of my life….not taking up biology beyond school.

So sitting tired and staring at some horrible work at desk I casually
remembered Bill gates and Calvin together and some farmers exploited
by middlemen.
This is the crux story of outsourcing which i figured out by some
chance glances at figures on some computers at work.
In the US the company saves $4000 by outsourcing a $8000 work to
india. Super saving $4000.
The company here thus bills 1 Engineer around $4000 to this us client
and pays the engineer $ 1000.
Assuming a $500 administrative expense per engineer our dear
entrepreuner makes a cool $2500 profit.and they say farmers are
exploited by middlemen.What about poor us….But we lack the courage to
bet on and be an entrepreuner …hmmm.

Gates said: Life is not fair get used to it.
Calvin:"I know ….but why isn't it ever unfair in my favour?"

Tagore 's Chitrangada and Lipika over the weekend

Have been reading Chitrangada by Tagore this weekend.
It about another of those princesses smitten by Arjuna though Tagore models this drama in a very sensitive and different way and herein the warrior princess is the equal of Arjuna at least thats the way the drama's written . It ends by some very strong proposal by the princess
"I am Chitra. No goddess to be worshipped, nor yet the object of common pity to be brushed
aside like a moth with indifference. If you deign to keep me by your side in the path of danger and daring, if you allow me to share the great duties of your life, then you will know my true self."

The story as per Indian mythology is different and softer but then thats the joy of mythology ...there are myths galore ...to each his own.

It beautifully describes how the princess is spurned by Arjuna giving his celibacy vow as an excuse
when she meets him first in her true form and thus she gets a beauty as a boon from gods for a year
and when Arjuna breaks his vow on seeing her she is disillusioned .
But then the gods persuade her to keep the disguise for the year.
When i am in a critical mood i guess i would dissect everything and make all noises about stuff
but since i decided for now i am enjoying fairy tales and dramas in good spirit it was a nice read.
It probably reminded me of the same thoughts that made me write "The Charm of Appearances"

Its been long though since i read Tagore.
Some times translations take away so much...i probably realize t a bit more as i have knowledge at least two languages which i an speak and understand to a great extent but cannot read but This book Lipika is relatively well translated by Indu Dutt.



I had got Tagore's Lipika(Brief Writings) in a very old and soiled with ink condition and another book 'The Gardener" on the street for some 10 or 20 rs 6 yrs ago and then i had loved it way too much cause it made you ponder a lot.
I wish i had blogged then...i seem clueless about my thoughts
except the one story which i somehow remeber well and recall at quite a few occasions.

Its a small writing called the "The First Letter"

Herein a young man newly married has to leave his young bride to go abroad.
Then abroad while walking reading the first letter from her
where she begs him to return saying

"Without you, when i do ot see you, the whole sky of my world is drenched in tears"

At this point he wonders
"What have I in me that has the value of those tears?"
Then suddenly a group of foreign girls come across him on the
street and its described thus
"Who knows what was exactly in his face or his dress or gait.........but they hurried away bursting into a giggle"
"In that cruel amused laughter mountain springs also changed their tune"

Now he wonders
"What was the value in my looks that could provoke such laughter"
and then he cant stop himself and goes back to his letter and
re reads the lines asking him to return.

Somehow i find myself often wondering on such lines when people are sweet or nice or cruel to me or vice versa(coz i too seem to be nice and cruel to some)
in ways that seem to have no explicable reasons.
I will probably re read those other stories and post some more .

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.

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.

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

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 .