Hope, deceiving …..

Unspoken Kindness in faces scares you

when you know you are not destined for such.

Some moments are destined to break your heart

Life has a way of scraping the wounds

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

When you reach the end of some horizon

you know it in the heart - the end that is

and yet…you wish

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

for as they say

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

A feel of the days

There's a feeling of being akin to sand
Broken into grains of nothingness
Can hold no water
drifting away never finding any roots
just slipping away to nothingness
even the sea throws you far off itself

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

When nietzsche said "The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time" he was right but thats for sweet memories.
Bad memory brings its own troubles . You never seem to be become immune to the bad things when they occur over and over again.You seem to hurt yourself for the same things over and over again.

I have a strange memory blackout problem amplified by a low confidence in my memory and my tendency to remain obscure.
When in a training class someone said SWOT analysis. All i remember is O and T expanded.It took me 30 mins to finally remember the S & W expansion.
And so i've never understood why i never trust my memory well enough .
There was a quote on the slide in today's training …a quote i easily know to be from Romeo and Juliet( Where else can one find a rose by any name) but i never respond on being asked.

When another class they ask if anyone has read "World is Flat" i find it prudent not to talk though i read it long back.
Then when someone puts across that poem i love "The Road not Taken" on a slide and tells that its an amazing poem and strange no one has read it and proceeds to read it, i find it unnecessary to comment.

I'm drifting back to a quiet nothingness i hopelessly prefer all over again.

I look back at anything past  and it seems something like this lovely Calvin stuff

Here's a picture of me when I was three. Look at that smile! Ahh, the arrogance of youth! I thought I knew everything when I was three. ….. Now, a lifetime of experience has left me bitter and cynical.
Funny how you miss out on things. Watched Sweet Home Alabama again.

A lil over 5 years ago we watched it at the end of a training program wherein we had to give opinions and all that stuff.
In my evergreen cynicism i found only one point  - The other guy in the movie who was being nice throughout anyways ended up a loser and hence it shows that most of the time you just accept that Life is unfair.

This time when i watched i pondered over a line i seemed to have missed last time.
"You cannot have roots and wings." The saddest part though is when you cant have both

I was searching for the exact quote and it seems someone else too has thought about the same…Funny some coincidences are just that but yet they i guess make you feel sane.

Last month i had taken two books which are not much in circulation at the Library - "A corner of a Foreign Field" and "The Brainfever bird" . When i returned them finally after nearly 2 months with me and a girl after surfing through all the library again picked those two I was a bit reflective , curious and sort of possesive too funnily of the books. And then she sees my pick for the recent month and enquires if i am taking it  or can she have it.

I'd have loved to talk more but she was with a chirpy crowd and so i am left to myself believing in my own normalcy as much as weird i seem to many these days.

A dull and loaded begining

A new place or is it new?

As is said there are wheels within wheels

and so life goes on.

The best part of this beginning is I have had least expectations

I seemed to have grown old quite a bit finally in my mind too or so it seemed till I got into this place and found people worse than me in those terms .

A top notch workplace in the world and yet I feel bored.

Its not about the work , I dont have an inkling of what i would be doing in concrete terms - Its all visions i've been shown for the moment and i am too cynical of them and its too early to talk of it.

The thing is there's no liveliness around, me being dull enough.

Both my previous workplaces had n number of issues

but it was always buzzing with people

their problems, their anger

their fun and sheer joy

I guess this is a problem with the real big organizations where you have those highly experienced people immersed and tagging along with life. Its not like they don't have fun or they don't laugh and all.

Its just that they dont take the change of an added person and so they dont take an initiative and its quite tough to break into well settled groups unlike in the past places where we who became friends - all joined in fresh groups and were equally new.

I am the same frankly but i was fortunate in the past. I did not run into people who were the same as me. Most were freshers who took in change and assimilated me into them and their enthusiasm their joy and spirit was simply contagious.

Here for the first time i seem to be in a place where 70% of the workforce is steeped in experience and thus target oriented for the next position(and also married), so they all are busy with their lives and its issues.
I am initially very shy and quiet so i don't make friends but at both my past jobs it was these lively people who came to me involved me and we ended up having great fun.Here even if i take initiative people have too many worries and just let it be known nicely that have to finish work.
Also fortune played a bad joke.I ran into a really avoidable person here… a chap whom i had requested to get me a job in tech doc umentation when i had no job and things were not good for me. I went for 2 or 3 days to get trained but then many things happened.
Like i realized though i write ok and can learn it , i wanted to be in s/w a lot more .
The environment and job profile seemed dull the more i understood it.

And then this guy had a bit of superiority while training and all that pissed off and i quit giving reason about my moving to another city.

This shocked him, and may be affected his word at place where he recommended don't know what, but i was amazed when i ran into him at my new company and he remembered me.Then few days ago he casually mentioned - you were moving to somewhere else…"Was that a lie".
He put it as though i had spoken some great lie.
Just so irritating and pisses me off. I really wonder the worlds a small place.

But yeah i am amazed - I am always amazed when people remember me. I always think I myself would forget a person like me very easily.

But nevertheless life's at a very dull point after a long time.It was bad so many times in the past 4.5 years since I began a career but its been long since it was so dull.

The cubicles are huge and so is the emptiness.

===================================================

P.S: Some standard cribbing

I hate Laptops at least since Ive been forcefully made to own one by this job. I am supposed to take it around with me all the time and have to walk nearly a km with it to get to office. Not even in school did i carry anything so heavy. the bag's all very well made but thats heavy in itself.

It feels like a noose around my neck- I feel like a coolie at times.

Oh heck why cant i just leave it at office.This is why big organizations and their policies and all get to me. For a easy going person like me who never wanted to bother to drive i am seeing some benefits of it finally.

The byproducts of a farcial / forced equality

Hey daughter i came home tired and toiling for you all  get me a cigarette from the shop

Are you mad - Does anyone ask their daughter to get one

Whats the big deal I never differentiated between a Son and a Daughter (i .e I paid for your education completely) and I cant even get such a small thing done .

Ok if this is what it is i guess I will get it have some myself too say what ?

Shut up you don't have any respect for elders -  what rubbish you are  talking about.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Truth is stranger than fiction .....It surely is.
He he he ...Such are the Inspirations for posts with topics "Save the girl Child" and this.

Fortnight of whiling away time at movies…..

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Remembering the Roses and its yet unanswered question

This post was actually prompted after the previous post about crowds and individuals thought i expressed.
This first thought came to me years ago first in school though then it was not so definitive.

It was prompted by a story in it called "Remember the Roses".
As if the mystery in the story was not enough it was the only story in the book for whom author information page said "Information not available" author name though was Avery Taylor but the yeah there was no Google then.

Its a story that has a haunting quality about it and i believed i was the only one who thought so much about it, but i found a comment here just a few hours ago by someone who also remembers it which just adds to the story anyways :).
Caesarean Conspiracies seems to be my most visited post on the blog .

Actually thought i would put a link to the story if i could find it online and i was led to a site http://www.remembertheroses.com/ .

Here the person tells in the background section how he came across the story
"About fifteen years ago while traveling in India, I came across an old book of short stories being read by the school children there"

I happen to be one of the schoolchildren and have loved it ever since.
I would want to see the movie cause everyone has their own interpretation ,
own touching part of the story and a part of my own imagination and thoughts is what this post is all about.
Every time i think of the story i have a different dimension to it.

The story overall is really special in that special book aptly name "Treasury of short stories " .
I still treasure it and its yellow pages with underlines and meanings i remember some of the happiest days of my life.

There is a word called "apoplexy" in it which i had not understood and had looked up the dictionary.
Strangely i forget so much in todays's world, but i always remember that word and the story.
It is in this story that in those days when very few people around spoke good english that we came across the first french words "Au revoir" ,"Adieu" and "Vive Churchill" etc.

Its a story set in the World war era of Nazis where Robert a soldier of the Allied forces is captured by the German and he is saved by a
mysterious woman called Jehane Lebrun.
No one believes his true story and report of escape and when he digs up the evidences he can only come to the conclusion that its Joan of Arc
who saved him and his friend.
But what is more touching is the way the story sets off as though this Robert of the second world war era is the Knight called
Sir Robert whom Joan of Arc is supposed to have loved.
Its a very touching story with just the right amout of love , mystery and history and sort of lingers on and on in the mind especially the last line

"See Jehane i remembered the roses"

In this story the below lines are the ones which first brought the conflicting thought about individual vs the whole crowd(be it a nation/ community/family).

Here Robert is being helped to escape by Jehane and he also tries to take with him another captive soldier but he is unconscious and when Robert cannot revive him

Robert decides to kill him so that he has an easy death compared to the torture by Nazis to give secrets, but Jehane prevents this by the below argument.

Robert:"Do you think i enjoy doing it"
Joan:"No it sickens you"
Robert:"yes but its necessary"

Joan: "Ah yes the old story Always the same. Better to sacrifice one life than many. Thats what they tell you , isn't it"

Robert:"And its true"

Joan: "Its never true" There was pitiless anger in her eyes and her voice was bitter
"Every life is precious. War demands that we kill, but in our own defence, to save what God has given us.But this is murder…It is betrayal and you know its wrong. In
your heart its wrong"

Since then whenever i come to a conflict about whether Every life is precious or some are more equal than the others this story fills my mind.
Honestly i have never resolved any answer.
As long as that one life to be sacrificed is no one to you or rather is not some one precious or special in our own eyes , we have a tendency to say yes one life can and should be sacrificed if saves/ helps the collective whole.

The moment we replace the person to be sacrificed with someone we love or regard as a great person relative to other being who live day in and day out the argument thins out and we believe every life is precious.

Its also probably my favorite short story with a romatic touch, along with that excellent Jeffrey Archer short story called "Old Love" and i remember it very well ,far after it was supposed to be remembered by the school .

====================================

P.S: For all those who somehow love this story , thanks to Vinits efforts we have a pdf version of it. and here is the link to download “Remember the Roses”.Very nice of you Vinitt and thanks a lot.

Also since quite a few people requested for it on my wordpress blog here are the stories

The following scanned stories are uploaded at
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=2b12de67400a8fb991b20cc0d07ba4d29c366712a409c822

Treasury of Short Stories - Scanned pages for below

1. The Tiger in the Tunnel…..Ruskin Bond
2. The Silver Lining…………….Chaman Nahal
3. The Liar…………………………Mulk Raj Anand
4. Half a Rupee Worth……….R K Narayan
5. The Case for the Defence….Graham Greene
6. Robin……………………………Jim Corbett
9. Mowgli’s Brothers………….Rudyard Kipling
11. A Fishy Story………………….Jerome K Jerome
15. The Lost Pearls………………..Sir Patrick Hastings
===================================================================================
Links for the rest of the stories

7. Dusk…………………………….Saki (Hector Hugh Munro) - http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/375/
8. The Face on the Wall……..E.V.Lucas - http://students.iiit.ac.in/~nirnimesh/Literature/The%20Face%20on%20the%20Wall.htm
10. The Gift of the the Magi……O Henry - http://www.auburn.edu/~vestmon/Gift_of_the_Magi.html
12. Three Questions………………Leo Tolstoy - http://www.online-literature.com/tolstoy/2736/
13. David Swan ……………………Nathaniel Hawthorne - http://www.classicreader.com/book/188/1/
14. The SignalMan ………………..Cahrles dickens - http://www.gordon-fernandes.com/hp-lovecraft/other_authors/signalman.htm
16. Remember the Roses………..Avery Taylor - download at http://www.mediafire.com/?xeidjmn2yzs

“The Last Burden” & Three years

My first weekend after quitting my job and i was stuck at home in rain and a not so very great mood i picked up the " The Last Burden" by Upamanyu Chatterjee. It certainly did not help my mood.

Its a book to be read to realize why art films will always be that…..art films….Truth personified but for a working class person it is what we dont like to look at or rather why a normal middle class person does not find it not worth the time
and money.It explains why Bollywood potboilers and everlasting Television teary sagas and the no good fiction like M&B's and are infinitely more interesting or rather seem more worth spending time and money.

They help you escape , they give you hope or rather they just blot out the present and when the present is a dark and unrelenting pain this isn't that what the majority would like.

The reason is stark and simple. Who wants to go and see on a 70mm screen or read for hours or days together of a dreariness, of a hurt that on lives through day in and night out - reflected and picturised again and then spend time and money on it….unless you are a soul looking for refuge in the compassion that you are not alone suffering the same.

"You'll notice, Jamun, money's never within your reach when you need it the most. I've witnessed how the itch to hoard dominated both my father and yours. I merely hoodwinked myself - that if i spent bountifully on deserving things then somehow my kitty would be replenished."

"Instead over the years while Jamun has grown up observing his parents squabble…while he's witnessed their marriage paralyse his father and slowly butcher his mother, he's begun to believe that living is elementally a petty , indecent, punishing business; its value lies in struggling against its meanness."

Most of it if not all is about the everyday middle class fare that we live through and struggle with. The finances, the hatred, the guilt ,the sense of duty, the helplessness compounded by the frustration of with /for the people around you.

The forces that pull you down when you try to make an escape.One should read this book to understand why its so difficult to simply read those new age books on positivity and leading a better life are so useless in so much of our world and why so many of our brilliant and not so brilliant people escape as a last refuge to that land of promise USA and others far enough despite criticizing all about it and its culture.

I come across such books once in a while and to say i enjoy them would be too nonsensical. There are mirrors you dislike and this is one of them. But for people who like mirrors however truly they reflect the darkness around and within them
this should be just fine.

"belu was the sole person in my family who cherished me, and not the salary i carted home-……….living together merely to thrill in unkindness…"

"But you oughtn't judge all marriages by the corrosion of ours. I know - that you don't wish to marry because you dread that you'll tail off like us."

Then there was Chekov egging on the cynic in me as i read his "Three Years"

"You'll fall in love and you'll suffer, you'll fall out of love and you'll be deceived, because there isn't a woman (I happily read it as woman/man rather than criticizing Chekov) that wouldn't deceive you, you'll suffer, fall into despair and you yourself will deceive. But the time will come, when all this will be just a memory and you'll reason coldly and consider it utterly trivial…"

"He remembered the long conversations in Moscow in which he had himself still so recently taken part, conversations about how it is possible to live without love, how passionate love is a psychosis, how finally there is no love…..but now …..(some stuff about how he fell in love at first sight) …he would be at a loss to give an answer"

=============================================

P.S: Loved the Vodafone ad with the Kabhi Kabhi song.I guess its because its pretty much of what we grew up like and some did end up just the same way if not all.

This post is almost a week old as i just felt too lazy to complete it and in just a week i find my mood is different enough.

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