Blossoms Blooming

We’re already a month into the New Year. I read Sugar Magnolia’s bundle-of-sunshine post here, ushering in February with much joy and exuberance and it really did make my day. It’s difficult to see the bright side of things when you’re locked up in an office with practically nobody to talk to and with that messed up work culture your mommy warned you about. The big daddy of a typical core manufacturing firm. Where your card swapping in-out time holds infinitely more importance than the actual work you put in. Where you’re allowed to spend as much time “roaming around on the shopfloor” trying to “learn things”, but when you plug in a pair of earphones to drown out distractions so you can finish your work much faster, oh you are so dead with those looks you’ll get.

Every manufacturing firm has production line down-time, and every single goddamn one of them wants to reduce it. Obviously. And who best to blame for this than the maintenance guys, who’re supposed to wrap up their maintenance duties in infinitesimal amounts of time. The best part is, the boys over at maintenance couldn’t care less. They’ve gotten their minds attuned to the fact that the blokes over at production simply hate their guts and just don’t get it. The end result of this is free-floating hostility all over the place.

With the severe lack of documentation, it’s terribly difficult to actually figure out why this is happening. Enter stage left the intern, who has no regular duty and is meant for bitch-work in general. Give him a pile of 30-odd log books with utterly illegible scribbling of what are allegedly downtime reports, and tell him to sort out the data, channel-wise. Give it a fancy name, and make him document the data in the form of a soft-copy.

What the above rant essentially means is, that I’ve been entering illegible data onto an excel sheet for the last two weeks or so. 8 hours a day. My eyes, neck and other assorted body parts hurt. Which makes it rather difficult for me to see the bright, lustrous, colour-laced season of love that is February.

But what helped, was that post. It hit me in that one split-second, that however relatively dark my world has become, there’s still an insanely beautiful world out there. And the fact that it exists is enough to get me grinning through the day.

Thank you, Sugar Magnolia!

Of bulls

"Expecting life to treat you well just because you're a good person is like expecting a bull not to charge at you just because you're vegetarian."

-Unknown

Tangled Up In Blue, I owe you one for this.

Stepping Stones

There was once a young boy, adventurous and steadfast. He had a simplistic life, with ups and downs, albeit more than the average kid of his age, but remarkably average nonetheless.

And suddenly, there was only failure, failure all 'round. Nothing really seemed to work out, nothing fell into place. No endeavour successful, no achievement added to the roster. He couldn't see clearly, it was all haze and confusion.

But he'd heard failures are stepping stones to success. He'd heard it all gets better and at the end of a long and eventful life, it only matters what your journey has been. Life was the exact opposite of a state function, he was told. It all falls into place, it all becomes okay, as long as you've garnered happiness along the way! That was how things work, he'd heard!

Sadly, it wasn't.

The lady

He couldn't stop thinking about her.

He was a man of creation. A man who had so many ideas, so many thoughts which he knew would one day revolutionize the way of life. Every moment, he was thinking of how to make things easier and automatically applying his mind. It just came naturally to him. He knew he was a prodigy, but he didn't want the fame. In the moments where he didn't devote his time to his creativity, he often wondered why the rest of the folk didn't see the world the way he did. It was all so beautiful and it seemed everyone blatantly denied it! One thing, he knew for sure - it is the fear of failure that makes people unhappy. This fear manifests itself in quite a few forms, but it is the same fear nonetheless!

After all, being criticized and ostracized was nothing new to him. Every radical idea, he told everyone who would listen, is tossed around and cursed like a murderer left to his fate with an angry mob. And it was not just for his ideas that he was ostracized. In his country, his kind were not treated with kindness. He knew, as he knew many things others didn't, that they would be accepted someday.

As time went by, he because obsessed over his creativity. If he didn't conceptualize something far-reaching for a long time, he would get very restless. His inspiration, uniquely, came from people. He liked walking around the plaza, looking at people and figuring out how their lives could be made better.

It had just been a fleeting moment in one of these walks. He spotted her through the crowd, and actually walked back a few steps - something he never did. She was not your average beauty, but there was this ethereal quality about her. She wasn't your average pretty girl you wanted to get in bed with. You would want to talk to her about life and the universe! A few glances at her and one knew she had it all figured out, like she was almost mocking you!

He asked around in the crowd, as discreetly as he could, about who she was. When he heard the name, he startled in recognition - that last name was impossible to not know! From such a family, how could he not have heard of such a beautiful lady so profound in her thoughts? His mind started going far, far away, trying to comprehend what that look meant. Did she know something the world didn't? That subtle look, that amused glint in her eyes - oh those attentive eyes, how they soaked in every detail of their surroundings!

Leonardo shook his head, and made up his mind to get that mysterious smile out of his head. Whoever had the time to ponder over and paint Lisa Sforza, daughter of the Duke of Milan, when there were machines that flew to be made and holy blood to be protected!

Borsalino

Everyone who's read Shantaram would probably find this redundant, but the Borsalino is this wide-brimmed hat made from very particular furs. Now this piece of art apparently digs quite the hole in your pocket, and there's bound to be fakes. In comes the Borsalino hat test. You roll the hat up into a tube thingy, and make it pass through a wedding ring (for SOME reason). After emerging from the other side, if the hat is not all crumpled and messed up and preferably not broken, bingo, you've gotten yourself a deal. If there's creases, you'd better run back and look for the genius who made some quick bucks outta you.

Now some people happened to realize that this makes for quite a handy metaphor. So "putting someone through a Borsalino test" has come to mean putting someone through quite a bit of mental (and possibly physical) stress and see whether he/she (for all you sexists, I said he/she, inspite of HATING it) "emerges" from it without a sign of being "crumpled" or affected by the stress. Us engineers would like a stress-deformation metaphor, but that would involve talking about "hardness" of the person, and it's best to leave that realm of unending innuendos aside.

So anyway, back to Shantaram. GDR describes himself been put through a Borsalino test by a recent acquaintance, to put it very bluntly. Why all this? I suddenly noticed the constant Borsalino tests we keep pushing each other through, in places more than you'd notice if you give it a little thought.

Of course, the "emerging without being affected" now covers a much wider purview. It all begins with the initial one - to put in a more vernacular fashion - the first impression. It goes on throughout the period of knowing a person, and extends to every human relationship that exists. Barring a few relationships with a teeny amount of people, everyone Borsalinos everyone else. I wish that'd become a valid verb.

I'm not even going to begin about whether it's necessary. I probably would have if halfway through writing that, I wouldn't have lost track of the patterns of the present thought vortex. Just that, right now, I think everyone would be much happier if these tests were slashed a bit.

And, I haven't begun thinking about this in detail. Thankfully, I'm somehow able to control these erstwhile unmanaged thought trains. I'll hold on to this thought for later.

Most will argue that these are a part of life. I just wish they weren't.

Late Night Jazz Ballads

In vaguely browsing through the music I have, I came across a folder in my Jazz collection called "Late Night Jazz Ballads". It was 2:30 AM, and I couldn't see any reason not to play it. Work was a good 6 hours away, and a few soothing progressions couldn't hurt. As I lay propped on my elbow, listening to Jimmy Smith, Dexter Gordon, Ike Quebec and the likes, I had this little memory run-through of all the memorable 2:30 AMs I've had. Owing to my wallpaper being this hard-earned photo of the BITS, Pilani clocktower I'd clicked with the sun setting next to it, the run-through kicked off with memories of Oasis last year. Good times. Expectations shattered. The tones of the tenor sax were more than the perfect catalyst to provoke the memory-walk. I was left wondering why I'd never pulled out this folder before. I imagine all the effort that goes behind a jazz piece. To be technically perfect, to recognize that perfect progression to hit that perfect mood. But I guess in the end, every jazz artist just wants to soothe, just wants to sound good.

As I write this, I realize I don't like getting profound about my music. I would never write a post about any music, overflowing with superlatives, because in my music, the two letter word is the operative (Credit to NT for that very useful phrase). I don't like making an epic out of a piece, I don't like writing about it as if I know every facet of it, because I never will. A true priest will never glamourize God in his writings. A true soccer fan will never write about a particular goal in a rambling fashion. For worship brings with it respect, and when you respect something, you want to attach a humble outlook to it. I might speak more than what is good for my well-being about music, and about particular aspects of it, but when I write it down, I plainly want it to soothe. I just want it to physically light up the senses. I just want it to sound good. Just like a Late Night Jazz Ballad.

Starry night

There’s something about heights. It just takes the idea of being on a “higher plane than the rest of the world” to a completely new level! And when she was on her terrace with the diamond-like stars looking at her with that benevolent gaze, there was nowhere else she wished to be. The stars had always been special to her. She was called the lady with eyes as beautiful as stars. That evening on the terrace, she could let her thoughts run completely astray, with nothing to bring them back to life. Her thoughts could reach out to all the infinite spaces she could see above her, her thoughts could fly!

She spanned her vision across the sky and saw every star that twinkled up above. Each one of them had its own staggering beauty. She had never imagined why the sky was so remarkable to her, but it was. The moon stood righteously in its place, ceaselessly moving towards the horizon. The same journey every day, the same purpose forever, that unending strife. She wondered about the journeys of life.

Why was the human race, she mused, so fascinated with the sky? So fascinated with that dark mist studded with gemstones of unspeakable beauty? Why so many before her times had spent their lifetimes looking at the sky, trying to find meaning out of it? Something she’d heard about the human tendency of being inquisitive. Some conversation she’d had in the past. Something about wanting to know more than what we do already, all the time. The thoughts swirled through her head, and the very idea of that fog gave her immense happiness. If this is what being high felt like, then she wanted to look at the sky forever. She saw one of the stars winking down upon her and she looked away, with a slender grin.

Looking into the depths of space, she knew she wasn’t the first one to look into its profundities and be in awe of its beauties. She knew how much it meant to her ancestors. It was those very stars that had not just stood as the immortal markers of direction to the ones lost at sea, but as a sign of hope to many a writer who lost his source of inspiration. She pictured the generations before her staring into that very sky, those very massive bodies giving out that very light, imagining how it all came to be, imagining how much of the universe there is to understand, imagining how much beauty there is in the world.

“There’s just WAY too much beauty to be unhappy!”, she wondered aloud. She realized how the advents in physics had come to change the opinion of the world about the sky. How, for some, the sky was an object of study to implement mathematical equations. For most, the sky was just a hundred and eighty degrees of a blind spot. For few in every generation, however, the sky was obdurate beauty. An ideology which beings of the earth could never reach, but always strived to. She felt the happiness inside her on so many thoughts of beauty revolving around her together.

She wanted the happiness to linger. She wanted to be happy. Forever!

In a sentimental mood

Slowly but surely, they wound up the road, dust swirling around the cars. There was a mist of anticipation and nostalgia surrounding the cars. Eyes darted around the green meadows, looking for any sign of their destination.

The clouds had chosen the day to practice formation flying in the sky and the sun was busy cooling off somewhere. The perfect day for a family outing, and four cars they took and pushed out! Driving down the highway on that perfectly lazy day, there was hardly anyone who could resist breaking into song. Away from the hustle-bustle of the Big City for a day, the weather could not have been better!

And now, as they drove down the road that didn’t seem to end, their enthusiasm grew every passing second! The fields around them swayed to the tune of the wind and the beauty of the scene was nothing short of dazzling! The serenity, the repose, the calmness in the air was enough to tranquilize everyone into a peaceful state. This was the life in the Indian village, the life hundreds of millions of Indians lead today. Enough to spark more than a few volts of envy! This, fifty years ago, was life as they knew it for Grandma and her children! Today would be a drive down memory lane for all the members of the family who lived this life, at the very grassroot level of the Indian lifestyle. Eighteen members of the family were out to look for the old house which the older members had once lived in, and the gusto could not have been stronger!

In its days of glory, the house had been a railway station, with Grandpa being station master. The house and the surrounding countryside was life as they knew it! And what a life it was! Waking up to the first ray of sunshine to the sounds of the 6 AM locomotive’s breath. Studying under the banyan trees, playing hop-scotch at the edge of the fields as the cows grazed. Helping their mother out in the daily chores as she sang to them, and later brawling to be the lucky one to sit on her lap while she read out the story for the night! The long-forgotten Indian countryside was rewinding and playing itself in the minds of all the siblings who’d lived there. The adults were surprised at how things had not changed at all! Far away from encroachment, the trees were still there and so were the boundless fields! The birds still chirped the same melodies, the field still whispered the same wisdom. The kids, however, were simply blown away. That a life in the village could be so beautiful and so worth living in, was something they’d never even imagined. The metropolis was the whole and soul of their existence. To think that their parents lived in a place like this, with all its peacefulness, was beyond belief!

And all of a sudden, like a shot from the blue, the house came into plain view. Nobody could have anticipated that what they saw.

The house was entirely unoccupied ever since Grandma and her family had moved out! The place was in ruins, but what beauty those ruins shot out! The house looked like an old wise man, smiling knowingly at those who knew him in his youth! The shine and polish had long gone and exchanged for a look of maturity, of age. The maintenance of the house was poor, but nothing could replace the grandeur, the magnificence!

It was like the memories stored inside the house had flooded out in that one fleeting instant and Grandma couldn’t hold the tears back any longer. Emotions welled inside everyone and Grandma’s children went inside in a reunion with the house they knew so well! Every wall, every staircase, every window, even the little cowshed to the side, worn out with age smiled at the family in unmistakable recognition. Time took them back, and the familiar sound of a train passing by the station was the only one which reverberated in their ears.

As for the kids, they were just thrilled to be in their parents’ house. The older ones who understood memories couldn’t help but smile at how rejoiced their parents were. Some kids had missed more interesting prospects of a Sunday evening to make it to the trip, but the house made everything worth it. This was a Sunday they weren’t likely to forget for a long, long time.