Rainy Day, Dream Away

Note: This was written days after the Winter 2009 edition of Waves culminated. This was the festival where my batch was in charge, the festival that was known the most intimately by us. Ironically, life caught on and I never posted it.

The rains pelt on. The blues spread their reign all over. Something that’s been more than half a year in the making just burns itself out in three days. Like one of those quick burning cigarettes my hostel-mates tell me about.

To outsiders, it seemed like a feather in the hat of the art of organization. Yet, I find myself wondering where it all went. Waves is just a blur of damage control and crisis management. Somehow, we rescheduled and negotiated and fought our way through and made it work. And just when our worries seemed behind us, the Gods decided to have one little last laugh, and decided to make it rain. Needless to say, people went to town with jokes about Parikrama and “But it Rained”. When there’s been no sleep and substantial amounts of stress, the best bouts of humour come forth. And what better time for those scenarios than Waves! The best one I heard was an overworked coordinator saying “Parikrama’s so old, they should be called Parikra-grandma”.

In any case, the last thing I want to do is discuss shortcomings here, so I’ll leave it at that. Waves was a grand success overall, and that's all that matters.

I spent quite a while musing about weather changes and whether what we’d learnt of the timing of the arrivals of the “rainy season” and “summer” will probably not be what we teach our kids. Hell, we might not even have the same seasons. Seasons change, they say. Not so funny now is it, you metaphoring elitists.

Nonetheless, in my little world, the rains are always welcome. They slow down your thoughts, they slow down life. Somehow, they give you a license to stand and stare, to step back and look at the big picture. To stand underneath the walkway you take every day and pause to look at the leaves soaking in every bit of the rain. To sit with friends, old and new, and sip that lovely tea that warms you up. To learn to tread carefully, lest you slip in the soggy paths.

Someday, if I write a book, it’ll feature the rain. In all its glory and magnificence, in all its ability to make humans step out of the rat race, temporarily nevertheless, and examine the world for what it is.

Full Monty

Giving in to a whim I had, I recently decided to watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail again. The last time was more than two years ago, as a fresher in college, kicked about the LAN and what not. You could describe my reaction to the movie as "amused" or even "mostly grinning punctuated by occasional laughter."

This time around, though, such blasphemy I did not commit. At the end of an hour and a half of trying not to fall off the chair, not only did my sides ache, I think there's some permanent damage on the sidelines. No episode of any show, no movie has ever got me in splits such as the Pythons did and it would be the lease I could do to just plainly dedicate a post to those geniuses of humour.

And on the walk back to hostel from the night canteen, I discussed this exact issue with Prashant. Our senses of humour have transformed over the last few years, and HOW! From being almost contrasting, to forming this one fuzzy mesh of jokes and one-liners that are completely predictable and more often than not, funny only to us. The bad part is, I can never get around to writing about this. I've tried to put fingers to keyboard and recreate scenarios, but somehow, never happens.

Yeah, that's about it. I don't think I have a point. Thought in transition. Admittedly, all of the above could've been put much better. That for another day.

The moment

One of the most crowning moments in the intricately drawn (drawn as in wire, not a sketch) history of Jethro Tull is, expectedly, in their self-proclaimed epic. Ian Anderson's answer to critics reading too much into their most famous album, "Aqualung" and calling it a concept album. He supposedly got slightly pissed and decided to give them the biggest and the most single-tracked (heh) concept album, Thick as a Brick.

Thick as a brick is approximately forty four minutes long. It segues into so many musical styles and moods, it's hard to believe the song to be even a minute shorter. In fact, fitting so much into hardly a three quarters of an hour is an achievement in itself.

This moment I speak of comes somewhere at 17 minutes, a minute or two after the song's famous intro has reprised. A sudden glimpse of a melancholy theme, a minor scale later, they break into that tune. That moment. The tune which radiates hope, which is the breaking of light from lament, could not have been better. Perfect execution, just the right character, just the right tone. Barrie Barlow is an arrant wizard at the drums, and the moment seems way too wonderful to just be born out of a long song. It deserves a pedestal of its own.

Maybe it is not the technical genius that lends it the beauty. Maybe it's just the hope. Maybe that's what we look for, and maybe that's what lends most things their beauty.

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!

Ambition makes you look pretty ugly

Ideally, I should blog everyday when I'm at home. What with the obscene amount of free time. In all the mindless banter of a vacation, however, I can barely string two sentences together. What with free broadband (like free speech, not free beer), add mindless surfing to that. What's the remedy? I wish I knew.

To make things so much better, I have no music with me. Barring all the classic music CDs Naren Mama's managed to bring, and a two-disk album of the "Millennium collection". Funny story about that too. I remember being gifted those CDs in 2002 by my uncle from the UK, all kicked that his nephew will now listen to the real music. Needless to say, I didn't touch those CDs, because I found the music too "weird".

Seven years later, I happened to run into those CDs in my room in college. Turns out I love all the songs on those two disks. Apparently, I heard Paranoid Android and Under Pressure and Glory Box back then and didn't like it.

Life's funny that way, isn't it? Stuff they teach you in school seems so relevant today. In school, if you even managed to mention how awesomely fitting something a teacher said was, it meant being instantly ostracized. I'm not saying it's a bad thing. I'm not even saying it shouldn't happen. It's part of growing up, and all that jazz. Just that it seems delightful looking back and figuring this out!

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.

Wherever I may roam

"Jahaan main jaati hoon wahi chale aate ho

Chori chori mere dil mein samaate ho

Ye toh batao ki tum

Mere kaun ho"

Ever had that feeling when a song reminds you of something else but you have no idea of the specifics? The reminiscence is incredibly strong, fully with goosebumps et al. And things like the sound of rain outside at half past midnight somehow manage to attenuate all of that. The feeling was so strong, the pull was so compelling, I just had to put it down. No amount of thinking is going to get me any closer to knowing what the context is. Maybe it’ll hit me some day when I’m walking about Panjim on a lazy Sunday afternoon, or when I’m riding to the SP college ground early morning for football.

The best part is, it’s a happy feeling. And vague happy feelings out of the proverbial blue are always welcome. Which is probably why I’m not thinking.

Yeah. That’s about it.

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.

One good argument.

As the darkness engulfed him, yet again, he posed one question to life. He challenged life to present one argument to support whatever he'd done in life was worthwhile. One simple argument, one reasoning with logic. Everything he'd taken up, he'd failed. Daniel had no idea where to look. To the Beatles song playing in his room, or his non-existent imaginary friend. The one happy thought he had for all those days had abandoned him. He gradually let the darkness take him down. He just wish he'd had the gall to climb up to the terrace.

Free Coffee

As the darkness closed down upon him, the much talked about vivid flashes of memory started making their customary attack. The sunset on the half-made housing society, Brahmani kites riding the thermals and putting up quite a show for anyone who cared enough, the barges making their daily dough, people celebrating yet another goal in their daily futsal routine.

He wanted to end it all, to give up. He could see no reason, no rational thought behind continuing life as he knew it. He burnt quite a few gray cells in trying to figure out where it all went wrong, and then burnt a few more in realizing that nothing of much avail was to happen through that particular process. Sounds of a sisterly concern rang through his mind, but he was positive the world wouldn’t stop turning. He vaguely remembered childhood tales advocating perseverance, and discerned how trivially he’d let them go. Somehow, the distant memory of walking under a flyover, on his way back home, and clenching his fist in determination and vehicles screamed past him played over and over again. He thought of the many who’d take great pleasure at the consequences, those who’d day would be made. The cellphone in his pocket was a dead weight, pulling him further down.

It would be so marvelous letting go. Something new, the change he’d been waiting for. In difficult times too, there is change. And in change, there is a challenge. Completely oblivious to the rat-race in progress, about a hundred meters behind him, Daniel believed it was time to let go. Fate, although, had other plans. For that was when his cellphone buzzed with the delivery of a text message. The one liner caught him by the scruff of his neck, inches away from the abyss and dumped him back onto the cold hard floor of reality.

“Free Coffee?” the message had said.

He felt the warmth seeping in. The overwhelming darkness felt lighter, and the bad taste in his mouth seemed like it would go anytime soon. He saw beauty around him.

He was soon to realize that in times like those, he was a dent in the happy lives of those who are perfect. If underachiever was not that clichéd a word, he would have thought it. Cold as metal, with all the performing capability of a dodo on tranquilizers. A dampener of spirits. But at that moment, he was happy. There were a few things that could act like global anesthesia, even for a few moments. And free coffee was one of them.

Lite

I'd never thought I'd say this, but it's staggering when you realize the full implication of the phrase "Lite can be taken". Every day, every moment, new facets show themselves, and one simply wonders whether whoever came up with the phrase had any idea how much power that one phrase has.

And the best part is, you need to use it, overuse it and abuse it, only then does the significance hit you. How lite has nothing to do with slacking off, with giving up, with reclining, and how it perfectly describes the state of mind which invariably leads to something good. Never have I been this excited about learning the entailment of whatever the phrase has in hold.

Maybe someday I'd take the efforts to elucidate.

Thought

It's not even bloody FUNNY how cynical I've become. Not to mention gullible-to-get-carried-away. TRY suggesting a word for that. TRY.

Birthday

My blog, today, turns two. It's been around through everything major, it's been my canvas for everything nice. The only place I have to show some creativity in an otherwise talentless existence. And the blog has seen me change from what I was in Junior college, to what I am now.

Before I get carried away like once before and pour emotions out on the blog in a stupid manner, I'm just gonna say Happy Birthday! I never thought I'd be the person I am today, two years back, but I knew I'd have the blog! I knew Random Thoughts would stay with me. The same fears that haunted me in the first post haunt me today. Not much has changed on that front. It's a happy day for the blog, but I'm not sure I'd say the same about me!

On a much, much lighter note, I do wish I get to keep the blog forever! Random is now cliche, and criticisms are much in vogue. Someday, I wish to look back at this post and laugh at how stupid I was. But not today. Not today.

As an afterthought, I must mention Bing and Pubby. Through all the times in college, through everything smart and dumb, these two buggers have been constant ports-in-storms and inspiration. There's tonnes of others who've been crazily important parts of my life, but them two deeks have just, well, been there. Non-judgementally, steadily. To another year of corridor-mate-ness!

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!