Sticking to the blog-title.

I just realised I've been to Mumbai and back six times in the last two weeks.
I
've seen the same crappy movie thrice. It's funny how they invariably show garbage-stuff there.

I've lived three days in the VJTI hostels. Studied personalities. Played Chess. Had cold water baths at 6:30 am. Eaten like a starven bull in a mess notorious for it's terrible food. Taken early morning and late evening walks on a deserted ground and visualised soccer maneovers. Spent more time alone than ever.

I know the road to Mumbai now.

Amen.

An hour in the life...

11.24 am.
VJTI, Matunga
Mumbai.

What does a guy do, with an hour to kill, in Mumbai's top-notch engineering college with prestige and all that jazz? Puts pen to paper and hopes the words flow like traffic on an unjammed expressway.



The letters appear shakily on the crackling brand new notebook. Though a prolonged absence from actual, conventional writing is one of the reasons, the main culprit is the resting of my arm outside a third floor window, with my biscep acting as leverage and forearm dangling outside during a midnight conversation, with the wind trying to act more like a tornado. I'd talked about cleavages and bases, among other things.

I have to wait for a long time more. I see the senior students strutting in the canteen with a sense of possissiveness. I hear the loud discussions on Orkut, i hear the somewhat muffled girl-talks about the return of an ex-flame. A black and white cat smiles at me as it walks by. I smile back incredulously. I think a girl somewhere is trying to catch my eye but that's just my imagination.

I've been running around for almost two hours now. Hostel fees, Bio-datas in the office, a random line which turned out to be one for the railway concession form. I glance outside on the basketball court and feel a dead hope of seeing a known face. I've already stalked the college to that effect once. Puneites don't usually come on this of the country. They don't like the climate.

I glance at my watch. The impatience is starting to seep in. I feel my feet rhythmically under the table. I think of the person who slaps my thigh in irritation when i do that. I miss her.

I see friendships being bred here in the canteen. Some will last.

This ain't gonna end man! Another damn half hour to go! I randomly think of Ninitha and her accusations me stealing her bakarwadis. I realise my writing's beginning to smoothen out.

I consider going for another walk around the campus. Feels good walking through an array of emotions. The college is a minimised version of the great city it is in, I feel. I drop the walk idea. Jus cuz I can. I minor commotion is caused when a guy almost steps on the cat.

I put my pen down and look around helplessly. Time seems to crawl and itch it's way across. I begin to play Tabla on the table. A few heads turn. Only for a moment.

I realise I've been stealing looks at a certain girl between sentences. I take a long look at her and turn away an instant after she looked at me. I can feel her inquisitive eyes on me as I write. I try to straighten my posture.

I begin dreaming about good old times. Times on the tekdi, in the university. I think about whether they're gonna come back, ever. Thoughts turn to the future. I start missing a certain person a lot suddenly.

I slow down, realising I can kill more time and write neater that way. I recall a joke about killing two birds with a stone.

I'm whistling Johnny Cash's "I Walk the Line." A guy two tables away hears it and quick turns around in recognition. I go on whistling. I realise how much I adore whistling. I turn to a new vague tune. I think about the new earphones I need to buy for my iPod. I contemplate on whether to go for Philips or Panasonic.

My watch tells me it's 1 minutes to go. It's started raining outside. I think of getting my third cutting chai before i leave. A guy at the next table is narrating a joke. The girls listen intently, the guys seem uninterested. In another corner of the canteen some people start singing. The girl I was looking at goes upto the food counter. I resist the temptation of following her with another chai as an excuse.

I believe it's time I start packing. It's been a fun hour! I put my pen and notebook in my bag, get in my raincoat and head to the auditorium........

TaGgEd?!?! Again?!?!?!

Whaa?? Jahnavi tagged me? Goodness, I'll be known as the local Dog if I wear so many tags!


Eight Simple facts about me:

1> I take too many things to heart. Unlearning what I know is a difficult process.

2> I detest smokers. I think pouring hot tar down my lungs is a much easier and faster process. Don't worry, it dries later too.

3> The worst emotion I have experienced is the desire to express myself but an inability to do so.

4> Randomness runs in my blood. It's been injected, I think.

5> Being lonely and happy at the same time may seem contradictory. I'm a live exception.

6> Music is a life-support system to me. Take it away from me, watch me writh in pain and die. Do not ask me my favourite band. I think it's the most ambiguous question anyone can ask.

7> I detest shady SMS lingo. It takes not more than 6 seconds (calculated, of course. Nothing I do or say is Random) to type out the whole word.

8> I don't like stereotypes.


There, sister, done!
I tag the Rambler and the Shiny Oddball :P

Adieu?

Elation? The deep desire to jump with joy and pat the next sad person on his back and say "Cheer up mate, life's amazing"?

Maybe that. Yes. Emotions running through my head when I walked out of the COEP auditorium with a VJTI production engineering seat under my belt. Well, in my file, literally speaking. The distant dream was a rampant reality. I was in a good college, a good branch, and most importantly, living on hostel. Living where superfluous restrictions are non-existent. Where adenalin can run free and control me. Where I don't have "irritating elders" telling me to sleep on time, telling me to change into better clother, telling me to lower down the volume of the speakers.

Oh but wait, I did have to come home after that. I was jumping around the place. Jack (yes, the one in the box) would've been proud. I told almost everyone i knew and cared about, congratulatory calls came, everything happened, and then it was that time when I had to break the news to the most important person - myself. Some call it "sinking in". I call it convincing myself.

This was not what I had expected. I'd expected me to be understanding, all waiting to leave this place, spread my wings and fly away! But what was THAT emotion doing here? A desire to explain, a deep, enchanting feeling of belonging? Of protection? Who would've imagined the self-convincing would've been so hard? Well i won't say hard. It was the kind of feeling you get when someone tells you that a loved one has met with an accident, but he's gonna be allright. Happiness or sadness?

As if on cue, Bittersweet Symphony crooned on. I think my computer has a mind of it's own. I'm gonna miss it, among other things.

Whippee!!!

I promised the Rambler the other day that I'd blog everyday. Hasn't quite materialised.

Maybe I should stop expecting too much from myself. Maybe I should revise the specification for a "Random Thought" to be a "Blog Post". Maybe there should just be a Bijection between those.

Oh, there's a long way to go for THAT.

Realisation struck me somewhere up the line that my fitness resembles that of a Sloth Bear. I need to get my ass moving. And FAST.

Nothing else comes to me right now. It's 8:30 am, the time when sleep really gets going usually. Imagine if an owl comes up to you in the afternoon and gives you a hi-five. :

Goodnight folks :D

The Night was Black

The night was black.



The thunder cracked like a whip off a reluctant horse. Seconds earlier, the dim restaurant had been lit up the flash of lightning. And minutes before that, an event had ignited a chain of thoughts in my mind.



Five Point Someone. Mr Bhagat's book was the ignitor. A cousin sitting at the table had said something that raised my thinking above the spinal level for the first time, ever since it had lay dormant there post-exams!



"All IITians or to be IITians hate that book. I wonder why", she said. Doesn't quite have the effect of "Charge for the guns", she said, but yeah, that was what she said. Try as i did, I couldn't conjure words to explain why. This inability didn't hurt me as much as the knowledge that somewhere deep down, I knew the answer.



The minutes rolled by. The food, drink and the dessert got us all purring like content cats. An eventless drive home later, the thoughts returned. What was it that was pinching me? Why did the need to justify myself overcome the desire of curling up in bed after a flawlessly brilliant dinner?

And then flew up another emotion. Maybe it was the food combined with the rain beating on the glass window. Maybe it was Floyd's "High Hopes" running in my ears. But right there, my levels of self-doubt reached the foundation rods. I questioned the basics of all that I had learnt to the extent that would've made punkism proud.

I have always sought one thing in life. My Holy Grail. The Golden Mean. That one position in life when you're in control of everything that u hold dear. Perfect optimisation. Not unlike the null-magnetic-field position of interacting magnetic fields.

A passing thought came to me. Does the golden mean exist? A moment of doubt and pain. The presence of Lucifer.

Two entirely unrelated emotions. Unrelated to my comprehension. Until this moment.

The night was black.

I'm sick of all you hypocrites

Is the generation gap a myth?

Do we, of our generation, have to do the EXACT same thing as the people two generations above us did when they were our age? Isn't there a factor which makes the next generation have different ideals and different ideas of "fun"?

Isn't there a way we can make ourselves heard at the place we call home? Is there a way my grandmother is gonna understand that I'm not wasted and that I do wanna do something productive in life?

Well, as they say, too many questions spoil the blog (With all respects to the cooks and their broth). No more questions. I'm being slaughtered here. Being set deadlines and curfew that would sound fair only to a 5 year old. All under the name of "discipline". It's not for me to decide what I want to do. "Do something productive", they tell me. "No talking anything private on the phone at nights", they say. Yes, I was having intimate phone sex. HOW did they know?!?!?!?!

Not good times at all. I read in some blog that the author loves her family more now that she's away. I know exactly what she means. I would too. I just want to move out.

Move out where my thought-process isn't shattered to pieces by illogical yellings. Move to where I'd be able to think clearly without people telling me things that don't make sense. Move to where I'd not have to go according to norms that i KNOW are insane, but they're just meant to be followed because they've been followed for eons. To some place where I'd be able to put down in words the things i feel without anyone making me justify myself as to why I need to write. Too many thoughts. Too less typing speed.

I want to move to a place where I can develop myself the way I want to.

I don't know where that came from. But it pretty much sums up all that I'm thinking right now.
Amen.

TaGgeD

First and formost, do NOT ask me why there are a few capital letters and a few small. Also, do NOT ask me why they're not alternately capital and small. The capital of Pondicherry, Pondicherry, is pretty small.
Amen.

PS - Sorry Rambler, got an irresistable attack of randomness :D

By the (in)sane Rambler. Case sensitive, among other things.

1. Pick out a scar you have, and explain how you got it:
--> A faint one on my left forearm, got cut by a barbed wire while on a reconnaisance mission of a cricket ball. There was Pus! YAY!

.2. What is on the walls in your room?
--> I have no room :)

3. What does your phone look like?
--> Like a phone :
Also, like something that can be dropped from the second floor and still work.

4. What music do you listen to?
--> Everything. From Green Day to Gangubai Hangal. From Black Sabbath to Bhimsen Joshi. From Jethro Tull to Jitendra Abhisheki. From Penn Masala to Pandit Jasraj. From Deep Purple to Dev Anand's film music. Anything that sounds good.

5. What is your current desktop picture?
--> The fab four "crossing the street"

6. What do you want more than anything right now?
--> To travel to Vashi by train :)

7. Do you believe in gay marriage?
--> Yes. No further comments. The Rambler's opinion can be sought on this.

8. What time were you born?
--> 2 something am.

9. Are your parents still together?
--> Yeah

10. What are you listening to?
--> Simon and Garfunkel - Bridge over Troubled Waters

12. The last person to make you cry?
--> Steven Gerrard. Thanks to his abyssmal performance last night.

13. What is your favourite perfume/cologne?
--> Er, i won't answer this (at the risk of revealing i know NOTHING about perfumes/colognes)

14. What kind of hair/eye colour do you like on the opposite sex?
--> Longish hair that falls around the face a bit, lightish eyes, not too light... Oh, and these are the basic specifications. If i start the real details, blogspot will delete me for over-usage.

15. Do you like pain killers?
--> Let's just say ur asking Zidane whether he likes Football. Or Johnny Wilkinson whether he likes Rugby. Or Pandit Bhimsen Joshi whether he likes to sing. Or.... Er, i think u get the point :)

16. Are you too shy to ask someone out?
--> Nope

17. Fave pizza topping?
--> Extra Cheese (TM- Rambler)

18. If you could eat anything right now, what would it be?
--> A certain Soup i once had in "Curry on the Roof", Prabhat Road. I have no clue why i thought of THAT right now.

19. Who was the last person you made mad?
--> Nandita and Prochie yesterday, in Vashi, by going overboard with terrible jokes. Maybe i was over-bored :

20. Is anyone in love with you?
--> I don't think so.

I tag... Jahnavi and Ads. Do me proud :D

An uplifting half hour

Never before has half an hour exalted me to such levels of musing on the meaning of life.

The city of Mumbai. The city of Dreams. Makarand society, a humble housing society of half a dozen buildings, situated right on the Mahim beach. The edge of the society is at a height from the edge of the sea. 10.30 pm. A few extra, unnecessary bites of Parantha in Only Paranthas, Linking Road, Bandra compelled me for a walk in the society. What better place for a walk than along the edge of the society, with the delightful sea-breeze lifting my spirits! Fate, it seems, had other plans for me.

The instant I stepped into the view of the sea, my first reaction was silence. My jaw had dropped too low for anything audible to be able to physically escape my thorax. The sight I beheld couldn't be real. It just couldn't. Words are too much of a handicap for me to explain, but let's try.

The Mumbai skyline. With all it's lights at night. In all it's glory. The perfect picture. Howard Roark would've been proud of it. Perfect architecture, a few structures of steel rising out of the ground. It was like that particular space in spacetime had been created by the Almighty with the sole purpose of giving refuge to that skyline. A pale yellow, perfectly crescent moon, placed atop the tallest building. Yes, placed. It was impossible for the moon to be there unless it was placed there. Manually, by God. He must have thrown hooks at it and tied it in place. The moon was part of the building. The building was incomplete without the moon. Symbiosis. No mortal could ever achieve such perfection. Not even those who want to reach perfection not for money, but for the sole purpose of lifting themselves above the rest.

I couldn't believe it. This wasn't happening. It happens only in movies or a few books, at the most. Yet, it was right there. It didn't even go after a few pinches i gave myself. It was there allright!

And all of a sudden, God loosened his hooks. The moon began to sink into the building. It sank, till it was no longer visible. Maybe God gifted the moon to the building for being so perfect. For being the only thing that could possibly occupy that space.

Then it was just the buildings. The disappearance of the moon made me recognise human voices. The fishermen folk, on the beach. With all their bedding, for their humble homes a little ahead along the beach didn't have air conditioning. For they trusted on the air conditioning provided by the sea. The sea, that was all they ever knew, that was all they ever trusted. The sea that enabled them to feed their children back home. Some lying down, talking about the wonderful catch of the day. Some enjoying a simple game of Rummy. Some smoking their beedis in silent contemplation. Through that mile-long humanity, i could sense one emotion. Happiness. Contentment. Not even a whiff emerges through offices of the corporates.

We talk about of social divides, don't we? Well, some inside information. It's the sea. The divide we all talk about.

On one side of the sea, fishermen unwinding, wiping honest sweat. On the other, modernisation. Fly-overs, cars, steel towers. Contentment on one side, a hectic life on the other. Beauty sleep after a hard day of work on one side, more work after a day of hard work on the other. In the city, it was hard to recognise which light was the brightest. On the beach, the brightest light came from a beedi and an occasional match.

I was suddenly aware of movement in the sky. A plane was apparently denied permission to Mumbai airport, and it was wiling away it's time making circles around the sky.

Straight ahead, i could see the incomplete Worli-Bandra connecting bridge. A bridge meant to bridge the gap between two areas of the same racket they call "Mumbai". We're bridging the wrong gaps, i said aloud. A stray dog on the beach heard me. It looked up in confusion.

"Main Tanha" by Penn Masala hummed in my ears through Apple headphones. And i was truly alone. Tanha, as they said. The realisation of the great divide had made me feel like the lonliest person on earth.

And it goes on. The Mumbai skyline won't change. The fishermen will still come out of their homes for the cool breeze at nights. The bridge will be made.

What changed, was me. By observing something that has been present for eons. But in a different light.

The city of Mumbai. The city of Dreams. It couldn't be truer. Ten feet away from me, on the beach, the dreams were humble. A mile away, beyond the sea, beyond the curving beach, among the lights, the dreams were sky-high.

Life poses some fairly interesting questions sometimes, doesn't it?

Bleh!

A loss of words. A complete, inexplicable loss of words. Not the best way to make the first post on your blog, but well.... Compelled by the constraints of wordlessness, I am!

Funny how sometimes when you want all eight cylinders of the mind perfectly lubricated and greased, and working on full horsepower, it fails you. It goddamn fails you like it's the most obvious thing it can do. I can't think of any metaphors, any ironical expression, nothing at all. It's a terrible, terrible feeling.

Now blogs aren't meant for this kind of jazz, and I really can't seem to get myself writing today. Nonetheless, i shall post, for more posts on your blog give you courage. Somehow. Ironically.

And there, i have created the first Irony of my post. Seems Paradoxial, doesn't it?

No, I have NOT been reading Wren and Martin all night.

Prologue

Heave ho, and here we go!!

After months and years and eons of contemplating on "to write or not to write", I finally decided on the former. Incidentally, this binary contemplation gave me a slight idea on the extent of the dilemma Mr Bard was in once upon a time, but that apart...

First things first. Kudos to Ruta to get me spilling the words out. Relax, let it flow, she said. And let it flow I did, and worked, it did!!

Now the next question is, what the hell should i write about? Miss Ruta left me groping in the dark there, didn't she? Goodness, too many people are telling me to figure out too many things on my own...

Ok now enough randomness for the time-being. I almost started a blog about 6 months ago, but left it halfway. Why? Fear. The fear of failure, and that's the precise thing i need to get over. The last two months have changed me to no ends, and now, fear is on the downhill road into the valley of death. Let's hope i decide to put pen to paper... Er... I mean, put fingers to keyboard more often and randomize myself into the sort of a trance associated with LSD.