Not much happens here these days, especially in a winter morning. The normal people are still in bed from the chill (or the excuse of it). As for many others it is the time we return home. Dressed in the same clothes as yesterday, had a cup of coffee at dhiru bhai unbrushed , I was heading home from hostel. The caffeine was working , the sun rays felt soft against the cool breeze and to top it off a rather buoyant track came up on shuffle play. With one fist pounding in rhythm on the speedometer a smile began to stretch across my face. These moments are rare, when you feel like you are on the edge of a major life epiphany, when your music impaired faculties take you beyond what is real. You see everything for what they truly are, lucid and plain. You blame time for being in abundance that we spend complicating things in and around us when in reality It's all a part of you; within reach. Acting like it's the elephant in the room won't help. Unless it blends of course :P.

As was apt; the non hippie “reality” chose this moment to slap me across the face. In the corner of my eye I see this man a little ahead to my left looking at the opposite end of the road with mighty intent. The determination on his face rose to a crescendo at the end of which he ran. Ran straight at me - I honked - Slowed down and tried to go behind him - He noticed me and panicked - Ran a step back to ensure i didn’t miss him. Not much i could do then. Full disks locked the wheels and next thing I know is I am skidding on the road dragging the bike behind me. It was all over in less than 2 seconds but every time i replay it in my mind looking for things i could have done to avert the incident, it seems longer. I wasn’t going fast and other than the head phones I was reasonably attentive. But then shit only doesn’t happen until it does.

I got off with a few minor cuts and scrapes but the one that hurt the most was that the visor of my motor bike had completely shattered. Much to my satisfaction the stupid man I hit was bleeding profusely (yes am a terrible selfish being with no humane empathy/sympathy). I refused to take him to the hospital and I was supported on the account that i myself was hurt. Tending to the cuts at home repeatedly filled me with white hot anger. I thought of the things that i would be missing out on because of this. We had our final intra sports tournaments coming up, the trip to springfest kharagpur, class picnic (eh ! well) and a few others.

In Bhubaneswar you can’t be certain that the empty stretch of road infront is actually so. Every now and then there will be stray dogs, cattle and people (sharing traits with dogs & cattle) right in the middle as if having materialised from a worm hole in space time. On the plus, i am extra cautious while driving and stopped listening to music unless am in the back seat*. I never was one who speeded in traffic ( always one who met with disappointment at having reached the destination sooner) owing to my lack of required skills and temperament . But given an empty road i would push 80 (even 100 once in a while). Some unmitigated hints by God are just marvellous and useless co-incidences, if the purpose of those hints is incomprehensible. Well we live in a world where Final destination could have happened. :/

*1 for three days.

If Only - by soup_boy

Talking to each other, strangers once again.
With only a faint recollection of familiarity.
We'll talk about the same things,
never realize how old it's become, and how old we've become. Let go.

I tread safely around you,
Scared of missing a step,
Scared of loosing you.
Illusions, I breathe them. Everyday.

It isn’t me. I only show restraint.
This love comes from a better place.
For everything you are and everything you claim to be,
For the inbetweeness and the incomplete conversations. P.B.M.

The one instant when everything makes sense
It is all understood, then all is lost.
When it actualizes to be a parade, a shroud of lies,
A body of proof; A dead heart with a now forgotten secret.

It is all there in the palm of your hand.
I find happiness there, My solace in holding it.
Not letting go. Not being let go by you.
And the last words to emanate off my conscious mind. If only.

THE CIRCUS IS IN TOWN

Yesterday I was grounded at home all day courtesy the persistent rains that have been on for more than a day now. As Lord Murphy rightly predicted, my internet couldn’t have found a more apt time to die on me. This led me to do something unusual; I watched the television. As I sat through the painfully long commercial breaks I learned that; If I didn’t have an iPhone I didn’t have an iPhone, Katrina Kaif is so utterly disgusted with the men around that she would rather make out with a seasonal fruit, Sirji (a.k.a Amitabhji ka beta) has come up with 3G plans that propose a paradigm shifting approach towards family planning and that the mini documentaries on life at Tata Steel are actually not advertising.


After what seemed; uh well a very long time, the actual program resumed. It was a live coverage of the entire Anna Hazare Jan lokpal bill meltdown on a 24 hour national news channel. The screen was split into seventeen segments as prominent members from the government, Senior Journalists, writers, members from the board of intellectuals™ sat while the award winning correspondent interviewed the crowd of progressive, informed Indians waving flags and shouting slogans at the T.V. screen.


Our Correspondent: Sir, what do you feel are the short comings of the LLUB draft for the Jan Lokpal bill? And is the PRAC draft that the government is now proposing acceptable?
Progressive Indian 1: HUMARI MANGE PURI KARO! . pauses to think. VANDE MATARAM!
Our Correspondent: As you can see people have come out strongly this time and they are. Aaaa. Bit angry.
Progressive Indian 2: (pushes his way into the frame waving a flag) BHARAT MATA KI JAY!
Our Correspondent: Aaaaa. As you can see. . . the youth of the country has spoken.


India is a land of the remarkable and the bizarre. On one hand you have hundreds of people who are dying of hunger everyday without a choice. While on another there is a man who has sworn not to eat, even if he doesn’t have to. Anna Hazare has had it with corruption and he refuses to eat so that he can force feed his draft to the people in power of legislating bills in the parliament and amending rules of Golf on weekends. If not eating could solve all problems then wouldn’t Africa be the happiest place on earth, but don’t tell Anna that.

There is a sheer, demented lunacy this entire fast has unleashed ever since it began. Let’s recount, shall we. (previously on prison break)

1.) Anna stopped eating.

2.) A wide variety of public figures stood behind him in support which included the unfortunate Baba Ramdev .

3.) Government agrees to draft a bill but is actually looking out for its esteemed corrupt mates that are still at large. Result: Lokpal is as effective as a rubber with a hole.

4.) Baba Ramdev is pissed.

5.) Ramdev stopped eating.

6.) Ramdev’s peaceful fast is disrupted by the police at midnight where he manages to escape clad in a saree , cause that would fool them. (This ?? A beard ? I just haven’t had the time to do my upper lip in a while officer).

7.) Anna threatens to stop eating and government sends thugs to kidnap him.

8.) Government succumbs to criticism and orders to release Anna from Tihar the same day.

9.) Suresh Kalmadi greets Anna in prison ward with a warm “Hello, How are ? Khana khake jana”. Anna obliges by refusing to leave Tihar.

10.) People go bananas and what followed involves a lot of flag waving and revolting by refusing to eat.

11.) As inflation in the economy rises to an all time high efforts are made to keep a tap on “I am Anna, Anna is India” topis .

12.) 12 days and 7.5 kilos later the government agrees to the three points put forth by Anna. He breaks fast with a sip of Nimbooz (official sponsor of the Fast until death for jan lokpal bill ) . Later, reports say he hogged down 27 pieces of chicken and 14 eggs in 9 helpings of Biryani.


I sat in amazement ,as being amazed is all one can do. Day after day the entire shin dig kept getting transmitted direct to my set up box, live in high definition. I enjoyed it, cause who doesn’t when the circus is in town. The middle class wronged their critics who called them to be an apolitical bunch, as ones always in lookout for the easy ticket out of this country to write program codes in greener patches of the world. They end up cementing their ideology as one that emerges when Gandhian values and crusading consumerism go out to grab coffee. Some dimwit follower faced a lathi charge, some unfortunate government servant got suspended for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, some clown had to be appointed by the government to give out embarrassing yet politically correct statements and some T.V. anchor had to be there with his crew because the revolution had to reported. That is all this was.

ANOTHER DAY

Rakhi is never a official holiday in ITER. Every year we drag ourselves to college only to find that a mass bunk is in progress (it’s more a procedure than an event). It was no different today. I was on my way to canteen (so as to derive some satisfaction out of my otherwise pointless trip to college) when Rishi (CS) showed up looking all purposeful and spoke about some guy giving a talk in college and there being a problem to gather crowds. I agreed, actually having nothing better to do. As I waited for a friend, Rishi herded a bunch of first years towards the conference hall. They moved in tight packs, the physically stronger ones pushing their way into the centre of the pack as the weaklings hurried along in the side, with vacant expressions that comes from a perpetual ignorance of what one was getting into.


When ‘some guy’ started his talk there were seven people in all in the room (it grew slightly when the first years arrived). He seemed pleasant at first but 10 minutes in he asked –“why engineering ”? There was absolute silence. *dramatic pause*. Not that it had shaken our core or anything but because we never answer unless specifically asked to (straight faced smiley). What it did manage to do was board me on a train of thought that led to elaborately choreographing fight scenes involving the faculty sitting in front of me (with the kill bill soundtrack playing in the back ground). An hour in and our guy seemed to make lesser sense with every passing second. He was making a rant about how we had no idea how we ended up in final year of engineering in our streams and that we never seem to realise what we actually learnt since paying that huge college fee for the first time (who invited this guy ). Nothing an individual with mediocre IQ has already come to terms with. It was time to leave.


To think of it the only purpose engineering served was silencing a handful of social elements for a brief number of years and setting us up for silencing them for good by becoming respectable (read pseudo; pharji) system analysts for MNCs. Am 21; with what might well be a quarter of my life behind me and I don’t really have a sense of accomplishment. What’s worse is that I might have secured my next quarter to be no different.

Dive In,Take a leap,Face your fears

There are times(not often) that you come across movies that change your life, and probably this one changed a few things in me. At the least it has succeeded to plant its message in my brain and has in a obvious way, made me think and give the Jo-bhi-ho-so-ho philosophy a chance. The movie can be summed in its name (as was the case with luck by chance) ,Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara. The highlight of the movie for me were the poems by Imraan that appeared in apt situations with strong words that rip your soul wide open and tell you to live life to the fullest.(yet has succeeded to keep it simple, courtesy Javed Akhtar).


How it is only natural to get caught up in a boxed life and believing that you want something only because you are expected to. Acknowledge, that you have merely scratched the surface of knowing your own true self and have to dig much deeper to find what you really want. Dive in, take a leap and face your ultimate fear. Cause you know what ? Life wont give you another chance. Its all that you make of it.


Immediately after I got back, I googled the poems . Found four of them posted in the facebook page for the movie. Thank the Akhtar’s, for giving us that new found love for life. All three of you have been brilliant.


WARNING: If you are in the moment may give you goosebumps.


Dilon mein tum apni
Betaabiyan leke chal rahe ho
Toh zinda ho tum
Nazar mein khwabon ki
Bijliyan leke chal rahe ho
Toh zinda ho tum
Hawa ke jhokon ke jaise
Aazad rehno sikho
Tum ek dariya ke jaise
Lehron mein behna sikho
Har ek lamhe se tum milo
Khole apni bhaayein
Har ek pal ek naya samha
Dekhen yeh nigahaein
Jo apni aankhon mein
Hairaniyan leke chal rahe ho
Toh zinda ho tum
Dilon mein tum apni
Betaabiyan leke chal rahe ho
Toh zinda ho tum





Jab jab dard ka baadal chaya
Jab ghum ka saya lehraya
Jab aansoo palkon tak aya
Jab yeh tanha dil ghabraya
Humne dil ko yeh samjhaya
Dil aakhir tu kyun rota hai
Duniya mein yunhi hota hai
Yeh jo gehre sannate hain
Waqt ne sabko hi baante hain
Thoda ghum hai sabka qissa
Thodi dhoop hai sabka hissa
Aankh teri bekaar hi nam hai
Har pal ek naya mausam hai
Kyun tu aise pal khota hai
Dil aakhir tu kyun rota hai...





Ik baat honton tak hai jo aayi nahin
Bas ankhon say hai jhaankti
Tumse kabhi, mujhse kabhi
Kuch lafz hain woh maangti
Jinko pehanke honton tak aa jaaye woh
Aawaaz ki baahon mein baahein daalke ithlaye woh
Lekin jo yeh ik baat hai
Ahsas hi ahsas hai
Khushboo si hai jaise hawa mein tairti
Khushboo jo be-aawaaz hai
Jiska pata tumko bhi hai
Jiski khabar mujhko bhi hai
Duniya se bhi chupta nahin
Yeh jaane kaisa raaz hai...





Pighle neelam sa behta ye sama,
Neeli neeli si khamoshiyan,
Na kahin hai zameen
Na kahin aasmaan,
Sarsaraati hui tehniyaan pattiyaan,
Keh raheen hai bas ek tum ho yahan,
Bas main hoon,
Meri saansein hain aur meri dhadkanein,
Aisi gehraiyaan, aisi tanhaiyaan,
Aur main...Sirf main.
Apne hone par mujhko yakeen aa gaya.

CHEENI KUM HYE...

Rarely things in life are dramatic enough to let you know they changed you. They tend to happen in a short time span or a period that you can clearly define. As teens we stammer our way through life. Unsure of our emotions and fairly oblivious to getting hurt that with years leads us to develop a defence mechanism against anything and everything that might remotely matter or cause us pain. It’s the foolishly ambitious nature that makes falling in love , making pacts with friends to be ”friends forever “ and that absolute belief in self that I can do anything I put my heart into, so easy that early in life. But the years that follow teaches us to build this fortress around us that no girl can breach, we realise friends come in phases and have to leave with time (enriching our lives in their own unique way nevertheless) and there is admittance of the limitations that come with our abilities. Is ignorance really bliss? Aren’t we better off foolish?

I remember making lemonade with six teaspoons of sugar (not kidding). Now I often enjoy a coffee black and without sugar. If I was at liberty to choose my likes – I would prefer to like that syrupy lemonade over a black coffee. Why ?? Seems more fun now doesn’t it. The cheeni kum philosophy has come to represent everything that has made life so bland. Now what can one say, I seem to be in conflict at what makes sense and what should make sense.

I have found myself to refuse to “love” someone I have come to deeply like over time. I just can’t get myself to act romantic after all these years I have come to criticise the idea of romantic love. At one moment all that gooey mushy talk seems just right and the very next my head is like “are you serious”. Damn my defence mechanism. It’s good. Why can’t I just be normal for this one thing. You reach that point where you are struggling to be honest with yourself and yet you fail to get the right answers. It’s this deeply cynical stance I tend to take when it comes to anything that promises to bring marked happiness .I refuse to be hopeful even if the tables are turned in my favour. If only I could get myself to jump to an orbital above or below (don’t much care if it’s stable or not). I am stranded somewhere in between and sure as hell missing out on something extraordinary to say the least.

Then what changed me so beyond repair. It would really help if I could put the blame somewhere. Then I could criticise it enough to undo myself. Were it the guys I hung out with making fun of the couples in college (especially the lame desperate ones), were it the shitty chick flicks whose trend has spread like herpes in the recent times or is it Chetan Bhagat for writing those books that are solely responsible for branding engineering colleges as a romantic utopia, all in for love and revolt. Well I don’t consider myself lucky enough to start blaming as of now. Is it supposed to be this confusing? Ted (HIMYM ref) says when the time is right you would just know. See I have opened myself enough to take advice from a nonsensical PBS sitcom. I don’t think it can get any better or worse #poeticbullcrap. However, its 5:06 in the morning and the time now is for my steaming cup of chai, with of course Kum Cheeni.

THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF MY LIFE

The end of third year at engineering marks the beginning if the big anti climax that is of course “final year “. Next year is all going to be how much we’re going to miss college, lots of tears over missing friends and bunking classes only to go out and do nothing which am pretty sure is going to ruin it for me anyway . Honestly I don’t think am going to miss college that much (if only a little maybe). Well that is what we do, we freak out that tomorrow is not going to be as comfortable and stable as today and in the process ruin today. It’s our everlasting quest for that stability that drives us to that place of convenience where we spend the rest of our lives and if we are lucky get to be happy. That is what makes me more scared than being sad when it comes to leaving college.

I don’t have a clue where that place outside the bounds of college is or more importantly how to work my way till there. In the past I have tricked myself into believing I want things only to find out the hard way they were never meant for me. I might have made slight improvement in that department with a little age and experience but that is not close enough to give any assurance from future catastrophes.

I go back to those nights I spent in the first year here with my cousin brothers watching Darjeeling Limited in pitch darkness which is about these three brothers looking for spiritual enlightenment and meaning for life as they travel through India . Anyway now all three of them (cousins) have jobs in different corners of the country and are leading their bittersweet lives.
I would any day make a deal to have something like that even if only to reduce the level of uncertainty that lies in front of me. Though pausing things right there or even now seems a more lucrative deal.

The ingredients for me are narrowed down to find that source that pays me for something that I don’t absolutely hate , confusion and uncertainty is minimum (this might differ for others) and have a friend(s) to share movie time with. All the big talk about ambition and I look to settle. In all fairness that is my ambition, to be devoted to laziness.What is my ultimate aim in life? Is being content the opposite of being ambitious? Am I ambitious, if yes, then what is my passion? Am I content, if yes, then why I am not happy? There is this urge to fast forward things to that moment where everything seems to work out. Can’t wait to see the first day of the rest of my life.