The Act of being Good

The set was all set. Yeah... it was just like a talk show, but was quite different; there was no host, no cameraman, no producer but just talkers, with different opinions and different footholds. Some were adamant, some were suspicious, one was curious, another defendant, and another a forward player.

One of my friends had come for a mid-week holidays to Chittor for three days. We had not been able to meet on first day of his arrival. The second evening was when we decided to go out to dine to one of the rarest kind of places found in my hometown, a restaurant. I am not kidding on this one, there is no place actually we can call as a Restaurant, and I’m not either exaggerating things. Well, there were four of us around the rectangular table: he, his friend (RJ), my wife and I.

With the various chats on our lives and all, we started to discuss on the topic, I think my wife and I will never stop discussing on. But yeah the chat-launcher was quite different. It started with the food, which had already landed on the table, soup and paneer tikka (by order it was, but by preparation it was paneer pakora). Well expected out of the soup and the starter, the chat was obvious to burp out.

The food (or rather starters) was awful, forcing my friend to condemn the whole Chittor (this is what happens practically too: if you make a small mistake, the whole of you is reviled as a wrong-doer). We started it with the food he gets in Gujarat (or rather Ahmadabad), insisting Gujjus are real fond of living life(this is also what happens practically too: if other person has a good taste in a certain thing, he/she is commended for everything you sought for). It was just for food that Gujjus had been fond of. Even I don’t deny this, but asserting Gujjus live their lives worthily was something as though reprimanding my place, my people, my community and above all me.

I hesitated on this but my friend with a strong thought reconfirmed his input, said, “You gotta agree on this that Gujjus live their life better, they don’t just save but spend also. They spend so much yet they believe in saving, they have more spending power.” I object your Honour (your Honour ...what bullshit), I objected stating spending power comes with the money. He insisted saying who said there is no money in this state. I rephrased my words saying, business opportunities are better in Gujarat, they have more resources of water, power, transportation and support from Govt, etc. A few exchange of words and I went into my own thoughts.

The real problem with my home town is not this that there is no money for people to spend, or people at my hometown are less willing to spend. But the problem is something no one actually ever thought on.

My state is well-renowned as ‘The state of hospitality’, and the hospitality starts from our people then to the people outside. We are so much attached to each other that we never realize when it starts to interfere in their world, and as a result we compel ourselves from doing things we like to do. In this place, every second (or maybe the ratio is yet less than I am stating) person know another, and every second person (no maybe here, surely the ratio is much lower than what I am stating) is also hunted from something which is socially-inacceptable. To avoid being seen by the known, they choose enjoying those (alluring) things with lower risks and hence prefer to go out for a weekend and fulfil his/her desires. This is the reason why no one has yet been able to set up a good Restaurant/Theatre/recreation place in my hometown, because people mostly go out of the town and have all these recreations there itself, when meeting his desires.

But this is not the reason I am writing a blog on the issue that I think I want people to know I have reached to the root cause of less business opportunities, more brain drain (and lesser friends of mine) in the place I am staying now. I am writing it because I am searching for an answer to overcome this issue. The issue is simple, solvable... yet I am helpless to find remedy to this problem. And, I am employing the best way to get an answer, putting it on my blog.

My friends, readers of this post, please provide your support to make my life(and many others’) a little easier. I am sure of it to move out of this place but till then I want not just to spend the life as others are spending, I want to make this place better. Whatever your thought is, your suggestion is... it would be very precious to me.

the New Year eve

I know this post is a little late in getting posted. I hope Indian Postal Services don't use the tag line

we get you the post faster than I-m-mortal

I know it is a nice way to show people your blogger profile(and your profile pic), especially when your "About me" column doesn't appear on the top of the blog's home page(okay! you don't need to click on this link, it will not get you to any better place... and yeah it is true for the previous link too).

But I am not supposed to be blamed for getting that thing fixed. I have used a new template, in which first four headers should actually club themselves together in a tab(like 4 post-it, one over the other). It happens sometimes on its own and sometimes many times it just displays them in a column pattern of excel- one below the other(please let me know what it displays to you a tabbed or a simple side bar), maybe it is also as moody as i am. After all it's my blog.

I am feeling I have not written a single thing regarding the title of the post. so first of all,

happy new year 2009

Different people have different attitudes towards the new year eve. I never happened to find out what difference does it make to one person on the evening before the new year that people everywhere are so much excited about it. is it that the moon comes that night with the disco light? or is it that the stars of that night stick to one place only all throughout the night? or that there is some imaginary real imaginary-real person(like Santa Claus) comes? none i suppose but then why so much heck about it?

Few days before the eve when you talk to someone on phone, after a few exchanges of words they will ask you "so, what's the plan for the new year eve?" and if by chance you say you have no plans, they will start suggesting, "why don't you come here?" or "you weren't like that before" or "plan something man, this is the time you can do these things"!!! WTF? if i needed to make a plan I would have done it much before your suggestion was required. and even if i have made all plans i don't see the need to let you know the plan until i intend to join you or i intend you to join me.

Moreover, it is the time, when you miss your friends the most as for any plans you make you require a good company/group(solitudes skip the last line or the whole paragraphs, as you wish). I think that is why people started this celebration, that those who have no friends to party or to plan anything should feel disgusted all for the night watching the same moon and the moving stars(Relative movement).

The eve was long and i didn't spend it doing any of the above said things and had my own plans, which i don't intend to write here. One thing is sure that whether you plan or you don't the night just passes the way you want it to, making a happy end to the year, like in the bollywood movies.

FriEnDs to live

There are few things that you require at every stage of life. Such as the air to breathe, food to eat, water to drink, land to walk on and friend to live. With a friend you live your life but without... you just spend it. I don’t know what is difficult to do: to live or to spend? But I know one thing that it is no fun to spend the life.

The importance of friends to live is undeniable. Have you ever thought that none of Chetan Bhagat’s book could have been completed without Friend(s), or Sholay would not have been a hit without Friend(s), or none of us would have known who KK was if there were no Friend(s). (What??? You didn’t get who KK is... that “Yaaron” singer da). Real life friends are as hit in life as the TV show, F.R.I.E.N.D.S. was

There was one of my cousins, who always used to write friend as “FREIND”, despite many amending her for the same. I once happened to ask her why she writes friend as “FREIND”. To that she replied, she wants to know others that she understand how to write friend but she doesn’t like the ambiguity in its spelling: “the ‘end’ in friend doesn’t fit when I know a friend is actually the beginning of the fun”, her word to word reply was.

(After a lot of paragraphs writing and deleting and writing again and deleting again and again)

There is nothing I can write here or anywhere that can explain what really it means to have a friend in life and how painful it is to not to have one. You need friends in every small (and big) thing you do.

So if you feel you are overburdening yourself with life and its (its ________ what??? there are many thing we can fill in here... summing up I write) traits, go, join orkut, facebook or other social network or do anything and make friends! Rule is simple my dear: No Friend, No Life!

The Time that's gone

A flash player. It's Adobe Flash Player or even better, better than any player available and there is a flash file being played, don't know what the creator of the file had named it, may be "Don’t worry It happens to everyone, to you too". There are pictures, hazaar of them, there are videos having people moving things here or there, there are abrupt changes from one slide to another. I feel this was the life I had spent, more than this I feel I want to spend that life again, again all throughout my life.

I don’t know whether something of this sort had happened to you or anyone, but it keeps happening to me. I keep catching the glimpse of the time that I have spent. I think this is some kind of a disease I am having, as the Dyslexia Ishaan had in TZP, (you don’t think it’s same? This way it will sound same: he was a normal child but only some tuning of brain was required). I have the similar case or maybe not. It has prolonged so much that the condition is now out of control.

The above mentioned sequence often used to cover my sight whenever I used to take a break and sit( or stand(or walk(or lay down)))(3 closing braces required!!! Lemme check! Yeah.) idle (uff... it doesn’t give continuity... please read sit as sit/stand/walk/lay down)... so I write it again.... The above mentioned sequence often used to cover my sight whenever I used to take a break and sit idle. I see myself moving in the streets of Basvangudi (FYI, location of my first rented flat in Bangalore) or eating in the restaurants of Indiranagar, or buying popcorns in the theatres of Kota, or staring the cemented basketball court of DPS Adityapuram while my teacher is scolding me or banging ceramic cups with friends in room no 61 of my college. There was time I often used to live in the past and come back to the present. But now, things are getting worse. I often find myself living in present while I am still living in my past.

My ignorance had mended the way for the disease to grow more than I ever expected. Now I see the images everywhere, every time and in everything I do, whether I ride on bike, whether I type this or that, whether I listen to music (music is one big player in it... I don’t know how this thing works but even sound of a string makes me nostalgic of the old times) , whether I jump into an old friends profile, whether I read scrap conversation of two people or whether I see myself in the mirror. The frequency has just got higher and still raising high.

I thought writing this would help me but... but it has made it worse. What do I do? I want to be normal, enjoy my present as I enjoyed my past. I don’t want to regret later in life to have missed this time. Am I not happy with my life that I am remembering those days of my life, but I remember all days, both good and bad ones? Or is it that I want to make amendments in my past life to make all those days to good ones. But the reasons are not the issue here. Or maybe they are, as I want to destroy the reasons from the root. I am confused. I should not write more... it’s a bad thing to show everyone you are confused. I am not writing further, but I am still writing. It should not end abruptly, but this is how things are in reality and so is this post, ending....

A little doubt and hope

I read this one in a local newspaper... and i thought to share it...

This is a story of two friends, Adbhut and Vibhut. Both of them were born
on the same day. They went to school together and did graduations in the same
stream from the same college and were taught by the same teachers. Adbhut and
Vibhut were equally qualified but Vibhut sometimes used to outscore Adbhut. They
both became good person when they grew up.

Once on a weekend, both these friends decided to go in the wild. While they
were moving deep into the forest, they came across various creatures, and
enjoyed it. At one point the beauty around them excited them.
It was green all around, the birds were chirping, the nature was pampering them
with all its utter care. While moving ahead, they saw a peahen sitting on the ground.
The peahen suddenly got up. Adbhut and Vibhut had unknowingly scared the peahen,
it flew onto a branch of the tree it was sitting next to.

From the top of that tree it, at one time, looked at the two humans in
front of her and on second glance peeped at the place it was sitting a moment
before. Adbhut and Vibhut got suspicious that the peahen had definitely left
something precious under the tree. They went close and saw two beautiful eggs of
a peacock.

Vibhut and Adbhut imagined a peacock dancing with all its feathers blossom
like a flower in their house. Both of them decided to carry each egg with them
and wait for the peacock to come out of the egg.
When both of them reached home, they kept the egg in the domestic poultry
between the eggs of hen.

A few days passed by and Vibhut started doubting of getting a peacock from
the egg. He kept on moving it from one lot of eggs to another, keep it in the
sun, shake to see whether there is something inside. A few days later the egg
started to rot. The chic died in the egg itself and could never
come to the world.

On the other side, Adbhut kept the egg in the best of his hens' nests. And
one day, a beautiful, peachic was born. It had no feather, but its beauty was
unimaginable. Few months later, it turned into a peacock full of youth, dancing with a bulk of feathers charming everyone in the neighbourhood.
Its feather were so colorful that it attracted people from the whole
town.

Vibhut also got to hear about Adbhut's peacock and decided to go to his place and
see the peacock. He was amazed to see the peacock and later told Vibhut that the
egg he got never bore a chic in it and that egg was not a real egg. On this,
Adbhut told him, "even your egg carried a chic but you never believed that
it did, and you killed it by the doubt on your dreams. However, I always
believed the egg to transform into a beautiful creature, which it did one
day.

The story was simple but had carried a deep meaning in it. I read this story when i required that leasson the most. The story tells us to always believe in everything we do. A small crack of doubt may break the filled dam of our hopes and fruits.

The Instigation of a Culmination

Imagine yourself voyaging on a ship for five and a half long years. Sometimes you have the destination decided, and you move towards it, though still not sure you will get to them. And you try reaching it and sometimes you do. But most of the time you just feel like to go along the wave to the place so unknown, so leaded, so magnetizing. When you boarded the ship you didn’t know many people, and those you knew were just that you knew as people. But with the course of time and the sail, you meet people who boarded before you and also after you. You become close to few, closer to still a few and detested to some.

You find people of your likes, your tastes and your thoughts. You find people attracting you with their intelligence, with their cool behaviors, and with their attitudes. Few mesmerize you with their looks. And you know there are still more few people on board in some corner of the ship, you need to see. You have fun, freak out, eat, drink, sleep, roam around, flirt around with people, play, fight, annoy, crack jokes and do thousands of other things with the people on board. You learn many things. You get used to things so much that you can’t imagine yourself sailing without them, or rather you can’t imagine seeing yourself without them. You get so attached to the ship that you pronoun it as your own possession.

And then a day comes, when you are realized that this isn’t the place you belong to. You are confided that you boarded the ship to leave it someday. That day you find out that the place you consider your world, where you dreamt your future is just a dream in reality. A dream you had lived so long, so completely with, so much enjoyed it that you don’t want to wake up to drop the dream in the air. But life isn’t about sleeping, it is about moving ahead. I know, for me this dream had been so treasuring that even after I get away from the ship, I will be never forgetting it throughout my life. A part of me wants to go ahead and have all together a new air in the life but a major part of me still wants to be in this dream, voyaging places all the time.


Walking on the street I asked myself what makes me,
What is the conviction around that reveals the real me?
The vagueness of my random ideas and stimulations
are really real, or just a theater show at the matinee?

With a hollow wish, I have decided to move ahead
and leave the place I had been living in for so long
It’s not just the place, but also the happiness that
I am leaving behind to create new delights along.

Walking on the same street, I whispered myself
It’s not just me who abides but also are others.
This street will also be longing to endure my feet
as I pine for its ups and downs, twists and turns.

When I hide my face in the darkness of this night
to wipe the tears rolling down my swollen eye.
With the lamp of hope lighting in the dimming dusk
I wish to come back to the place I will now deprive.

Vending Machine

Proud and Close association with the vending machines in the pantry. Dreams of time when the day start, and the dreams of dreams when it falls. I stay near the vending machine, making the hustling sound as though it's brewing the coffee fresh, but still I know its just the powdered coffee and the creamer it mixes to give me that hot cup of coffee.

Through the sound of that pretentious brewing coffee, a herd of thoughts passes through my mind. Capturing one and capturing other followed by capturing the one I had just left. The one minute wait at the coffee vending machine makes me think of the thousands catch, the one or those I am sure to forget as soon as I reach my desk and power up my monitor.

It is just for the matter of fact that I think of the meeting in the room alone with the girl in that room locked but still not so locked. The way she looked, the smile she bore but still I was so unsure to say yes or no.

Through the same sound I think of calling an old friend of mine, who was in college with me. Though not prepared for any exam with her, I have definitely revised all my subject with her before exams. She complains of me forgetting her, but there were very few in college I spent time with.

In that pretentitious sound I think of the girl I always think of calling up, but never get courage to do so. At the same time I think that I had been thinking a lot over the girls in my life and try thinking of something else, realizing I forgot to think about the girl from the school or the girl in the neighbourhood and many more.

The coffee is ready and then I pick the cup thinking I need to take serious decision in my life... stop doing things those harm me or cost me a little high, start things I had been planning to do.
Everything after I finish this cup of coffee.

Soon I get back to the machine... the same cofffee vending machine, rushing through all the thoughts I just dumped in the trash with the cup of coffee I just finished, thinking on my way I also need to cut down on my coffee, but realizing soon that this vending machine is the best friend I have got in the office, whom I visit the most often, standing next to which I take many decision, staying around this machine I clear my doubts, hence trashing the idea of chopping the number of coffee off.

So I am just going back to meet my friend... thinking tough on thinking something new this time.

Feels good to

come back to the same routine.
Yes now I am back to the same fun life of Bangalore.
May of 2007 is one period, which I will forget after forgetting my name. I was so excited with my trip back home and it turned out to be equally repulsive. Apparently after reaching back to Bangalore the tune of bad news didn't fade off.
Firstly I learnt that the QEA nite party is already thrown and icing on the cake, it was thrown at the Taj. And I broke my bike's mudguard... and there are so many more..
I am still waiting for the more bad news to come. truely... I am waiting and I am all ready to tackle them.

But on an all I am happy to be back to the place I was missing all these days.

IS THIS?

Beyond the extremities,
Afore the foundations,
Revealing my curiosities,
Coining my assumptions.

I searched for my bliss,
And found my misery,
I explored for my aspiration,
And discovered my desertion.

Was it the way or the course,
I was searching them?
Or was it my doom
That brought me the unasked?

During these years of my life,
I modeled many relationships
With my sorrows and grieves,
With my solitary and my dreams.

I live in that social order
Which I created myself,
Though I didn’t intend to
But still I inhabit it.

Is it for my creeds
That I do not amend?
Or is it my hopes
That deteriorates me?

In this uphill struggle,
I bank on my immortal beliefs,
Which give me nothing
More than the deceiving pursues.

I doubt on me when
Others confide in me,
I appraise me when
Others repudiate me.

Is this the query I pose,
That leads me to the Deceptions?
Or is this the answer I provide,
That shapes my uncertain existence?