My lunch break is waxing at the speed of light, and I have the luxury of the last 3 minutes to get something here "on paper". Before I move further, rhea, nina and aashoo .. thanks for having been there, seen that and left a note. However much you tell yourself that you don't write for recognition, there's a soft spot in the ego that definitely feels better when you know someone felt good coz of what you wrote.
Today had a wonderful start. One of my articles is finally on print. I would have wanted the first one to be in the Hindu Opinion Section, or in the cover pages of the India Today magazine. But, it's a modest start ... a start, still :) And before I could bask in that glory, thud comes a mail from my "boss" asking me to login to yahoo messenger's voice conference with my collaborators ... where they were singing sermons praising the pillars of platform independence. And god said, son you have had enough and the whole network goes down :) Shukriya mai baap! and off I am blogging my way through in a notepad. Mondays have never been my favorites. The weekend's magic takes its own sweet time to wear off my back. And when you spend a weekend like what I did ... enjoying romeo and juliet's love lores with a hot cup of "cafe au lait" sitting next to that huge window letting drops of the first summer showers sprinkle into my coffee, and reaching out from the second floor to save the suicidal rain drops from ending their lives; And when the rain ends, taking a walk through the empty roads intoxicated by the aroma of earth and sending a few drops to infinity by free-kicking them to the nearest lamp post; Sitting next to the old guy in the roadside singing with a harmonica and clapping for a minute and dropping a few cents once he's done to make him feel like the king of the world; Dozing off in the black leather couch watching 'friends' till late in the night, letting just your nostrills see the rest of the world through your warm blanket; Do all those and come back on monday to work on a "Platform independent unified architecture for Knowledge exchange" is definitely not a smooth transition don't you think :(
Anyways, that's life and I know it's neither the rain drops nor the guy with the harmonica who give me my daily bread. It's my Boss! Sometimes, it's amusing how what you say affects what you think. True most of the time, you say what you think .. .but so many times it happens to me that, what I say affects how I feel about something. And when I tell my friends here what amazing work I am doing, and what fantastic family I have, and how lucky I've been in life ... I surely feel better. Of course much better than how I feel when I crib my way to glory. All said and done, I know I've been destiny's favorite child. Sometimes when I actually crib, I seriously visualise god (if you are wondering how he looks like, he's tall, croggy, has a flowing white beard, is dressed in white and is very bright :)) looking at me with piercing eyes and I tell him, "just this one time. I feel good when I do that". Reminds me of something even more childlike .... when I was a kid my mom once told me that people who wake up and go to bed again out of laziness are punished by god. So, back when I was young, if I wake up suddenly and wanted to go to bed again ... I used to tell god to forgive me this one time as I am really feeling tired. Today, it was 7:30 and I wanted to sleep for some more time. I caught myself telling god to excuse me for the next 30 minutes :) old habits .. don't die at all. Oops .. my prof's online now and wants to talk with me. Ciao! Ciao!

  ¶ 12:24 AM 0 comments

  Did you guys know this ... type a hundred words, get the best words in the best place ... and just when you think, you are going to blog your way to infinity, out of sheer coincidence "crafted to perfection by the ill-luck", your fingers reach for the Escape key, and lo all that you wrote is gone! Is there anything more frustrating than helplessly looking at the screen finding amiss a hundred words ... that so beautifully described how you felt. Anyways, I still have some life left in my fingers ... I shall go on ....
Before losing it out to the "treacherous escape key", I was explaining how perplexed I was to categorise this blog. How would you classify, the ramblings of a lunatic, the complaints of a crying kid, and the last words of a dying man. Oh no .. wait. I am not one of those who's carrying his burden of life on his tender shoulders, and hiding tears under the skin folds under his eyes ... I am just another Happy Joe, who's lost amidst options ... and feeling morose, more so (- a nice anagram for morose don't you think) because the day sapped out the last bit of energy out of my slim frame.
Hmm.. I've already started feeling better. There are so many things about blogging that's very intriguing - The state of being there like a mass in an unknown land(for a second, close your eyes and imagine people like unformed chunks of matter expanding and contracting, and thus showing life, in a closed room. Cut the daylight, get some haze, some fluorescence, imagine you and I sitting so close together in a virtual room and blogging as if we weren't there beside), this anonymity, this feeling of "dancing in the rain, as if noone is watching" where you can say just about anything and don't give a damn if you have got the final punctuation right, this optimism (to believe some silly soul would actually got this far and read this - "Thanks a lot") , and this sense of freedom, beyond the shackles of repression that civilization forces. And so on and so forth goes the lore .. in the praise of the lord and the Internet ....
Does blogging actually have to make sense? Hats off to men who bring about a change in the life of millions, by taking sometime and blogging for a purpose. Sometimes, it's unbelievable to believe that our society has finally embraced a virtual alter-ego that's much more sound and loud than the mundane one surviving the dirty marshes of flesh and blood. Of course, where's there's light, there's dark, where's joy, there's pain .. and where's there's sense, there's ME :) I love movies like pulp fiction, being john malkovich, and adaptation - They are so complete - completely non-sensical (from a perspective of a 9-5 guy walking on earth and still breathing air). They don't intend to make sense. But they are poetically cacophonic, carefully careless .. just like how the clouds are. Do you actually believe that the wind and god sit together and decide what patterns to draw every living moment of the day. Nah! They aren't software professionals. But they still are a little too busy for all that. But, if you have the time and the heart to enjoy art, look nowhere but up above .. you find teddy bears, rabbits, angels, heart symbols (like woh! dil shaped walah balloons!!) ... just whatever you want to see ..
My room mate's calling. Seems it's time to live. I end here. Au revoir.

  ¶ 12:24 AM 1 comments

  I just lost the last 300 words that wrote and have a clean slate facing me. I don't feel like rewriting it again. See you.  ¶ 10:12 AM 1 comments

  My last blog is dated 16th February ... and today exactly a month later, Iam back. Suddenly, the drive that moves me on to write something seems terribly missing. I don't know if that's coz my entire life seems like a total non-event, or coz if I've lost this urge to pen my thoughts down to paper... I guess, over these past few weeks, thoughts have taken a shapeless form, hazy and obscure making any kind of retrospection impossible. Seems like, they just seem to gel with the events that happen everyday and don't stand out to prove a point, or make a statement of purpose. I frankly don't know if it's a good sign or not, or if it's for good.. I've all the time in the world (hopefully) to live and watch my (whatever technical jargon I want to name it as) making up its mind and letting me know of its decision.
Let me just do a quick recap of the emotionally charged events that happened over the last month - Of course the immediate ones I could think of are the chat sessions that were supposed to happen, the snake calling me the worst soul to cohabitate, the successes and the failures with the willow, my futile efforts to get back to the study mode - criminal waste of time that I can never forgive myself for. Yeah, I guess I would have a day's blog to pen on all the topics above .. but I guess, a lot of thought has gone into the first few points, that I wouldn't want to go over them again .. right now. But considering the cyclical nature of events Iam sure, I shall back cribbing on all of them in the near future.
Here I lose it again .. the urge to write some more .. would rather go and jog my way to light and the eternal truth in the gym. Adios!   ¶ 3:40 AM 0 comments

  Been a long time since I came here last ... Don't know if it's coz I didn't find anything interesting to say, or is it sheer laziness or a selective amnesia when it comes to fulfilling responsibilities. I shall have to admit that in the last two weeks, I've been a little tipsy turvy with my emotions .. be it an inexplicable sense of euphoria or a dark deep feeling of depression.. Now, when I recollect how I was thinking of my mother at 3 today morning, I realise it's so unlike me. It's of course irrelevant to the topic of discussion that I have never been to figure out what's "like" me.
All that has been running in my mind right now are illusions of future... life beyond what my short term aims reach and shall accomplish- the road to Utopia, the secret of a joyful and stressless life, if there's anything like that. There are of course, as I've always realised, limits to how much you can expect life to go according to your plan. But, I've never been able to resign to fate accepting the law of life that ideality and reality are mutually exclusive. I've been so "miserably" lost in thoughts as I've confessed over and over again ... drives me to the same point of fear .. a nurtured insecurity out of experiences in the past. It's like racing in the motor tracks - You know when you are being too hard on the accelerator and search frantically for the brake pedals .. coz' there've been times in the past, when you thought you can live in this moment a little longer.. get the speed levels little higher .. thoroughly enjoying those moments at the edge of life, only to crash heads-on, pulverising every bit of poise, control and joy... sweeps off life off your eyes and leaves you as a piece of trash without the slightest bit of focus.
Anyways ... life seems to have gained a bit of direction right now. I can clearly see what I have to do for the next 5 months and only two souls in this world would realise how important these following months are .. coz' it's our lives we are talking of here. Anyways, I would have to stick those words of lord krishna somewhere when he says, "do your duty dude and I shall take care of the rest!". Ok master! As you say!  ¶ 10:28 AM 0 comments

  Iam going out on a lonely road...
walking on the bed of snow....
the heaven's showering flowers on me ....
as white as it could get ...
just as we are .. our love is .. and shall forever be

  ¶ 6:10 AM 1 comments

  Hmmm... Another weekend passes by and I don't realise a difference. Now that eachone sleeps under his roof, Iam left with a whole house for myself for most of the following week. Frankly, I don't see much of a difference as that's how I've been all this while in my new house. Looking back at the week, I realise it's much better than the last one. In terms of deliverables, I don't think there's any bit of difference between what I've achieved in these two weeks. But, I guess it all boils down to how my efforts have been noticed and appreciated. New projects promising to be better ventures than the previous one, and a greater onus on my shoulders in each of these responsibilities ... You know what, it's stuck in my mind that the life Iam living here is a miniature version of what a normal life is in all aspects... a life that in many ways has been idealised and captured inside walls of a painted jar. Everything around me looks so readymade and perfect. If the present is in anyway an indication of future, Iam yet to realise the perils of the life of a working man. She told me, during that one dinner date, that I remind her of Jim Carrey in Truman show. I never got the link. But, now when I look at my life.... I realise there is so much in common between me and the star inside a dome called universe. Day in and day out, I meet the same set of 30 odd people - 4 in my office, 15 to 20 of them in my immediate neighbourhood and the rest sipping coffee in the restaurant or working out in the gym. This is my world and they are all the people who matter in my universe. And you can move this population from a place from another, and I wonder if I would know the difference. I've never been in terms with being content. As for me, life always has a catch. It's this devious snake at the garden of Eden that shows me the fruit of knowledge and waits for me to fall prey. Well, I guess it helps ... to question every faith than to incredulously fall prey to assumptions defied everytime by the human race. After all, all that I want to be, is to be happy! :)  ¶ 9:19 AM 1 comments

  Now that was a coincidence... I write about managing change last week and I end up reading "Who Moved my Cheese?" today! Nice book... reminds me of the rabbit, frog and the hunter story that someone told me before the play. And whatever I've been missing in that screenplay that I've been fiddling with for quite sometime now, has been given on a platter this afternoon between those lines of sense in that tiny collection of pages.
Otherwise, Looking back on a week, After a long time I end up missing and messing an appointment; I end up screwing up a deadline (which again, I don't realise how I could have thwarted!) .... not a nice week, eh! I am smiling to myself right now for resting the squibs on those rituals I believe in but failed to keep up :) Guess, it does make a difference. Now when I look at it, I realise it's all about moving the cheese. I should have sniffed it coming.... Shall do it henceforth. The best thing about Advice is that, what finally makes sense to us is not something we don't know or never even thought about.. it's something that stuck us sometime but we never took seriously... Something, we expected an X to nail on our foreheads! And thee shalt call him a prophet.. .coz' he turned your eyeballs inwards and told you something you knew deep within.
Anyways .. as Ham says, "better late than never!". Shall have to look at my next stop in life pretty seriously.... I guess, as always, I've got things to a point where I don't have a choice. I wonder why I love living life like this "on the edge"! She tells me, it's dangerous... Well c'mon.. what's more dangerous than living! :)  ¶ 7:50 AM 0 comments

  For a guy like me basking in the luxury of a steady state, this week has been a wonderful experience. Quite a few situations where I was at crossroads, between taking a detour from the same beaten path I tread everyday, and to stay in this state of intellectual hibernation, I chose the road less travelled and now at the end of it all, Iam a happy man. It's the same paraphernalia everytime.... I miss my first chance of doing something, and for a long time I regret missing it and wait for the second chance to come by, the excitement builds as everyday passes by and I can see the silhouette of my dream realising itself at a distance, and as the moment of choice gets nearer, self doubt creeps in and creates a catastrophe, and moments before the the occasion my whole self votes against change and prefers to sleep longer in the same rug... and then if I lose this battle of will, I stand to regret for the rest of my life ... and if I win, it's a euphoric feeling that can never be replaced. Seems weird why decisions in life don't just depend on the deliverables... if I do it, I shall be happy and if I don't I shall regret ... and yet, my whole mass stands resolved against accepting change!
I should be knowing better, thanks to those simulations that send the signals thru the human decision making networks to observe their behaviour... Only if, the gap between theory and life were a little lesser, life would have been a much easier task to pursue ... and you bet, less interesting too :)  ¶ 4:30 AM 0 comments

  And just when I thought, there couldn't have been a duller week than what walked on my corpse .... the skies above called out for a wonderful display! For the first time in the history of this place (to be read as the last few years), it snowed.. and boy! it snowed big time!! It all started sometime in the afternoon, when we saw a few white flakes disappearing into the grounds below .. An hour later, grimacing at my options on tv with a hot coffee mug in my hand, I looked out to see one of the most beautiful sights I've ever set eyes upon. It was like my window led me to the worlds where the snow white lay on a bed of roses, where hansel and gretel dropped their crumbs of bread, and where evil spirits spit deaths and as they walked along in search of lives and blood in the middle of a walt disney set.. And soon we started out on a car in search of the lands lost in snow. And were they beautiful... It was all white till what our eyes could reach. Never realised, a monochrome world would look so breathtaking and would evoke such sentiments deep inside. Everything around us seemed dead.. it was like a battlefield after the ruins .. only that the blood and gore were in white. I could almost hear the dying creepers crying out of pain. But, it was beautiful. Seems inhuman right now when I think about it. But then I was looking at the roses and not at the coffins.
Not just beautiful.. but so "miserably" romantic. When the plants on the creek went white with the snow amidst the waters turning black with weeds down below, you look at your footprints in the path behind and sorely miss those that should have been beside. There are few things in this world more romantic than watching the snow painting a serene picture on your window, when you stand beside your bed ...and those few things being, going out on a ride and making faces with snow to carve a smile on the face that you shall never get tired of seeing, leaving a slight creek in the window for the bed to get colder, for her to say, "Rathish, it's so cold" and for you to say,"Oh yeah.. let me hug you tighter!" and kiss her gently when the night is still young, standing under a huge pine treee hugging her while it's snowing all around you and when she frets about her wet hair and adjusts her cap the way only she could, your eyes stay fixed on her till she notices and asks you, "what?" and you lie again ..."You look so beautiful!" ;) and when in the middle of the night you lie in eachother's arms sweating, when it's snowing outside... you look into her eyes and say "I love you" and couldn't have meant it more. I wonder how lifeless my life would have been without these illusions. So many times, I feel they complete me - and make me what Iam.
A sigh! and it's all I've right now... I look outside my window beyond the snow... at the stars ... asking them when it shall dawn. "Soon!" they say! .. Soon!  ¶ 9:28 AM 1 comments

  Bonne Annee. For the first time in my life, Iam spending a new year's eve outside my house. And for the first time, I missing my bro's birthday! It's been a practice that I wouldn't want to quit, penning a few lines down.... an introspection of the year that went by and an effort to focus on the bigger picture for the next year. The bygone year has been good, rather excellent, in many aspects. May be the best thing about 2002 is that, it's left me with a long list of things-to-dos for the year to come. Yesterday, lying in my bed ... trying hard to sleep, an hour long movie on what my near future should be like screened itself before my eyes. A diffidence in realising my resolutions has been reaffirmed with every year that's passed by.... it's like standing near the sign that reads "Welcome to a new year!" with an Ark of promises on my back. And everytime the sun dawns, I look at my ark and say "they shall be done tomorrow" and carry them everyday! And lo, comes a day when I see the next sign on my way!! And a truckload of wishes wait beside the board to strain my back for another long mile...
Hm... and so standing here, I tell myself I would ... learn to play the guitar, write my second screenplay, go to the gym, learn salsa, start talking in french, get my hands on the steering wheel ... and so goes the list for another kilometer. It's all in a pursuit of the smile that you wear, when someone out of the blue asks you how your year has been so far and you suddenly realise, despite all these broken promises, that you have actually had a wonderful year! You remember the smiles etched on those faces you would never forget, the drops of rain that fell on your face and sank in your hearts, the look in the eyes, the touch of the hands, the tears that you never saw, the stabs that you shall forever feel, and the distances that shall always remain the same.
And from where I stand now ... when all the roads in my life seem to converge into a huge illusion, promises are all I've. And each day is yet another step towards the horizon. "No one is given the right to wish for something, without being given the means to achieve it!" .. and if that's so, I shall walk any extra mile to get my life in place. And, let this new year be a huge step in the right direction. Aho! I come ....  ¶ 8:32 AM 0 comments