Moving on

The light
has changed.

The agony
is nearly over.

It'll be morning
soon, hopefully.

I need to act
fast, very fast.

The night will
be over and lost.

But the dark treasures
should not be lost.

How do I carry
all that I learnt?

How do I pay for
all these invaluables?

How do I fly into
the morning, one-piece?

Will a part of darkness
linger into the morning...

...inside me??

News Headlines

• A belated Merry Christmas to all, and a happy new year in advance. God Jul och Gott Nytt År.
  
• I went on a cruise to Finland last week. It was the awesomest thing. I was HIGH without any alcohol at all and danced all night with despo guys and despo lesbian girls. I have a bunch of stories from that night. Too much to type!!
• The greatest part about Christmas this year was not the little belated snow, but the fact that I ran into a bunch of Indians at a party and they loved my aloo-poori. [:P]So we had another follow up party yesterday...
  
• A couple of exchange students lived nearby. somedays back one of them killed the other and fled. The body was found five days later because it stank. Now the other guy has been caught and it's discovered that they fought over another guy(!) and that let to murder! Murderous love...
• I'm 20.
  

Theoretically speaking: Concentric circles

So, life goes on. The lows of the last post have largely, albeit temporarily, been abandoned by gritty conscious efforts from me. Cool, am I not! Borrowed some energy from the universe and deliberately met people for two days, eating, roaming, doing all kinds of masti possible in this dark yet beautifully lighted-up-in-the-festive-season city just to pinch away from the circle of woes. So even though life is more or less back to where it was, I'm trying not to feel gloomy about it and at least now it's working. One would be stupid to miss a beautiful life getting depressed over nothing. And besides, God has been listening to me a bit. It's finally freezing again here, and this morning I woke up to ice gleaming under the sun again. People who lost their minds a bit in the last few months finally regained their old sensible charm in the lazy December chill. And all my cooking experiments seem to be working miraculously well once again!
So, it's all down to the last exam tomorrow, and after that I'd be officially free...hopefully shopping, a cruise, a couple of parties and all that would fill my time till it's finally time to pack my bags again! Till then, I'm free to worry about WHAT to buy, and also cribbing about having to stop being a teenager in just about 10 days...eeks that sucks!

Ok, now that the crappy updates are done, I wish to write about one of my various theories today. Oh yes, I got many many theories about life and people, and how things work or don't. Most of them are observation based and empirical, and a lot of them make sense many a times. However this one is one of my favourites, and I write it because I want someone to read it (hopefully you will, it's not sugarcoated...)

Right, so here I go. I think/believe that each one of us is at the centre of a number of concentric circles of increasing radii, and all the people in our life -- and I mean every single person --are situated at one of these circles. The closer the person is to us, the nearer his/her circle which means less distance. The farther you go, the larger the radius, the larger the circumference and thus the larger the number of people who could be accomodated on the circle. This means that there could be only a certain number of people who could possibly be really close to you because there is only that much space, and the list of acquaintances is invariably the longest because it's so far away. Everyone has their own circles and circles for everybody intersect at various points but it's rather complicated to imagine so better use spheres for imagination purposes. Also, it's not necessary that the circle number we occupy on someone else's cluster is the same in the vice-versa scenario. Which explains a lot of pain that happens in this world, when we give someone more value than they give us.
The first few circles around everyone are empty, because they signify the innermost reaches of us that our defence mechanisms don't let anyone get to. This is what we call our private space that we value a lot. The number of these empty circles varies from person to person. If you feel lonely in life, it means there are more circles empty than you'd like or you need, and that is when you feel the need of someone to come a little closer and fill in the 'emptiness in your life'. Again, most of us have a limit, and if someone comes closer than that, we start getting uncomfortable and try and push her away a little radially outward.
Centrifugal forces are inversely proportional to distance, and hence the closer the person, the shorter the radius, and the harder it hurts. Similarly, the more this distance, the less it really matters.

So far I always find my theory making a lot of sense at many practical points. I, like many introverts (even though I'm more like an ex-introvert), lived/live within a shell that enclosed some of the innermost circles, and everyone else positions herself/himself at points on the circles beyond, so that no one could hurt me with a force more than I could handle though I had to cope with loneliness in return. Yeah, I knew/know like a thousand people, but that simply suggests that I have many circles in my cluster, and a lot of the people are on the far-off large circles. No co-relation at all with who I really was, or thought I was, what I really felt, and how alone or happy I was.
In the past year, I think I have grown tremendously. Most of all I opened up and came out of my shell, or at least, moved it inward a bit that allowed some people to come closer to me than ever before. Of course that makes me more vulnerable, which is the part I've always hated and still do. A few times, I've felt so vulnerable and weak I wished to rush back to the old shell and push everyone away who's come in. So far though, I've manged to hold on. I chose this for myself, perhaps experimentally. I have given myself the possibility of getting hurt a lot more than I ever could. And I've already had my share of unprecedented hurt a few times. But then, it's brought me more joy than ever before too. More of both joy and the sorrow that comes tagged along.
In short, more of life.

And there she goes again...

Once in a while this blog bears the brunt of raw emotion...not the kind camouflaged in nice-sounding words and/or fictionalised...but raw anger, frustration, love, pain...
Come to think of it, I don't even care. Sometimes I snap, and then I don't have the patience to disguise my self and my feelings. I don't know what's wrong with me, but if I stop lying for once, something is. My brain has been corrupted with an UnknownVirus from Swedeland. One thing's for sure...exchange programme is not meant for sensitive girls. I don't know what's become of me. I'm so unrecognisable to myself. I just don't have any spirit left. I'm tired of pushing myself on to do this and that and that and that...I'm tired of forcing myself to smile. There's just no driving force left. Smile for whom? Live for what? Lie more to yourself, but why? I've had enough thank you! Sure this is a wonderful place...it's beautiful, the atmosphere is very relaxed, there's plenty to experience blah blah. But..hello...it's been four months and so enough is enough. Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder and my eyes are cataracted!

OK OK too much. I'm slightly frustrated hence the exaggerated reaction...It's been good this last four months. I've made sooooo many kinds of people from all over the world; I've learnt how to cook and how to survive independently; I've learnt how to be self-sufficient for everything including love and hate, including crying for and wiping tears; I've had time to slow down in my express-pace over-dramatic life and think, reflect, grow; I've come to know which are the people that really matter to me, who are worth caring for, and who all care for me or come to me just when they need help. It's done so many good things to me by giving me a wonderful perspective on living. But excess of anything is bad. I just think too much. And now I've just lost it. Life is a sine curve I know, and earlier I used to struggle out of the lows because I knew that life must go on and so a high must come after the low, but exceptions exist right...life is never so bad it can't get worse. And somebody shifted the X-axis of my sine curve up ward, so now even the highest highs are only at the "zero" level...I'm extremely alone, so much that days pass without me speaking a word to another human being. And I'm tired of making that super-extra effort I managed initially to reach out to people. Sure I know a lot of souls around, but I don't really 'know' anyone. Can't really talk to anyone. And the guy who came with me from IIT... :D :D :P...the last I saw him was Nov 6, and he stays on the same floor as me! But damn him, he;s too untolerable for me...

So what is it that's left now. Simply this: it's down to the last two weeks now, nearly. So I should be happy about it and quickly wrap up all I wish to do here before bidding adieu. But instead of lightening up, things have become gloomy. I've finally lost patience with myself, so now I feel resigned to depression. This time, I just don't have the enthusiasm the energy to fight out of it. Which is why I'm writing this post too. To get it back somehow. I'm proud of how fighter I can be! But it's just that I can't live without the enthusiasm the energy, and I hate to die in defeat like this too. To make things worse, the semester is over in IIT, which means almost all of my friends who would earlier chat with me once in a while are either home, or resting, or celebrating their jobs, or sulking, or simply forgotten. To make it worse, my best friend who's the only person who's been talking to me all this while come what may, thinks that he's missing me a lot so he shouldn't talk to me till I come so that out of sight is out of mind. It works for him, and I understand perfectly. I'm dying to meet him once I get back, but what till then....

The last post veryone said that the 1% is what is really me...the bad unsensible stupid loathable thing is really me..the 99% is false..and you are right guys...I'm that loathable thing. I got to accept now. Just who am I kidding. The only problem is, now, how do I survive?

If I were you, which means reading this and not writing it, I would say "Don't think so much". and it makes so much sense that DON'T say it. If anything, tell me how?

The 1% I Hate

99% is sensible; the rest doesnt listen to the mind
99% looks forward to the future; the rest stares behind
99% wants to smile come what may; the rest is keen to cry
99% is bent at fighting it out through; the rest doesnt even try
99% sees reason, knows patience; the rest doesn't want to understand
99% forgives forgets moves on; the rest is stuck in Neverland.
99% manages to accept find peace; the rest still wants to question fate
99% wins 99% of times; the remaining 1% is what I hate.

It works!

:-)

Omens

Do you believe in omens?
Signs, symbols, signals?
I don't know why,
but I think I do.

Sometimes, I think, the future
sinks into us in the present
One or more moments before
the moment that is to come.

Like driving down a deserted alley
on a dark night without lights
Just before you turn the corner
you know you'd crash into something.

Yet you do nothing of course
And wait for the crash to happen
Even if you did, it wouldn't have mattered
Some things are definitely inevitable.

And that is life to me
Full of magical 'coincidences' that felt just right
Full of omens that made me believe
It's all gonna fit in perfect.

And just as well, life is
about sinister intuitions and vague hints
Now, honey, I'm gonna turn the tide.
Now, next, is the corner where you'd crash.

Yet again, I know. Yet, again, I shall wait.
And do nothing, of course.
Life's set for an inevitable crash
Says thus the omens.

This is my life!

...alongwith many many other unphotographed people and moments.

Chasing moments

I am one of those who believes life is lived in discrete precious moments. In fact life is made up of tiny moments, each like one precious pearl, and we must live it like that. We lose so many moments of life all the time in trivialities we ironically call 'living', in sorrows and whines and all the muck of this world. Yet the few we manage to grasp are what define for us our life and its purpose forever. They become pearls of memory, or lessons of living. They become the windows from which we can look at our life, or the meaning of life itself. That is why, I am the silly one who tries to 'create' moments sometimes and to engrave them in memory. Silly but harmless fun!

This afternoon was a mini-exercise in creating moments from the Stockholm stay, now in its last month. I had a few hours to spare, and felt less lazy than usual. So I wandered to the city centre and started walking around familiar streets, now beautifully decorated for the approaching Christmas. Evening fell in and the lights started looking better in the darkness(my watch read 3 pm though, and my watch is working fine! :P ) I went in all those big shops I never went in, maunnly for window shopping. I wandered observing how people rushed about or strolled, how they behaved, the expressions on their face, the way they talked, the way everything existed around me..it started feeling surreal so I went up to the big Culture House library and fished out a Vikram chandra to read, sitting comfortably near the glass wall overlooking the sprawling city beneath. More wandering and more shopping later, I finally got home very tired but preserving a treasure of tiny moments.

However, the incident of the day was while I was coming back on the metro. There were a couple of Indian guys standing almost next to me talking in Hindi. Now because it's so rare, and feels so nice to hear something in a recognisable language in the chatter around me, I always turn around to notice who the speaker it is (even English, anything but Swedish) So these guys were blurting about their work when I sort of turned to notice them for a few seconds. One of them noticed me and began talking about me as I silently listened all the while turning away. The other said in hindi, so what if she's looking at us? Why do you have notice? Let her if she wants to. He replied, I dont have a problem yar, just that it feels good when some girl is looking at you. And so they continued, while I had a hard time suppressing my laughter. I had to get off soon, and while exiting, I turned to them and said, "Have you ever thought what if somebody could actually understand what you are talking, I mean ek billion Indians hain, kai jagah ho sakte hain na..." And walked out finally laughing.

I bet they were a little stunned.

Nostalgia: Farewell

A few minutes past midnight, a young girl mad with passionate love and nearly choked with emotion stood in the light of a half moon that shone twice as bright as a full moon any other night, and looked into the pair of eyes dearest to her full of an infinite amout of deep, pure love and laced with the moisture of a sharp sadness. Staggered to her feet, for a while she didn't know if she was dead or alive, or if her heart that was literally in her mouth now was still beating, and then she saw those eyes turn and leave, walking back till they disappeared in the horizon and her heart returned to her chest, now with an additional lump that weighed on forever thereafter.
I was the single tear that single tear that dropped from her eye and inundated her soul with an emotion that was a mixture of immense joy and immense pain. I was the moment of time that stopped and was buried alive forever.

Crap

Moments die sometimes. But they never disappear. A death of time and a death by time is never a natural death. And nobody gets away with murder that easy. He killed me with innocuous weapons. He brought me back to life with deceptive potions. In the interim, some moments became droplets of pain and crystallised in the depths, lifeless. Did I survive?

***************************************************************************

Ashiyana dil ka mere, kai baar simta bikharne ke baad

Daraarein hain ab deewaron mein itni, har barish bhiga deti hai

Jaane kis sahare pe har baar khada ho jata hai

Ladkhadati minaron ko har aandhi hila deti hai

Mere tootne ka intezaar kar rahi hai duniya bekarari se

Par duniya ko bhi wahi nirashayein milengi jo duniya mujhko deti hai

***************************************************************************

I felt the silence seeping
Inch by inch inside me
Till every pain was numbed
Till every voice was dumbed
Till every desire shunned
Till every joy stunned
Till molecules stopped their collision
And then the heart stopped it's rhythm.
Silence seeped within me
And now emits just peace.

***************************************************************************

"Did you hear it?"
"What?"
"Nothing."

And she walked off forever.

Coffee Break

Phoenix's Philosophy Lecture

"Life is so tough."
"Tell me something new!"
"Yeah..true...life ain't easy...and everybody feels this all the time. Life got to be the most cursed of 'em all!"
"Maybe...but the number of curses you get and deserve must be giving even life a run for its money! ;) "
"Ha ha..very funny...but I'm serious you know...all the time everybody keeps saying life is this life is that..a bitch a whore a battle a puzzle...there's just no end to those words. Half the literature of this world revolves around interpreting and symbolising life. Half the world's philosophy is just that. Yet it remains the ever-lasting enigma."
"The ever-lasting enigma...and each answer to the puzzle is as right as it is wrong, as complete as it is incomplete, as true as any other...Have you ever wondered how remarkable it is that whenever things work out fine for us and life is smooth, we so stop digging into the puzzle and nearly everything else as well. But inevitably it'll quickly return to the "normal" course again with a twist or two and we'd be back on business...thinkind, pondering, reasoning, anguished, cursing. Almost like every short sunny patch is a mini vacation for us engaged in the job of discovering life."
"I don't think it is meant to be a vacation...I feel it feels like a short vacation because we treat it like a luxurious holiday and stop doing our job. We stop putting in the effort and the thought...we take things for granted. And life surely doesn't like THAT. So it twists again, saying 'you just don't deserve it bloke' !"
"So you think we would never be able to get out of the loops, the vicious circle...from birth to death must we agonise to find the answer to the unanswerable question...what is life and what is it's purpose?"
"Are you trying to ask whether or not there is a Nirvana...an achievable state of liberation from the maze..."
"Maybe I am...I don't know...but now that you put it like this, what about the people, saints et al you know who claim to find the peace and the Nirvana? By the way, all Nirvana reminds me of is alcohol, drugs and tranquility..."
"Tranquility is the key..alcohol nd drugs are just the popular myths that claim to find it for you. I don't know anything about the saints, maybe they do have some way to break out of the loops that others don't know. Maybe it is all false and there is no escape. You know this book I was reading last night...it said, Peace begins with acceptance and dies without perseverance!
Maybe I understand it a bit now. I guess there can never be an end to putting the effort as long as one is alive. That effort, the quest is the process that is the elusive meaning of life itself we seek to find. And the moment I know this, unless I stop working, I'd be at peace with myself."
"You know this now...are you at peace with yourself?"
"I will be I guess... as soon as I get back to work idiot. This is too long a coffee break. Boss is soon going to pop in here with a nasty twist for both of us."
"Ha ha..see you at dinner then."
"Yeah sure. Bbye."

?

All
my life
I lived by
a set of rules
and beliefs;I stuck
to them through high and low
Putting all my faith in their truth
And working, and struggling for
the elusive goals.I sweated;
I met disappointments
Yet, stuck through
Just because
I believed
in what
I
believed
in.
It worked.
Finally, one day
I did get to my goal.
I got what I had been
looking for; And just when
I took a moment off. To catch my
breath, with a sigh of contentment,
of delight, of reflection and of a search
for a new goal. Just in that moment when
I stepped back to look at myself, and the past
To find the seeds of my future.
I suddenly realised, my set of
rules and beliefs that had
made me what I was
were all so
untrue.
False.
Baseless.
Now what?
Where do I go?
What do I trust?
Who, at the end, am I?

About Me

Orkut:

I'm too many things to limit in mere words
I wanna fly higher than clouds and birds
Yet stay on the ground, firm and steady
And life..whatever you are..come to me..I'm ready....

Blogger:

I walk a lonely road;
The destination...unknown;
I die and am reborn;
I cry and I frown;
I am the phoenix from the ashes of your soul;
I live in my words, that from your soul I stole...


Sylvia Plath:

Colorquiz:

Phoenix took the free ColorQuiz.com personality test! "Intense, vital, and animated, taking a delight in ..." Click here to read the rest of the results.

The world:

Infinite lots. Love and hatred. Disgust and indifference.

Me:

I don't know. I still am, none of these and all of these...And something else.
Words, however, fall so short.
So so short, even if that's all I have.

:|

Deja vu

A moment, an emotion...relived.

I see you rising from the silhouettes in your might
As the shadow that walks beside mine in the night
And then as I watch the shadows merge
The emptiness of my embrace hurts

The Agony...

She said
or at least,
I think she did...
or maybe she just
mumbled on as usual
with me not hearing
but I think anyway,
though I didn't hear,
she did say
something.

It's hard to focus
you know -- if it were
a word or two
I'm sure I'd listen --
but how could I
ever concentrate
on a full sentence!
Still I try
to listen, or to appear
as if I am.
But this time,
I missed it.

She tried, she did
switch off the television
and took me in her arms
to softly say her words.
But I guess I was too lost
in the residues of
commentary in my head
and the fragrance of her body.
She said, I smiled,
and said Okay!

As I walked out
she gave me a loving glance
and said "Do remember"
but in my thinking
of how happy she looked
I assumed she wanted
me to remember
the match scoreline
and walked out in glory.
But now I think,
she said something.

It's not that I'm afraid
of not being able
to remember,
or asking her again.
But I remember when
last time I didn't remember
she cried,and didn't say
anything for a day.
Not that I don't like
the silence; just that
I don't like her tears.
And so I must remember.

Kismat

Berang sa samaa tha
Khamosh sa jahaan tha
Lab muskura rahe the magar
Dil khoya jane kahaan tha

Shor tha awaaz nahi
Ant tha agaaz nahi
Khali thi gehraiyan ankhon ki
Shabd the par saaz nahi

Zindagi usko bhi kehte the
Lamhe usmein bhi rehte the
Dil se ho ya aankhon se
Aansu to tab bhi behte the

Phir unhone aake jeena sikha diya
Har saans ka mujhko mayna sikhna diya
Rang bhar diya meri muskurahat mein
Zindagi ko meri aayana dikha diya

Phir maine suni apne dil ki awaaz
Phir maine jana is jahaan ka raaz
Jhalki gehraiyaan aankhon mein
Phir hua zindagi ka asli agaaz.

Jab unko jana, khudko pehchana
Dil ko mila dhadakne ka bahaana
Rooh ne jaana ehsaas kya hai
Samay ne seekha lamhe sajaana

Yehi to hai zindagi, kehkar gaye
Kuch pal is dil mein rehkar gaye
Par jaana to tha hi shayad unhe
Achha hai jo mere paar, behkar gaye

Ab dil ko bhi aata hai rona shiddat se
Muskuraiye nahi to kya, hum muddat se
Phir bhi khush hain kyunki, jante hain ye
Woh beete pal chhin bhi mile the humko kismat se.

Change-V

Well, of course the change series was supposed to end at part IV, but I just chanced upon something too good to miss at this blog. Thanx Nikhil!

It's from an Italian movie called Cinema Paradiso, and the story below sums up the essence of change. With time, perspectives, needs, aims and desirability changes so much. Sometimes we can't understand it, and that's when it hurts. But we must, for time is the most powerful of 'em all. The tormenter AND the healer!
This one's about love, the volatility of love, the time-bound falsification of love, the fact that things can be wrong even if nobody involved was wrong, the fact that nothing is forever!
Love perhaps is one of the prettiest untruths ever. Perhaps.

MAN: "Once...a king gave a feast for the loveliest princesses in the realm. Now, a soldier who was standing guard saw the king's daughter go by. She was the most beautiful of all and he fell instantly in love. But what is a simple soldier next to the daughter of a king? At last he succeeded in meeting her, and he told her he could no longer live without her. The princess was so taken by the depth of his feeling that she said to the soldier, "If you can wait for 100 days and 100 nights under my balcony, at the end of it I shall be yours."

With that the soldier went and waited one day...
two days...
then ten...
then twenty.

Each evening the princess looked out, and he never moved! In rain, in wind, in snow, he was always there! Birds shat on his head, bees stung him- but he didn't budge. At the end of ninety nights he had become all dry, all white. Tears streamed from his eyes. He couldn't hold them back. He didn't even have the strength to sleep. And all that time, the princess watched him.

At long last, it was the 99th night...and the soldier stood up, took his chair and left."

BOY: "What happened at the end?"

MAN: "That *is* the end. And don't ask what it means. I don't know."

Moral of the story, anyone?

Chaos

I'm sure I'm not the only one who's experienced "thought collisions" at times, which is to say experiencing a number of rather unconnected thought processes and relevant emotions nearly simultaneously or shortly after each other, randomly switching over. All I know is it's happening suddenly a lot with me. One moment I'm laughing over a stupid PJ, the other reflecting over the Current Song's lyrics and the third battling an existential query with near-frustration. And the fourth I switch to writing a random post like this one. Ever heard of "chaos theory" guys. Used to be my favourite timepass years ago to dig about it, but I'm suddenly reminded of it again. My mind is in a chaos.
Bottomline: Joblessness can be injurious to health, especially to workaholics like me.

I started reading this poem randomly scrolling through my old blog: the abandoned crazy home and suddenly felt as if those words, that were once written rather impulsively and thatI later thought had become redundant with added clarity and understanding in my life, I suddenly felt they are true once again. Life indeed moves around in circles, though my theory as I repeatedly tell him has always been that it's more like a spiral with short purposeless detours allowed but everytime you reach back the same state you come with something additional (experience? added knowledge of what to do, or one of the things NOT to do?) so that it's slightly different. But the point here is as clear as that poem. I'm lost.

Talking of which, I'm reminded again of something I had opened this page to write about. Just like girls and dates, what is it with guys and asking for directions?? I mean i'm not talking of driving and any comparisons there at all, I'm just asking in general of the reluctance of guys to ask for directions while walking to someplace new. Of course I do know of many many exceptions, so don;t fight with me, but I thought that all stereotypical driving and getting to places jokes were reserved exclusively for females and recently I've come across so many guys who just won't ask for directions at all! I had the ill-luck of being with one on my recent trip to Paris and his rather bad aptitude with maps and reluctance to ask anyone or listen to me combined with his will to just walk anywhere any direction he felt like --mostly the wrong one -- ended up making me really really frustrated and eventually we split. Exploration is anyway more fun alone. Another friend of mine recently told me about the day when he was to join university and reached the new town all alone and missed the only bus in two hours. so what did he do? Just walk and walk and walk randomly for four hours, eventually making it to one of the higher sites of the city from where he could point his university and then walk towards that. Phew! I only had one question. "Have ypu heard of a word called 'ask'?" "I don't like doing that!"
Well...

Dates

Just what is it with girls and dates? I'm sure it is not just me, the memory of many others are similarly corrupted and programmed to remember dates and counting days. But it surely is a serious case with me, and since I'm one of the hapless lot who don't even have the other kind of interesting 'dates' (to go out at with handsome hunks :D) in their destiny, I guess it's a case of over-compensation. Only that can explain why I remember birthdays and anniversaries of weird long-forgotten fringe people, and girlfriends and cousins of such fringe people. Only that explains why I count days in free time almost involuntarily. I'm absurd, am I not?

Of course there are the few advantages. People kinda feel touched and glad when their birthdays are remember and wished. It helps me keep wavering friendships alive. And I do not miss anything important and get curses and brickbats for that(something nearly monopolised by the menfolk... I mean to forget your girlfriend's and sister's birthday IS outrageous). But then, as defenders among men like he once said, memories are finite aren't they. And God knows how many important things I forget because I know an old friend's sister's boyfriend's birthday! Of course, this is not a substantial excuse for guys because they don't remember anything important in return, except amybe some vital-stats. But I must must must find a middle way between the two extremes. And I'm improving for sure these days as I have forgotten some birthdays, mostly consciously, but it's been more like I know the bday is on 4 Nov but I didn't realise for some time that today is 4th Nov. Blame it on my laidback life here!

But I got to do something about myself anyway. Like I know I have 50 more days left after today here. That's a precise 50 days for my birthday as well :D And some beautiful moments are 250 days old now, and that seems like atleast 2 lifetimes ago.

I really have chemistry and mystery problems with Time! :)

Change-IV

It was like waking up from a dream after a really long sleep in a dimly lit room with nobody around except an alien silence. It was that surreal, that numbing.

But of course, she hadn't really slept at all. She had nothing to dream of, either. It was just that the pain that poured out from her eyes had finally drenched everything around her and the thoughts in her head stopped to collide, or exist. It was then that she snapped out of it, suddenly noticing where and why she was, and not seeming to remember anything at all. But it was hard to think; it was impossible to feel anything, and for the first time in her life, she was not trying too hard to do anything. She knew she had to let go, and this was the first step. She had to let go of her instinct to think in any definite direction. Things had changed.

Sometimes, change happens slowly but is recognised and accepted effortlessly. Sometimes, it happens in an instant and takes an eternity to sink in. If Chloie had been able to think, she would perhaps be busying herself with recognition, classification, and stepwise breaking down of her problem, which sooner or later meant working for the solution. But some problems are such that it doesn't make a difference whether or not a solution exists. She knew things had changed already even if she couldn't feel it, and some changes are irreversible.

Things moved outside the window. Maybe people, maybe just the chilly breeze. Things stopped moving inside her. Nothing could reach her anymore. Nobody. No thoughts. No words. Chloie thought of her daughter for the one last time. Her daughter had been to her the meaning of living for nineteen whole years. Nineteen years in which she had lost her youth, her husband, her parents, her social life, her energy, her identity, and today her job and the very goal she had been living for. Maybe from another point of view it would make sense. Maybe her daughter really was right in all her accusations. Maybe she really was a bad mother jealous of her daughter. She had tried to think all of this; she had tried to think why really did she have to object if her daughter wanted to marry her ex-boss's son, also the new boss. She tried to think why her daughter would hate her so much because she opposed that alliance. She tried and tried for hours but reached nowhere. And then she was tired and suddenly she realised that this was not it. She had gone wrong long ago, somewhere else, maybe everywhere else. Relationships don't break visibly for many tiny overlooked moments much before they break visibly in the one moment one could spend a life-time understanding and still reach nowhere.

Chloie knew this. She knew she had lost her daughter and her pain drove her to thinking of suicide. But there was no energy in her body to even move. For hours and hours tears flew, eyes swell and not one thing made perfect sense in the plethora of thoughts that piled in her brain.

Until, numbness took over. And then she snapped out of it.
Things had changed. Her life had changed. She had no meaning, no goals, no identity at the moment. Her life was unidentifiable.

But, it existed.
And if it had managed to persist despite the change, it deserved another attempt. To live.
To try to live.

Change-III

Two weeks back...it was autumn. It was coloured. It was pretty and silent.





This evening...it's winter. It's white. It's snow everywhere, and really really pretty.





Seasons change. Beauty, where it exists, persists.
Where it doesn't, you eventually see the dirt, the darkness, the malice, the cracks, the shallowness.
That's the job of change in life. That which is really worth it, persists and evolves.
The rest breaks down.

Change-II

Things change all the time.
People change all the time.
Me too, but I think I change intermittently. Like pulses at random time intervals. That's why it's difficult, and maybe conspicuous. Or perhaps, it's just that I notice only from time to time, and realise the change, or the need for change.

I have been doing something that everyone does whenever they have time or opportunity. I've been thinking back on my life, from who I (think I) was and who I (think I) have become. For the first time though, I'm able to sense an ongoing change and see the front and rear of it as well. Time has slowed down. What I can't decide however, is whether I like it or not. But maybe, it is necessary. Even though I can see many not-so-good things happening sometime in the future, I feel maybe it'll be all for the good, like everything in this world anyway is. For the good.

Some of this is exchange effect. Considering I know of at least four seniors of mine who claim that exchange changed the people they were significantly, I believe exchange might just be called "EX-CHANGE".But it's ok. I kind of like it. Or I think I do.

People at IITD who would still remember me when I eventually return might be able to point out at the contrast better, but one of the things I have definitely noticed is that people repel me now, not crowds but known friendly faces. Conversations don't energize me any more. I still like them, but I don't die for them like I did till a month back. Once in a while one quite conversation does it for me. I had some friends from IIT over for a few days at my place, but although some of them were people I really enjoyed being with till the end of last sem, now I stayed as much away from them as possible. Now they've gone to Finland for some days, and I enjoy the silence and gloom more than anything. I really feel peaceful and happy. And i'm in absolutely no hurry to go to India any more. Most of the other things I noticed, or realised I should change are a bit too personal for discussion. But the bottom line is I've stopped being hyper-energetic and loud as I had become in the last three years. I don't think of India as my "home where I am dying to go back to" any more, except when I talk to mom and realise she's the only one really missing me and I should be with her. Lots of things I used to treat as "aims" or things to work to get or keep don't mean anything to me any more. Actually seem kiddish! Time seems even more powerful to me now. But I like idling it away into nothing even more. The silent moments when minutes gobble passing seconds and hours gobble minutes are just sangelic for they allow thoughts to wander off into untouched and forbidden domains. Books don't provoke me into much deep thought now. The only reason I want to write this post here is so that I can come back to it later and identify things, and writing in my diary isn't equally effective because I show much less restraint there. Objectivity is at a premium for me, as I had recently become hyper emotional. Eeks. I'm so silly! :P

OK, among other things, I've been wanting to write a looong Paris post, but because it must be long, I don't get the enthusiasm to. All I must say is I had a lottttttt of fun, and the city is truly amazing. I saw many places, but I wanna go back again.

Apologies for a rather silly post. Has got nothing for anyone to read. But then, I barely care these days. :)

Change

Based on theory by John P. Kotter.

How to change something, in eight steps:

BaseLine: A change has to be made in small discreet measurable steps. Being "dramatic" doesn't work. Too sudden a change only causes confusion that lasts a considerable time and hapmers nearly everything.

• Identify the need for change.
• Identify and setup a team to manage and lead change. When change is to be affected on a lot of people, like in a company, this team may consist of a few people at suitable positions. When change is personal, this team could be a resolve to change and the use of physical, mental and emotional capabilities to pull it through.
• Create a vision of change (Where do you want to go?). Then create a strategy for achieving the vision. (How do you want to get there?)
• Communicate the vision and strategy to all involved, especially the team. Identify a "role model" area to apply change first.
• Innovate continuously; remove obstacles step wise. Persistence and flexibility are important.
• Ensure that short-term achievements are frequent and obvious, to ensure co-operation. Set goals accordingly.
• Use small successes to create opportunities for greater-scale improvement.
• Reinforce the habit, improve effectiveness.

At some level or another, we all want a lot of things to change. Mahatma Gandhi said "Be the change you want to see in the world". Difficult to do, but the policy is good for a foundation. At some level, there are always a few things about ourselves we may want to change, or slightly improve. The number of things and this desire depends on each individuals' level of personal satisfaction. Still, change is a constant, and it's a good idea to adapt to it.

It's a good idea to bring it into effet when situations demand.
I'm at step one.

Les Rendezvous Parisiens

I'm back from Paris.......

Half-time

It's intermission.

Half-way through my Swedish vacation. Half-way through my semester at KTH. IIT has a huge holiday break in the middle of the sem. I'm half-way through a lot of things I set out to do when I cam here, and half-way through a lot of things I never wanted but they just happened.
And now, it's time for a short break. And hence, I fly to Paris tomorrow morning for a short 3-day trip. I hope to have LOADS of fun. Actually, whatever I do, I know I'd have loads of fun ;)Will return Friday with a full account of French adventures.

I don't know if I'm looking forward to going home, now that I'm closer to returning than coming here. For a little while I was, but that was the 'middle-age' syndrome. I love this place anyway, and I have a feeling things at home have changed too much now for me to have any fun going there. Staying here is much better than being an alien at home. I just hope my fears don't turn out to be true in Jan, but these days, a lot of my fears do come true. So much, that I'm afraid of fearing, whatever that means...

Anyway, cutting the crap, firang land has been a little interesting in the last few days. Although the weather of this place is such that I've become really lazy, and the laidback life we have and the lack of lectures in the past few days hasn't helped. But aside from feeling sleepy half the day and giving in to bad habits like watching Sitcoms, I've managed to see some cool scenery under the rains (it rains nearly 24 hours), work on submissions, reports and presentations at a frequency of three a day for the last whole week, and finally (almost) passed three courses. Saw a lovely Swedish movie As it is in heaven and loved it because it helped me snap out of a sinking depression. [:D] There's something peculiar about Swedish movies. At least it's been there in the three I've seen. Even if it's a family movie, people just take off all their clothes anytime any where for nothing. Even this one has a weird scene when the heroine suddenly decides to swim in the lake and takes off ALL her clothes and then begins another conversation with the hero, (not her lover) who quickly gets psyched out and runs away. Everyone watching the movie just goes :O :O :O :O :O at such scenes.

I celebrated Diwali by cooking and eating lots of good food, playing with candles and enjoying with friends. And most interestingly for me, found a cool person to talk to once in a while...my cute blonde Swedish guy-next-door who's just moved in. He loves what I cook, even if it is European food! And I love what he says, even if he just complains about his lovely girlfriend who doesn't go the normal girls' way and insist on 'talking it out'. He just hates having to do that because she doesn't. :D But he's good fun to talk to, whenever I bump into him.

And yes, I don't have fevers or legaches in the morning any more. Good thing right! :D Happiness, even if artificial, cures a lot of things...

See you Friday.
Bonne-nuit.

Light

"May light emerge from every dark atom of your life"

On the festival of lights, my Diwali prayer for you all, especially for all you Indians back home. You owe it to me for doing extra masti on my behalf!

Sorrows, joys, successes and failures --all happens for a reason
Time now to make a fresh, bright start this festive season.
Here's wishing a smile to every face, a spark to every eye
and a bright and prosperous Diwali to every single life.

And yes, here's the special diwali present for all of you. For every single one of you.I want to give you a dream and the power to make it true in the times to come. May you be blessed, may your dream come true, may you make this image (YES! the gift!) come true!

:-)

It's not a good morning! :(

I don't know why it's happening to me now, but am caught in this weird phase these days that I wake up every morning and end up saying to myself that it isn't a good morning. It's weird, and I don't like it at all, because even though I've never really been an early morning person, I've a serious thing about waking up fresh, which I usually do, and my efficiency and productivity during the day suffers considerably if I haven't woken up with lots of smiles and energy. That is one of the main reasons why I must sleep soundly before every exam even if that means skipping a tiny bit of course so as to sleep well in time. And most of the times, when I'm in IIT, a four-six hour sleep does me enough good(at least eight on exam days) that I peak next morning. At home or other places I sleep more, but the effect is the same.

But these days, from the last few days, every now and then I wake up feeling not happy, not energetic, and often pained. I've seen weird dreams all my life, but mostly they are funny. These days, they are not. No recurring dreams, but all with scary tragic ends with a variety of people. I've lost count of the number of mornings now I've woken up with real tears in my eyes. It's so disconcerting!

And then, on a lot of these mornings, esp yesterday and today, I wake up so tired!! My body is aching as if I've just run 10 kms, there's a weird pain in my legs, in my head, in my eyes, nearly everywhere. Not screeching hard pain, but pain. Discomfort. I wake up at 8 everyday, and unless there is a class or important work at 10 or something, I usually sleep off again to complete eight hours of sleeping time. And I wake up at 10 again in equally bad shape. Nothing seems to cure, not a long warm bath as soon as I get up, not an effort to think nice excited stuff, not reading. The only two things that have been slightly effective are hugging a teddy tight for ten minutes, or just walking out for a while in 5 degree Stockholm air without many warm clothes. The cold breeze in my head does something soothing, but dont know what.
And it's worsening this sort-of morning sickness. For three days now I've woken up with a slight fever, not much...only 99-99.5 degrees F, and it disappeares on its own in sometime, leaving a weakening ache. And I absolutely hate all this happening. I dont know why I'm tired because although I'm working many hours, it's usually sitting at a place and reading/wwriting/typing work. The rest of the time I'm doing nothing great. OK, granted that no work had always made me tired, but these days even work makes me so tired. I'm damn confused!

I guess I need a dream-interpretor or something. Or maybe, I just need a long warm hug.

Hunting the Web

Just what kind of stuff do you hunt the vast web for? I would say, just about everything, because the web being THE WEB, it holds life, the universe and everything captive at some or the other of its nodes. Fair enough. The web will go on exploding and so will its users, and search engines like Google will never have scarcity of stuff to feed on. And then, it is so Goddamn important and convenient that there's no reason why it shouldn't be so. Man, I'd have flunked the assignment I have been doing since yesterday had it not been for wikipedia, and I'd probably never graduate without Google.com. Sad news for the libraries, but basically even they can't survive without online editions and cataloguing. (Ask me about it, I actually did a one-credit course here on "Information Searching and retrieval", in other words "How to Google"....trust me firangs can't even learn this on their own, they must be taught how to go to Wikipedia, Google and Meta search engines, and how to type in a query!!! In 9-hours' worth lectures!!! God save the world if this is how people in the 'developed' world are these days...)

Still, this post is not about the merits or demerits of Googling, or about cribbing about pea-brained huge-sized firangs, or even about paying tributes to Google Inc. (this not withstanding!). This is about a simple random thing I did this morning. I just peeked into the records of the statcounter for this page, and randomly clicked on to see what keywords were bringing people here.

You know what the list for the last six hours looks like:

• C.A. coachings in delhi :Though I never talked about this subject I may have possibly used these words at some unconnected places, so ok.
• Chhadi fat gayi: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Can't even find these words individually on my blog. LOL!!!
  
• Sweden eat : This is reasonable, if you remember the big PJ here
• Alchemist maktub : Yeah yeah I talked of the lovely book somewhere..
• girls hostel ki sexy kahani : Err...excuse me...This is a public diary, remember? Censored stuff like THAT [!!] doesn't exist on this blog! [:P]
• Public ki sex chahat: This final one completely stumped me...What the hell was this query suppoed to be for. I mean what was the person looking for. Is that the name of some kinky book or porno DVD??? Gawwwddd....Investigation tell me that google redirected the poor chap to one of my (decent) poems that had the word "chahat". Shit..I'm no fan of google now. It so completely skews meanings!! :P

Lessons learnt:

• Google and google crawlers are a lot of junk. And let me share the only worth-knowing thing I learnt in that 1-credit course. By self-admission, Google has only about 4% of all web-pages in this world indexed, and that's the largest among all search engines. Wow, that's a lot of hidden data. Maybe all those queries should have fetched him something from there.
• Statcounters can provide funny mornings!
• Half the queries used for searches are KINKY and HORNY. And that's a lot of them.

;)

The Frog

Random introspective morning question :
Do we all change with time? I guess so, and I guess it's not such a bad thing at all. I've always been (or believed that I've been) okay with change, rather welcoming to it. It's all a part of growing up and life teaches everyone, and this world will be a swamp if there was no change. Blah blah. I know all this. I am thoroughly convinced of all this as well. One should change and one must change.

But sometimes, when we just notice it after a period of indifference and just not thinking/noticing all that, it just hits, doesn't it? It's like looking into a mirror after ten years. You suddenly notice the wrinkles on the forehead, the depression under your eye, the receding hairline, the blowing waistline and so on. It just hits. However, if you had been looking at yourself everyday you'd probabaly never even notice all this like THAT. It's like if a frog jumps into a tub of hot water it'll immediately jump out. but it it jumps into the water when it is at room temperature, and then somebody switches on a heater, the water will go on getting hotter and hotter and the frog would not even notice. Not even notice!!...until, err, well, until it is rescued...

We are also like the frog in some way. We don't notice subtle changes till a lot has happened, and often, till a lot is lost, unless we switch off for sometime and suddenly notice the drastic difference time has made.
The monotony and business of daily life, of the job of living, doesn't give us time to stop bck and notice and reflect on ourselves, on others around us, on changing equations with people and environment around us, on society and culture, on earth and environment and so on. Subconsciously we are always aware of the change at some level, but we just don't pay it attention till one fine day.

Extended summer holidays here have sort of switched on my introspection switch again. Damn! I've changed so much from three years back, from one year back, even from six months back. Who the hell am I now? Would the people who liked me and hated me then for who i was, have the same feelings for me now? Did I do something terribly wrong? did I do something that was life-changing-ly right? Why did I let go of myself? Why am I not that timid, that strict, that silly, that shy, that confident, that scared, that scary, that mysterious, that weird anymore? When did I find my new current parameters of all these things? Did I do it, or did life? Do I need to run away again and go back to where I was?

I'm the frog, and I don't know who switched on the heater. What I also don't know is do I need to be rescued yet?

Foglights

There are many reasons why I was awake that night, not least of all being the fact that sleep deludes me whenever my mind is in agony. That's quite an unfortunate habit, because there is no mental pain that a good sleep wouldn't ease, especially if loads of love and its healing powers are not available. Still, that night I was wide awake, staring at nowhere-in-particular in the darkness while nowhere-in-particular stared back at me. In my mind echoed the sounds from the recent and not-so-recent past; in my room echoed every step that the the arms on my bedside clock took. I turned to stop that clock; the commotion was getting too much to handle. It was dark, but not so dark that I couldn't shadows from outside. Moving, vague shadows of nothing-in-particular that came and went as if I was in a train compartment. They began to disturb, and thus I got up to close the curtains so that my room could be freed from the crowd.

Drearily I got to the window. It had been a long tiring day, but I couldn't sleep till I stopped thinking about it, and I knew I'd continue to think until I dozed off. I was trying to draw the curtains, but drawing curtains is one of the many things that if you try to do too swiftly, you get nowhere at all. I pulled at it twice too hard without success. The third time I managed eyes-opened-wider and a slow, concentrated speed. It was then that I realised how foggy it was outside. The world was blurred, and not just in my mind. I tried wiping the tear in my eye to ensure I could see just exactly how hazy it was. It helped, for this time I caught the one unmoving shadow at the corner of the scene in front of me. I looked harder for I was sure there was someone sitting there, humped, and I wondered who would do that at such an unearthly hour in such weather. I somehow remembered exactly where I had left my torch some hours back, and thus had no difficulty retrieving it now. The fog dispersed the light of my torch, but even in the foglights I could finally make out it was a real person sitting crouched at the opposite corner of the building with not too many clothes either. I knew it was cold outside, and was instantly paralysed by a fear when I saw him unmoving...a fear that easily superseded all the pain I imagined my mind was cluttered up only an instant ago. I switched on my lights and put a jacket and slippers onto myself and moved out with a blanket and the torch in hand.

Outside, I felt it was colder, darker and much foggier than I expected. Still, I was moving swiftly despite the cold, un-gloved, un-capped, un-socked but undaunted nevertheless for I was worried. I reached the place I was headed to, but found no one where I expected to find him. I turned back and saw my window; he should have been there, I saw him only a few minutes ago. I flashed my torch in all possible directions. Fog dispersed and reflected the light, but I still saw nobody. I tried calling out, but neither did I know who to call out for, nor would any voice come out of my mouth. For an instant I feared he was dead, but if that was true his dead body couldn't disappear right. That was a relieving thought. For the following few minutes I didn't know what to do. I was rather numb and could feel or think nothing at all. I stared at the ground where the light fell on nothing-in-particular, and in the dim light in the dense fog wrapped under the darkness of the night, I suddenly felt clear. Clear about what?I don't know...but it was as if everything escaped me completely. I had nothing to worry or smile about. The world came to a stand still. I switched off the torch. I didn't need it any more. Even as I retraced my steps back to my home, I was able to 'see' in the fogged darkness, and I was cent percent sure I was going on the right path.

I got back home, got rid of the jacket and re-opened the half-drawn curtains. There was no one at the opposite corner. Whether there was ever anybody there, I wasn't sure. But it didn't matter any more.

I slept.

Uncensored

I'd ditch protocol for this one, so please excuse the language and allow me to quote something I find funny...

As I said before, spanish guys know great after-drunk songs. And there's one guy I seem to run into so often, and he's almost always drunk when that happens. I get some of the loudest salutations as he moves on singing his one favourite drunk song which he insists is a real song and which he insists everyone should sing with him as loud and musically as he does!!!!!! And it really is loud...

Anyway, I don't know much of the lyrics, except the opening lines...but it is quite a sample!!
Here goes it.

"Is there anyone on the floor?
Who will f*** me like a wh**e
every night and every day
And never ask no more...."

I wonder which school he went to, and what nursery rhymes he learnt!

What's wrong with all the men of this world is...

..err...well..nearly everything!

But not all of it is their fault you know. They didn't choose to be born males, and then, they had to suffer being brought up like "men", so by the time they are grown up...no, men take a long long time to actually grow up, if at all...so by the time they have been brought up to something confused and twisted and left on their own from thereon, they are almost there at being the confused meaning-well-but-doing-wrong jerks they are in so many situations. Yes, I know you are burning with a thousand arguments and curses to thrash me down, but if you are a guy, just for a change hold your cool and read this through. If you are a girl, you don't have to go on your spontaneous bullshitting and arguing with everything chirade just yet. The rest may proceed to the comments section or shoot me a mail right now.

But the others, I recommend read this post by Mukta once, and you'd know where I'm beginning from.

So, what's wrong with men is that their pre-conceived knowledge base is mostly junk, and hence most of what they do is, until a few of them learn to really grow up and have a belief of their own and act with some kind of rationality. But that, sadly, is a few of them.

Men are experts at doing a mistake and then coming to realise later what they did, over and over again. Sometimes they squeeze an apology somewhere, before or after the realisation, but most of the times they forget the whole exercise pretty soon. I don't know if this is better or worse than the women who often think so much both about things they impulsively did and never ever did that it turns out to be a mistake anyway and who are experts at issuing all the right apologies without meaning them.

And one of the saddest things about this world is that men and women don't yet know how to handle one another, although they can't do forever without each other. So they must stick together, but know so little about the Do's and Dont's with the other sex. And then they end up getting on each other's nerves fromtime to time. But life and this world, together with its imperfections, just goes on. All men are bastards and all women are bitches, and what separates one from another is both qualitative and quantitative, but they're both capable of variable capacities in different situations. Yet, the bottomline is at the end of the day they don't know how to handle each other, or any feelings for each other. They just somehow, keep going.

What's wrong with the men of today is however, that they don't even know how to handle themselves. They're confused by birth, full of doubts from the Preamble of their lives and fed on a notion that they still do know something and must know something and will/should/must get somewhere where they are meant to be (whatever that means) because they are men. They have a blind acceptance for the notion, but so many times take a lifetime to understand it. Nobody however ever taught them to handle emotions and failures and feelings of a high or a low. Sometimes they learn how to handle the after-booze-high and the-next-morning-low, but that's just about it.
You know what's better about the women of today in this regard. They can't handle themselves either, but they are way better at masking it and pretending they're ok.(Worse, they never learn to manage booze-highs and hangover-low, although they have a lot of practice at handling lows thanks to PMS) Afterall, they have the advantage of being brought up as women, so they have to prove themselves (to whoever?) in everything and compete with men uselessly and fruitlessly for everything and think and argue till they die, but never once do they have to accept defeat even if they lose. They have the convenience of many many standards of victory and defeat to choose from, whether or not their ego permits. So what's wrong with men is, that they are worse at even pulling off shams.

More on what's wrong with men is that it's so easy to tell them to "shut up and fuck off and just listen to me because you have no clue yourself", or to tell them "just what the hell do you think of yourself"! It's so goddamn easy. Try that with a woman sometime and you'd either be met with a snarl and a growl or a barricade of tears, both of which are very tricky to handle and survive.
What's wrong with men is that they wanna know what the whole world is thinking but somewhere while doing that they forget why they wanted to know it in the first place, or what do they themselves think about it. Women on the other hand want to know what the whole world is thinking so that they can waste some grey cells mulling over it and arguing about it with themselves, and eventually stick to whatever they started with because all the time wastage has convinced them that they were always right(so much for their ego) even if it was the worst of the alternatives available. So the problem with men, is generally of a small cache.

I could go on and on. But there's work I must do. And besides, I have to be considerate towards the patient few who have reached this far but wil now blow up anytime with their controlled emotions. Since what's wrong with men is "everything", I can obviously never capture it in full. So excuse me now and you can have your outbursts.

But before I end, there's one thing I forgot to say. What's wrong with al the men of this world is nearly everything, especially the fact that they pay any importance to women at all(anatomical i know...sad no/) and what's wrong with all the women of this world is that they will never ever stop pointing out mistakes in everything and everybody, but never accept their own!

Communication

It's kind of fitting that I write my 200th post on this blog on something that this blog itself signifies --Communication. This blog, this public diary, was always meant to be a means for me to talk to myself, and sometimes to others. It has been, in either case, a means of expression and communication. And that's what I've been thinking about, again, these days. In fact I had a two hour lecture today on Communication with robots and machines, but my thoughts kept digressing on a more subtle, philosophical, complicated humane platform.

It's a well-known cliched, the fact that speech and communication separates Homo sapiens from the rest. And it indeed is very powerful the whole idea and the potency of communication and talking(or for that matter, not talking). Silence is an under-estimated, though not under-acknowledged means of communication. Very often we all love and savour silence so much, especially the ones which enable hearts and souls to talk to one another without losing the meaning in the ambiguity of words. However, I have already said so much about silence and how much I savour it mostly that I think I'd devote more space to the broader issue of communication tonight, verbal or otherwise.

The fact is that communication is vital. Introverts understand it as well as extroverts do, though perhaps for different reasons. And ambiverts like me end up with mixed perspectives and mixed-up opinions more often than not. But nobody disagrees that communication is something important, and it is what makes us human as well as "as fallible as a human". But then, it is what earns us (or steals away from us) our friends, lovers, companions and mostly, family members too (talking of a bit more than the obligatory inherited part of the blood relationship). Communication is what earns us people in our lives, and it is the only way to connect and reach out to somebody else, especially a stranger. Gestures, words, actions and silences are all communication, and together they bring love, happiness and a variety of other emotions in our life.

Still, isn't it astonishing the number of people we have lost, notably friends and intimacy among some family members in many cases, simply because misunderstood or non-existant communication. I feel losing friends to miscommunication is one of the worst things that can happen to us, yet it does happen fairly often. Unexpressed emotions -- be it anger, hurt, gratitude or love -- often decimate so many possibilities of intimacy and love in our lives. How rarely do we tell people who matter to us how much we care and appreciate. How little of our nice feelings towards the people around us are reflected on a day-to-day basis. It's a pity if we lose a friend we cared for simply because of what I call 'time decay', which is a very natural phenomenon, as shivam put, a tendency for things to spiral downwards under 'gravity' if untended. And the irony is that today the times we live in is the age of communication, telecommunication, mass-communication and all that crap when we have so many ways to communicate at our disposal. I really do have a lot of sympathies for all the unexpressed emotions of this world, barring those of jealousy and malice.

Personally I can't make out any sense of the idea of 'relationships" among those who get together because 'she looks so hot' and 'he looks so cute' and 'I think he's tolerable to talk to too' so 'will you be my valentine'. If I were in my Loveguru modes, I'd probably spend a paragraph with advices on what not to do and how such a girl would be so tedious to live with after three months and such a guy such a pain and insensitive jerk after a couple of months. But at the moment I'd just restrain myself to say that a relationship not found on the foundations of a strong mental/emotional connect that more often than not come from effective, hearty and soothing 'free conversation' is a waste and not worth anything. But the latent problem in this sphere is not of initiation but sustainance. Like two great friends, a compatible loving couple is also very susceptible to falling apart because of the dying out of communication and sharing. If that were not true, 70% of love marriages would never have fallen apart. But over a period of time, we all tend to take each other for granted. We forget telling our parents and siblings how much they matter to us, we forget spending quality times with friends that would indicate they mean something to us, we forget talking and connecting with our girlfriends/boyfriends/spouses at the ground level, and Boom! one day we suddenly realise the damage has been done nearly irreparably. Friends are lost and relationships break off. Why? Because somewhere down the way we lost communication. we stopped sharing the trivial things and then the important things too and then everything at all. People start feeling we are not interested/don't care/don;t wanna stand by them and they distance further and go into their shells even more, while we barely see the difference till it's too late because we think we are the same anyway. Why does that happen, I have no answer. But it's sad.

For communication to be effective, we need to listen more than we need to talk. But we can't talk too less or listen too much either. Wish the balance was more understood! So for anyone who wants somebody to listen to, at least I'm here talk to me..I've too much time and too few people to talk to anyway...

Aks

Jab kabhi lagta hai zindagi meri toot rahi hai kai tukdon mein

Jhalak bhar dekh leti hoon aas paas,
har tukda kisi aur zindagi mein milta hai

Jab kabhi gham badne lagta hai aankhon mein meri

Pee leti hoon kisi aur ke aansu,
mera har gham kisi aur ke chhote se gham mein milta hai

Jab kabhi lab.z mere ghutne lagte hain sannaton ke shor mein

Sun ne ki koshish karti hoon,
har lab.z kisi aur ki ankahi kahani mein milta hai

Jab kabhi andhera bad jata hai zindagi mein meri

Roshni de deti hoon ek aur zindagi ko,
door se apna ghar bhi fir roshan sa dikhta hai

Jab kabhi ojhal sa ho jata hai wajood mera

Kisi aur ko vishwas sikha deti hoon,
mera aks kisi aur ke aaine mein dikhta hai

(Pretty random and with little rhythm; don't murder me OK)

Firang land

General Observational Expertise Pvt. Ltd. bulletin announces that Firang lands are peculiar places. Excuse the generalisation, especially if you are one of the boring types, but basically any foreigner in a foreign land among foreign people and so on would always come across so many peculiar things it should make even non-foreign types see the funny side in it all. Forty five days in Sweden and I could list at least ten times that number of silly things here or back home when the contrast presents itself to me. But then, I've a small cache in my RAM, so let me just blab about whatever I can speedily recover[:P]

The first has to be how the various kinds of firangis here treat a firangi, i.e. the foreigner me in Swedeland. There are at least a dozen countries and places I look like I belong to(Iran? Russia? London? Gujarat? Sri Lanka? Arabland?), and at least 30% of all those who have ever met me have seen/known someone who looks exactly like me. I mean I never knew I looked/talked like the sisters, cousins and girlfriends(the latter I suppose was a really bad pick up line, eh?) of soooo many people.
And then the moment they come to know it's India I've to explain for the next twenty minutes about the food, culture, language,Kashmir, Taj Mahal, history, politics etc etc. Maybe the Tourism dept of India should hire me for promotional purposes. I have a 20 mnute speech crammed you know! And then they give me the impressed look and I end up inviting them for some Indian food. Which reminds me all European food is so sweeeettt! I've eaten traditional Swedish Italian German French and Portugese food by now in great amounts and it's all good looking food with no salt and often pretty dry(ignoring the beer) when they themselves claim to love my spicy cocktails. Whatever...firangs!

Anyway, to slightly less boring things now, firangs love to make out with their girlfriends/boyfriends in public places, but they enjoy it even more on escalators, crowded trains and full-with-people kitchens/ bus-stops than say at relatively less crowded places. Swedes are good in this regard, they are generally very loyal and loving(though they dont like marrying the mother of their kids) till they break off and move to a new person the next second. ((For something really funny about Swedes and to know them close, click here [;-)] )) Chinkies like shrieking more, while making out and breaking out both. On the other hand french women are always tricky (has to be..the french word for love and like is the same, as is the word for kiss and sex....it always gets so complicated with them that I've seen too Germans getting a rough deal due to communication barriers..lol)

One of my professors wears red-coloured ties with colourful Mickey Mouse cartoons over his sleek blue suit to class everyday, and another takes pride in his sexy skin tight T-shirts that show off his cool body and keep me awake in the class (he even says Hi to me whenever I cross him elsewhere on his own :P). But what's peculiar to me is all those sexy women who teach us and wear those really hot tops and skirts even when it's chilling cold outside. And those who wear Indian style printed skirts and bags while tending a couple of their kids.

More peculiar stuff...no student goes to class without an i-pod in his ears. Every teacher apologises for giving a tough assignment. Train inspectors spend days snoring at random stations checking each train for arrival time. People mostly don't vacate seats for elderly. nobody believes in sharing an umbrella with a friend unless it's clear weather. There MUST be a pub in every department in every college. Children drink beer since they are 13 although you can't buy it unless you are 23. All firang women, esp. Swedish, act extremly sleazy once drunk. Spanish guys know great after-drunk songs. Spanish women, though, are usually too drunk to say anything at all. Europeans are bad at history and English, but they hate american accents and those who have them. Sense of humour is quite weird, and most swedes laugh as if they have to pay 50% tax at laughing too. Shops are the easiest place to steal/shop-lift at, with no close circuit cameras and barely anyone looking. What Stockholmers eat as their evening meal(dinner) is a word in swedish that means lunch. People in south Sweden eat the same for lunch though, at 3 o clock, and sleep early enough not to eat any dinners after that. Europeans believe Asians are more fun and more hard-working, while Europeans are pragmatic and to the point. Everything mediocre and in-between is simply American.

And yes, sometimes everything breaks down here also. Metro breaks down for a day suddenly which means no work (and no classes). Feels good to be an Indian in firang land.

Would you?

We began to walk together without caring
about where the path did lead.

We walked eye-in-eye, hand-in-hand till
the path disappeared beneath the feet.

We were lost but still together to lend
an arm and shoulder if we stumbled.

Life was aimless, but we nevertheless stayed
good and happy, how I still wonder.

Every night we slept in the woods
you'd wake up to see if I was fine.

Every time a thorn bled your foot
Blood would flow out from eyes mine.

We kept searching for direction
in the maze, searching the way out

We looked around, fought, struggled
and we managed to emerge, but without.

At some point another pair of feet
started walking between ours adjacent.

And somehow that stranger took both of us
on paths different; his force was latent.

"Time" is an enigmatic person
I could never figure if he was friend or foe

But this time he managed to separate us
From each other, without letting us know

I want to retrace my footsteps
To go back to where and whatever I lost.

If to get rid of sorrows I must lose you
I'd stay in the forest; I can't bear the cost

But the question is would you come back
to me, retracing the paths of Time?

Would I ever get back the bliss of your love
Or is forever now, this solitary grief mine?