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?

Competition

From the moment he stepped inside his train to the next stage of his journey, he knew he still loved the girl he'd just left behind at the platform. The first time they had parted, he had moved ahead with hurt and anger, and with almost a vengeance he had told himself he had left her behind him forever. Still they met, and for a second time he told himself he was leaving her behind forever, but this time something inside him knew for sure that he loved her still. Even in two years he hadn't got over her. Even two years hadn't taught his eyes to not find her exceptionally pretty, and his heart not to find her exceptionally special. Yet, she was far from him, and he knew that. Conflicting views of the mind and the heart turn life itself into a battlefield!

He had been traveling for the last three months now. It was a part of his job, and he had to cover a number of cities more in the next two months. He liked all this traveling a lot, although he always had dreaded this city on the itinerary, simply because he never wanted to face the same places again. Yet, he was face-to-face with her again, and not completely out of coincidence. She had tried to be nice and polite as usual, and he had tried to hate and curse her as usual, but she was always far more successful than him. In everything.

The journey lasted seven hours, and each hour brought back to him the memories of the seven fastest months of his life. Those months when so many things had happened in such little time that it was hard to believe that there was any time for time itself to pass. Yet, those were the seven months that turned his life on its head, and that too more than once. But it all seemed so blurred now. Opposite to him on the train, a six-year-old sat engrossed in his sketching book joining dots with straight lines to complete the sketch. His memories were equally vague and disjoint now, and he too spent those few hours joining dots with straight lines.

He knew he loved her, even now, and he had never doubted she had loved him too, at least then. Perhaps a part of the problem was he always felt she loved him more than he loved her, and that she somehow wanted to make him feel inferior by caring for her more than what he thought he did. Still even now the memory of the first two months of euphoric passion made him feel dizzy, when they had both fallen in love with each other almost instantaneously and in less than one and a half months, found each other married to each other. That hurry nearly consumed both their lives in entirety. The excitement at working with the spouse in the same office soon gave way to an invisible competition in which he always saw himself losing. She was better, she was smarter and she was the boss. The boss who doted him with love and comfort, and brought in more money than her. The line that connected the him who was lost his heart to her and the him who lost almost everything else and every competition to her was a broken one. He knew she had done that deliberately. And when he could not stand it and asked her to resign and stop proving her goodness, she acted so ignorant and so stubborn that she completely refused to do a thing till he explained why. In other words, till he publicly accepted his defeat. Outraged, he just left the home, the city and her that night without saying anything and asked for a transfer from the office to the remotest place he could get to.

For two years he had not heard from her. No phonecalls, no letters, not even a divorce notice. How easily can women pretend love! Only sometime back he had learnt she had quit her job too. Maybe she had already found another aim and another man. The train reached the platform. He cursed himself for still being in love with that woman and moved on. At least she had signed the divorce papers he had met her for. He was free!

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

Seventeen years have passed. This morning as I was sorting his mail, I found one personal letter in it. Like always, I opened it to read, but what I read surprised me.


"Hello,
My name is Tina and I'm the daughter of a foolish mother and an insecure father. My mother died yesterday after wasting an entire life loving a man who for some reason believed that his marriage was a competition that the loser had to quit. My mother was foolish enough not to realize it till she lost him, and still wait for him to come back even though all was lost. She lost her husband, she lost the father of her child and she lost every meaning of living but she never lost the love in her heart. My father won his freedom, but could never even call his daughter his own.
But today, I'm the lost child both whose parents were losers. I'm the only one who lost the competition.
Have a good life."



I thought for a moment, then had the letter meet the same fate so many others over the years had met at my hands. But even as I threw the ashes away, I couldn't help feeling even in death she had still managed to somehow win the competition away from me, forever. She had come from nowhere and took away my love, my boss, but in round 2, I had managed to break their marriage and then keep them apart long enough that they divorced. I won Round 3 relatively easy and got him to marry me and also keep me his Secretary like always, for the sake of convenience, habit, love and ego-boosting. But today something tells me Round 4 was the final one of this competition, and somehow, she's won it.