I didn't even realize

...when my life ended.

Or when it began, for that matter.

Idhar udhar ki baatein...wagerah wagerah -II

Hi again to dear diary
As I was saying last evening, all of these random nothings keep happening to life like it was a random nothing itself (is it?). We wonder and wonder, if there is something "funny" to be found in the mundane we normally ignore, and then we find it. Amusing to only the two of us I guess, the private joke nonetheless provides entertainment in what is otherwise just life as usual. As an aside, this life as usual business is really such a waste - every time someone says what's up these days, that's the only default, boring, true answer. Why is this the usual?

Anyhow, so we went to IIT Kanpur yesterday and had an okay event, I suppose. What a maggu campus it is, we wonder too. And then we try to drive to Lucknow at midnight, and get stuck in a miles long traffic jam caused by a truck breaking down in the middle of a single lane bridge over the Ganges. As nothing moved for almost an hour before improvising souls found ways to make the car jump over a foot high divider, we wondered in the dead of the night, if that wasn't the epitome of present day India. Where 24 hour channels go into outrageous hyperbole on anything and everything. Where governments struggle to comprehend the difference between national pride and national shame. And where futile corporate slaves like us get a hotel to serve us dinner at 230 AM. Life goes on, I suppose. As usual.

I think we need sleep.

Idhar udhar ki baatein...wagerah wagerah

Dear Diary

Today was one of those good days I got to sleep in late on a weekday. I had a 1230 flight to catch, and thus going to office for an hour in the morning was logically wasteful. However, sudden urgent stream of work between 930 and 11 messed up my leisurely pace of getting ready, getting into a car etc, and the missing lane on the roads (ref CWG) meant that I had cut it really really close on a 1230 flight. But then again, Air India being Air India leisurely delayed the flight by almost 3 hours (a flight they had preponed yesterday from the normal 2 pm slot) and thus began a long wait at the not-so-cool terminal 1A. Still, what to do, this being the only connection to Kanpur in the day, we wait; we read an(other) intriguing book on Wall Street insides behind the Great Depression II; we are offered complimentary Masala Dosas by generous Air India supervisor aunty; a balding gentleman also on our flight decides to flirt with us, and happens to be some bigshot at the Libyan embassy; a call and an email informs us that we'd be moving to a new project from the current one with immediate effect, which later translates into a week or so of paid vacation (hopefully)/ some work more life balanced days :-) (the office recommends we utilise some of our balance leaves - anyone game for a vacation plan next week? :P) We arrive in Kanpur after gazing at flooded fields of UP from up in the air, aghast at how bad the external city roads are, and how long the distances seem to be. We are aghast also at how shady the only so-called five star hotel in this city is, where we wait for the night event to begin. And in between all of this, we work, but that's what we do everyday - what's great :-)

PS By we, I mean me and this stranger in my head I've been talking to all day. The stranger is also editing some of the words above as I type, so I don't take responsibility for all of it.

That kind of love

He came striding against the sunlight in slo-mo against a thumping ‘Hud., Hud’ score and I knew I loved him again…you know that feeling…when you have loved with the gush of first love, heart beating at every phone ring, blushing-by-his-mere-mention type of love everyone scorns but secretly wishes for…and then you grow up and become all like a dry leaf with a stone for a heart pretending to be ‘mature’ but one day you meet that guy who made you understand the magic of spring…he looks different but that boyish charm is still there and you don’t know if he has changed…or forgotten…and you don’t know if you have forgiven…but then he smiles and you smile back and in that moment you love him again…a different kind of love that will remain and will now keep beating silently next to your heart asking for nothing…Well, I got carried away there, but you understand. Yes, I was back in love. With that kind of love.

Not my words. But mine. In a way.

Complex

Getting older is almost synonymous to making decisions. Decisions that are almost always in the gray, almost always difficult and almost always leaving a significant bitter after-taste. You can be poetic and call them choices, and go into a soliloquy about the choice between choosing and not choosing. Somehow even that seems like a thing of the slightly simpler past, when the monologue gave some solace, and when it was mostly about deciding pink or purple, gems or Hajmola, engineering or sciences, crush or forgettable. Admittedly those seemed challenging at the time and this may seem trivial later - the enormity of a tragedy is a function of the speed of the passage of time, and the present does not allow time to hop days, weeks and years at will.

However, despite the complexity of today, I remember something very valuable learnt in the simpler past. That everything is as simple as you please. Even the present.

Now, only to figure out what I please.

Restless

Restless tonight
No sleep in sight
Waves of questions
rise and crash
Thoughts pop
Collide and dash
Meanings threaten
To disappear in a flash
Lightning, thunder
And then rains lash

Restless tonight
No sleep in sight
Fear reigns
In an empty night
Asks questions
Is the future bright?
Vulnerable, should I
Give in to the might
Or let destiny, distance
And my soul fight

Lightning. Thunder.
And then...