For whom the heart toils

For insanity I yearn
I crave for freedom from logic
To lose all rationale
To honestly believe in magic
I dream of living in the castle
of day-dreams and reveries
where nothing is truly impossible
No measured adjusted deliveries
I wish to be free to be the crazy me
That hopeless romanticism in life, my plea...

...sigh

The eternal chase

Humse woh pyar yoon kar na sake
Jaise humne pyar un par lutaya tha
Tum par woh aitbar hum na kar sake
Jo tumne humse pyar kar hum par dikhaya tha
Har dil mein chah hai kisi dil ki
Har dil ko chahne waala koi aur hi dil hai
Khuda ke khel khuda hi jaane
Ye dilon ka hisaab bahut hi mushkil hai

That funny feeling

That funny feeling
something tingling inside the stomach
like rats or ants or hippogriffs really small
something popping up in your mind
from nowhere in the middle of nothing
over and over, for no reason
something waking you up from a nap
then disappearing from memory
and leaving you smiling to yourself
over and over, for no reason
That really silly funny feeling
what is it called?

Feminism

Summer 2007, 2008

I never review movies etc on my blog, but have to say Summer 2007 is a good watch. (So is Jaane tu...., while Thoda Pyar.... is sooo cliched and Love Story 2050 is so not watchable:P) The reason I say so for Summer 2007 despite an almost unknown cast and not the best direction in the world is the story and a not bad at all acting by at least Gul Panag and Ashutosh Rana, and even though the movie could do with some editing in the beginning (too many sub plots) and a tighter control on the script that would help develop each of the five main characters properly. In a lot of technical ways and norms of movie-making then, it is just about there, but not quite. Each of the five characters undergo a catharsis and reach a Rang de Basanti types awakening in the end, which albeit a fresher option than miraculous healing and closure of the entire problem, but the characters are so poorly developed you almost miss that catharsis and awakening at the individual level. Most of the rest of the cast looks promising, but again, more like getting there. The title is weird, it so doesn' resonate with the essence of the movie.
But still, I maintain it's a good watch because it's effective so far as its core issue is concerned. It manages to look real and disturbing and does not adhere to stereotypes (one of the villains is a modern, karate-knowing, slick, sexy, English-speaking female police inspector) And the movie almost made me jump and run and want to do something concrete, something helpful.
Ok, enough of this. I'm sure I'm not good at reviewing etc. Moving from summer of 2007 to summer of 2008, that is the here and the now, life is getting, or at least, feeling more pleasant lately, as I said in the last post. At least as much as it could get in boring vacations. It's the time of the year when my life is entirely dictated by the inertia of rest. I don't do anything hence I can't hence I don't. :P :P

But I like the nothingness sometimes, anyway. The rains, the pakoras, the slow pace of work, the gossip, the movies, the walks, the games. Not thinking is cool, I say. Very cool. :D

Seeing is believing

What we see depends largely on where we see it from.
Some of the events, conversations and feelings in the past few days have repeatedly brought back the above sentence to my mind. It gives me hope when things look ugly and skewed, because I can blame it on my vision and perspective, both correctable. It also reminds me that most of the joys, comforts and conveniences are illusory too. All of us are living at least partially in denial. As Calvin would have put it though, we are just selective about the reality we accept. :) :)

After a good weekend, full of my favorite people and amazing sports (probably the best tennis match I've seen) and good weather, I hope the coming days freshen up my lazy rotting mind and give me some crazy stuff to do.

Some days back I was wondering if I should blog anymore for I'd practically written everything I knew and felt and saw and had to say and couldn't think of a post. Now, reading that line again, I know I can write, because I'd stand at a different place and see something different. :)

Of Martian men and women from Venus.

This one's a purely जनहित में जारी (Issued in Public Interest) post marked by a special guest (re)appearance of LoveGuru, one that I suppose everybody can use for today I'm going to teach you something that everybody should know to make life a little simpler। A lot of people learn this the hard way, anyway, but people, to put in simple terms, men and women have different genetic hardwiring in their brains, and hence just like hundreds of other things, they also communicate differently.

Now everybody knows that women have a much larger intrinsic need to communicate that men, their brains have bigger lockers marked for communication and that women are weird. That said, what's true is they also interpret and process the same words and sentences differently than men. Men mean a lot of what they say literally, and are naturally inclined to process information like that. Their brain is hardwired to work in logical flows only (the correctness of which maybe debatable occasionally, but whatever). Women on the other hand go by feeling the words a lot lot more than meaning them. 99% of the times, you cannot interpret it literally, especially all the poetic blanket nevers, nothings, and always.
Half the arguments in this world happen because of communication gaps like that. The woman wants to be made to feel loved n special for some minutes, or something like that and doesn't get it, n says, you never love me, or you never have time for me, or you never take me out. The man counters with hundreds of examples that counter such an obviously baseless lie, and the moment is doomed. The man says I love you as a matter of fact, it doesnt sound to her as he meant it, n she thinks now he's trying to distance away from me/hiding something/doesn't want to talk to me. Catastrophe. The man says I'm busy now and fails to convince her of that. She is convinced he's ignoring her. Women!

There are endless examples, and a lot of these real avoidable by choosing different words and by investing an extra minute to make yourself explicit and convincing, because after that point women also trust with immense faith. Women can be a little helpful by remembering to believe what's being told sometimes as it is too, though again, not at the cost of their sixth sense.
Men react to most problems by trying to solve them, and often withdrawing within themselves to reach it. Women on the other hand manage to solve half their problems just be talking about it, so they sometimes need to be simply heard to for all their crap without necessary solving them. Give her the patience he needs and she can be equally rational, and faster than men mostly, after that. So if you want to help a women, let her talk, let her feel secure n heard, n then she'd solve it n be fine on her own. If you want to help a man, give him his space and time, don't interpret his actions within that period as withdrawal or lack of attention to you. Just because he needs to focus on himself for sometime does not mean he's stopped loving you. Give him the patience he needs n just let him know you're around.

Ok, enough funde for one lecture. I'd end with a really common one. For example, when men are asked what's wrong and they say nothing, 99% of the times they mean nothing, or something really trivial that they can and would rather handle on their own. On the cntrary, 99% of the times when women say nothing they don't mean it the least. If it were something trivial, she'd easily tell you in as much detail and assure you can take care of it. But nothing is serious, and 60% of the time they'd be willing to tell you what it is if you sincerely asked them 2 or 3 times again. But, because of these huge intrinsic differences men and women interpret each other differently. Women think the man's nothing is something serious, and asks him again and again, completely irritating him and often resulting in "Leave me alone" "You don't trust me" kinda situations. Similarly, men take the nothing literally and do not pursue the topic, and she gets hurt feeling uncared and unlistened blah blah.

How complicated, right. But just knowing and understanding this makes people more patient and avoids misunderstandings sometimes. So, S, here the lecture ends. Hope it was what yu asked for.

Ciao.

~LoveGuru

The night time.

I didn't know this, one of the side-effects of listening too much instrumental music is that you start thinking on the rhythm. Here, look at how words ruin a great song, if you can make out which:

So awake in the night time
Wandering about
I want to ask what
I'm doing around
I want to know why
I wouldn't sleep
I want to know what
I want to keep
Lost in the night time
Looking for a plan
I want to want
and I want to know I can

Will I ever reach where
I really wanna go
Just what place is that
will I ever know
Reaching out in the darkness
Will you understand?
I just want to want
and I want to know I can.

More or less, to think about in spare time only

More or less, everybody has someone who thinks they are the best. More or less, everybody has a testimonial that says they are sweet, kind, helpful, wonderful, gem of a person. More or less, everybody loves, and is loved. Yet, people are different. Even those who believe everyone is basically a good person does not really believe it when they interact with everybody around them. Some are good, some are weird, some are adorable, some are worth ignoring and some are absolute selfish devils. The rest have nothing in them to avoid indifference. To everyone, someone is one of these. Does that eventually make everyone the same, or everyone unique? Or both?

More or less, everyone is trying to get somewhere. Or waiting while everything else around them changes so that they are automatically transported elsewhere. And passively being changed by the gradients of the environment. And actively trying to find themselves and changing for (what they think) the better. Isn't it possible, that in the craziness of all this motion, everything stays randomly distributed, effectively at steady state, effectively remaining the same all the time? Mathematically that would be a good model. Physically, it makes everything so pointless. More or less. But still, despite bursting with examples and arguments to prove otherwise to me, just sit and imagine for a minute a real model like that, or better, don't apply it to what I said...apply it to any plausible system, randomly distributed events in a pseudo steady state that keeps afloat the universe... then tell me what would happen if one of the factors that together create the randomness consciously stops acting an does nothing. Or just fails.

Are we, each one of us, not a factor?

Dedicated to HRD Minister

Mr. Arjun Singh, you seriously need a brain transplant.
Now the HRD minister wants quota for IIT faculty!!! For heaven's sake!!
This is the height of ridicule. There's already reservation for all staff and now students in IIT. And as of the latter wasn't already going to diminish the standards and brand of this place, you now want faculty to get the caste flag. How divisive politics can be! This makes me so angry I want to kill him. And it's absolutely senseless too. Already we do not have the 'best' faculty owing to the low salary bars the govt fixes for IIT professors. Now, everything will be destroyed. Seriously, is this the British Empire days in disguise, divide India, rule India???
And this time, I can't see which vote bank he's trying to pander to, either. The number of people who potentially benefit from this move would be abysmally low, and the OBC community is enough appeased by whatever has already happened. But just the thought of something so outrageous in his head is disgusting for every single person with an ounce of brain in his head. It's like buying sub standard machinery to make guns during war time.

This govt, powerless enough to control inflation and powerless enough to go through with probably the only good thing they have brought up, the nuclear deal, has it now sold out the country too?!?!