joie de l'écriture

There is a silent surrender

To the drudgery of life

And yet on a day like this

There’s a difference of a kind

From where life begins

And till the time it ends

Few are there people

For whom the heart melts

If a story were to be told

Of what it means to be free

No matter how it begins

It’ll end with thoughts of thee

I’ve tried and I’ve failed

And yet I don’t regret

‘cause all through the while

There were people that I met

Faces that were there for a while

Memories that would last for life

And no matter how hard I’d tried

Couldn’t heal wounds that cut like knife

And while this odyssey still’s alive

And while there’s life in my heart

In search of dreams I shall wander

Until destiny do us part

Lit a fire with my thoughts

Burnt a hole in my heart

Shaped a destiny with believes

Crossed an angel on my path

Wished a dream on a star

Washed my sins on the road

Bled tears from old scars

Broke promises that were made

Stole a kiss from the girl

Laid a soul to its rest

Stitched a smile on a face

Etched a name in the oak

Sang a song for the poor

Danced a dance for the rich

Prayed a prayer for the helpless

Wept a tear for the rest

Fought for a cause

Lived for a reason

Blamed the world

Changed the lanes

Sailed the oceans

Danced on the waves

Wrote a book

Read a face

Risked a life

And lived the best

· Why does life suddenly seem ripped of a goal when only a few years back even submitting an assignment on time added vigor to it?

· Why does junk food suddenly seem unhealthy when until a few years back it didn’t evoke the slightest concerns about calories?

· Why is it so long since I last had a chat with my best buddy when until a few years back we had all the time in the world to text each other a senseless joke?

· Why is it so difficult to spend time doing things I love when only a few years back I had juggled everything on the agenda to cram in some time to go dance?

· Why has music disappeared from my everyday living when until a few years back listening to songs on Love Guru was the most relaxing thing in bed?

· Why has TV lost its charm when only a few years back surfing aimlessly like a couch potato was my idea of relaxation?

· Why has my wardrobe changed from reds and pinks to plain pastels and stripes?

· Why are there more black shoe liners than white sports socks with a familiar check mark on it?

· Why have they replaced funky plastic click pens with heavy metal ones to make notes in branded notepads and leather-covered diaries or is it just me?

· Why have days become longer than nights and weekends truncated to just a Sunday?

· Why does the past seem more blissful when until now the present was all that mattered?

· Why does education and all the degrees suddenly seem to have gone waste when only a few years back you prayed to get into the best schools and etch a fantastic career path?

· Why do songs remind me of people and places when until now all knew was to sway to the the music?

…maybe life has suddenly become real after waking up from a dream!

A smile is all I ask of you

A gentle word is all I need

Hug me tight in the darkest night

Lest my soul would bleed

My eyes may do a restless dance

But in my heart dwells a silent prayer

And come what may, I know it would

See us through this endeavour

The journey together has just begun

And we have miles to go

But on this road am not alone

It just feels nice to know

Dreams may fade with time

And wishes may not come true

But life would still be perfect

‘Coz I wished all my dreams with you

It’s the kind of solitude writers have spent their lives searching for and yet the closest they got to seeking it was only by writing about it. It’s that moment in time when you can hear none but your own self. The same self that otherwise engages in an endless strife with the alter ego is today exceptionally tranquil. There is this same surreal tranquillity gripping the air. The high rises towering outside the spanking glass windows shimmer like mirrored disco balls and yet the city assumes a mystifying calmness the kind that rests on the dance floor when the last pair of shoes walks away from it. A melting pot of cultures and temperaments has been frozen for a moment and within each moment rests the vastness of an eternity!

Boredom has always been my pet peeve. It has amply proved itself to be a motivating and stimulating feeling that has often pushed me far enough, out of my cocoon of laziness to grab the keyboard and fervently punch the keys to liberate thoughts in my head. I am afraid this is one of those liberating moments.

My vacuous mind keeps discovering syndromes that speak highly of me as someone suffering from an OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). These symptoms pop up as casually as spotting pasta in a bowl of minestrone soup. I have immense regard for people who, by their very nature, cannot step out of the house without having a bath but can stay indoors for days on end without meandering anywhere close to a bathroom. I strongly believe each one of us has our own way of conserving water. Shopaholics are in my opinion the happiest souls alive and are pivotal in imparting a thrust to the crumbling economy. They are the alpha and the omega of the word ‘Demand’.

While Shakespeare earned enough fame for himself by scripting “What’s in a name…”, he has been unsuccessful in convincing his audience the importance of the same. Trying to recollect the name of someone about whom you know everything but the name, is as bad as engaging in recollecting the name of a movie that some jingle or song belongs to and as irritating as a shred of broccoli sticking in your teeth.

The power of the sub-consciousness is phenomenal. Imagine you step out of the house and there is this lingering feeling that you just don’t seem to get rid of. It’s like this little voice ringing in your head and telling you “You’ve left something behind!” You do the usual checks – wallet, cellphone, keys. Yet, the feeling stays.

Every night before you retire to bed you perform your regular rituals and just as you take the last sip of a glass of water, your face ghastly illuminated by the radiance of the refrigerator bulb in the kitchen, your eyes involuntarily travel to the knobs of the cooking range and do a quick check if the knobs are turned off. You shut the door, and almost as if you trust your sense of touch more than your trust your sense of sight, your feel the plastic knob with your fingers in the dark and return to your bed to count the sheep.

Boredom has always been my pet peeve. It has amply proved itself to be a motivating and stimulating feeling that has often pushed me far enough, out of my cocoon of laziness to grab the keyboard and fervently punch the keys to liberate thoughts in my head. I am afraid the liberating moment just ended.

At the break of dawn

The songbird sings

And the sun peeps slyly

From behind the hills

And then it sprays

A gust of golden dust

And dabs it with a cotton puff

Of flossy clouds that drift along

While the songbird in the woods

Sings its morning song

The dewdrops shimmer

On needle leaves

Splintering light

Like crystal beads

The wind then plants a gentle kiss

On the rosy cheeks that lie in bed

Underneath the silken satin sheets

Black almond eyes awaken

Like the first blossom of spring

And with them unfold

A thousand dreams.

Right now I feel as claustrophobic as a thin piece of pepperoni slice inserted between two pieces of stale bread. It’s that feeling of boredom that begins to crawl all over me like a tin of cockroaches popped open on a floor. My mind is behaving like a switch that’s turned off and later refuses to toggle. As I begin to count the imperfections that surround me I realize I have a long drawn list. This is when I feel miserable and home sick for two reasons - because I cannot go home and because I cannot go home. This is also when I have bouts of frustration accompanied by interludes of mood swings to go with a few busts of depression in my otherwise perfectly mundane life. That adds another to my list of perfections. My life manifests the perfection that a Zero embodies. The vignette on my biography, if my life ever ceases to be as uninteresting as it is right now, will undoubtedly have me in one of these moments when I run out of everything under the sun that could keep my mind occupied, so much so that I could be sculpted in time for my motionless and meaningless temporal presence on the face of the earth. Even my spam box is more active than me right now! I envy the animals in the zoo and the flowers in the botanical garden for they are looked at with a lot more awe and admiration than I am appreciated for my honest confessions about my incognizance about life. Sometimes the mind has to deal with the other polar situation when thoughts seethe in your mind like water bubbles in a pot of boiling water; like fractals of thoughts enveloped in an intricate tapestry of uninvited mentations or like a quagmire of cerebrations you plunge into. If only the brain were a muscle, could have sprayed a relaxant!

P.S.: I know I suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder, but it's striking that the text does not budge when I try justifying it...almost like the thoughts in my head!

15 years is a long time. A lot has changed. Degrees of comparison as defined in Wren and Martin have moved from the classroom to the real life – taller, wider, heavier, (loser is not in the comparative form!). But some things in life are eternal and such etched are some memories that they remain with you forever. By the unwritten rules about childhood games, girls play with Barbie dolls and guys play with GI Joes. Girls play games that conjure images of cotton candies and frills and laces and ribbons and fairies with gossamer wings. Guys are tough, with caps and bruises and little men with guns hiding behind heaps of mud.

The advent of a computer in the 10X10 blue walled bedroom, that today could have fetched a fortune for sheer obsolesce marked the beginning of an age for two kids at home who were suddenly too learned to operate the gizmo. The best compliment that was showered upon the little girl was too much for her to take. She played Pac Man with both hands as opposed to the naïve way of using only one. This ambidexterity was a sign of a sheer genius in making. So beguiled was the young lady by the responsiveness of the machine to the cryptic commands that she equated art with the geometric traces of the turtle on the screen. Prince of Persia, albeit slightly overrated by yours truly, made its debut and was here to stay in the heart of millions of kids who manoeuvred the little prince clad in a funny outfit, fighting with a lone sword against the guards and the skeletons, drinking ambrosia, through dungeons and gates and mirrors and thorns, as the beautiful princess awaited her prince in no shining armour to come and rescue her from the clutches of the Jaffar. That was the era when a series of grey scale pixelated bitmap images defined superior animation. This was a chapter bookmarked in time.

15 years later, I reopened the book to find that the love for the game still holds strong. Today’s sophisticated animation techniques are capable of offering a virtual reality that can transcend the player into a completely different world. However, there is something mystical about the crude animations of the days of yore when imperfection had a bit of magical touch that delivered a gripping madness to the game. Prince of Persia was much more than a game. It’s amazing to note that it still is. It is one of those childhood memories you want to lock up in your drawer and simply keep them because they are indescribably special. A little folder on your desktop with a DosBox alongside just about does the job!

Confessions about life

The cane chair suspended from a hook in the flaky ceiling perfectly adjusted its swings between cold brass railings on one side and a flawless white wall on the other. Its creak faced a silent death in time and was reduced to a mild squeak before the chair stood motionless almost as if captured in a frame. The euphony of the wind chimes that swayed to the tunes of the breezy interludes to a standstill silent evening added dramatic overtones. The moon scattered its silver rays liberally through puffs of cotton clouds that drifted lazily in the sky. The jingle of the last soap on the television playing in the background was subdued not so much by the distance of the balcony from the television set as much as it was by the aloofness that she could so easily let herself into. Her feet dangled from the chair like those of a little girl on a swing. She rubbed her palms and then embraced herself in their warmth. Her charcoal black eyes glistened like solitaires. Her loosely tied hair, the colour of cappuccino whipped her on her flawless wheatish skin. Her vibrant face was illuminated by the glow of the halogen on the street and by the exuberance of the new day that awaited her an hour from now. Fireflies orchestrated with the stars that twinkled and shimmered like the trail of a magic wand. It was a night filled with perfection. It was a night filled with the subtle undefined joy of being in harmony with oneself. It was a night of finding answers to thoughts that were never crystallized into questions and therefore could never be posed. Her tryst with destiny that had shown her the glitz and the glamour of the city of dreams was to end with the last swing of the pendulum which swayed with the same monotony that had greeted her when she first arrived after leaving the cosy comfort of her hamlet nested in the hinterlands of the Himalayans.

This city gave her the unbounded joy of living on the cusp of dreams and reality. From the sanguine bricked houses to a plush apartment in the heart of the city was a long journey of 700 days interspersed with a potpourri of human emotions that chiselled her very disposition; a disposition she had to leave back as excess baggage before returning home as it bore nothing more than a niggling relevance in a life she was about to embark upon; a life characterized by simplicity and genuineness. She had refused to admit to herself how she had let her life revolve around green bucks what was traditionally considered one of the seven vices in her village. How often had she been struck by the irony of chasing ducats when the folklore she grew up listening to spoke of the malignancy that creeps in on chasing materialistic pleasures! She had started living a life of contradictions and although she didn’t feel particularly dismayed by her decisions, the guilt of failing to see the relevance of her childhood teaching in the rat race slowly caught up on her. Had she outgrown those days and their sweet memories or was it that she was seeking justice in her actions too afraid to be proven wrong? She found herself alone as she stared at the loftiness of the mountains, the depth of the ocean, the vastness of the sky and the completeness in the rainbow stretched across it. Tomorrow she was to fit that last missing piece in the puzzle and complete the jigsaw of her life. It’s funny what you search for sometimes only lies within you!

Ideas that marinate from pickled thoughts in the head carry with them the true flavours of life. A year is a vat full of Baskin Robbins ice-creams; one flavour for each day! It’s only at the turn of a year that the line of demarcation between life and philosophy becomes an illusion. It’s only at the tipping point that man identifies the good and the bad, the right and the wrong, as easily as separating the rotten apples from the basket. It is only now that hope finds more meaning in his life than ever before. It is only now that regrets take a back seat and he has new beginnings to look forward to. It is only now that he gets a chance to revive lost ties, to let go and to relive, to make up for lost times. It’s a new year that awaits him as anxiously as he awaits the clock to strike at the midnight.

Takeaway from 2008
· People change. They don’t need a reason. They just need time.
· All sweet times get caramelized
· Mood swings are inevitable
· Family and friends is all that matters
· Friend is an overused word
· The worst fears never come true
· It helps to sulk a bit as much as it helps to pamper yourself
· You are your biggest obstacle
· Don’t let your life revolve around one single thing
· Everything has a time and place
· Life is too short to regret about it
· You’ll get what you deserve
· If you don’t have it, it is not meant for you