Another Year, Another Set of Resolutions

I need not say further, the title says it all.

The ones to achieve in the first quarter of the year:

• Hog on chocolate, make up for the all the time lost on it
• Refrain from taking a resolution for abstaining from cheese
• Finish reading Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations
• Buy an epilator (and stop making excuses why not to)
• Start wearing more colours and not just black, white, grey and blue
• Talk less on phone, use Skype and Gtalk instead**
• Learn to keep my table and wardrobe tidy and organised**
• Find a Swatch outlet in the city
• Make a trip to Ooty and Kodaikanal
• Learn to swim**
• Tame my hair**
• Crib less**
• Learn basic Tamil
• Start wearing make up

The ones to achieve over the entire year:

• Be the old fussy, finicky, choosy (more synomyms anyone?) self - BE THYSELF
• Lose a couple of kilograms and maintain it
• Fall out of love and fall back into it again, of course with someone new**
• Figure out my life and career and keep one from encroaching upon other
• Learn a South East Asian language (Chinese or Japanese)
• Keep in touch with all the old friends/foes (I am still around, you like it or not)
• No more snooping on my ex's girlfriend**
• Check on my baby brother more often
• Be good to street animals
• Get up early in the morning**
• Go to bed early in the night
• Spend more time at home
• Keep my appointments with Kaya, Loreal, etc. etc.
• Write, write, write more often!

** - failed resolutions!

The Tennyson Lover in Me

Reading Tennyson has always been an immense pleasure for I often suffer from obession-like bouts where I could go on reading a piece of poetry for weeks altogether. I am suffering from one such spell right now. Here is what has been keeping me immersed in itself.

Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal

Lord Alfred Tennyson

Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;

Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk;

Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font:

The fire-fly wakens: waken thou with me.

Now droops the milkwhite peacock like a ghost,

And like a ghost she glimmers on to me.

Now lies the Earth all Danaë to the stars,

And all thy heart lies open unto me.

Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves

A shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me.

Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,

And slips into the bosom of the lake:

So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip

Into my bosom and be lost in me.

And then there's another one by Yeats that caught my fascination in much the same manner as Cleopatra's Lament by Shakespeare.

No Second Troy

William Butler Yeats

Why should I blame her that she filled my days

With misery, or that she would of late

Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,

Or hurled the little streets upon the great.

Had they but courage equal to desire?

What could have made her peaceful with a mind

That nobleness made simple as a fire,

With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind

That is not natural in an age like this,

Being high and solitary and most stern?

Why, what could she have done, being what she is?

Was there another Troy for her to burn?

How I sometimes wish I could have someone to write such poem for me! And people, do check out the story behind the Yeats' poem.

I've been thinking...

There have been so many thoughts that have so carelessly been wandering though this so impossibly large head of mine.

• I am 23 years and two months old and no, it’s not young. Try watching something like Kung Fu Panda or Open Season with a 12 year old and you will say this to yourself no less than 10 times that you have grown up since you were 12 until the full fledged realisation hits you hard that you are in the unnerving territory of adulthood. I feel I have aged more rapidly in these 6 months than I did in the last 22 years and 8 months.
  

• Now why is it so difficult to find a good lingerie store? When I ask for size 32C, I mean I want 32C! I am tired of the salesgirls trying to hand me a 32B while glancing at my rack and telling that it should fit me. And when I insist, they tell me that the piece of clothing does not come in the particular size. Now why would I pay 600 bucks for something that I know is not my size! For God’s sake, why can’t the owners employ people who understand that what they are dealing with is an external-indispensable-complementary-enhancement organ and not a harness to support some bulk!
  

•  Why do I try to change myself in order to be like by someone else? Why this desire to please others when I know it’s only going to make me miserable? And then on the days that I realise this blatant truth, I extricate myself from the complex network of changes only to fall into trap the very next day. Hey, I think I’ve found my New Year resolution – “Be thyself!”
  

•  It has been so long since I last boozed, I feel like those old dipsomaniac days/nights were from another century - My head all clear of thoughts and unnecessary analysis, exactly the opposite of what I am doing right now, eyes trying hard to focus on a view which I felt like I was seeing while on a swing and other people around me going all weird, giggling, dancing, crying or may be stripping too! Wow, it definitely has been a looooong time now.
  

•  And last but definitely not the least and my personal favourite - My career. Yes, what about it you might ask. That’s exactly what I would too!
  

Nostalgia - The Beginning

This post is first in the series titled ‘Nostalgia’ as you can read above in big violet letters. What it basically contains is this – every post in the series will deal with a long lost memory/event that might be ages old or otherwise but nonetheless it shall be subjected to my dissection. Lately I have been feeling all weird because I haven’t been correcting other people’s mistakes. Some people went so far as to call me captious, but what the hell. Getting back on track, I guess this negligence of other’s mistakes led me to neglect my own mistakes and now I make so many mistakes and I feel so human, damn! I am going to try and address those long lost mistakes through Nostalgia. Wish me luck people. Being the first in the series, I’ll keep this one from the time I was still pure and not morally corrupted to the extent that I am now.

I was just done with my Class 12 exams and was running all over the country taking entrance tests. It was the weekend after I had taken the AIIMS entrance test (I never made it there otherwise I might not be here poking at my keyboard.) AIIMS was the last test I took; it was on the first Sunday of June if my memory serves me right. Technically, BHU-IMS entrance test should have been the last one but then I skipped it and I never gave it a second thought until today, things could have turned out seriously different if I had or I’d still be here staring into my laptop. Getting on, Mamma had accompanied me to Jaunpur for my UP-CPMT (she didn’t consider me old enough to travel alone) and yup, I had taken a hell lot of pre-meds because my parents wanted a doctor in our household for a change, all we have are engineers in our family, you see and they thought I had the mirth to see it through. Personally, I’d started detesting biology after being subjected to a traumatizing preacher in my class 11th and 12th. Now, Jaunpur is this village of a place in the eastern part of Uttar Pradesh and that is where my parents were brought up and where I was born.

Okhay, so it was the weekend after my last entrance test (yippee) and my Dad who’s not very physically active, was quite perked up that Saturday. By the way, you should see Dad now though I haven’t for quite some time, but from what he tells me he’s been gymming and all after the annual medical tests came as a shocker. I must say, good for him. So, the three of us, wait I didn’t introduce this little cutie in my life, my baby brother! He’s not all that younger than me, just a couple of years, but he’ll always be my baby brother. The three of us decided to walk to the sea, i.e. the Arabian Sea. It was like in our backyard but we decided to walk ten kilometers as we wanted to get to this temple on the shore – the Varahaswarup Temple, it’s dedicated to Lord Vishnu’s reincarnation as Varaha (the one who’s pictorial depiction resembles Pumba) – and also the beach . Now as Mamma stayed back at granny’s in Jaunpur, (I travelled alone back to Surat, the first train journey on my own) cooking had been a big problem at home. Nevertheless, we prepared the sandwich filling that night so we’d wake up next morning stuff it between two slices of bread and grill it. Of course, I had to do this chore. Everything went as planned, and by seven next morning the three of us were walking down our way to the beach. We took under three hours to get there and the day was turning out to very pleasantly. We offered our obeisance at the temple and then went down to the beach accompanying the temple. My brother and I ran along the length of the beach while Dad sat under a coconut tree tired from the long walk. We had lunch (the sandwiches that I had prepared) and started back for home a couple of hours later. It was nearly a perfect Sunday with only Mamma missing.

Now, the mistake that I made here was I didn’t carry my camera, really silly of me. I don’t have anything to remind me of the day except the stones that I got back from the shore after a lot of protests from my Dad which Mamma later neatly arranged in flower pots in the garden and they still reside there. The other thing though it would not classify as a mistake, I was concerned about my career then as I really didn’t know my interests, so I decided to carry on with science. But had my dad for even once mentioned English Literature, I would have totally lapped up the idea. Eventually, he did mention it but that was four years later, when I had already graduated.

A Burger Story

(A review on Gallopin’ Gooseberry, Besant Nagar)

Being laconic has never been my forte, nonetheless, I’ll refrain from turning too verbose. All one needs to discover a brilliant eatery is (i) A vacant Saturday and (ii) The craving to eat something really good, something that not only satisfies one’s taste buds and appetite but also the heart, the soul or may be the intellect. What I mean is the sense of absolute satisfaction that comes from doing something that one hasn’t in a really long time or never.

Gallopin’ Gooseberry is perched neatly on the 1st floor of #2, 2nd Avenue, Besant Nagar, Chennai 600090. However, that address didn’t help me find it. I’ll put it in this manner, it’s just around the first right corner on the 2nd Avenue. Encased in glass walls covered with straw mats to prevent in sunlight during the day and pulled up in the evening to let one look down at the busy traffic laden 2nd Avenue, it offers an ambience too cosy for a burger place or maybe it’s the Italian effect. Let’s say it could be the perfect burger-date place. The place is small, not seating more than 20 at a time which makes it a peaceful and personal dining, naah, gorging experience.

The menu is laden with burgers, sandwiches, soups, pasta and lasagne, all very reasonably priced. It might sound huge for a place as small as this. Being my first time at GG (I’d do with calling it that), I chose to keep it simple and tried something very basic – ‘The Classic Burger’ – and a Coke. The service took a comfortable 15 minutes, might sound too much for a burger place, but GG isn’t a huge retail outlet, instead imagine every burger to be custom-made taking into consideration the diner’s, naah, gorger’s disposition that the place seemed to read. The burger is huge, holding it between my hands made me feel like an 8 year old at McDonald’s. It’s so difficult to get a bite off it and keep your hands from getting all messy. It had been ages since I had a burger like a child with the mayo and ketchup dripping down my front. It was a burger true to its name, ‘Classic’.

One big lesson that I learnt at GG was that before I decide to go for the coke and the fries, I’d finish my burger up. The burger is so huge that it doesn’t leave an appetite for anything else. The maitre’d was very hospitable and helpful with suggestions but not of the sort that would hover over one either. One has enough privacy. They also home-deliver. It’s not just another money minting business but a place that has a soul and thought process of its own, desirous of providing one with a satisfying hogging experience. And I am already looking forward to my next visit to the place.

(Acknowledgments: Thank you, Nilay, for leading me to the place.)

The Morning Escape

She had been uneasy all evening. It was the uneasiness that told her something was waiting to happen. She tried reading a book to distract herself. However, it did nothing to help and finally surrendering to the unfamiliarly familiar feeling, she stared at the canopy overhead lying in her four poster bed draped in white linen. It was almost two in the night when she was overtaken by sleep and exhaustion. A couple of hours later, she was woken by a strange whisper in her ears as though some ethereal being were whispering in her ears. She noticed her easiness had grown to a mild tingling in the pit of her stomach. She ignored the whisper and sunk back into her slumber.

Another couple of hours later, she shocked awake. This time she felt there was someone around her trying to communicate with her. In the dim light of the dawn she could only make out the outlines of her bed, the other furniture and furnishings in her room. She made a quick trip to the washroom, grabbed her pashmina and was seen running across the huge lawns that surrounded her castle into the woods, in a manner which suggested that she was being led by someone. And in that rush of moment, she actually grew oblivious of her guide and wandered off into the woods alone.

The woodlands wore a festive look all decorated with the dewdrops dispersing rainbow lights, ribbons of mist stretching between leaves from one tree to another and musical gurgling and gushing of distant streams getting ready for the ceilidh. Not a single creature stirred in the woods. She glided through juvenile grass and between the ancestral trees bowed down from the burden of ages in stance of a warm reception. She kept moving on deeper into the woods until she came a small and sluggish streamlet that seemed devoid of all esteem. And the very moment that she set her foot beyond the streamlet, she was surrounded by a mist so dense that it felt solid and that it cleared at an extraordinary velocity for its density.

It was for the first time since she wandered into the woods that she felt alone and the uneasiness returned. When the haze cleared it left behind a panorama that could literally take a spectator’s breath away. She let go off all her apprehensions. The sun shone brilliantly from behind the hills and it was strange that the sunrays felt pleasantly cool against her skin as thought she were experiencing a tryst between the sun and moon in an ambience set just apt by breezes. More than that, she felt the familiar presence beside her. The breezes moved in a manner as if being directed to carry out chores. A wreath of purple flowers floated it’s way to her and settled ever so perfectly around her brow. The butterflies and bees danced around her while the sparrows and bulbuls serenaded.

However, the question arises as to where was she finding herself? It looked like she had chanced upon some new country. She could see majestic mountains on one side of her and endless oceans stretching on the other. But, it couldn’t be bigger than an enormous garden, she thought. She pranced along with the fawns and the chipmunks that had joined her until she came to the centre of the garden. She stood at the foot of an grandly aged tree laden with tempting fruit. Wise as she was, she guessed, “Could I...is it possible that I am in the garden of Eden?” She looked around at all the creatures staring up at her. Another thought came to her mind, “Could I then be Eve herself?” She reasoned with herself, “If I were Eve, my Adam should be somewhere?” She exhilarated with happiness but then she thought, “And then there would be the serpent too!” She wore a grim visage now. She stepped closer to the tree as if holding a private conversation with it, “Oh, Thy Arboreal Splendor, your fruits are succulent and tempting as designed for, but I cannot eat from them as I am born of sins long committed and have known the nature of cognizance from history. Accept my gratitude for the honour bestowed upon me.” And with these words she moved away the Tree thinking to herself, “Someday, maybe, someday.”

She came to the familiar sluggish streamlet accompanied by her new found playmates and the spirit who had been protecting her all the while. She was all weary from the adventure and famished too. She birds brought her wild berries that she enormously enjoyed but before she could finish even a handful of them, for she had really small hands; she was hurled into deep slumber. She lay there, her countenance peaceful, with streamlet now gushing and gurgling at her feet in joy. She lay there in oblivion, waiting for her Prince Charming to kiss her into consciousness.

She stirred awake; she was lying against the familiar white linen that lined her bed. She was home. She still wore the floral wreath around her brow; there were flowers at her feet and a butterfly or two dancing around her. She looked out the open window towards the woods that beckoned her and she thought she saw someone waiting there.

Music is in the Air

It happened last night while I was taking a walk along a deserted path somewhere in the middle of a heavily vegetated stretch of land. It was raining cats and dogs just fifteen minutes ago but the fury of the Gods had milded and the torrents reduced to soft drizzle. It was eleven in the night. The stage was set and the venue clear. There was a distant echo loud in my ears, "It's show-time".

The leaves rustled softly against each other, picking rhythm poco a poco. The air picked pace to an allegretto gale that whistled in glee. The alla breve water drops from the high leaves provided the percussive effect. The crickets chirped appassionato to agitation growing around. There was music in the air. The stars twinkled capriccioso adding their magic to the opus taking shape. The ocassional noise from aeroplanes landing and taking off at a distance bridged between symphonies. The caesura from stray animals, the nascent stream gurgling grazioso, the purity of birth from the sprouting shoots, the tree barks rubbing against each other coarsely, the sweet smell rising from the wet soils, the creaking of the branches back and forth in the air, the lights effects from the moon playing peek-a-boo in the overcast skies - the whole of nature conspiring a trance hidden from the logical world.

I stood motionless, my arms outstretched, my eyes closed and head held high feeling the sporadic rain drops on my face. It was the music of arrival, a celebration of existence. And as my clothes began to drench from drizzle or sweat or both, I witnessed nature in her nubile form.

Hello, World

main()

{
printf("hello, world");
}

That's the first program that we as kids learnt to write and then execute but the antiquated Turbo C compiler kept returning errors on it as we needed to include the file 'stdio.h' and learnt the importance of these header files much later on. I am growing all nostalgic again. Never mind, I have been quite that way for some time now, ever since I realised that I am all grown up. But that doesn't just stop there. There's more to it, the pace at which the changes are taking place isn't all constant, it's acclerating and that is scaring the life out of me. May be I need to relax. May be I need to take a look a things one-at-a-time. And may be the gloomy Chennai weather woudn't get better of me.

Dreams

"It's Saturday night and I am in bed with the laptop, (What an irony! Of all the men I know, a laptop is what I find.) lost in utterly chaotic thoughts that wind and swerve only to lead me back to where they originated from. My head is so full of fantasy literature from Tolkien and Eddings and Rowling, tales that seem to have neither a beginning nor an ending but merely an existence that doesn't fail to excite and conjure up tales for oneself. This one's for the dreamy state that is sure to be my abode for some time to come."

The unicorns tread every so softly on their prowl
To the vigil of riddles of old, long forgotten scroll.
The balrogs lie in deep slumber of oblivious days,
Biding time, anticipating arousal of the one face.

And thus, meet the two adversaries of lore when
The intrusion of slack awareness of callous men
Unsettles the dormancy that lingered on for ages
Of which the history has been sated with pages.

I have been here last century and the one before last
I have watched from my lair of what time came to cast.
I have forever been hidden in those ever naive eyes
Dreams, so they called me, spanning beyond the skies.

Evolution...2008

This poem comes as a tribute to the four years of companionship, four years of reluctant pedagogy, four years of growth, four years of utter frivolity, and to the life that is...MNNIT.

It's an era spanning
A lifetime of reminiscing.
It's a period of growth,
Of learning, of acceptance, of troth.
It's an epoch of mechanical
Engg, of discovering a world practical.

We are a system designed
To adapt to customs unrefined.
And cast into moulds resolute
To our goals, we are put en route.
Tempered under conditions rough,
To strengthen matter, to make it tough.

Machined to a degree impeccable
We stand tall, yet humble.
And now the testing begin
That sands of time will surely sing.
It's a saga of flaw and fest,
It's manufacturing at it's best.

Happily Ever After

Here’s again a time when one feels torn,
Another of the times when "bygones be bygones"!
A tale of a bondage so long carted,
One alone trying to get out of what two started,
How does one end it on one's own then?
Together they walked into it when
The world was still new, flowers bloomed,
And the beautiful lines they crooned.
When knowing the other was a journey
Instead reduced to a mere destination early.
The breach of faith that one claimed
Only to hurt the love, leaving it maimed.
They demanded personal spaces
Removing each from the other's graces.
Maybe it wasn’t so long either,
Compared with the clocks tick whither.
And then time is a swallow swift,
An aide to filling up the rift
If only one would relent and forgo
The restraint and let mutuality grow.
Mercy one asks for, mercy one has none,
And while everything is pretty under the sun,
There still is a storm raging within
Much like an ever persistent question.
It’s a two man ordeal, that one
Could never undertake all alone.
For they draw towards another chapter to close,
And I think of them - the light and the rose -
How ever apart and oblivious of each be the other,
They’d still be living "happily ever after".

Forever...

I feel the cool breeze caress my skin,
I feel the moisture penetrate my breath,
I feel the skies staring down upon me,
I feel ALIVE!

I dream of spreading my wings wide,
I dream of riding the glorious sunshine,
I dream of taking the abyssal fall,
I dream ALIVE!

I rejoice each day the morning brings,
I rejoice the birds chirping on the twigs,
I rejoice flowing with the sands of time
I rejoice ALIVE!

I feel your presence close beside me,
I feel your words resonate with mine,
I feel your dreams imbibed in my own,

I feel alive FOREVER!