A Smile is something I can give to you...

When I am going through my tests on earth,
I do not seem to be caring about you.
I talk to you immediately after my test is done,
For, it was you who occupied my thoughts while at the test.

You made me realize the importance of respecting,
Respecting differences, respecting the para-'normal',
respecting myself, for, I would not have been happier
Had you not come into my life and talked to me.

You talked to me, you shared your life with me,
I talked to you, I got attached emotionally too.
For the first time, I felt as if someone missed me.
I still miss you. I have always been this way.

I do not fit into the social 'norms',
I do not fit into your friend circle,
I feel left out from so many different angles,
But I have gotten used to it.

I can be that ideal person you want,
But I won't be myself if I am that,
I am very hopeful that by being myself,
I will grow up to become better. Just better. That's all.

When you grow up too, you earn, you socialize,
You move away from me, you are less connected to me,
But this is the way things have always been, at the end of the day,
A Smile and that assurance of tolerance and love,
Is something I can give to you. Because, I love you. 

Momentary randomness

India has won the Cricket World Cup 2011! Feelings of extreme happiness...I could not express my feelings till the time I went to sleep yesterday night! Traffic jams happening at midnight near my place...this madness happens very rarely. It was amazing!!:-) When I woke up today morning, I was feeling very pumped up and when AR Rahman's Vande Mataram played on the radio, I just felt awesome. Such moments do make you feel very proud about your country.
All this done, things move on. The world moves on. Four years from now, maybe we'll see a new champion Down Under. Things in our life move on too. I was just thinking about how I have changed as a person in these last 8 years. I don't remember how I reacted to India's loss in 1999. After that, I guess I was fit enough to remember how I have been during World Cups. In 2003, there was a certain child-like enthusiasm at the beginning of he final. At the end of it though, there was disappointment.Mind-less criticisms of the cricketers at school. Indian cricket sucks. Dada should retire and all. But I always was considerate of the losing team. I knew one had to lose. India played well, Australia was just too good. 2007, I was radical. That phase of my life is the 'radical exuberance of youth' phase. I was a pukka nationalist. I remember I had my Class X board exams at that time and I was really sick of studying(or should I say mugging, I should). I watched that match in which we lost to Bangladesh. My mood was off. And since the World Cup was in the Windies, the feeling of sadness for every Indian must have been more. Anyone would feel sad after seeing your team lose after you watching the match till 3 or 4 in the morning. But we won the T20 WC, and that was a great moment. I would explain all the scenes on the roads of my country to my American cousins. Excitable and provocative and very expressable nationalism. All this without having thought or read a great deal about human behaviour and thought.
2011. I have changed a lot. I have become passive in my expression of feelings. There's a debate raging in my mind whether this is Ok or no. I did go out on the roads to be with my countrymen, but what I saw made me think about the situation in my country. Of course, I love India. Society analysis, people analysis. Such things hold fort over the unabatable nationalist exuberance. Looking at the poor beggars of my country, sitting on the roads, wondering what wrong they did that they did not get to see even a TV in their lives. Such people were getting drunk, not because India won the World Cup, but because it was their daily routine. "Aaj kya hua hai bhai? Itne log paglo jaise aadhiraat ko kya kar rahe hai?" must have been their first reaction. After some time, they would also get into the act by dancing on the roads with the rich Indian. It is a very very rare occasion when you see the middle-class mingle so much with the poor. The rich are of course at the pubs and farm-houses around the city partying like wild with vodka and champagne. Char baj jate hai lekin party ab bhi baki hai! Even in this integrationist moment there are several divisions. If we observe closely, the divisions are in the political sphere. MNS, Shiv Sena, Congress, NCP flags were galore. Social divisions, linked with the economic divisions. Sometimes not linked. It's visible.
I have changed. I guess it happens with most of us. I won't think of all this even 1 year back. But this being a moment to rejoice for our countrymen, we must rejoice. I am happy for Team India. They played really well. Kudos!
The idea behind writing this post was to just share with you how my way of looking at things has changed. I guess it must have happened with many people of a similar age. It is just amazing. I guess, as we grow older, we realise our ignorance more and more. But people don't ignore purposely. It is just that they don't choose to see. That's not ignoring. A day will come, when they will see and ignoring would be hard. Seeing around helps me to understand the complexities of life and there are definitely no finite answers to such problems of life. I can really go on about something which I read in a beautiful book on the Mahabharata recently, but I wont go on. It is change which I realized in myself that I felt like sharing. Such things just go on and on. Things happen, for the better!!

Tod do yeh deewar!!

               Really, sometimes I just get so frustrated at myself for being a good listener! I am more of a listener, than a speaker.  I listen to my friends, I listen and listen to my teachers perennially. I listen to AR Rahman. I listen to my parents, my grandmother, even my younger sister sometimes! Ok, so is listening bad? May not be. Should not be. Is over-listening bad? Maybe . What do I mean when I say over-listening? Here, I mean listening and listening and not speaking to the necessary extent after which people start saying “Dude, you want to say something? No? Ok, so listen…..”.And this goes on. This is what I have felt!! Listening and listening. Being democratic, I am. Let the person present his views, at least. Then I’ll talk.  But by the time, that guy has finished his talk, I have lost the soul of his argument  and he is tired of speaking and speaking. So, what happens is, both of us stare at each other. Blankly. And then I say “Ok. So, you do agree with Marx? But why?” And again I am listening to his ‘clarification’. This time he talks in such a dominating manner that I just don’t feel like discussing and refuting his argument. Done. He leaves. I am confused. Pondering over what Marx may have said. Why was Marx so crazy? And why is my friend one of the few public Marxists in this world of public capitalists? Is he a seer? I doubt. Confusion. That’s what happens when you over-listen.

              Now, let us assume that there is a process here. Well, there IS a process here. You listen, you process the matter (think) and then speak. Something very similar to what I did here while writing this post. I typed out this stuff on the QWERTY thing (wow, typing out qwerty is a rare thing. I enjoyed doing it twice!!), the master-mind processor thought and the dubba CRT spoke in it’s way. Just imagine how efficiently the computer functions. We perform the input functions. The CPU processes and the output is out flat. This happens when the computer is working efficiently and is normal and sane. Now, imagine the output device not working. The computer’s output device not working leaves the human mind frustrated. No computer(or any such gadget) output implies frustration of the human mind! Similarly, we humans take inputs, then process and then give an output. Normally. Suppose we keep on taking in stuff in the form of thoughts, figures, concepts, equations, scripts etc. We think over it(we don’t) and then efficient and normal beings have good, proportionate outputs in the form of exhibitive  responses like verbal replies and histrionics. Abnormal beings do not have such outputs. They remain stuck in the thought process. There is a problem. The output does not come out. Now, if we get frustrated when the computer does not show an output, imagine our condition if WE do not give out good outputs!! There’s a condition of confusion and conflict which is going to stay on. This is not good. There can be a certain kind of mental clogging which can have undesirable consequences. This can become a habit which will not help me when I face society. Lack of expression of feelings at the right time can lead to isolation and a certain self-centeredness. This is also not good. But this problem can be solved.

                How? Now, the solution is in our CPU. It’s in our processing unit. We have a conscience. We have willpower. We can act. We can improve. We can improve further. Now, taking a cue from what I learnt in English Literature class today - “All conflict arises out of desire” -  I would like to be aware of not crossing the line on the other side. I should not lose my good listening skills. And I should not talk non-sense. But there are certain times when my discretionary powers should come to my rescue. Sometimes, we should not express ourselves as we would normally. We must consider the practicality of the situations. Good. Sounds good.

                 But why on earth am I sharing bits of my personal diary with you? Well, my discretion tells me to do so. You, my dear friend and reader of this blog will also take in something from here. If you find the post rubbish and grammatically horrible(some errors creep in, I know it’s sad inspite of MS Word’s existence), please express your displeasure by posting your comment. Let me tell you - let there be transparency between the writer and the reader. But there can be times when you have nothing to say. Perfectly fine! All your feelings and expressions are respected and accepted! I love you.. all I wish is minimal misunderstanding! I wish to understand my Marxist friend and also you. I will talk to you and let there be exchange of ideas, let there be healthy debates, and let there be lessons to be learnt. Learning and growing together is a beautiful process which may lead to a healthy, strong and well-knit society. From here, we can talk of macro-growth and macro-development. We can be a better society, a better country and a better planet. Let there be conversations!! Light will be there, then. 

Beginning with my neighbourhood!

Hi people!

I have decided to start my tryst with the pen(virtual and real).This being my first blog,I felt like giving you all a small glimpse of my surroundings and it's effect on me till now. The musing...

I decided to take a late evening walk in my neighbourhood, yesterday. Walking in a pretty non-appealing but well-organised colony cannot be said to be very refreshing for the mind.Up I walked towards the main road to be amidst people,after a few hours of aloofness.The current scene in our colony makes it even harder to be with people.A road dug-up on it's sides with stones and gravel spread about,giving it the feel of a never-before walking plaza.In fact, the delight of walking in the middle of an erstwhile busy and vehicle-only road made me feel 'lifted'.The normal footpaths have are non-existent and lead to the creation of a wide,foot-only path due to barricading and metre-deep trenches on parallel sides of the direction of foot-march.The markedly visible,unidentifiable pipes in the metre-deep trenches are nearly completely covered with some men doing some more digging and other men doing some pipe-wire engineering,the description of which escapes my factual brain.Whereas, the women surrounding sacks of cement(or maybe even sand,I am not sure,as always) are helping the digger-men either by being digger-women or by clearing the sand and piling it up on a nearby heap.

The foot-plaza(i.e the main road) is compartmentalized into many sub-footplazas for the convenience of we pedestrians.Something for the pedestrians,finally!!Up and down from the sub-footplazas are the residential lanes.Due to the trenches,humanity here felt the need to build bridges to connect these sub-footplazas to the residential lanes.A new kind of bridge.The Sack-bridge!!It's strong, it's curvy(and hence,sexy!) and maybe the shortest bridge to help both the pedestrian and the occasional motor-biker!!

As I look at my colony with more observant eyes, I start finding it a little more appealing.There are these light-starved but nevertheless happy trees enjoying their freedom from 'shishir'.And the Indrayani bungalow(sadly) stood behind three such trees.The three trees(one of whom I name Sheela,what's in a name yaar!) literally beg it's inhabitants to start paying their electricity bills.On the other side, Sheela and her friends face a decently-lit Vamanrao Udyan, a parabolic road separating the visually antagonistic and contrasting landmarks in Dahanukar Colony. This Vamanrao Udyan used to be the site for my shy playfulness for a short period of time.As I look at it now,I notice one new play equipment.The waist-high semi-circular jungle-gym.The basketball court with the two nets being separated by gravel, is the court witness to many a physical battle!The jogging track which is an ill-fit for any 2-feet wide plus mortal still exists.I remember stepping aside every two minutes to allow the other 'jogger' to pass by or (rarely)pass through.That's one bad jogging track!Then the three bhai-bhai-bhai slides.Small,medium,large.I hated the small(for obvious reasons).Enjoyed the medium.But detested the large one because I could not climb up the slide from the bottom of the butt-rester!Then the mini merry-go-round and the mini gymnasium and of course the best place to hide-the water basin,remind me of my days here.I used to come here as a primary school-kid with my Mom and infant sister.We had a Rs.340/- pass to the garden,which we all valued because of it's high cost and great play infrastructure!

As I end a day of retrospection,walking around my colony,going back to my playful-kid days I bury my left foot into a gravel mound.Shaking my foot and chappal and thanking gravity for allowing the gravel to get off me,I once again come back to the current realm of thoughts.Even I am in a state of repair,like the foot-plaza of my colony.

Stepping over the sack-bridge I enter my lane and walk down the narrowing but well-lit lane and sloping path which leads me to my building.As I walk down, I try staring at the faces of the bike-riders riding upwards,only managing to guess the age and sex of the rider as he/she zooms by.

Not really refreshed,but happy nonetheless I return to my shed.The uncertainty remains,it does not zoom by so easily!! :-)