Cement and Emotion

As you must have noticed, I have changed the name of my blog from "Musings" to "Cement and Emotion". Firstly, my musings are really hard to describe and secondly, how I thought of the name remains a mystery to me. I may have chosen the name because the word sounded good or was a new and attractive little fresh word in my dictionary. Without really going deeper into the meaning.
Anyway, now it is "Cement and Emotion". Why so? These are two things I value in my life. Cement not just because it holds my house together, but more for the rather deeper meaning of it. The way I interpret it would be different. Cement(mixed with water) holds bricks together and helps us make walls of our house, of our compound, of other things as well. Cement mixed with water and gravel, gives us concrete. One of the best materials for roads for us to drive on, to walk on. With comfort. And hence, cement is important. It stands for firmness, it stands for strength. And firmness is important in life. I have realized that we should be firm with certain things in life for us to realize how good or bad those things are. And that would help us grow. But only if we are in tune with our selves. In tune with our EMOTION. What is better than knowing one's own self? Knowing one's self is like a journey all of us undertake, directly or indirectly. But being directly in touch with our selves would mean being in direct conformity with our emotions. And that I feel is very important. I have decided to follow these two 'ideas' in my life and would keep sharing certain experiences with you through my blog.
This blog still serves as an outlet for my feelings, observations and emotions and I hope you would enjoy reading my posts and get back to me from whichever medium that suits you.   

Ain't Giving Up!

How I thought, I would be this that..
How I thought, I would be here there..
How I thought, I would be...
I thought and thought, I do not know how.

The deep recesses of what and what not,
The lump in my throat when I see that person,
The jump in my heart when I talk to that person,
The deep crevices in that rock, how they deepened,

Fools die! Heroes die! Commoners live! Why?
How I wished I would be the salt of the earth!
But hey, I have not given up yet.
I live, and I still dream of tasting success,
With the salt.Or without it, I do not care.

What is the sense behind the recesses and the jump?
And why did I mention the crevices and the lump?
How I thought, I would be there in them..
How I thought, I would be this that..
No idea, mate.

It's an illusory world. You better ask about how's
In classrooms and labs, my dear.
You may get quick answers there,
Not in this world, not in this world.

But hey, I have not given up yet.
For I still am in the search committee.
I am still curious and I won't give up.
I am waiting to taste something known as success.    

Dost ki Poetry - 1

The following piece of literature has been written by Tejas Gokhale, a friend of mine. 

                                                          TIME

Time starts when you are born, ends when you are dead.

Why should time be the same for all ?

Why should a second be the same for all ?

You are your time...

Realise that before it ends for you !

Years do pass by, but what is an year ?

What maketh man young, infant or old ?

Time of the earth ?

Its not your time fellas!!

You are your time...

Come spring, come fall, you make time long or small.

Define your own place, with God's grace, make haste,

For You are your time...

Time didn't start with a BANG !!!

It started with you !

For time exists because you do !

Tejas can be contacted at his e-mail address - tejas93.gokhale@gmail.com 

The good feeling - 1! :-)

I have been involved in our Society's Ganeshotsav preparations for quite some time now. Every year, around ten of us, all of us are of the same age group(late teens to early twenties now), take the initiative to organize a Ganeshotsav in our co-operative housing society. We have a lot of fun while organising it. Of course, there are disappointments at times, but overall,  if one is completely dedicated to his/her work he/she gets that feeling of being a part of a community. This feeling is something which we rarely experience these days. The good feeling! :-) This feeling of doing something, being a part of something irresepective of your problems at home/work/college and coming together for 2-3 weeks, meeting, planning, debating over retrospectively small things, taunting one another, sharing the responsibility. This is something we may be doing in college for say, the festivals, or at work for some event etc. but rarely in housing societies these days.
And even myself. I feel that I live in a co-operative housing society only once in a year. During Ganpati. Otherwise, who cares about one's neighbours these days! Everyone is so busy with his/her work that coming together as a community to do something is very very rare. I feel really bad at times that we, so-called civilized citizens do not even maintain regular contact with our neighbours. I feel a little awkward at times when I meet my neighbours outside. A smile at times. Not even that otherwise. There are many deeper reasons for this sort of behaviour as well. I live in Dahanukar Colony which falls in the Kothrud area of Pune city. This Dahanukar Colony is one of the most well-off areas in the city. One would find a pretty homogeneous society here. Mostly a Brahmin-dominated colony with people coming from the middle or upper middle class. But that is not my point. I do not wish to study my area socio-economically at this point.  would do that. I have done that to some extent already. One would find a certain behavioural trait associated with people living in Dahanukar Colony. I would not generalize. I know very very notable exceptions to this trait as well. Anyway, that is something one has to live with and respect. For, this is what living in a society would ideally mean. Whatever differences we have, we respect the differences. Up to the point we feel it is not harmful for the rest. Tolerance is something we should learn by living in a society. But there is another value which I would like to stress upon here. Fraternity. The feeling of brotherhood/sisterhood. I remember my Civics textbook in school where we used to have some part from the Constitution where we said we would be honest, peaceful, tolerant, secular and fraternal citizens of this country and even the world.
I do not wish to go deep into the issues of societal structure and the dynamic relationship of it with nation-building at this point. For, I find myself incapable of it at this point. I just want to share something which we have been doing in our society for some time now. I am proud of what we do during Ganpati. But then there are always more things which can be done. Why only during Ganpati? Of course, we would love to have that feeling of community during other times of the year as well. I would also like to highlight the fact that even we are not perfect organizers. We have our low moments. There are people even in our society who get left out. Someone with some serious family problem feels left out. Someone with a certain physical/mental disability may feel left out. Our watchmen who guard the Ganpati and the buildings may feel left out and think - what wrong did I do that I and my family cannot enjoy the privileges all these people enjoy? It's all a part of social structure. Again a very deep thing it is. But we have to live on. Live and let live.
We, ten or so young people love organizing Ganpati Utsav here. It all begins with laziness initially, but as Ganpati comes closer we go through that phase - Arey Ganpati basvaychay ka nahi? Serious vha na zara! (Should we install ganpati this year or not? Please be serious, people), then we start collecting contribution from the people living in our society. Starting with booking the Ganpati idol, to planning for events to held during Ganpati. Decorating the place around the Ganpati with lights, mandav, padade(curtains :-p) and small things which we fight on during the decoration part. It is fun! There is a lot of emotion involved. One does not know whether God exists or no. But let us assume he exists(mathematics does show everywhere). Even if we  assume so, all of work day and night, plan, meet people in our society and say aartis, organize events, food etc. Don't we feel something different? We do. I have felt it. I have felt emotionally very different when I am involved in things like this. When your feeling is pure and innocent, when you just want to do it, you don't care about pessimistic things. You do not worry about the existence of God. If the assumption of his existence can make us think so much about ourselves, about our family, about our society, about the happiness of our society, why worry about the non-existence part deeply? Why intellectualize so much? I just love being a part of something and if God is something that brings people together, so be it. I believe in God for that. I may not agree with all the rituals and traditions. But I feel connected to my society, to my country through this God. I love doing this. I would like to thank all my friends in my society for taking the initiative and making things work. It is a good feeling. Emotional but good. No doubt. We still have 6 days of Ganpati left in our society as I write this. I am sure we'll do well this time too. Ganpati Bappa Moraya! Ani jara pavsacha bagh re Ganaraaya! Khup padtoy ya varshi! Thambavach ata! ;-)           

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!! :-)