A just-a-guy 's tale

2008-01-08T18:57:00.000-08:00

It isn't today that tortures me but the absence of yesterday
And the only souvenir it left me
Intrigued? ..... Listen

Tangled in the myriad tapestries of gold and velvet
And yet all his eyes saw was but an endless sea of black
And all his skin felt was the touch of cold ice
Screaming into his mind with utter disdain the obvious
I am numb
But what else would darkness have me do
And what would the cold chill further prove
For what is gold without the ray of light
To bestow humbly upon its head its crown
And without the touch of a delicate hand
Would not eyes on velvet frown?
Those were my walls
For a few hours when the sun fell gaily upon my skin
For a few hours when I saw, smelled, tasted, felt
For a few hours when I lived.... and I was happy
Those were my walls
My day
And no one could take it away from me.
Or so I thought...
For as night announced itself with a grandoise and flair
That would make daddy Death proud
I was left standing... ignorant
And as lust overcame the bounds of my space
In the darkness, outside of prying eyes
I was still standing... ignorant
Then the air played cupid and poured its heat
Into the passion of the walls
And the union was complete
And I in the midst
Collateral damage
Was left
Tangled in the myriad tapestries of velvet and gold.

2007-09-25T08:28:00.000-07:00

(cont. from prev post)
But at least Microsoft had some sort of physics... some rigid objects while some could be knocked over... some mass on the cars at turns that reqd good usage of the brakes and allowed you to slide on gravel turns that made it realll fun (until an opponent car comes blasting through and you start cursing again.) Cuz then there came this ... this .... well ... sorry thing to be called a game called the Sega Rally. It was supposedly an arcade game... then an Xbox 360 game and now a PC game too.
I don't know who did the crossing over to the game, man.. cause the version I have isn't completely done. Why, you ask? Well.. firstly when I go to configure the controls (which sadly one can do only before actually going into the game) I see an Xbox 360 controller showing me all the controls that I can use to ..... THAT'S RIGHT... I CAN'T CONFIGURE THE CONTROLS BECAUSE IT'S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE CONTROLLED BY A KEYBOARD(???!!!!!). So anyway, having resigned myself to my fate I go on into the game anyway. I start a race and it's all well and good so far. Then the race begins... but my car is still there. I know I've pressed a button .. the universal racing default key for acceleration... the up arrow key but my car's still there.
Now I'm completely befuddled. So then I go onto the keyboard and start pressing keys at random. Suddenly my car jumps to life and then again slows down. Then I also catch sight of a sudden flailing of the car tyres like it's been given a shock. This exercise has now me scratching my head. Progress. Then finally after a full five minutes I realize what the controls are. It's A and Z for accelerating and decelerating and then the punchline ... the side keys?? The > bracket key and < bracket key. Well.. aren't the Sega people clever. What a joke has been played on me. I'm laughing hilariously at this utterly hilarious modification that has been hilariously thrust on me. Sighhh
Then I restart the race. It begins and as soon as my car starts it also starts flailing about helplessly bouncing off the sides of the road like a ping-pong ball. Now I'm intrigued, since having played my share of racing games I'm more or less acquainted with how cars deal in games but this wasn't something I expected: possibly the most sensitive turning device ever. Let's put this into a little bit of perspective... I could perform a 180 degree hairpin turn while going at a 100 mph while holding the side control down for all of two seconds. That's right... without pressing the decelerator. !!! . I grappled with the controls for the next three races only to find some semblance of a redeeming quality in its control... but I came out of that exercise an utter dunder-headed failure.
It was after my failed attempts that I noticed something else. All through my hopeless driving, the car had managed to fascinatingly stay on track and further not overturn even once. I never faced the wrong direction either. How was this possible?? The answer was simple. The boundary was set up so that it was completely rigid. It didn't matter if it was a simple wooden fence or rocks or a mountain slope... it was like you had two brick walls on either side... so all that would really happen is that you would lose a bit of speed. OOoooo.
The thing that actually angered me the most was that graphics were actually good, the cars looked good, they used the actual car models used in the WRC which would lead me to believe that they had some sort of permission from these car companies (or not.. who knows) and that the tracks were amazingly interesting. Rather than become a racing classic.. this game chooses to let the user grapple endlessly with the control while his car bounds of the brick wall boundaries on either side and then manages to make it past the finish line without as much as a scratch on it. I don't know if I have some whacked out version of the game but I would like to believe I would... if only to keep in my mind the fact that SEGA is not completely s*it.
Meanwhile however, I am on the lookout for the mother of all rally games... the Colin McRae Rally .. something that will run on my PC. Here's keeping my finger's crossed :D

2007-09-25T07:37:00.000-07:00

A familiar sight: the white dominated screen of the new post tab of blogger. It's been some time since I've posted in the blog ... or for that matter commit any sort of ink (electronic or otherwise) to any sort of writing surface. The reason was simple: exhaustion..... for want of a better word. I had renounced all form of effort required for doing anything I deemed of importance ever since the summer holidays came to the most boring end: a normal one. Even now... it is only by sheer force and will that my fingers crawl across the keyboard painfully stroking down keys one by one. I started blogging more or less as a catharsis for all that was pent up in my life. Well ... now ... I'm emotionally spent. All that remains is pure nothingness.... pure vacuum; empty.
So how does one deal with this after the same spot was once a dangerous roller coaster ride? Well.. by distraction; not thinking about the fact that there is nothing there. And how does one distract oneself from this without working?? Well, there are people all around the world working on things that can help you do this. This enterprise is in a peak of sorts and has been responsible for many millionaires in the past decade or so. And the geek mind has taken to these products more readily than to something obvious like say... real life. That's right ladies and gents... video games.
And that's right I'm into gaming. Not in a big "I want to be the guy who can frag someone using a rail gun in mid air" kinda way (Quake reference here, although I'm not really interested in the game). In fact, my interest lies only in racing games and so I went after the NFS series. The most obvious choices was the underground series because unlike a lot of people I find cops on my tail trying to run me of the road in mostly fatal ways while I'm trying to race completely badass tracks and negotiating completely badass turns a little painful somewhere. But once they were done I was tired with the urban landscape. I wanted something different ... and so I looked for the games at the other end of the spectrum -- off road races... and in particular ... rally races of which I found three. Let's just quickly see what they were:

1> Colin McRae DiRt
2> Microsoft Rallisport Challenge
3> Sega Rally

The first in this list was an 8gb iso + 12 gb on hard disk whopper -- not something my 1gb RAM and 256MB graphics card was ready to handle and the game ended up playing coughing up frames like an old man with lung cancer. Don't get me wrong though... whatever little I did see of the game was awesome.... with a brilliant menu system that has you salivating at it for a few minutes before you feel like going in for a race. And the menu helps... taking you through several options that end up actually taking a few mins to get to your first race. But enough about this... onto less magnificent things
And so came Microsoft's offering that truly was less magnificent. The game wasn't all that bad and the tracks were actually well thought out and challenging. What did however start jarring later was the back view of some cars while you were racing with a third person view which were severe enough to have been fashioned out of rectangles alone. The sad thing is these masterpieces of cubism are actually third level unlocks which ends up being.... well ... anticlimactic. The real sad thing about the game, though, is the physics which ends up annoying the s*it out of you (as proof is the fact that this game has qualified as the most sworn-at-by-me game I've every played... and that's including the 2D Prince of Persia games... 1 & 2). Cars totaling over as if they had no mass.... rival cars banging at you like they had infinite mass letting you spin out of control while they zoomed on ahead without any effect on their paths whatsoever. And then there was the absence of the reset button which basically made sure that every time you actually did end up facing the wrong way.. even though it wasn't your fault... you would lose at least 5 secs on your opponents.
(cont...)

2007-05-28T05:58:00.000-07:00

In the dusk of May, before the dusk of day, as the afternoon sun beats down upon the earth like vengeance and as hot humid winds feel like warm, viscous liquid currents upon one's skin, there is only one sight for sore eyes: the light dims, and winds intensify as black forms stretched above crawl noiselessly across the smooth sky on invisible legs and one sees it. On a bicycle, on a road, the eyes lose focus, for just a second to be able to see a drop of something fall from out of the sky and the body exhales as one a gigantic sigh of relief -- a summer rain. There are few things more virtuous found on earth than falling water on a summer day.

The drops now get more frequent. Spots form on the thighs of trousers while legs trudge away mustering all their strength to accelerate. There is a sudden burst of life on the streets. Everyone wants the rain. No one wants to get wet. Legs swish away, handlebars are rotated further back... the one word to describe the whole canvas of life -- acceleration... and struggle; struggle against nature itself, to achieve a sense of victory over its minions at work. Some nearby where they need to be, some just started out; distances of all sizes are to be covered. Those nearby thank their stars, those not think such things always happen to them and continue their journey feeling sorry for themselves, sometimes guiltily. Thousands of thoughts suddenly change speed and direction -- acceleration.

Defiance, however, is something best exploited in the heat of the moment. Sooner or later rationale catches up and realizes that it's time to find shelter and as human and machine huddle anywhere there is shelter; trees, building foyers, shops, eyes again look to the streets and find cars still swishing past, sometimes a little water thrown off the roads at the huddles, and again self pity rears its head, this time however, conscience not making as much of an attempt to stop it. It is obvious therefore that being in the midst of these huddles is not the best place to be at such a time.

I have often wondered and asked, what is the best place to be stuck in a rain. Many tend to say, home; so that they can snuggle into their blankets with L Subramaniam, Jagjit Singh, Alanis Morissette or even Tchaikovsky floating through their ears. Maybe. But not for me. I found that place. A tea stall. Not a big one mind you, one of those small places completely open on one side, corrugated tin or asbetos roof, maybe even with a couple of holes and rust, wooden benches and tables and a typical chaiwaala glass possibly with a special double chai and a radio concealed somewhere, old from wear and use, playing a slightly distorted old hindi film tune. Life doesn't
get more relaxed; beyond the daily pressures of standing up to society's scrutiny of being a well mannered, well spoken, decent human being, confirmed by an expletive every now then flying through the air, sometimes even from a group of well dressed respectable looking people. The only constraint on humans here is their own conscience... and seeing a place like this function re-affirms one's faith in humankind; that there is some virtue that can be salvaged from what seems to be a fast degenrating world, that people like the ones who sit before me now exist, and that moments like these exist when the petty troubles of daily life are put on hold to enjoy a cup of tea and smile a little. From acceleration ... to revisiting a dying faith in humanity. All during a summer rain....

2007-05-19T08:39:00.000-07:00

A tribute to a Mr. Bob Seger, who managed to take the garbled confused words I was stuttering and stammering to say, taking it apart and then putting it all back together; a song that now comfortably resides in my brain and a song that I listen to give me solace... knowing that by singing this, I have said what I wanted to say.
For hearts we long for that cross oceans.... just to be far away:

I know its late, I know you're weary
I know your plans dont include me
Still here we are, both of us lonely
Longing for shelter from all that we see
Why should we worry, no one will care girl
Look at the stars so far away
We've got tonight, who needs tomorrow?
We've got tonight babe
Why don t we stay?

Deep in my soul, I've been so lonely
All of my hopes, fading away
I've longed for love, like everyone else does
I know Ill keep searching, after today
So there it is girl, I've got it all now
And here we are babe, what do you say?
We've got tonight, who needs tomorrow?
We've got tonight babe
Why dont we stay?

I know its late, I know youre weary
I know your plans dont include me
Still here we are, both of us lonely
Both of us lonely
We've got tonight, who needs tomorrow?
Lets make it last, lets find a way
Turn off the light, come take my hand now
Weve got tonight babe
Why dont we stay?
Weve got tonight babe
Why dont we stay?

2007-04-19T09:49:00.000-07:00

A song I wrote for all my friends passing out this year... and specifically for my wingmates. If you find the lyrics a little too cheesy... I couldn't help it ... not when I got that sento. :D . For all you guys

T'was the dead of night
Tired souls huddled over each other
As sleep wove its magic blanket
And the tarmac raced on below.
We were driving back to our present
Leaving the past behind
City lights in the background
Glowing bright, fading sloww...
Ly.
And as I try to walk down
Nostalgia Rd., Dream Street
Hope Avenue, all at once
Stardust falling into my eyes
The monotony of black
Singing me a sweet lullabye
And I realize

It's the end of the road, for many of us
We knew this day must come.
But we denied, that there would be a time
When our hands held together would come undone.

And as the last few days here
Draw to a neverending close
When each moment that we spend
Is the last of its kind.
A small tear everytime we remember
Days that we never cared for
Wishing we had known then
The way we feel now.

'Cause it's the end of the road, for many of us
We knew this day must come.
But we denied, that there would be a time
When our hands held together would come undone.

Two months to the day
When an open door invites me in
An empty room stares me in the face
(It was better when it was dirty)
And as reality
Fades into a hazy memory
I am reminded that the imagination
Can only do so much
And that you're no longer here.....

It's the end of the road, for many of us
We knew this day must come.
But we denied, that there would be a time
When our hands held together would come undone.

:)

2007-03-22T22:27:00.000-07:00

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

2007-02-21T01:01:00.001-08:00

The scene began in the back alley of a diner. It was nighttime but you couldn’t really tell except by looking at the sky; the alley seemed to be well lit. Right in front of me, two people were in the midst of a heated argument. One of them, a rugged, full bearded, disheveled looking Sly Stallone and the other seemed to be the owner of the diner. After a brief period of defending himself from the constant verbal attacks of the owner implicating him of being a has-been boxer, Stallone starts to walk off.

The next second I’m walking down the same path he was feeling the same anger in my heart that he probably did when a guy comes out of nowhere and tells me that my wife is in the hospital in a coma and that the child birth has suffered complications. At that moment I’m confused. My mind is trying to remember – am I still with her or have we broken up? Do I go visit her in the hospital? Does she want me to visit her? Battling these questions in my mind, I walk on and before long end up on the front steps of a derelict apartment block. The street seems to be completely dark save for the solitary bare bulb hanging above the steps streaming a small circle of light, almost like a spotlight on the floor.

I then hear footsteps from up the small flight of stairs and a man emerges into the light. He’s wearing a shabby overcoat and a cloth cap on his head. The shadow of his hat obscures his face, making it in no way discernable. He looks at me kneeling behind a car parked on the street beyond the curb, just out of reach of the light and calls out to me.

“Hey! What’re you doin’ there?”

I look towards him, a dense cocktail of fear and excitement building up inside me, like I was anticipating something big that was supposed to happen and had no idea what it would be.

“It’s the night of the revolution!” I hiss in return. My heart begins to pound louder with the growing silence enveloping the air all around, but my heart is silent. I can feel my chest thump, but without any sound, almost as if scared into silence.

“Then how come it’s so silent?” The voice slices through the silence almost making me jump. It’s the man in the overcoat. He’s still standing there possibly wondering what I’m actually doing.

A slow smile spreads through my face, some kind of energy building up inside of me, the kind of energy that comes from not only suddenly finding your purpose but also being presented with the opportunity to fulfill it.

“Because it’s a silent revolution”, I hiss back again and in an instant I leap up, lunge at the man and in one gruesome move twist his head a full 180 degrees. Before he falls to the ground, like a deranged madman, with a sick smile on his face, I begin running up the flight of stairs. I hear a soft thump behind me somewhere in the back and start laughing. Silently. Like I am suddenly part of a mime. I might as well have been; everything around me is shades of black, white and yellow.

I run up several flights without stopping once, that grin plastered on my face, only stopping once I reach the top floor where I find myself in a corridor, a really long one, opening out into the nothingness outside on one side and bound by a wall housing a long row of doors on the other. One of the doors is open and it’s dark inside. A figure walks out of the open door, a human figure. The grin from my face disappears. My eyes were accustomed to seeing in the dark by then but I cannot see this person. All I see is a black form. At once it seems natural and yet unnatural.

“What’s going on?” he asks. His voice is so serene, so mellifluous, so calming that I try to imitate this peace in mine. “It’s a silent revolution!” I whisper out and immediately look out toward the open barren sky and start slowly singing “Silent night… Holy night…” and while I do not know the words of the actual song, I sing a verse relevant to the coming of the revolution. The melody I sing is haunting; it is the only sound in the atmosphere. The air is still, no leaves rustle, no soul stirs. It sounds like …..

Then a voice again begins “Silent night…. Holy night…”. It is the man behind me and how beautifully he sings it! How rich is his voice! Yet he sings it meekly, the song is supposed to be haunting in its melody, asserting an uncertainty through minimalism of sound; it was the anthem of the revolution. Oh joy! I have found my kin! I have found my family! Someone I can trust, love…. And then realization hits me.

I turn around and I know I must embrace this man and so in one grand gesture I hold out my arms and start toward him. He too raises his arm and in less than a second, he’s clasped me in his arms, tighter…. Tighter!…… TIGHTER!! His claws dig into my back when I realize, this is Satan, the devil, this is the father of the revolution and I know about it! I must pay with my life!! His grip suffocates me while his claws dig further into my flesh…. I feel my blood flowing down my back in multiple streams and slowly, I feel myself losing consciousness!... slowly I feel myself slipping away further… and further! … and further!!.... without any control!… without any power to change it! … slipping away!… AND SUDDENLY… I’m back in the real world!… on my bed! … I’m awake but slowly losing consciousness!… again slipping away!! … into sleep or death I cannot tell!… And in one final gesture I muster all my might!… I MUST WAKE UP!!

I sit up at once on my bed, my feet numb, my fingers numb, both from the cold, yet a bead of sweat makes its way slowly down the side of my face. It was just a nightmare…

2007-02-01T19:18:00.000-08:00

The only reason I now take up writing a new post is because its been wayyyyy toooo long since I've actually scribbled here. Thing is, life , it seems, had a few surprises in store for me. And as all surprises go, some were good... some not so much. Far for me to play arbiter to things that have happened to me over the past few weeks, but the thing is, everything that is happening feels almost trivial. How so? It all started with my new years resolutions.....

Thing is, last year wasn't such a hot year for me. Personally. A few good things and one very good thing did happen to me... but I was more sad than happy. The whole urban angst routine, you may call it, but the truth is the whole pain thing got comfortable for me. I wrote poems on them, songs on them .... the whole works. The whole works, that is, till the Epiphany.

Don't ask me where it came from, don't ask me how. It just happened. Somewhere along the line, it just struck me that all I was was a whiny sob, no different from any of those million and a one teen angst rockers that have me cringing at their "pain". And worse still, my problems weren't big... maybe they were to me, but I'm a (touch wood and thank god for this) well provided for kid. Even though the source of a lot of my "sadness" was the fire inducing friction between the people who provided for me, and even though that fire, on a lot of occasions, burnt me too, I was in essence just a kid feeling sorry for himself. So it was time to turn my life around.

Such things are however, easier said than done. It was at this time, though, my grandpa came to my rescue. The fact that he was no more didn't matter. The importance of deeds came back to me. Something he'd done just before dying, more than ten years ago, now came back to help me, giving me the breathing space I had always wanted. Maybe this was how things were meant to be. Maybe this was some grand design to make my becoming more independent easier. This kind of reasoning may seem very egocentric, but for each person, he/she is the centre of his/her life; for them everything revolves around them, their existence. Aham Brahmasmi. And in spite of all its flaws, this reasoning made me feel more powerful, more in control of where I was heading. And that was a good thing. So through this churning of thoughts came a very cliched new year resolution:

I resolve to make this the year of change. I resolve to look at all my problems as potential sources of solutions. I resolve not to feel sorry for myself, and if inclined to do so, I will remember the horrors that so many more less fortunate people are facing. And finally, I resolve to make myself independent. I have gotten too big for the walls that protect me. It is time to step out into the real world and stop hanging onto some crazy idea that I'm still a kid. It is time to become........ (sighhhhh) an adult.

I think its clear now how I have resolved to trivialize the issues in my life. Well, not so much trivialize, as much as put into perspective. But it is happening. Will this actually turn my life around? Will it come back to bite me in the a**? I don't know. I guess I have to just wait and see. So here's wishing all the self pitying bastards and the rest of you a veryyyy latteee happy new year

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

Keeping my fingers crossed throughout..... :)

2006-09-21T22:43:00.000-07:00

I was sitting out in the open last night; had just talked on the phone. Not many people actually call me up. Just those closest to me. And I like to talk in open spaces. So there I was, sitting alone, on a place referred to as mess-top: the roof atop the mess. The sky was clear a couple of minutes ago. Now it was engulfed in thick white clouds. They were moving fast. Very fast. Almost like thick white smoke billowing out of a chimney as big as the world making its way across the night sky. The factory attached to the chimney was working in full force, it seemed. The vision almost scared me.
Then it started. At first, it was light, nothing above a drizzle. I began thinking about a lot of things; things I was thankful for, things worth cursing the Gods about. How long it lasted I do not know. Only that it was long enough for me to start wondering how much longer it was going to last. Then the drops became more in number. They became bigger. I wondered if it was a good time to go in now. But that's all I did. Wonder. I didn't move. The rain only got worse from there but I didn't feel like moving.
I thought hard about why I didn't feel like moving. The fact that just before the rain started I put the cell phone I had on me inside and then came back and sat at the same spot made me rule out laziness. At which point a voice inside me told me to sod off and leave the thought alone. And that's when it struck me. I just didn't care.
The last time I "didn't care", I made a waiter, at a restaurant I was having dinner in, believe I was an Australian just to up the service I was being provided. The last time I "didn't care", I frustrated a salesman at a Planet-M by asking him to look for cds that were extremely rare and when he did find a few of them, told him I'd come back later to pick them up and never went back. The last time I "didn't care", I told all my friends that I was possessed by an evil spirit and then attacked the warden as a demonstration. Its been over three years since then. Closer to three and a half actually. I'd supposedly "grown-up". Funny. I never saw that coming.
Then last night I was reminded again what it felt like. Three years ago this was a way of keeping my identity. An identity beyond an exam writing machine, beyond a number. 01I5130. Maybe it is my exaggerated romanticism that makes me relate to shows like Dark Angel. But back then, when I wasn't "free", that was my only revolt against a system that I hated from the very core of my heart and yet had to succeed in. It was what kept me sane and looking forward to a brighter tomorrow. It was my identity, my attitude, my solace, my escape. It was my name. Didn'tcare.

2006-09-17T04:10:00.000-07:00

Article rating: meaningless unless you prefer otherwise.

It's evening time and I'm taking time out from studying for a very theoretical exam of a very theoretical subject taught by a very senile man. His stories are stuff legends are made of and so my humble blog will not be able to pay homage enough to this great soul. And that is not my purpose either. Thing is even when I'm studying, a part of my brain always works thinking about something completely irrevelant to the task at hand ( note: this happens only when I'm studying and it is also what some self-righteous buggers call "day-dreaming"). Today's topic I realize is: why are geeks made fun of universally?

To all those on the other side of this tunnel, the answer may seem pretty obvious. But from our side, its all a big blur. I have to admit here, I was a geek. But now I get to know that the Brotherhood of the Geek is a lifetime- membership- only offer. At least to the rest of the world it is. So according to most people I do know, I'm still a geek. Fine by me. Whatever suits you. But then they start treating you like a geek. Now you're intrigued. You wish you could tell them that geek or no geek, the undergrad as a class is very very consistent in its behavorial patterns and is independent of location, class, creed, sex (this I'm not so sure, 'cause in engg. its more or less a homogenous male) and above all, the college. Maybe this is a phenomenon only in India. I don't know. But here at least I find myself evaluating the behaviour of every collegeman I know, wherever they are, as completely normal.

But even among us "geeks", there is a further classification which again involves the branding of the now known supergeeks. Seeing them I slightly begin to understand. Normal people can't picture a geek doing the normal things of life (like having a girlfriend, partying, and getting laid.... which is more or less an exhaustive list as far as the undergrad goes). For example, can you picture a Steve Urkel look alike with horn rimmed glasses or glasses so thick you can't see through them, with pants pulled up so high his balls could get sliced, pulling the "moves" on the opposite sex. You might picture him screaming "E=mc2!", "E=mc2!" when playing what a certain conglomerate has termed our favorite sport.

However the mistake I think people make is generalization, or as symbolic logic would tell you, fallacy of division. Just because the collective group has a property does not imply that each individual has the same property. The case is the same for when guys smile at a girl. I've been at the recieving end of that one. Supposedly, you can't smile at someone as a part of being polite. People have laughed at my face when I told them I smile because I want to be polite. What's wrong with being polite?!!

The answer to that lies in the following questions....
1) Have any of your parents
a) undergone sex change?
b) written porn novels?
c) killed themselves or abandoned you?

2) Has your wife
a) turned a lesbian?
b) turned a lesbian?
c) left you at the altar?

3) Are you
a) an obsessive compulsive?
b) someone who sleeps with women and never calls them back...... EVERYDAY?
c) the kind of person who believes in valentine's day bad boyfriend bonfires?

4) Why do you want to be like someone who's the culmination of Manhattan madness and the above events?

Wow. This is not the way I intended this thing to go. But I guess its out so its out. Man, I enjoy shows like FRIENDS and the ilk but I do not see the need for people here to be like them. And the stereotypes these shows portray are partly why we have all this shit today. But the saddest thing of all? I'm prey to this. I called a guy wearing a pink shirt gay, behind his back. I tried, man but its hard. Its as they say. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Thus saying I should introduce myself to the Americanized Anonymous.
Hi, my name is Shravan, and I have been Americanized.

2006-09-16T19:40:00.000-07:00

Finally, after months of trying to remember just what the name of my last blog was, I found it. It would not have been far fetched to say that it was probably in one of the most obscure corners of the internet. But I found it. It had just one post. So I decided I'd put that post up here. It's a poem and I'm not sure how good it is. Topic wise its cliched... all that post-modern urban angst, which is ironic in a way, since a large portion of my life was actually spent in two villages. But anyway, I decided to put it up any way..... so here goes

Swirling, fast, into nothingness
Trying to look for a purpose
Whose existence is as much a mystery
As its end. Deeds,
Done upon noone in particular
Looked upon in the crude of day
Left in the doom of night
Spelt destruction in a hazy past
As minutes creep by
In a maze
Left with noone to feel for.
Kindness, virtue overshadowed.
Stronger forces rule....
Natural or unnatural, questions
Left to answer themselves
Explain their own paradoxes.
Each man to himself
Indifference
Localized discrimination
Exception to the law?
As saints scream in unison
Into the air
Only to let their voices be lost in the wind....
Noone is real.....Noone is true....
How can there be anyone true.....
Condemned by society....
They remain shadows.....
Like characters out of a book....
Each with a fairy tale......
Stuff faded to legends
And yet I look....
Like a fool I look and set myself an outcaste...
Empty
Looking for but silence to fill me

2006-07-07T22:30:00.000-07:00

Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear;
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Brevity, Thomas Gray's brilliance, clinches these four lines the distinction of being the most beautiful lines of poetry in my mind now. Before they had been nothing more than the string of words were themselves. Lines of poetry. That is ... till yesterday. For some reason I myself cannot understand, I had suddenly become curious about a man who lived opposite my accomodation here in Bangalore. To me he looked much more than what he showed himself to be. So I started imagining him in his completeness trying to fill in myself what I thought he would be hiding. And I came up with this:

Under the visage of a rock
Beggar like countenance
Shoes too big for his feet
Dirty pink shirt tucked deep inside
A pair of pants pulled too high
Lived a legend, unparalleled
Walking stooped
Head swinging to either side
(His brain was heavy, apparently)
Shuttling between two shoddy buildings
Each one room large
Cut in two by a street
One to sleep in, one to eat in
Lived a legend, unparalleled
Dome shaped head, tapering to the top
Eyes looking to faraway infinity
Except when made human by a pair of glasses
Worn during a morning
Of reading the news
With a twinkle in the eye and a smile
The gleam of a child who knows it's right
Grown with care, day after day
Maximum today, no one knew
As the words slowly unfolded before him
Ten thousand die in Indonesia
(Because no one listened)
Morning evening spent talking to the Gods
In silence
Never betraying meaningless contemplation
Petting kids who run back home crying
(Monster, mother had pointed to him and said
And mother was always right.)
The neighbourhood lived out its monotony
Day in and day out
Never realizing that in its midst
There lived a man who held the world
Never listened to him proclaim
The end of the world is here
Said he, the end of the world is here
And still no one listened
For dead was the neighbourhood that lived out its monotony
And in its midst,
Lived on, a legend unparalleled

This I wrote straight out. And then finally read the results. I had in essence said what Gray had already said in those very four lines. And that was when it struck me. Brevity. Thomas Gray's brilliance. The simple four lines came alive in my mind, its ferocity of awakening rivalled only by one Mr. Frankenstein.

2006-07-04T03:54:00.000-07:00

My vain attempt to capture a beautiful evening over here. I decided to put it in here anyway.....

Everything stands still...
No wind blows ... no leaves stir...
Afraid to move ...
Lest I break the brilliance; silence
That at dusk shines through
The brightest noon
And shames it to submission
Fluid... continuous...
In the monsoon
That humbles the calmest flow
In the ides of march
Without as much as a careless whisper
Neither to celebrate victory
Nor to pronounce defeat.
In silence it speaks
Commanding absolute attention
And so I surrender
My body, my mind, my soul
As a soft rhythm prances
Within the deepest goche of my heart
Carrying my mind far away
To a land of dreams
Where another heart awaits my arrival
A smile.... a laugh
Mute ...
Yet fingers tremble
Trying deperately to crawl
In a vain attempt to capture the moment....
The smile.... the laugh.. again
Mute still ....
Sends back pain
Stained with a kiss.....
Dusk now .... dusk then....
Dusk face ... to dusk face..
Engulfed whole....
Without return ...
Who craved return anyway?.....
Sit listening ...
Nature's music....
Silence......
Bliss.....

2006-07-03T07:02:00.000-07:00

As I bang my head on the wall that adjoins my computer looking at how a 100 line matlab code can go so terribly wrong that at the end I get a string a NaN for my solution and repeatedly ask every god who isn't deaf why the goddam program just won't work, I come to another spiritual enlightenement. The program won't work. Period. I probably have to list that .... that ....... thing ...... NaN.... as one of my ten worst fears. NaNophobia if you may. But the fact remains. So this article will try to be an ode to simply one of the most brilliant software ever. EVER. An ode to Matlab.
My relationship with Matlab started just this summer and judging by things it'll be a summer romance I initiated and now forever regret. Don't get me wrong. In this short time itself we've been through a lot. Negative kelvin temperatures, that .. that Nan thing and errors galore, errors that have me scratching my head for hours on end until I find I ended up missing a ' (the single quote) somewhere in some obscure corner of my program and has caused this otherwise harmless character to also become a source of fear and dread in my weak mind.
Sigh.......
Sigh.......
Sigh .........
Another sigh......
Still another sigh.......
A sigh to end all sighs......
I want to put down the long series of ups and downs I've had with Matlab, from being able to stand it to absolutely wanting to indulge myself in taking the computer apart, wire by wire, screw by screw while it is still switched on (Doesn't help, though ..... it switches off in an instant neway). But I do not find words to describe it....
Sigh........
Sigh........
Another sigh......
A sigh to end all sighs
A sigh to end the sigh to end all sighs.......
..................
.................
........................
.........................
.........................
.......................

Sigh............

2006-07-02T00:12:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer1: This isn't intended to be funny. I do not want all the readers of this post to tell me how bad my attempt at humour was. It isn't meant to be funny.
Disclaimer2:I have no reason behind this post. So do not break your head and try to figure out the metaphysical or deeply emotional implications of this post (refer to disclaimer1)

My latest should-have-been-enlightenment moment...... how nothing in the world is permanent and is only is a state of transition. You know what brought it about? Rock. (I mean the music) Observe...

me: you know ..... with time everything sucks
siddharth: true
that's a nice aphorism right there

(Siddharth's aphorisms -- (sigh) let the example explain ...
an example: twisted is a hair straightener)

me: i kinda got my hands on stairway and kashmir ...........so listenend only to tht for three
weeks straight
siddharth: paige is god..but i HATE plant
me:now i hate 'em
siddharth: LOL..... thats saaaaad
me: yeah .... dude i now hate the best rock song ever written
so neone who praises it from now on can come @#$% ON MY !@#*
see where im at?

If at this point I have to explain what stairway and kashmir are .... (sighhhhhh). Now this should have been the moment where the realization should have come if only we had dwelt on the topic a little longer. Watch the moment pass.

me: that is sad
ohh welll
i resign myself to the fate that is death
and as nails slowly drive themselves
into my coffin
i can only lie down inside
frozen
still
paralyzed
being suffocated and buried alive
siddharth: hmm
me: i think i feel a song coming
hmmmm
siddharth: u just wrote a metal song :-D
dude
nice thought sync here
me:i know ......
i KNOW
(silence) .......
.............
.............
(a little more silence)
siddharth: oi....heard no remorse of cannibal corpse?

and so my dear friends dear enlightenment was lost. It could have been there. Then the fact that I now hate Led Zep's best would have been partly compensated. But alas .... ohh well. BRING ON THE NOISE!!
(maybe a few more meaningless posts are in order .... hmmm)

2006-06-27T22:25:00.000-07:00

My recent hiatus from posting (though it is only two posts old) was due to a hectic summer internship I had this year (and yes I'm in the middle of it now). Hectic, though, was for all the wrong reasons. I think I spent most of my time observing life itself, which I find I now look at from near-detached third person point of view thanks to a secluded campus life. I also realize that my previous two posts were an attempt to be emotional in my writing since that was a time when, well, I needed an outlet.
This post will not be one like that. In fact this will contain no emotion whatsoever. Just a bland writing that will serve as a transition from where I started and where I now intend to go. The thing is, when I started out I wanted to bring to light a crush I had actually had for four years (no not the same one as the one in the first post ... to let the cat out the bag, this crush was on the girl in the second post). Though, the reason may seem childish enough, I did this hoping that this would help me get over this girl who I actually thought about 24X7 every day of those four years. After a stage of denial I had come to try to accept the fact that I could never woo the girl (did that sound crude?). But the thing is what the head accepts the heart doesn't, not on many occasions. And so now too, I wasn't willing to let go, simply because I felt that it would mean a wastage without consequence of four years. And even when I write this, there is a tinge of nostalgia, remembering a time I was so whole heartedly devoted to the thought of a person who never really acknowledged my existence.
Recent events however have changed that. Everyone goes through stages of darkness only to see a light shine on them from the most unlikeliest of cracks in the fabric of the universe around them. And so it happened to me too. Looking back on my previous posts now it seems like a lame attempt to live a past I did not want to forget. Now, that past is buried and shall rest in peace at the back of my mind. A cliched statement of living in the present and living each moment to the fullest always stuck out in my mind but never made sense. I've come to realize that realization itself must be accompanied by consent and approval of any tenet by the heart. Without feeling the statement you can never really claim to understand it. So I stand today enlightened to a small well known truth. Doesn't seem very special, right? But when I think about the large chain of events that brought about this final realization, it brings a smile to my face, a smile that rests, peeking out from behind a curtain, unsure of whether to hide or show itself, even as I write this. These chain of events continue today and frankly I don't care what happens at the end. A lesson is a lesson is a lesson for which I will live in gratitude.... forever.

2006-04-19T08:01:00.000-07:00

As the din of the crowd cheering the Indian team in the last few overs of their second one day clash with arch rivals Pakistan fills my surroundings, I am caught reminiscing. That first day comes back into mind. First day where? That was a question every one who read the previous post asked me. I would like to clarify that this was my first day in Vikas, Vizag where I had enrolled to do my intermediate (or as some would refer to as senior high) so all the Kharagpur ppl who are already guessing as to who this girl could be can rest in peace. You guys don't know her. Or so I hope...... Anyway........

Break was coming to an end when suddenly a face popped in at the door. It was a girl's face and it was ......... well....... different. That was the first word that came to mind. Not beautiful, not ..... well a lot of things, but .... different. She stood there looking for a face in the chaos that was my classroom and in a few seconds she found it, rather found him, and beckoned him to her. This was what caught my attention. It was something I did not expect. It was a very naughty kind of come-and-catch me call... not unlike the stereotyped seductresses we catch on the tube. And it worked! This guy, tall, dark, lanky broke into a literal run!..... in the middle of a classroom aisle!......... which incidentally, as any student here will tell you, is scattered with the massive book laden bags of a lot of students and even though these bags were to the side, this guy's foot was especially adept at finding one...... and then kicking it....... and then letting him fall face down onto the ground. He managed to regain himself in an instant though and for a second seemed fazed like a person who had not the faintest idea of where or what he was. Another instant later it all came back to him and he resumed his run, the rest of the 10 meters, without incident. I don't think I have ever laughed harder inwardly (I was too polite to let him know I was watching) but it was more than utterly obvious this guy liked this girl a lot.

So I decided to meet him. For the next few days however I didn't. Whether I couldn't or just forgot I don't remember. But he caught my attention again a few days later as part of a group of four guys who kept yakking throughout a tutorial class. Since the lecturer hadn't really taught anything of consequence as yet, he did not really bother them. Intrigued as to what the topic of such elongated discussion could be I joined them the next period after introducing myself only to realize, to my surprise, once they resumed their discussion that it was about pornography on the internet. I didn't exactly join them much after that but I did grow to be good friends with this guy pretty fast. I will not reveal his name..... since people who know this guy well might also chance upon this blog..... This guy however, did not stay in my campus as long as he would have liked. This back-bench company of his, later caused a lot of academic work to pile up for him which constantly increased the pressure on him in terms of unfinished assignments and falling grades. Things got bad till this very girl who had beckoned him on the first day got a campus rank above him in a major exam. A few days later he shifted campus.

This is not what I intended today's post to be about. But I guess I went with the flow -- to remember one of the closest friends I had for that short period of time and a gem of a person whose only fault was being a giver........ he gave everyone a lot of fond memories..... even those back benchers he once hung out with........

2006-04-11T08:15:00.001-07:00

And so on embark on what will be my second attempt at blogging. Tried it once before only to find it had as many visitors as........ . Oh well I guess you get the idea. This time around though my puropose is different. Maybe its better that few people see it. All my life I have opened up to only inanimate objects. Maybe it should stay that way. Either way, I guess I have to get it out of me somehow right?........

It feels like yesterday when I first entered that partially lit classroom in the corner of a cramped building on the corner of a road (which, it should be noted, was smack down in the middle of town.) Funny thing is though somewhere between my brain and my heart time seems to have taken a hike. It feels like yesterday but I hardly recall the day. All I remember are glimpses of what I saw. No sound. No smell. Like a silent movie....... fast forwarded. A sea of faces more unknown than known flashed past me. Now when I look back, it seems a little comforting: they were as clueless as I was.

Classes were uneventful, as all first classes go. The usual "Hello everone I am Whatsisname. Could you please introduce yourselves?". Or so I would like to believe. I don't actually recall all this. But it feels about right. Come break and all order established just exploded into perfect pandemonium. Two periods down, I was beginning to feel intimidated. (Why? The roots of that lay in my dinner experience the previous night -- my first dinner in a hostel. It was animated with discussion which was nice to note since hardly anyone actually knew each other. Until it became clear what all the talk was about. In a hushed excitement fingers were pointing in all directions as vivid details of the extraordinary academic achievements of an alarmingly large number of students was laid out before one another. It was like the congregation of the greatest knights of the land -- "D'you know Sir Lancelot over there vanquished the great dragon in the caves of Hellsmouth?!" ...... and I had nothing like that to my name. To everyone I was just another guy. )

Then she came over...... She was a good friend from high school. And I had a crush on her. Part of me believed she knew, part of me believed she didn't. They fought a lot but I didn't care. As long as we were on talking terms....... A crush and friendship was as far as I was willing to go on the whole love thing. And she had a boyfriend. He was also a good friend of mine. So I let things stay. We talked for a while that day. When you're 200kms away from home and without many faces to look and smile at, you tend to get closer to the faces you can smile at. Thinking about that day I guess that was the best part of it all. Not the new faces, not the new surroundings, not the new challenges we were made aware of that day but the smile on a face I had known for five years in a place far away from home.......

(to be continued....)