both were a little annoyed with each other. i because he was. and as a result his annoyance was wearing off while mine was sharp and fresh. it was time to part for the time being. i thought i could hurt him by an impersonal and cold bye. attempted a mumble without looking at him and headed for the green and yellow rickshaw that was my victory escape. noone heard what he said. he just pulled my hand and the next moment my body lay standing limp against his. every bit of me. there was no defence. i felt him in every strand of myself. noone timed the hug. to me time stopped. it was one of those defining moments. when things obstinately declared their shape and meaning. i didn't utter a word on the way back and my companion who had been witness to the mute scene was too scared to make a sound.

all struggle was pointless after that.

micro-brahmaaan

there were nights in dschool when i would keep myself awake. like a solitary celebration of time on hand. the night after a major hurdle of an exam of sorts. i would rudely shake myself out of any hint of sleep that touched me. it would more often than not begin with some music while i could disturb the human co-habitants. after lights in rooms quit one by one, i would turn to some form of silent entertainment. reading. sometimes simply waxing my limbs leasurely, especially in slightly cold months when i loved warm wax on myself. staring at the moon from my balcony or just the sky from my bed upward. the moon i never tired of. when it showed on that side of the sky that is. and then creeping down to the ground floor to watch tv at 2-3 in the night when the socio-geog buffs finally left it alone. once i remember tired of it all and yet resolute on not sleeping i just slipped between the locked with a wide gap gate that supposedly shut out the terrace to us. and i just sat up, lay down, surrendered to the mosquitoes and nursed my bruises waiting for the sun to rise. and i did manage it. it was like a new beginning. like a maturity crossed. like i was there before the world began.

today i sort of feel like that. like forcing a jagran on my senses. like celebrating this leave i have with such difficulty weedled out of my boss. my boss who has given me a conviction in the soul's survival and rebirth after a body's death. because in no way can he be a one-time creation. nothing can ever produce as debased an output as him. nothing other than, a chain of deterioration.

but a night up cannot be accomodated in this busy schedule. its funny when i was in dschool i thought i had never been as busy as that and never used time better. i still think i was right and yet time flies by now. doing nothing of great value. while the great valued things wait for my laziness to wear off. have to do so much before i see that proof of rebirth again...

a new season here. half the year gone again. how time flies in this place

couldn't smell the champas today with this nose on temporary holiday. the paintings in visual gallery were disappointing. hit a bicycle on my way to work in the morning. and the guy didn't even curse. didn't even glare. just made sure his spokes were all there and pedalled off. knowing very well that i had the right to curse in this case. had my ears blocked in a weird sense because of this cold. made me feel handicapped in a way. and made a real accident on my way back dangerously probable. only to my scared mind. breathed agitation in more than out once more. and felt like last winter was just yesterday. already missing the summer.

to my right, though i couldn't see it cos there were so many cars obstructing view, i knew there was the loud red ball stopping traffic on my part of the street. and to my left, in the night sky was glowing a white ball, seemingly of peace.

diwali will be a moonless night. we will forget this beauty and won't even miss it

a mystery+an argument=an idea

why do magazines and all such weekly/fortnightly publications always come out in future dated issues? iv seen the phenomenon since i probably picked up my first copy of one. and yet today it struck me as really absurd. especially today, when every two hours or even more frequently the world financial scene is updating. i was reading online and there was so much that had happened in the last two days that i felt i had read volumes on it. and then i turned to the physical library and was faced with the choice between the two available mag prints in front of me. an Outlook dated the 13th of october and another dated the 18th of october. for a minute i lost my sense of real time. what was today. and both these had pages dedicated to the financial crisis. old stale news in the date of the future. upset my sense of reality and my value for information. so why do they do it? there has to be a logical reason for this practise.

some people gave me these answers.

one, a competitive market in which each publication wanted to outdo the other in terms of being 'new' in the market, and because unlike newspapers, such publications do not just report news, they dissect it in hindsight; they could afford to talk about past topics till much further into the future. so if you saw a Business World dated the 5th (Di) and another the 7th (Dj) of the same month the consumer mind would possibly be lured to buy the latest mag, even though the stories would be more or less the same in the two and the date of buying (Db) was say the 1st; which also implies that the rational mind knew the date of reporting/writing (Dr/w) couldn't in either be newer than the 31st/30th.

Choice{Di,Dj} = Dj; when j>i even though (Dr/w)for both i&j <= [31 or 30] < Db

the second answer, a more tangible one claims that vendors of such publications have deals with the mags which guarantees buyback of all unsold copies by the publishers. so the farther in future the date of publication is, the more time is available to sell more copies before the date the magazine is declared old, i.e. the date of publication.

reality may be a combination of the above two or of some more marketing strategies. if the weightage of the first reason is substantial, it would be interesting to do a behavioural/empirical human choice study testing perception of newness.

also in case of either of the two above, wouldn't a magazine be competing with another one of its own brand at a different date? so in the first case, the trick would have trickle down effects on the magazine's own 'older' issues (here i talk about 'older' issues that are still in future dates).

and in the second case, wouldnt there come a date earlier than the date of publication printed on a mag (the date when a more futuristic issue of the same mag hit the stands) when it would be declared old? on the other hand if not for this practise (the alternative being an honest declaration of date of publication), probably a mag issue would have remained 'new' till the next (honest dated) issue was out; thus gaining substantial sale time before the publishers were obliged to buy back. wouldn't that be closer to a mechanism in which truth telling was most efficient? but apparently there is an incentive to deviate.

(on cross checking i notice that all Outlook publishing dates are mondays. and yet 18th of october is not a monday. a lapse of my memory i guess yet i remember it so clearly. even the internet doesn't help reconfirm. the issue is/was too futuristic and is not up on the website)

the longest journey

i just read and re-read the most beautiful ramble i've ever come across

"The soul has her own currency. She mints her spiritual coinage and stamps it with the image of some beloved face. With it she pays her debts, with it she reckons, saying, “This man has worth, this man is worthless.” And in time she forgets its origin; it seems to her to be a thing unalterable, divine. But the soul can also have her bankruptcies.
Perhaps she will be the richer in the end. In her agony she learns to reckon clearly. Fair as the coin may have been, it was not accurate; and though she knew it not, there were treasures that it could not buy. The face, however beloved, was mortal, and as liable as the soul herself to err. We do but shift responsibility by making a standard of the dead.
There is, indeed, another coinage that bears on it not man’s image but God’s. It is incorruptible, and the soul may trust it safely; it will serve her beyond the stars. But it cannot give us friends, or the embrace of a lover, or the touch of children, for with our fellow mortals it has no concern. It cannot even give the joys we call trivial – fine weather, the pleasures of meat and drink, bathing and the hot sand afterwards, running, dreamless sleep. Have we learnt the true discipline of a bankruptcy if we turn to such coinage as this? Will it really profit us so much if we save our souls and lose the whole world?"


i cannot attempt to explain it. i could only ruin it. i just wish very often that i had lived in the early 1900s. and to think of the fact that most people think Forster boring. i wish i had known him, held him in my arms just once