waiting for a poem to rise in my heart. its welling up within. like that final moment when you expect it anytime. but noone ever said that the final moment can sometimes last ages. if only the sun stayed golden on my cheeks and the wind stopped howling. it may yet come. even the waiting is beautiful

a person's room has a spirit and character of its own. whether its in north campus, or an audience to the daily clatter of neighbourhood kannadiga life, or overlooking a dark back-lane between lil flats in a typical vk block, or in the surprising greenery in cluttered south delhi; i am carrying along this bodyless spirit with me. give it some time, and the essential clothing it begs you for, and so what if white blinds replace the indian curtains it loves; the room will breathe the same. more often than not i forget how much the outside world has changed, it feels so - the same. its as if i carried it with me in one of the 23kg boxes allowed and just put it down here. so what if this mattress cost me 10 times more and the wood is donated and scratched. it travels over time, back and forth in the past, while i daydream. and i am in all of those rooms at once

its nice to come back home early from work once in a while. to leave at 5:30 dot. so the roads are empty and i zoom past. except the bad flyover which makes my car jump like it was a toy. somthing in my body feels unhealthy whenever my car jumps over those potholes or when it makes extra sounds. like this once when my car ac was tripping every two minutes when halted, and my heart actually came to my throat with every trip. that for two days and i was in a frenzy, enough to take papa with me to samara hyundai, out of this world in okhla industrial area. seemed like we were traveling to a village. this, when papa hasnt been to the car servicier in ages, ravi always takes it. (dont interrupt by asking who ravi is now). so in the waiting room there, was a tv and this woman was watching a pathetically sadistic south indian movie dubbed in hindi called 'lok parlok'. with some evil woman's spirit entering different forms of life or nothingness, and plotting to finish off a couple cos the guy hadnt married her and she had killed herself in the fire. now if someone just stands in a fire and doesnt scream, and dies without becoming a naked spectacle first, thats quite something. anyway so the movie was full of huge scary eyes and screams and noises and fat bodies. i totally loathed it. and wanted to change the channel but no, the woman said it was coming to an end. which was an utter lie. and papa who was making faces (and comments) at the woman also started watching it. i was in fact having to maintain almost constant eye contact with him to get him off it. anyway i did manage to change it to dd news as soon as resolution got bad (pretending i was trying to correct it) and then papa managed to get more masala news. and the next hf n hr we must have heard the word 'bahubali' more than 15 times. that was the day after the election result. for once i did not get mad at the melodrama of the media.

anyway so coming back home early. with serious intentions of working at home once the comfortable shorts were on and the tummy had had an extra luxury of crapping in the evening. but now the word file lies forgotten in my pendrive and i've wasted half n hr again on facebook. looking at ppl's photos. even though circumstances plotted against my 'id' with my 'ego' with mtnl giving way just when desired. but i guess it finally bowed down in front of my strong intentions.

oh btw i had to drive backwards almost 100mts cos two approaches to my house within my colony were blocked by a truck each and when i finally managed to get front driving back again i had to get down and remove this extra huge pole blocking the road next to something dug up. and then put it back again thinking whether a car could trip over it like ppl do over ropes.

poetry, psychology and economics

"Had I been less definitely determined to start working, I might have made an effort to begin right away. But because my resolve was absolute and, within twenty-four hours, in the empty frames of the next day where everything fit so well since I was not yet there, my good resolutions would easily be accomplished, it was better not to choose an evening where I was ill disposed for a beginning to which, alas! the following days would turn out to be no more propitious."

that's proust on procrastination through tirole on a self-confidence model. sometimes only a long sentence can express things accurately.

punchline

two college friends on gchat after years bothered to actually talk beyond a hi -

friend 1: how u doing married n all
friend 2: great re
having fun here in dubai
joined a mkt research firm
doing some work....dying to get back home...nice place dubai
for youngsters
like mumbai
lots of short drives around the emirate...
lots of weekend trips....discs...pubs....malls...big buildings
jus like aamchi mumbai :)
friend 1: :)
v good
friend 2: and full on masti coz no more deadlines or late night worries...
coz im married na...have a male escort 24/7
lol

semal

its the semal tree. its a pure wonder. more than the lovely shade outside my kitchen window. in winter it dispensed off with all its greenery and suddenly turned into this brown skeleton with red, huge red, flowers. dotted along the entire structure of the tree(s). the flowers were a major hit with all the birds apparently for their sticky sweetness. i just loved the sight of those bunches of red from the heights of my staircase landing. and they'd plop down every once in a while and litter the entrance to the building and would bleed their stickiness underfoot. i managed to get a couple of the lucky charms out of it which give the first velvety hints of it being a cotton tree. we could sometimes sight never-before-seen birds on the tree. and then by the end of the cold season the flowers were all gone. and some greenness returned. and now with the leaves there are these random fruits on the branches. brown buds. just brown mysterious buds. that make you wonder where the famous cotton is that you associated the name of the tree with. and then suddenly one morning my mom pointed out a neat big flower of white cotton bursting out of one of those brown buds. the cotton was stacked like thick rose petals with a halo of fluff around it. and the next day it was all fluff and now its all rolling in the air just an inch above the ground. with numerous lumps of fluff out of each cotton fruit. each of these has a small brown seed in the center. and if you manage to catch bulk of a cotton flower you get a brown walnut-like skeleton within. its a pure wonder - the tree. and why all that nectar if the final produce was fluff? did the sweetness become these strands of white? something like the cobwebs we used to make out of squeezed orange juice from the peels i guess

10th day!!! and they proudly announce it will continue. they are trying an experiment. acting on a whim. and killing innocents in the bargain. its like animal testing for a new drug. who cares how many die if their whim, their superiority is proven. and the United States backs the claim of self defence. self defence against odd home made rockets. 10 day offensive! air strikes and now army on the ground.

its so obvious isn't it. they've made this an excuse to claim their promised land. they are happy to make this into a reason for war. they are bloody cocky about it.

and we, the Indian government grant Gaza aid for the victims. what heroism. to make up for the guts we never had, to object to what's wrong.

as usual the world will continue to churn out yet more militants. till... probably one side to the war cripples itself without the other's effort. its not possible to finish a religion from the world. so probably it will be possible to finish anti feeling for that religion. very often the world like a thermostat corrects itself...

old and new

the pink of the waterlilies has faded whitish in the winter. and the goldfish have grown. there are some new lil white n black ones that will probably turn gold when older. u can tell so by the spots on their skin. Diner has put tables in the sun. and chrysanthemums are all around. but its not really cold this winter. its like a hoax call after last year's 0 degree. and yet sunrise is so late that my mind refuses to wake up despite the phone and psychological alarms that i set. and i now have a friend in office. yet i love raoming aimlessly in the sun. squinting against the warmth. with my hair growing longer n softer around my face. its hardly six months here. and i feel a sense of proprietorship about this place. its so easy now to go to eatopia and eat on the barstools watching random sports on the flatscreen. mountain biking it was yesterday and today waterbikes.

but the potted flowers make me feel nostalgic about the beds in the hostel garden. that riot of colours there in the winter which soothed your mind after the hours of shazam in the lab. the bright yellow and that mass of red poppies. and that running barefoot on the grass. not once have i visited the place since then. part of my mind doesn't want to disturb the memory of the place by a new visit.

the following is a letter started by some friends. If you agree with and support it, please leave your name, location and email id to be used as signature on the letter.


A Complaint against TV & Radio Media

Dear Madam,

We are some citizens of India and the following is our opinion. All of us were disappointed with the attitude of the Indian media in handling the terrorist attacks in Mumbai that started on the 26th of November 2008. The TV channels appeared as selfish, reckless, insensitive profit makers who did not lose any opportunity to make their TRPs soar. We also believe that they put at risk the secrecy of the offensive by the security forces. This was in particular, done by both TV news and Radio channels in the case of the Police and ATS Operation at the CST Railway Station of Bombay and by the TV news channels (specifically reporter Srinivasan Jain from NDTV) in the case of the Operation at Nariman House by the National Security Guards.

Another major issue we have against the media in how they handled this situation, was the way in which most TV channels spread speculations and rumors, without caring for the vulnerability of the viewership at a time of such crisis. Various channels have gone around making claims about the identity of the assailants, about the reasons why our security officials got killed and about the motives behind these attacks without quoting any authority on these issues.

Also the TV news channels did not lose any opportunity at sensationalizing live tragedy. Moreover they competed with each other in the drama that they could attach to the news reporting. Barkha Dutt from NDTV was unbeatable in this regard. Most media reporters were also uneven in their coverage of the attacks. The low profile areas like the CST Railway Station and Cama Hospital were overshadowed by the Taj and Oberoi Hotels though people were getting killed even there.

And we do not see any sense in inviting politicians on TV even while poeple are being killed and to allow them to fight each other in their calculated forecast of what should be said to malign the other and win votebank. In fact also the interviews with Bollywood Celebrities and other Socialites totally unaffected in these attacks were pointless and criminally money minded.

We do in a way hold the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting responsible for such reckless abandon.

In times of such national crisis, we think the Ministry should revoke some of the freedom allowed to the Media at least till the situation or the attack has been brought under control.

Specifically,

1. Cameras and Media reporters should not be allowed near the location of the Offensive because as we all know Terrorists these days carry technologically advanced communication devices and any information leaked out about where and how our Forces are hitting back could be dangerous and fatal.

2. The media should not make statements like "Someone said ......". If the media is reporting a comment made by someone, it should categorically state the name and Organisation of the person who has actually made the comment, probably even play a video of the person saying the exact words. In case the comment/opinion is purely of the employees and reporters of the media channel itself, it should be clearly stated as being so. In this case a disclaimer of the sort : “The findings are based on the media channel's preliminary investigations and are purely speculative in nature. These need not necessarily be true”, must be made.

3. The Ministry should draft out some codes of ethics for the media in cases of such crisis and sensationalism should be strictly discouraged. Politicians/Celebrities should be discouraged from being invited on media at least till the situation is brought under the control of the Security Forces.

We do understand that free media in a democracy is very important, but at the same time we cannot ignore the facts and experiences from past that these media houses sometimes do misuse that freedom for purely business motives and that in cases of crisis this could cost our country, our Security Forces and our people dearly. Our demands for regulation of the media, therefore apply in times of crisis alone.



Thank you,

my google reader has never collected so many unread articles in the past. its as if i read the first line of each in the left hand summary and dismiss them all because they seem to continue their lives as always. as if nothing has happened. the same kind of posts that i liked earlier, seem irrelevant and luxurious in some way. as if they are ranting about their personal lives when some others cant afford to think normally. when for some others their lives may have suddenly been torn apart.

my cousin talks about the england test getting canceled with a lot of regret as if that was the biggest tragedy to come out of it. im sure he is jumping now.

personally i still feel a strong dislike for the city bombay. when i think of living there. when i think of the day i was commuting by a local to college like so many other days, and our train suddenly halted and all of us started cribbing about how important our time was. the reason for the halt was apparently a man who had been crushed underneath us. i think each one of us gave a peak below when we heard that and then the crowd that is the life of the city swiftly raced in another direction to reach the next earliest train on the other platform to get comfortable sitting/standing space.

another day we were waiting for the clock to strike 12 as it was new year's eve. we were in jw marriott and malaika arora was supposed to dance in the first minutes of the new year. there was an entire room to bread and cheese, and another to streams of chocolate flowing over strawberries and cakes. i'm not kidding. i hadn't seen that kind of lavishness before. and there was a bar where barmen shook bottles with strange liquors over your open mouth while people drank and danced like mad. one man on the dance floor got a heart attack. he blacked out. people stopped for a few minutes to clear the way for him. he was taken away and the dancing resumed.

when the word resilience is mentioned after people having died these are the two scenes that i associate the word with. its not anyone's fault. its just the way the place is. it doesn't leave you with a choice of any kind. i've been there and i don't think i ever want to live there again.

there was once when i bought vada pav and frooti and left it next to a man who lay apparently sleeping or unconscious at the marine lines station with some blood near his head. i don't know if he was alive. people stared at me as if i was a lunatic. apparently because the man was in rags anyway.

but what happened this time is not about bombay to me. this is about what happened to people. those people could have been from anywhere. probably the fact that i have had good moments also around that city and that i have spent quite some of my years there, makes this as personal as it could get without losing someone. but for me this has got nothing to do with the symbol of the taj or of south bombay. i hate people talking about it like that. its purely the scale and the impact of the attack on people, on the perception of civilian life that has suddenly changed; that makes all the difference.

Mumbai blood donation and requirements

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http://blog.chaupaati.in/2008/11/28/blood-banks-for-victims-of-mumbai-attacks/
http://mumbaihelp.blogspot.com/

why are people talking of china as if its the next superpower. as if the US has its days numbered what with the financial crisis. and as if its already a bipolar world with china waving as it peacefully rises looking at US go down. incidentally, someone in office cited the chinese opinion on china's peaceful rise with an example of a china man/woman hitting you on the head chanting "china's peaceful rise" if you objected to giving the rise its credit.

what i don't understand is, firstly where do i see signs of the end of the superpower US. so what if theres a bout of recession. secondly, do we forget that no country has ever risen or will rise without substantial global support at least in the beginning? where are china's friends? a meagre pakistan who has become a poor relative begging for assitance or bangladesh and maybe sri lanka? those who can't look beyond their own boundaries because of their internal problems. how can a country be on its way to superpowerdom when global opinion doesnt trust it enough to grant it market economy status as yet? will china be able to gain people on its side with bilaterals? when india and the US both refuse? i am not saying that india matters a lot because its a power itself (for those who love to claim that we indians get happy with lil titbits of acheivements given as alms). but what is important is that india is a regional power in the neighborhood at least and the US is what it is. where is china heading gathering everyone's mistrust as it goes along?

a tired rusted yellow moon. stopped fighting against the darkness of the sky and yet too listless to decide to withdraw. just hanging there. at the mercy of the night. waiting to be finished

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

125th post

from one moment to the next
i am not the same
and yet i retain enough of me
to recognize myself
and like me too