मन उधाण वार्याचे

Lyrics of one of my favorite songs



मायेच्या हळव्या, स्प्र्शा ने खुलते
नात्यान्च्य ब्न्धात धु्न्द मोह्रते
मायेच्या हळव्या, स्प्र्शा ने खुलते
नात्यान्च्य बन्धात धुन्द मोह्रत

मन उधाण वार्याचे
गूज़़ पावसाचे
का होते बेभान कसे गिहवरते ॥२॥
मन उधाण वार्याचे

आकाशी स्वप्नानच्या हरकून भान िशरते
हुरहुर्त्या सान्ज़ेला कधी एकटेच िफ़रते
सावरते बावरते घडते अडखड ते का पडते
कघी आशेच्या िह्नडोल्या वर मन हे वेडे झु़लते
मन तर्न्ग होउन पाण्या वरित िफ़रते
अन क्षणात िफ़रुिन आभाळा ला िभडते

मन उधाण वार्याचे
गूज़़ पावसाचे
का होते बेभान कसे गिहवरते ॥२॥
मन उधाण वार्याचे

रुण्ज्झु़णते गुणगुणते कधी गुन्तते हरवते
किध गिहरया डोळ्यान्च्या दोहात पार बुडते
तळमळते सारखे भाबडे नकळात का भरकटते
कधी मोहाच्या चार क्षणाला मन हे वेडे भुलते
ज़ाणते ज़ािर हे पुन्हा पुन्हा का चुकते
भाबडे तरी भासान्च्या मागुन पळते

मन उधाण वार्याचे
गूज़़ पावसाचे
का होते बेभान कसे गिहवरते ॥२॥
मन उधाण वार्याचे

Confessions of a 20-something Drama King.

I guess this is going to be one of the first rants in this blog of mine. A rant in the truest sense of the word, because this one arises from a sheer case of....anger would be too strong a word, I guess the expression that comes close would be being at wit's end.

For those of you who belong to the category of the younger siblings, the black sheep might be a familiar term. Don't get me wrong, it rarely is the fault of the older sibling. It's just that us younger ones have the onerous task of living up to if not exceeding the bar set by our predecessors. In the case of yours truly, the bar is set to a level which while not beyond my reach - figuratively speaking, isn't in my easy grasp either (the reasons for which I choose not to delve into with extreme prejudice). Compare Arcturus and Antares. Ergo, I present myself to you, the black sheep, where every misfortune or every leap short of the goal is a direct function of asininity and personal ineptness, and is completely independent of any and all external variables.

Now, once christened with the aforementioned epithet - as unknowing as it may be; other adjectives quickly follow. The price of being a recluse, as I discovered is being labelled as an arrogant, high-strung, hard-to-please, pretentious freak of nature. The possibility that one might be socially challenged, isn't even on the cusp of a possibility of the possibility. I wonder though, if the fact that the conferrers of these adjectives are people supposedly closest to you is a consolation or not.

Black sheep also suffer from a terrible habit of always creating situations in which the arbiter is always presented with a situation in which the only possible perspective visible to the arbiters is that of the half empty glass, despite the sincerest effort of the said sheep.

The half empty glasses aren't as innocuous as they appear though. These glasses serve as vehicles in which the stolen thunder is carried away. Yes, the thunder from the poor, dear black sheep. Either by other "black sheep creators" as I call them, or by worshipers. By now you are thinking that I am missing a few marbles in my head, well that is the result of prolonged thunder thefts.

Blogs are probably the only media which can actually handle rants. Carbon based life forms get bored too soon, and aren't very tolerant of unending rants. Walls do a fine job too, as I was reminded when I read a very, very old mail I had written; but blogs do it better. Only a blog makes the whole rant sound a tad bit humorous in a dark vein, at least to the blogger...the blogee remains clueless.

I sign off with a bow to the Baa baa (am guessing that's its name), who managed to have the satisfactory amount of wool for three complete people, and immerse myself in the extremely mellifluous soprano of Maria Callas as she sings the Sull'aria from the Marriage of Figaro. Exquisite !

!&$@#* Pissed !!!

If ever I felt that life had a cruel sense of humor it is now. Merely four days have passed since my new found optimism and I feel the dark side, the sith if you will, beckoning me. The reason for this - my hard disk, the repository of all my "time capsule"ish paraphernalia crashed. Four hundred gigabytes and the last seven years worth of packratting gone in an instant by an aberration in behavior of simple storage medium.

Extremely peeved that I am at this moment, I cannot help but regret all those times in the very recent past when I considered backing up my data. But even at 4.7 GB/DVD it would still take me almost 100 DVDs to save it all. You may say that all of my data can't possibly be all important. That my dear friends, is an argument which does not make sense to a packrat. Oh the blasphemy, how can one even pose such a question !?! If it wasn't important, it wouldn't be on my hard disk in the first place.

Extreme vexation leads often leads to a tirade of dissatisfaction, mostly at the cause of the said vexation. Ergo, I shall return to the pursuit of salvation from my current predicament.

Time Capsule

This one probably has been a long time coming. It has been a really, REALLY long time since I last made a post here. God knows, I haven’t really been short on time, just short on ideas. Call it writers block. But I guess sometimes all you need to come up with something to write about is to stop trying so hard.

Those of you who know me, know I am a packrat. I have an obsessive need to save anything and everything that might have paid the tiniest role in my life (tiniest role ≥ something I happened to hold in my hand for greater than 30 minutes, something consisting of a pebble to anything under the sun). It isn’t as much a need to save, as it is a guilt which I might risk facing should I throw it away. Anyhow, this idiosyncrasy extends into my virtual and binary presence, the result of which being I still have files and saves from a hard disk which I used a good 2-3 years ago. A hard disk which crashed and I had to get the data retrieved before I could sleep properly again. The hard disk now lies in desuetude, although the data remains on my new 0.40 Tb drive. The data consisting of songs, old mails salvaged from Outlook Express (Bless MS), images, and the like.

Now, my agglomeration isn’t entirely without purpose. I enjoy going through these things at a later time in the future, sometimes much, MUCH later in the future. These are sort of my own private time capsules. Things, which I might enjoy showing my kids someday so that they know what their pappy was like. On one of my recent voyages down the old and forgotten recesses of my hard disk, onto sectors which are seldom visited I came across an antediluvian model of the ever so familiar “My Documents” folder. These folders, are among my favorite to venture into, as they usually contain data that was most frequently accessed or modified or data that was casually created or saved in haste (the latter is true in my case anyway) on that installation of the operating system. These folders tend to be the last places where any activity happened before the avalanche of a newer, fresher installation either deleted them or simply pushed them into obscurity. In essence, these folders are to me what Pompeii and Herculaneum are to archeologists.

My latest expedition led me to “\My Documents\My Received Files\” section. And it was here that I came across chats from almost 3 years back (Bless MS again). Though I usually do not read these chats, I did get quite engrossed in one which I had with a dear friend of mine with whom conversations were on a low since; let’s just say certain other common commitments ended. These flights of fancy have an uncanny nature of taking a retrospective turn. Nothing can actually make a person look at themselves the way the transcript of a conversation from a different time can. That is as close a person can come to the silver screen flashbacks in real life, minus the waves and ripples. For those who can understand, my hard disk had become my pensieve.

As with any other person, I have changed in the past few years, and like most other persons this was change I did not expect. I read a lot my own statements and scoffed at them. Cynicism seems to be pervading through me, the thing I dreaded the most had started its sinister process. The Grim Reapers of hope seems to be nearing. I can almost feel their wizened cold hands pulling me under, whispering, “You are one of us now” in my ears.

Looking at myself now, I start to realize “the process”. My choice in movies has changed, my choice of songs has changed and I seem to have given up music altogether. I feel more like a Goth than like a flower child. From a stage when I could find beauty in the macabre, I have reached another where I find macabre in beauty. Beauty sounds mawkish, cloying or maudlin now. Bastions of hope have now turned into sieges of despair. Attitudes have changed, enthusiasm has repudiated to blasé. Although, I must admit, I still had an edge back then. Sarcasm reigned high. But that with the other stuff seemed to attain equilibrium. Considering the only arbiter in these cases is the person himself, it is remarkable the level of equity one can maintain when scrutinizing himself. And prejudice against oneself still counts as being fair.

I personally hate cynicism. The prospect of living my life waiting for people to screw up makes me uneasy. Moreover, being a cynic automatically makes you a skeptic, which though not all bad isn’t much fun either. Leading a life believing that nothing out of the ordinary could every happen, where people could never ever amaze me by doing exceptional good is a thought which paints pictures exclusively of grey. That, even to a person suffering from deuteranopia is not a very pleasant thought. And after coming across people who are doing amazing acts of philanthropy, by actually offering their services and traveling 8829.59 miles (geodesic) to offer them, every single fiber of my body revolts against being a cynic.

I attribute this “process” to a part of growing up, which brings me to why growing up sucks so much. I speak for myself, but for me the suckiest part of growing up is that it doesn’t really happen when you want it to. Another thing in life which seems to always know “what’s best for you” (am sure coming up with ideas belongs to the same list; they are just never there when you want them). With growing up its like, your whole childhood, you so badly want to grow up and when you do grow up you so wish you hadn’t. Only the verity of that ponderous statement can make up for its banality. It’s time for the truth to set me free now. Though, I portend the possible demise of my own spirit, I am now forewarned. And while the prospect of capitulating haunts me, the other road where I might escape it, nay even defeat it does kindle a tiny flame. May be a cynic is what I might turn into, but there is time. While it lasts I intend to make the most of it, bring me “the chicken soup” and bring “veronica decides to die”. While still at it…I sign off with Edgar Allan Poe, I can’t think of a better way to find beauty in the macabre, then by having a tryst with the king of the macabre himself.

Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore,
That gently, o'er a perfum'd sea,
The weary way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the beauty of fair Greece,
And the grandeur of old Rome.

Lo ! in that little window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand!
The folded scroll within thy hand —
A Psyche from the regions which
Are Holy land!

Confessions of a (somewhat) poetic mind

In my first post I said poetic musings aren't exactly my forte, well that might have been proved wrong (or not). While trying to back up my hard disk, I recently came across a few of my poems. This one being the cynosure of them all. For two reasons; One, because for the love of god I have not an idea what I have written as in the idea behind it which is probably why it is incomplete, and two, because I only vaguely remember writing it. So if anybody can make anything out of it, please feel free to annotate.

Edit: Its funny that when posted, the silhouette of the body of this poem or thing or whatever, looks like a hookah pot. :)

Staring at the ceiling, listening to the drip
The drone of the machines, their beeps high pitched
The hiss of the breather, barely oblivion it gyps
Wanderlust in his mind, the gone it tries to filch.

Reels of yore, hastily they unroll
Chaos reigns, dissociation & upheaval
Monsters unearth, goblins and furor
Fragments flying, wonderment revealed

And then some, out of the blue came
A child, skin so soft, eyes divine
No sin, no guilt, no regrets, no pain
Nativity, an odyssey soon maligned

Apparitions of antiquity though,
Of the child, with a glow angelic
Riddled the sheet of
Came the shimmer mesmeric

Coruscation of the simulacra
And probity in its wake
Like a puzzle so magical
The reels now bore some shape.

Fragments no more, a tale soon unfolds
Of strife, of survival, of conviction, of victory
And of regrets, of losses and of acts not so bold
A tale so very common, for every bourgeoisie

Nothing out of the ordinary, ever did he achieve,
Save a life, or find a cure for an ailment fatal
Nor was he blessed with serendipity
Became a thorn in his mind, ever so perennial

Trivialization of events innumerable
Paved the way for the conundrum
Obscurity gulped an ambition insatiable
Pride departed, enter mediocrity and some.

Events, from the day, ever so ordinary
as

Happy New Year.. yea sure..

As is pretty obvious, I have been tardy in joining the "new year bandwagon". Five days of the new year have passed, and i think now would be about perfect time to post something before the new year wears out its welcome.

This new year or at least its advent was by far the best I have ever had - I celebrated it. Pune became the unlikely (or may be not so unlikely) location of my New year celebration. The last day of 2006 went by without much hue or cry, nor did it seem to drag along as I half expected it to..i mean it is the last day, wouldn't it want to last longer? And as the clock struck midnight, i had my tryst with a sort of a realization. I was happy, for I was with the love of my life in the very first minute of the new year (though, the lingering thought that somewhere else the new year had already started a few hours back was ever present); but the more I looked around, the more I realized that nothing earth shattering was actually happening. I was in the Pune station area, on a slightly elevated level, which I was happy to assume was my apotheosis.

Though in the distance all around me there were those coruscating fire crackers, right underneath me there was life going on as usual, people carrying on as if nothing had happened, no celebrations no excitement, no zeal, no signs of life other than the most ordinary ones. Yes, the station was alive, but the life in it seemed to come from the hum-drum and banal activities of the people, and not from celebration of joy of the new year. Asiad buses packed with people entered and exited the bus station nearby, Autowallas hunting for people to scalp, an eunuch going about doing his thing, the traffic moving at its slow Pune pace.

To all who might think that the juxtaposition of such antithetic ideas might have been cathartic to my nature or anything. All it did was stifle my enthusiasm a little bit, nothing which being with Aditi can't cure. Two minutes later, I was back with Aditi, and we continued our celebration. After all, its hard to stay mad (or sad/apathetic in this case) when there is so much beauty around you.

You have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm sure. But don't worry... You will someday.