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.

A hundred things-to-do before I die

This is an eternally incomplete post.

I know that the title of this particular post sounds like a regular rant, but it has more to do with a recent novelty if i can call it, i saw. While crawling on the world wide web I came across this nifty little list somebody had made. Some of you might be critical about the "earnestness" with which i came across such a list, or to the cliched nature of it but i think this would be a nice little way to put life in perspective. I guess this would be the ultimate, the end all of all agendas, or at least it ought to be.

One hundred things to do before i die, has almost an apocalyptic sound to it. But then again, i am going to be a bit avaricious and just let the list go on for as long as i can think of more things to do. Limiting just to a 100 sounds a bit too "in-the-box" for a remotely "out-of-the-box" idea as this.

Combine this list with the death clock (hopefully they can make one sometime which actually works), and you have the secret to living a fruitful life. :)

Without further ado - Things to do before I die

1. Get married to the one (all who think this is lame, eat my shorts).
2. Go bungee jumping.
3. Base-jump from Taipei 101 or which ever is the tallest building in the world.
4. Go Snorkeling.
   
5. Ride on a dolphin's back
6. Go skinny dipping with the one
7. Catch a snowflake on my tongue
8. Dive into the mariana trench.
9. Get a Brazilian wax.
10. Fly a glider.
11. Go to Everest Base camp.
12. Jam with Joe Satriani, Saul Hudson, Eric Johnson, Joe Perry together.
13. Go and live on an uninhabited island belonging to an Archipelago, preferably somewhere in the Pacific.
14. Make someone really really desolate and poor, some one I don't even know really REALLY happy.
15. See the look on that person's face.
16. Do a good deed, see its results and walk away, without waiting for any adulation.
    
17. Hear the call of a Hump backed whale...LIVE!
18. Change the status of a vertebrate from "Extinct in the wild" to "Least Concern".
19. Go and thank the makers of Google and Wikipedia.
    
20. Learn the art of wine tasting.
21. Taste at least all the good wines.
22. Make my own wine.
23. Make breakfast in bed for the one.
24. Learn to make the perfect biryani.
25. Finally make egg in the basket someday.
26. Make Calvinian snowmen.
27. Make my own comic strip.
28. Read all of Calvin and Hobbes. and Pearls before swine.
29. Learn to use a gun.
30. Be a Sharpshooter.
31. Rebut all the people, using all the rebuttals I came up with later. :)
32. Raise a "stub" to article status on Wikipedia.
33. Write a completely new article for Wikipedia.
34. Donate to Wikipedia.
35. Have my picture taken by Google Earth Satellites.
36. Ride a cruiser and a super car in a desert.
37. Find a meteorite in the desert.
38. Stay at a Naturist Resort.
39. Sleep under a starry sky.
40. Visit Austria, Bora Bora, Iceland and most importantly the Pitcairn Islands (also here).
    
41. Hear sights and see sounds.
42. Spend time in a Sensory Deprivation Tank.
43. Learn Hypnosis.
44. Create a phenomenal instrumental track.
45. Splurge money on somebody else.
46. Get a personal computer, with the fastest processor I can, with the highest RAM I can put in it, with the best graphics adapter and sound card, with a laser mouse, with a goliath hard disk and plasma screen for a monitor, not because I need it, but because I WANT it :), and play games on it online on a "T3 or higher" connection.
47. Possibly buy Bag end from Peter Jackson. (Jackson took it to his vacation home :( )
48. Read Lord of the Rings cover to cover.
49. Learn Elvish and Quenyan.
50. Get a Tattoo.
51. Get Cornrows. I didn't do this, just don't want to, my hair hurts when its pulled that tight, and I don't think it's that cool.
    
52. Learn Falconry.
53. Meet Keyra Augustina.
54. Start a free career counseling website for health professionals.
55. Buy a Shack at Arambol, and call it "Peace & Love".
56. Own an Island.
57. 
    

Pune...

Pune is a weird city, people have their principles and their discipline and yet the traffic sense is as common as common sense. I have been in Pune for 2 days, and in the those 2 days here i have seen more accidents here than I may have seen in a whole year in Mumbai, despite the higher number of vehicles in Mumbai, going at higher speeds.

Journey to pune is always surreal, accompanied by a huge excitement and "i-cant-wait-to-get-there" syndrome for obvious reasons. But this time around, for the first time, i didn't realize how the time went by because before i knew it we were off the expressway. i found myself looking at the watch and commenting on how it was typical that the one time i am not coming here just to meet Aditi, i come here in 2.5 hrs flat. Lady luck it seems has a cruel sense of humor because about 10 minutes after this incident my bus happened to knock out a cyclist. I dint really have the courage to get up... these kinda incidents and sights in real life scare me (Anybody who has seen me play a video game, specifically the action/RPG/FPS genre will disagree). Finally, after picking my balls off the floor i did go and check out the "victim". Looked like he had minor injuries- a concussion or two, but man was he dazed. I mean, being hit by a bus and surviving is a big deal, but being hit by a Volvo B7R and surviving is nothing short of a miracle.

For the uninformed, the Volvo B7R is a behemoth when it comes to buses. These beasts average around ~100 Kph on the expressway ( i have my own, more or less accurate method of clocking them :) ). The ease with which these buses accelerate just shows efficiency of the monsters they have in their bellies. I have seen BEST drivers give way to these buses, and THAT i know is a sign, a clear augury of sorts, that these are not machines to be trifled with. And yet the "victim" actually walks up into the ambulance.

The irony of the whole situation was that as bad as his luck (or the degenerating neurons in his cranium) may have been, to be hit by B7R; there was no way under the sun would he have survived the accident had it been any other bus. Swedish engineering saved his life.

Another thing which impressed me was the lack of time between the accident and the transfer of the "victim" to the hospital, and the overall management of the situation on the whole. All this while i have put victim in quotations, because I really cant decide who's victim he was. The old man was at fault, a national highway is no place to be going across the traffic on a bicycle. So was the government for not really barricading a national highway. Needless to say at that moment the driver and the cleaner fled the scene, and were untraceable when after much deliberation we decided to hitch a ride into Pune city.

Frankly, i think that (=entering pune city) was the scariest part of the whole journey. I would take my chances going against the direction riding a bicycle on a runway while an Airbus A380 is taking off or landing, than expose myself in the chaos which has a name - Pune. I would have liked to enlist the problems with the traffic in Pune, but that would be too taxing a task. But among the first things Pune needs to do is get all those two wheelers off the roads, and get a public transport mode which is more convenient than the junk heap which is affectionately called the PMT or the PCMT. The roads really aren't bad, they just need more traffic cops, even corrupt ones will do, in fact preferably corrupt ones. The kind who will have enough incentive to pull over even the most trivial offense.

Anyhow, I just got my hands on a bag of pop-corn, and some guava nectar, and policy making and improving a city are things that come in the way of hedonism :).

Un-f***ing-titled

For a post which comes after what seems like eternity, this is not really starting out pretty. Actually, I don't have anything in particular to be pissed about, nor am I especially unhappy about anything in my life; but this is my rant and I damn well intend to use it.

I know what you (or anybody who is reading) is thinking. That I am a perpetually dissatisfied type of a soul and cribbing about the wrongs in my life is my passion. In my defense I would like to say this - BITE ME !!!

Recently I read an anecdote if you will, about how life finds meaning in the most unlikely places, and about the mysterious ways god works in. Made me ponder upon certain things about people, the need to dramatize trivial events. May be its not people, may be its my generation, well mine and my antecedents, we belong to this "chicken soup" generation. It's like there is this longing for "life changing" events and every one wants to have their's. Everyone wants to feel the rush, the adrenaline... the hair standing on end, everybody wants their "oprah moment" with a nod from the audience, the oohs and the aahs.

This almost makes the why to my cribbing rhetorical. I crib, because I like things when they are simple, uncomplicated. Accept that such is life and deal with it. Sudden realizations about god's mysterious ways just illustrates the sedated state in which the herd leads its life. God is omnipotent, has mysterious ways and by the time I finish typing this sentence, a thousand movies being watched by a billion people, a thousand books being read by an equal number of people, a thousand books being authored by obscure and the not so obscure writers will have blared that same message a very large number of times. SO WHY THE F*** DOESN'T ANYBODY GET IT?? what necessitates the need for these "moments"?

I could go on ranting about this forever, but I have calls to make, and add to that...there is one other fact which needs mentioning at this point- Mine is also a generation of the Page 3 and of being "with it"

The thin line between my boredom and yours. . .

One of the most common uses of basic geometry I have found was in the most unexpected places - moderately serious conversations. Thin lines are thrown here and there to give an air of intellect to the conversation. (Purists can go to hell; I know there are no thin lines in geometry). Here’s presenting a list of thin lines I have heard or seen being used, I know its s short list…but as I grow older I think I can add more to the list.

Thin line between bravery and stupidity.
Thin line between sanity and insanity :P (and it appears that am treading it)
Thin line between discussion and a debate.
Thin line between an argument and a fight.
Thin line between living and existing.
Thin line between agnostic and an atheist.
Thin line between a believer and an agnostic.
Thin line between flirting and sexual harassment.
Thin line between metrosexual and homosexual. (according to Urban dictionary not even that much)
Thin line between Heavy metal and noise.
Thin line between ignorance and apathy.
Thin line between genius and madness.
Thin line between self respect and pride
Thin line between borrowing and stealing ( :D )
Thin line between love and hate
Thin line between hero and a dead man.
Thin line between boy friend and boyfriend.
Thin line between girl friend and girlfriend. ( apparently in both cases I think its called a hyphen)
Thin line between tidy and being obsessive compulsive.

The sky is falling . . .

Ok, this post is purely a by product of sheer and unadulterated boredom. Now, poetry isn't exactly my forte; neither is it exactly in the same zip code as my understanding, so I am going to refrain from putting any over here.

Boredom presents itself in weird ways. I have been bored doing something interesting, at other times I have been riveted to something most might find, to put it nicely - vanilla. Right about this time I realize that this talk is magnifying my level of boredom.

I guess this blog is serving its exact purpose, my rants are being documented. I figure, somewhere down the line when I am older and wiser these rants and these posts will be like light houses on my road to introspection . . . or at least tiny humorous (to me..screw you !) chronicles of my life.

Rumor is a funny thing, as I realized today. All the things about it being a destructive force and such are too cliched now, and I see no point in pontificating on that. I think its funny . . . period. As to why it is funny, that is a discussion for a time when I am in the mood.

Mental note: Writing a blog is more difficult then I thought it would be.

Blah . . .

Finally materializing something I wanted to do for a long time. Clueless as to what will form the matter of this space here, but then again blogger.com is free and I intend to exploit that to the max. This place, its about me, my Daily ( which might not remain so "daily" ) ranting about things which are important in my life, yes this is all about ME... ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ...I guess you get the picture. Somewhere in here might be tiny pearls of wisdom, which you are free to borrow :D
I pipe down...for now, hopefully loads to come in the future . . .