Hope

And i stand alone,
waiting for the impossible,
waiting for the inevitable.

Staring into the oblivion,
my heart skips a beat,
only to realise, it's just a mere retreat.

Its all but happening,
but still i wait for it,
someday sometime i could content sit.

Hope i again,
use this word again,
abuse this word again.

But its just the single word
on which survives the world.

Who is she?

Gently does she move in with surprise
making sure, i dont realise

Moving her hands through my hair
i feel her caress filled with care

she plays with me making me quiver
almost sometimes making me shiver

I feel the warmth in her company
although she's cold herself to many

Engulfing me in herself
she makes me forget all within myself.

When all she does is make me please,
how much i want to say, thank you Ms. Breeze.

WALK...

And i walk, and i walk.
down the memory lane.

where i meet strangers known.
and known strangers too.


the seasons change.
from spring to winter
and winter to spring.

but the boulevard's still unchanged
though changed still a lot.

some lessons learnt
some unlearned

some given
more taken

some needed,
some not at all.

so i feel,
but not him.

as i propose
so does he dispose,

and i conclude

thats why he's him
thats why i am me.

as i walk back the lane
i see a mirror

to whom i ask
is it with me or is it with you?

RAIN

RAIN
rain, thy i did disdain,
rain from thy i did refrain,

but,
rain thy let me cry
rain thy hid me from the pry

rain thy woke the child in me
who i thought had died in me

rain, i feel sorry
for i thought always gory

rain, i thank thee,
for you let me forget the pain in me.

you are as good as your last haircut!

There's a snippet of funny quotes in the top left corner of my blog.
Today it read, "You are as good as your last hair cut"
Considering, that i went bald yesterday, how good am i???
:-D

Sad but True!

April 20, 2007. 1545 IST.

I get ready to go to attend an extra class.
But for a change, i am not cribbing about the extra class. The professor asks us to go to the air-conditioned seminar hall, a soothing thought in the killing summer.

I encourage a few souls to attend the lecture, making them remember, this is the last lecture of college life!
I go there, sit in the hall. Start listening to the lecture, but was soon disinterested, as usual. So, my eyes roam around the class. The sinking feeling of departing from all these fellow classmates two weeks from now, sets in. With a slightly heavy heart, i stare at a few faces. The same faces i saw four years ago.....


Four years ago, when i entered the first lecture, sceptical and unsure (exactly as one of my teachers described me later, not that i still ain't), not knowing what to expect, but here i sit now, admist the same faces, heartfelt.

I cribbed about everything in the college, the rooms, the system, the exams, the teachers, the classmates, everyone and everything! And as the day nears, my heart goes heavier and heavier, for this very room, these very classmates.

Sad that i have to, but i have to, as i move on to another day, another morning, where i will have to make another set of friends, till one day comes, when i say goodbye to even them.......

Life's sad at times, but is still to be lived......

Duty!!!

My tryst with the Bhagavad Gita continues, gradually.
Slowly and steadily, i read those verses and their meanings.
Trying to read those and get "cleansed".
:-)

The source of the Bhagavad Gita, they say, were the words spoken by Lord Krishna to his disciple Arjuna, to give him the mental strength to fight the battle against his own clan comprising of his near and dear ones.

In this particular verse which i read , 2:15, to be exact, Krishna tries to tell Arjuna that sometimes you have to break the bonds with your family, for the higher duty/goal. The ties in the materialastic world shouldn't hold you from attaining the higher goal.

Here, an example of Lord Chaitanya is quoted, who, at the age of 24, leaves his old mother, his young wife and children, to feed for themselves, and he goes to attain the "spiritual bliss".

But, this proved to be a little uncomfortable for me.
He did break the ties with the materialastic world for the spiritual attainment, understood, but, didn't he shun his basic duty?
The basic duty of taking care of his old mother, who had brought him up throughout his life.
That of taking care of his wife and children, for whom, he was the only support.

What's the point in attaining a higher goal, if you fail at the basics?
What's the point of attaining the spiritual bliss if you left other people, leave the ones around around you, in total abyss?

Which is exactly the duty, the "higher one" or the "lower one"?

CHANGE

I reached the Surat railway station from my home by the early morning train as I have been doing on a few weekends of the last four years. I get out of the railway station, and am swarmed by a group of auto drivers, a normal sight, them trying to poach you for the maximum amount of money they can. The firs autowaala came to me “Sir kidhar jaana hain? Kribhco, L&T, Reliance?”

I was left baffled by the question. Usually, they used to guess it right, all these three years, they used to guess it correctly, SVR, they used to say (a “colloquial” term for the SVNIT, Surat). What happened, how were they considering me as a professional at these companies instead of the student at “aapdu svr”?

My clothes didn't tell it for sure..... a pair of faded jeans and a t shirt are definitely not what the executives roam around in.
Have the four years of college life done it to me finally?

Do I no more look like a student?
Have I lost the so called innocence?
The four years of college life, showed me many things.
Many firsts, many lasts, many lessons learned, a lot taken from the past four years.

The first slap on your face during the ragging period, the first slap given during the ragging period, the first puff of smoke (and I swear my last), the first sip of alcohol in the dying days of these four years. It’s all changed a lot.

An introvert, who never really had any friends, who never really spoke out, who was shy of girls, by the time he completed the 12th grade, was totally different now!

Now he was almost an extrovert, though still the introvert's hidden somewhere deep within. Now he speaks out and lashes out at each and every small thing.
Girls! Now, they are after him!! No don’t get me that ways…

They are after him, because he abuses them left right and center, accuse the girls!

There have been stray cases, I don’t deny.
Well, respect is ought to be earned, that doesn’t come by virtue of just being of the sex you are of, argue I; I don’t abuse all of them, always, do I?
i give immense respect to the ones, whom i feel, deserve it, be it a girl, a guy, a professor or even a beggar.

One more change that i notice in myself is that, I no more can act nice, either I am nice, or I am not!
Some things change for good, some for bad; I dunno how to classify the above!

So have many things!
But does it really show to outsiders?
Even a rank outsider like an autorickshaw vaala can even recognize it!

Life has changed and so has my perspective towards it.

Dream!

Oh My God!
Not Again!

A lot said about it in the earlier posts, what's he upto now?

Why did I refrain from dreaming?
The reason being, if they break, you seem hurt.

And now i carry some dreams, which sure will break.

What's my dream?

A borderless world!

Huh.... Enough joking!

Where did i get such a senseless dream from?
A so called educational tour which showed me the hurt in the eyes of few Tibetans, having no place to call their home. Sure, they do live in India, albeit as refugees! Then was a case of two countries blowing trumpets (literally), trying to show their strength, hiding their failures.
Then, came a couple of war movies based in africa and rest of the world.
A Perfect reciepe, for the dream??

They say, the days when cruel monarchs ruled over the land are long gone!
Its a democracy now, and i have been brought up in the largest democracy in the world!

But isn't democracy a kind of organised monarchy?

You select your ruler, but they still rule, don't they?

One of the major reasons, why monarchy was thought to be bad, was because, they divided land into pieces and fought wars for them. Wasting human life, time and money.

What's the difference now?
We still fight wars, we still waste immense amount of money on wars and lives are almost unaccounted for.

India, the largest democracy in the world, has more budgetary allocation for defence than health and education combined!

Just imagine how much money we could utilise for better purposes, if there were no borders!
Why do we draw borders?
Why can't the white skinned, dark skinned, brown skinned all be together!

Why is it necessary for there to the existence of countries?
Humans exist, isnt that more than enough?

We have the "United" States of America, why can't we have United States of Earth, instead?
The "unity" should extend, Shouldn't It?

India is said to be a Secular republic, but still almost 80% of the population comprises of a particular religion!
Ditto is the case with almost all countries, whether, they be fundamentally secular or not!

I guess the comfort theory does work, though in a larger context, here!

People would be more comfortable with the other people who might look like them, talk like them, and probably worship the same God as them!!!!

Blood definitely, is thicker than water!

And still i dare to dream!

THE PATRIOT

A couple of days ago I was witness to the flag lowering ceremony at the Wagah-Hussainwalla border between India and Pakistan.

I could see the blood boil among the old and young alike in the crowd because of the slogans shouted. The slogans were not at all of any nature which could demean the other country, they were the ones in which you praise your motherland.

All around me, everyone was shouting at the top of their voices, including my friends. Some even broke into a jig or two at the ‘Patriotic’ songs dished out from the blurting speakers.

A ‘Hair-raising’ experience said many.

I overheard one of them saying later that “It felt as if, the very next moment, if a ‘Pakistani’ came in front of me, I would cut him into two.”

So much for patriotism!

“Didn’t this ‘show’ promote pseudo-patriotism?”, I asked my friends.

Both countries dishing out songs praising themselves, and the crowds on the either side of the “no-man’s land” shouting at the top of their voices to prove their might.

I got various answers.

One said “The whole process was just to encourage the army personnel to go and fight on the border, so they can forget the humanitarian reasons, while shooting down each other.”

Another friend of mine said that it didn’t appear as pseudo patriotism to her, it just appeared as if children from grade II were fighting with each other. Nothing to be thought about, as such.

Ironically though, after becoming “true patriots”, we head for a place, 20 miles away, which was the centre of a separatist movement hardly 20 years ago, “The Golden Temple”.

Just as I sat down in the train for the return journey, I overheard someone say, how “peaceful” it was in the Gurudwara!!

And all agreed, including me.

But just as I said sat down in the train, I remembered a few more instances.

One that of a Tibetan refugee selling some goods in Dharamshala, the seat of the Dalai Lama, and a place oft visited by foreign tourists.

Just as we looked through some things which he had to sell, and asked the prices, we got a shock, we tried to bargain, but to no avail. So we chucked the idea of buying the show piece and walked ahead, and then he murmured “Indians never buy anything!!”

One of my friends, retorted, albeit amongst us, “How can he say that, he lives in India, and abuses Indians?”

Then it suddenly struck me that these were ‘refugees’ in India, who had put up many ‘Anti-Chinese’ slogans and posters all over Dharamshala.

And suddenly my mind came back to the Wagah-Hussainwala border again. Just as the flags were being brought down at sunset with much hullabaloo in the background of human voices, two birds were flying in the sky ignorant of the fact that they had just crossed over from Pakistan to India!

Secular!

While in the train, coming back from a so called educational tour, one of my friends sang a telegu song, she herself not being one. One of her friends tried to pull her leg, saying that not even, I, a south Indian, couldn’t understand the song!

To which I scathingly remarked, I am not a “Gultee”!!

She said “Oh I forgot, you were a Tamilian!”

To which, I didn’t respond, a lost cause, I thought…

Another friend added on, “You South-Indians all look similar, speak similar, there simply isn’t any difference!”

I resigned for sure now!

It seems as if all “small-eyed” creatures looked same, whether they be Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian!

But later I thought, why did I get irritated by the fact?

Am I not supposed to be secular in nature?

Where I can be called whatever,

I am an Indian, or in a larger context am a world citizen!

Throughout my life, my surname has been wrongly spelt, MEMON Vimal it reads, instead of MENON Vimal, including a month ago when I was paying the fees at the institute. And every time I correct them with a frowning face!

Was this an example of religious intolerance?

Although I go gaga over the secularism in India, whose Prime Minister is a Sikh, after a Roman Catholic declined the post, whose President is a Muslim, and over eighty percent of whose population consists of Hindus, and I myself am intolerant of this?

After prodding over it for a few minutes, I found out that more than religious intolerance, it was more a case of mistaken identity, or lost identity!

A scene from last year’s Oscar winner “Crash” came to my mind, where an American guy gets a call from his mother, and he tells her that he is with his Mexican Girl-Friend, to which the Girl-Friend snaps at him, saying she is half Puerto Rican and half Nicaraguan, and where can he find a Mexico in it?

A case of lost identity for sure I’d say!

The fact that some teachers remembered me in my school days through my roll no. too irritated me; I was given a name by my parents for god’s sake!

But then, the flip side of the coin is revealed by the fact that, how comfortable you might be in an alien culture?

Although being secular is one part, and being in your own comfort zone is another!

When I took the admission to the hostel four years ago, a strict directive was issue by the authorities, no associations, based on cast, creed, religion or language.

But I myself am a part of the KSA, or the Kerala Students Association, which consists of a group of students from the state of Kerala. And the best of my friends are within the so called association. It has more to do with your comfort zone, I guess!

Although, that doesn’t mean that I don’t have friends from outside the “association”. But the “rapport building exercise” was faster, I’d say!

I could make some good friends almost at the end of the four years of college life!

So I will hold the “Comfort zone” theory responsible for the mildly insecular nature!

Trust?

jaage hain deer tak
hamen kuch deer sone do
thodi se raat aur hai
subah to hone do
aadhe adhure khwaab jo
pure na ho sake
ek baar phir se neend mein
woh khwaab bone do

a not so popular song from a critically acclaimed chartbuster of the
season.
One of my favourites. Tells about dreams.

Dreams!

In the earlier posts on the blog, i ve written down a lot about it.
Always in the negative sense.
Not that I have changed my stand on it.
It does hurt when it doesn't come true, (still???).

The diffrence lies in the fact that your greatest strength can
sometimes be your greatest weakness.
Too many cooks spoil the broth, or is "two" many cooks spoil
the broth.
Operating in groups has always been tedious.
Working alone might not be difficult, its more difficult when you
have to make others work.

Trust, a word that has been used and abused by many on this
planet, is hard to come by.
Its more important to know the fact that trust on oneself is
easier to come.
Self-Belief, should be there.
Strange for a pessimist who degrades himself more, day by day
like me writing down something like this.

And more importantly, trusting your own instincts. That is something
 which I have refrained from doing.
And I regret that and ask me how!

Life and its lessons!

Sadist!

One fine night last week, sparing a few hours of my sleep, i saw an intriguing movie, Babel.
Babel stands for the ancient city of Babylon in the Hebrew Bible.

Once upon a time, few people decided to build a tower, known as the "tower of Babel", to reach heaven. This apparently angered God, who punished the peope involved in the project by making them speak different languages and seperating to the different parts of the world.

"Good Lord", wasn't that nice of him.

Nope this has nothing to do with the movie, its just a piece of mythological history i had read somewhere. Probably the movie has just the similarity of people speaking different languages, from japamese to morocan, english, mexican, and even the sign language.

It basically is a movie about how the actions of one may affect another, who might not be even aware of the existence of the other. A kind of "Butterfly Effect" which states that the flapping of wings of butterfly in Brazil may cause a Tornado in Japan. A story that moves across four countries and people of different races, mistrust ruling among them. Nominated for the oscars, worth it, a bit like last year's winner Crash.

But this post is not a movie review, its about the "knowledge" of not knowing of the fact that each and every action one carries out affects another. Some of whom we don't know, and some whom we know, and value more than ourselves!

Sometimes, we want to make ourselves believe that its just us who are being harmed, but in reality seldom do we realise that the wounds inflicted on others are much deeper and much dificult to fill.

And there are some who feel, let anyone be happy or unhappy, I come first.The "I-centric" people. They ruin this planet, we say. But delve deeper. So are you and I, and everyone until the day comes when the wounded one is you. But does that restrain us from repeating the mistake again. Never. Now its more of a sadistic pleasure!

The thirsty crow!

Date: Feb. 14
Time: 11:00 am IST
Lecture: Concrete technology
Class: B.Tech IV
Branch: Civil Engineering
College: National Institute of Technology, Surat.

Unfortunately i was forced to sit through the aforesaid lecture on concrete technology.
The professor, one of the vey few of his clan who doesn't kill us by giving boring lectures was giving a lecture on the properties of aggregates.

He came up with a story, the oft listened one.....
That of a crow, which was thirsty and suddenly found a jug with little water at the bottom.....
But the Prof came up with an intresting twist to the tale.....

The stones which the crow puts into the jug would absorb water upto an extent, due to the various fissures, cracks, microscopic pores, etc present.

And so there are chances that the crow won't be able to drink the water!!

How complaicat d life is????

The crow drinks water in Kindergarten and it may or may not when in graduation!

But who's thirst did it?
The crow's?
Or mine?

I guess as the thirst increases for anything from knowledge to money, we forget the simple things in life!

The roots are diffiult to be clung onto.....
Although we might sometimes realise and make a desperate attempt to cling on, not much can be done.....

What does flying high take away from us?
lots before you realise.....
lots before you end up being a slave of your needs rather than the other way around!

This crow is sick of the thirst!

Somebody help ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

NIGHT

Why's the night so despised?
Why is it always rued about?

There's a day
cuz of a night

For every night,
there's a morning

For every spot of darkness,
there's a ray of light

The night shows us
the beautiful sky.

With the twinkling stars
and the glazing moon.

For they are the ones,
who stand by in the drk.

But as soon as the dawn does break,
We forget there was a moon and there were the stars.

HOPE

An informal talk with a friend on GTalk
He asks me, ignorant of the amount the pain he is causing me, what do the entrance exam results say?
I say with a heavy heart, no calls so far.....
I add that two more results are yet to be anounced.....
He tells "Keep hoping for the best"

HOPE !!!!!!!

How many times have i heard this word???
A word, abused beyond its limits......

But many do survive just on this word......
Its a beautiful word, they say....

I'd say yes...but disguisedly beautiful
It makes the world around you so much unlike it is.....

A world of fallacies...
A world, where dreams rule......
u forget the present, u forget the past.
The steps of the ladder on which u stepped to climb, but forgetting there's a day when you have to step down too....

Hope however is a word par excellence for the bereaved, for the ones who have lost in the immediate past.......

they live on it...

we build a wonderful world around us and HOPE everything works out like that!

The true world is better where tomorrow comes tomorrow and today's to be enjoyed to the fullest!

So enjoy the days as they come instead of worrying about tomorrow......

Tomorrow, if you have to be in misery, you won't rue over a thing which was never there!

And if tomorrow rings in the good......then what else can i ask for!!!!
I do prefer surprises and so do we all!!!!

FROG IN THE WELL?????

I take up the newspaper, fed up of "trying to prepare" for an entrance exam.
The difference being the newspaper is almost a week old,
Running through the usual stories of killings, kidnappings, rapes and murders in the first page,
i turn to the sports page, an analysis of the indian cricket team for the carribean, the possibility of handing over the captaincy to sachin, blah blah blah.....
then to the business page - the officially unofficial release of i-phone by steve jobs priced at $500-600 in the US, good one said my friends, but affordable????

then i reach the editorial page, there comes an article by shashi tharoor.......
He puts forth an India shining picture.......rather a resurgent india picture, citing the example of the new poster boy for mallus, shanatakumaran sreesanth, sreeshanth, or sreesunth???? however his numerologist might have advised him off late.......

Tharoor puts forth the idea of the agressive Indian, like gopu or sree as they call the fast bowler.....

an India where tit for tat rules....
i would deal with you in the same plate as u did with me.....
an india which does not buck down under one blow, which would give back the blows......

good....
youngsters can really get inspired by that idea....

then i reach the supplements, the sunday supplement has an article informing us that the drag "queen" in the UK this time is an Indian, RESURGENT INDIA.....for sure......

then comes another supplement.......
it again brings up the mallu poster boy, and asks whether Indians are aggresive enough to achieve their goals and ambitions....
the survey says pretty much yes.....

And India's own superhero, a bollywood star, also reiterates that we need to stretch ourselves
to know our limits.......
for that he says we need to get out of our own "comfort" zone.......
true i agree a lot....
but how much "comfortable" is anyone out of their own comfort zone....
what is our ultimate aim?
To be HAPPY!!
But happy outside the so called comfort zone!!!!
Is it really possible????
Although everyone would prefer not to be called the proverbial frog in the well, but still everryone loves to be one.....
don't we?
There lies in the problem of aiming high......
We get acrophobic.....
What if we fall midway through????
what if we never reach there??????
would we able to take the mockery associated with the failure?????

But i would rate one thing, which would be ignored by many......
what if we really reach there???
The point of stretching us further comes.....
Stretching further until one day the chord breaks.....
But what have we achieved???
We still feel incomplete....
Still feel that we have got more to do till one day we will die leaving the job at hand unfinished.....

And in this process we might even break a few relationships built over the time, because we no longer belong to that genre of people.
We can't even strike a conversation with them.
Simply putting we start feeling uncomfortable, thus getting out of the "comfort" zone.....
But is achievemnt in the materialastic world really worth it?????
True to be called a "hero" by the masses you need to cut a few present chords, forge a few new ones......
But there in stands the choice......
Emotional satisfatcion or materialastic satisfaction?????
What would you prefer?

Even Mahatma Gandhi, is said to have a "spiritual marriage" to Tagore's niece, three years his junior at the age of 50, because he just couldn't realte to an illeterate Kasturba.
Yesterday i went for a bollywood flick, Guru, about how a villager makes it big as an industrialist, but the moral ways are forgotten for the good.
The end of the movie, say many including the newspaper in my hand, was flawed.
Because the industrialist is let off for all the frauds that he has committed.
They said cinema should always show a "morally good" end.
But i guess that's justified in the materialastic world of today.
India is definitely changing and so are its people.
Everything is changing with time.
Nothing remains same.
You.
Me.
Him.
Her.
It.
Everything, nothing escapes the clutches of time.
And so does India!!!

Three cheers for the changing country, although something dear is always lost in a change!
You have to pay for everything.
Nothing comes for free.
This country is set to pay with its culture down the line.....

Call me a pessimist or one that resists change......
But if I am happy with the present scenario, why should i change????

I would love to be the frog in the well.
My world does start and end with the well!!!!

Spring time ahoy?

I saw those eyes....
those innocent eyes.....
the cute smile with a kid's gleam in those eyes....
and i yearned to be like that...........
Free of thoughts of the outer world,
free of the worldly pleasures except for an odd ice cream!

Can i ever be like that.....
Be a twenty one year old and still manage to move around with the nonchalance of a five year old?

be treated like one......
feel like one......

like they accept her...
like they treat her.....
taken care as a kid......
but treated like a woman.

its so difficult in this world to show you are tough.
but its more difficult in this world to keep the innocence in you
the child in you alive....

They say the years go by, and it all changes with the years.....
the childhood comes and goes.

But is it so, or are we responsible for it?
Don't we brand the innocent as unwise?

so we hide the innocence somewhere in the dark corners where it would be difficult to retrieve it back........

And put up a facade.....
and end up not being us......

being someone else we would love to be,
but definitely not HAPPY to be.......

But there are pros and cons for innocence too i guess.....
the con part being, the naivety would be mistaken as mere "foolishness"

But paying a price with your happiness seems to outweigh people mistaking you.
after all its not them who should matter.....
its your happiness that does matter....

and slowly but steadily, the dreams are creeping in....
the days seem more wonderful,
the sunlight seems to penetrate although its the winter at its peak now, for the outer world.

greenery seems not far in the boulevard.

A few steps and is it spring for me?