just some more

I read a poem today. Beautiful. Long. Vivid. Roundabout.

Will you come with me to the city, he asked. The answer was, what was there in the city? Just tall Skyscrapers, long unmoving lines of beautiful cars, trains snaking as far as the eye could see and industries with tall chimneys that sent smoke spiralling skywards. What else is there? But mirrors staring right back at you and a jungle of bricks as far as the eye could see.

Will one get to see lush green fields? Will one get to listen to the silence?
And on it went.

Don't you think, this is exactly what we wish for when we are alone. Not aloud, but deep within ourselves?
Don't we at some point or another ask ourselves how it might have been if the streets could have been silent and cleaner? Greener?
Haven't we ever asked ourselves about what would it have been if the cities were not mere rocks and stones? Have your eyes never thirsted for a patch of green in the dusty city streets?Or ever imagined what the day of a traffic policeman might be like?

Or perhaps most of us have never even noticed it? Or have just been too caught up with the bustling of the city life, the glitz and the glamour, the neon lights and the discotheques, the bars and the restaurants, the malls- the supermalls and the elusive Ferrari or the Audi that roars by and then the silent Metro overhead.

The question is not "what to do?" or "What can I do?". You can do a lot.
But the pertinent question now is "Have u even noticed?"

the redundancy check.

the delhi metro are fully air conditioned and it is a pleasant time when you are inside it and the sun is shining outside in the middle of the summer season. a few enterprising students came up with a novel solution to escape the sun in the dead heat. they buy tickets to the immediate next station and travel the route up and down and finally get down at the intended destination buy a ticket back and come back to the point where they started out from.

want to try it out?

of the ice cubes at the bottom of the coke glass.

it was a warm evening. dry as always. and a multitude of people thronged the streets and alleyways of cannaught place. lights were just beginning to wink on and off attracting unsuspecting buyers to its charm. a kfc outlet was my destination. i was in desperate need for a drink. a coke was the best alternative i was prepared to risk. so i asked for a large one to the gentle and very forthcoming young face at the counter. my companion was in the washroom washing off the days dirt that had settled on her face.

i got a small bill and we walked out carrying the large glass. the coke was quickly gulped down and sitting beside the subway station on that warm dry night waiting for that non existent breeze we were thirsty once again. and dry throats rankled my thoughts. she quickly opened fished out a perfect little ice cube and popped it into her mouth. a kid came up and asked us for a penny she offered him the coke. he pushed it back and asked for something more than just ice cubes. but that is what was more soothing to us in that warm dry evening.

the next few minutes saw her popping the remaining ice cubes so perfect in shape into her mouth in quick succession. she said she had never seen such beautiful ice cubes in her life. neither had i.

the cellular phone incident.

while sitting on a bench at a bus sidewalk in the capital a couple of days ago, my companion-of-the-bench had her cell phone out and was twiddling with it. she accidentally brushed a passerby's hand and was accorded a glare. she noticed me catch her glare...and this time it was my turn to get another one from her. in return i paid her a smile. and was amused how the smile around.

her head snapped back. a feral snarl replaced the glare. and then in a whip lash motion her head whirled around and i was surprised to find a beautiful smile in place of that snarl. a perfect example of dual personality disorder.

the train man

here i was sitting on my berth at 9 'o clock in the evening aboard the bhopal express. below me sat three of the most talkative people i have ever had the misfortune of meeting. it was still a quarter of an hour for the train to pull out of the station. one of the men noticed a hawker peddling pillows - the kind that is blown in to and plugged thereof. on his hands a few chains were dangling too. and a few locks poked their faces from the boxes. this boor asked the poor peddler is he had in that collection of his a pillow that would blow itself and empty itself?

and at that snide comment the three of them snickered. and one of them commented...it was so advanced a technology that it was japanese made only. and that he wanted only the original. the other equally arrogant a fool sneered that probably the hawker did not expect them to know about the technology to which the hawker calmly replied. that there was a pillow that was suitable for them all. he gave them a blown up pillow. he said it need not be blown into and if and when required to deflate the pin had to be pulled. that shut them up till they finished their dinner and the sweet lassi provided in the train. and the hawker had been left far behind..

eccentricty

it comes most naturally to some of us. but most of us at one point of life or another experience it, in the most innocent ways. ever had the urge to irritate people doint the most unimaginable things like typing crass and appending words with more of them and typing with no spaces in between them. or perhaps placing misscalss or empty messages and so on and so forth. it is human nature to irritate others when one is bored.

on the other hand some of us are ice calm whatever happens on around them. never react violently or otherwise to anything that is bothering them that we start to winder if at all anything can break that calm countenance. they are the most suitable candidates for whom the term eccentric seems cogent. rarely does one witness the unveiling of their true face which is usually in turmoil and in a deep state of unrest. they are constantly at war with something or another. it is anathema to them to remain calm but by luck or by chance they are the ones who exhibit the most calm of all amidst all their eccentricities.

is anything ever fruitless??

other than love how many things have ever been fruitless..of course one might argue fruit trees when not bearing fruits are technically fulfilling the premise of the meaning of the word "fruitless" but i beg leave to think otherwise.

of course if u are reading this u are curious to know why i think so, not because you want to refute my arguments but are waiting to understand what lies on the other side of the fence. as a famous philosopher once said "the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence" here too one might argue that my arguments only look neater and not actually practical. taking an example, the other day my friend and me were riding to what we thought was an appointment on the other side of town. needless to say u might have already guessed, and rightly so , since i tend to have so many unfortunate events happening to me, that the appointment was canceled a while ago and i wasn't informed about it. reaching there we started to make our pitch and were taken aback when they retorted that we were the ones who canceled the appointment. but as everything has its own flipside we found one too. we put their enormous resources to good use and on the way back we had a good ride around the city to freshen up. it is amazing how the mind reacts to different situations.

sunday classses

welcome to my world in which one actually volunteers to attend classes on sunday mornings too!! and not only attend them but also strive to be the best in them. when most of our contemporaries are fast asleep in their beds and dreaming whatever they dream we on the other hand are up and getting ready to make it to the doors on time. its as if a blade is hanging above u and for all that is done to try and get away from beneath it all one can do is simply prolong the time before it actually falls. and the competitors that we have grown up to be we try really hard to be the ones who dance on the edge without a false step for each misstep may mean the difference between an alphabet in the english language..a-b-c-..and so on..the iims i was talking about.

and for the rest of us the ones who are more interested in the basic things about handling the delicate situations are bogged down with this deadweight of such singleminded students.

kudos to them for being the drivers for shameless students like us need a few capable drivers and standard markers who will in the end lead us all forward.

to beer and rum

drink beer and @#%! fear!! an emphatic introduction to the after effects of alcohol consumption. For most people it is an easy way to hide behind a mask to escape from reality. for the rest it is a road to live for a few moments in the world they create for themselves with their skewed sense of reality. and then we have the abstainers specifically called teetotalers.

consider a specific case, if a teetotaler tastes beer and whisky does he turn into a connoisseur or an alcoholic? a difficult choice one might say. being sober as i am now, i think it is pretty obvious that he is both and neither at the same time. it was his first experience but the circumstances also do count too...dont u think so?

for crying out loud-are all alcoholics by choice? and are all connoisseurs so just because they "like" to taste and decide which drink is better than the other???

ironic

with respect to what i had written earlier, i write this to enlighten some ironic aspects of our lives.
the other day i was listening to Alanis Morisette's ironic... it shed some light into what might be considered ironic to the point of being considered diabolically paradoxical. what might be one man's happiness might be another's grief.

just as you pay the taxicab driver a fifty- u think how light your purse has become but the taxicab driver will be thanking you for making his heavier. another point being when you need spoons all u'll have will be chopsticks and when one needs a fork all you'll see are spoons and knives...try this out in a restaurant. its like good advice that you just didn't take..how will you know the advice was good if u did not take it?

and so on...the best would always be to meet the person of your dreams and then meeting his/her spouse... Oops..

of wanting things.

have u ever had the strangeness engulf you at the pre-dawn moments of achievement when attaining something seems imminent? haven't you ever wanted to run as fast as you could in the opposite direction? not exactly afraid , just apprehensive to face all that accompanies it?

I might also be mistaken and it might be that this peculiar habit afflicts only a select few individuals selected for their singular views towards life, or their sardonic habits. whatever it may be it is for only a few chosen to experience and esconce into our daily schedule.

ping pong..

ever played ping pong? and tetris? pretty old games but very inspiring especially in real life situations..take for example what happened today. i was knocking on one door and as the story goes i went on to knock a few more doors in quick succession before i finally decided to try again tomorrow. it is a defeatist situation i know, but that is the way it is. live as well as u can when u can and live to fight another day. not sacrifice yourself at the most trivial of things and then later fail to complete the task at hand just because of these trivialities. life is hard and unforgiving and we have to adapt ourselves to live it on its terms not ours as it turns out.

living life on out terms is pretty eas i guess but living it on its own terms is pretty difficult. in my opinion we only pretend to live life on its terms and all the while we try to bend life to our own terms, every moment every act will only reiterate what i have just shown.

so play ping pong if life tells u to, knock doors of it comes your way, speak when the time comes and laugh and cry together too if that is what it takes.