Flying...

A careful survey has revealed that the number of readers of this blog is not just three. In fact, it is four. Since one of them is located in India, it can be safely said that the blog has transcended boundaries and commanded international recognition.

It is my duty, therefore, as also my pleasure, to inform my readers that I am flying to India today!! Wow, its going to be soo much fun!!

Happy new year to one and all. Till we meet again, happy thoughts!

Something disturbing...

I have often wondered whether it is right to execute a person for his/her crimes. There are groups in the world who have severely opposed the death penalty. There was the famous case of Dhanonjoy Chatterjee in India, when many anti death-penalty champions took to the streets. In USA this week, a similar chapter was repeated when Stanley Tookie Williams was executed by lethal injection earlier yesterday.

On one hand, I believe a criminal must face the results of his crime. No-one can justify what Dhanonjoy or Williams did. Ever. No action of atonement can bring back the lives that were lost, nor subside the pain that was caused. On the other hand, punishing death with death, makes 'Us' just like 'Them'. When Williams died yesterday, the death was witnessed by a group of fifty people. He was put on a table in a glass chamber and people sat around the chamber and watched him die. Watched him die. It gives me a feeling of civilized murder. Criminals act as per their wrong ideas, follow their cruel intentions. The system that does justice to them, acts no better. It murders them in cold-blood, at a given time and place.

I understand the perspectives of both groups. I understand the need for revenge, the need for 'closure' that a victim's family wants. My views therefore swing between two opposite ideologies.
Perhaps, this is one of the most complicated issues of our times. Various nations have differing opinions regarding this.

Here is a link to the report about the death of Stanley Williams. Its depressing.

I read this when I was a kid. The story of Pandora. How the world was once a beautiful place and there were gardens and orchards all around. And there were no hard choices to make. I wish Pandora hadn't opened the box and the world had remained just like that : beautiful, peaceful.

True love...

There are a few moments in your life, when you feel you are in the presence of true love, and you often cherish those for life. I sometimes feel that the sum total of ones existence is the few moments of love and affection that we have in our lives; it is the simple hugs, the careless pecks and the mischievious nudges, those few moments in which your heart took a leap, that you remember even years later. And if you have ever been in love, you will know when you are in the presence of true love.

Last evening I was at a friend's place and we were having a get-together for Thanksgiving. It was here that I met this couple, and looking at them during the evening, I just knew how truly in love they were. It was a kind of quiet, confident love that you don't get to see everyday. One of them is a friend of mine, and I felt I had never seen her like this, she was always pretty, but yesterday... She was so happy, her face was glowing, and she was looking really beautiful... We were all so very happy to see her happy.

Everyone could see the chemistry between the two. Perhaps, I am a bit more intuitive, and I could feel a bit of the history too. I could feel how much they had been through the years, the ups and downs, and I don't know why I felt this way, but that every smile today had been paid for with some tears in the past.

The two made the evening extra special for me; for sometime now I have been really cynical about love. Sometime back I had written in this blog an article titled "Once I too was pure and naive" . I remembered my friend Shashi and how much in love he was and how we used to talk for hours at King Circle at 'Garnish' about these things. Once I came here, I kind of felt I had lost sight of true love, it was always a throw-it-in-your-face, "hey its us"-kind of love that you often get to see here.

Not that I have anything against it. But I feel that still waters run deep, love need not always be obvious, and if it is true, it will show. I had begun to think that it doesn't happen that way anymore.

I felt true love no longer exists. And I am so glad I was wrong about that.

Yearning for magic again...

Yearning for magic again...
Dreaming of ----- again...
Riding the wings of desire
Flying away from pain...

Riding the wings of desire, flying away from pain,
Life is a beautiful game.

Some more "roomisms"...

This one is short, I promise. Just two more gems from roomie-talk, fresh off the oven:

• Heard while retorting to a claim that someone doesn't like someone's attitude: "The feeling is bi-mutual!"
• Heard during the discussion of why all Bengali's are not like our Bengali roommate: "Ay chal chal... Sab Bengali log tere tarah kharab nahi hote... Abhi for example, Sarojini Naidu ko hi le le"

Many more will be posted soon. It is worthwhile to note while parting that I have started using ambiguous naming conventions to escape strange compiler warnings.

Lol so funny...

My house has become a breeding lair for future comedians and it seems each roommate uses every opportunity to test his jokes on others. As all flaky and cheap people do, all of us laugh at almost anything that is thrown at us, and in the process encourage this never - ending cycle of really really poor jokes...

It comes as a relief then, when someone unwittingly cracks a really good joke, and the celebrations for this event often continue into the night, with peels of laughter arising intermittently...

Today's event needs special mention:

Today we were watching some TV show with a girl called Casey in it. First someone suggested that she looked cute and everyone readily agreed to that detail. It was then that I put forth a doubt: Is Casey the name of a girl or a guy and how are we supposed to know... The question made the room silent for a minute, after which Jay added that it was indeed a difficult question to solve and mentioned that Casey Miller who works at the university office is, in fact, a guy. Having two such examples of each kind, we racked our brains even more, when Jay finally came up with this beauty and stopped the discussion for ever by saying:

"Arre, shayad last name pe bhi thoda depend karta hoga!"...

I am planning to nominate this to the 4733 hall of fame for 2005. Please vote.

The fight within...

When aims and ambitions
Clash with feelings and emotions
The mind wanders into a world of miseries
Uncured by fitness potions.

When the thinking mind pursues one thing,
& the heart endorses another,
The soul flutters in between & feels:
What would it do rather?

O loves of my life! & passions!
& my ambitions! Gather!
Couldn`t we break all old notions
And get along together?

-deep

ps: okie, that wasn't so good, but it was honest, I often feel I should be able to follow my heart, do what I really want to do even when I tread the path to academic success. And man, do these things clash! And so it is that things like learning either the piano or a guitar, getting back to my school friends, spending more time with my new friends, all take a backseat. I wish I could do all that. If someone could teach me how to.

Wishes And Roses

She gave me no roses
I asked for none
But in secret refuges
I hoped for one...

She gave me good wishes
I kept them away
But their goodwill refreshes
Me to this day...

For roses are lovely
But not forever
Roses lose their fragrance
Wishes...never!

Once I too was pure and naive...

Sometimes I wonder, how I have come to become all that I once hated. A cynical non-believer in love. One who cannot accept that no matter how much two people are in love, it is a facade both of them are putting up until the time comes to emerge from behind their masks. That we are all selfish people. Of course, there is a reason why I have unknowingly started thinking this way. I have seen it happening all around me.

Once I too was pure and naive,

The world was beautiful all around me

How I wished I could have stayed the same;

I am sure it would be

A lie to myself. Yet I would be

Happier than what I am today,

A cynic who lives day by day.

On lonely days, I sit down and think. Why things didnt work out. Why the idealist in me died. Why I stopped believing. Why it was so much better when I was man enough to cry.

It was so much better when I believed. I really want to believe again. In love. In destiny. And I will, one day, even if there is a fraction of a reason to believe.

Wish I had stayed naive.

Gypsy girl...

Her hair needed brushing...
Her hands needed washing...
Clean but crumpled, her dress needed pressing...
She had me gazing at her on that mysterious evening.
But all she shared
Was a blank stare.
Now she's gone with the evening
But hours later,
Miles apart,
I am still thinking...
Of the gypsy girl who stole my heart.

-deep
(Inspired by someone I had met when I was 15.)

Lather, Rinse, Repeat

Seems like just yesterday when I came here. Trying to act like Mr. Cool, kinda nervous inside, not a clue in the world how things were going to shape up. I was very lucky to find very good friends here. Yet each one of them seemed weird in his or her own way when I met them for the first time. I am not going to go into examples here :)
I fumbled for the first few days, trying to find my way around, took the wrong buses, got down on the wrong streets, said hello to the wrong girls... the list goes on. Except for the last point on that list, I have improved a lot on the others. Things worked out well, thanks largely to early support by friends like Piyush, Monty, Nitin and Abhishek.

I had a good time with my roomies Nimish, Jay and Kausum, neither of whom I can even begin to explain. The weirdest of the lot had befallen my path, and I couldn't have been more thankful about it. Times have changed, and soon we will not live together. I will miss them. The little things. Those that only roomies will understand.
The only fun in trying to be Mr. Cool in your first semester here, is watching your roomies do the same and fail miserably. And being blissfully unaware that you are worse than them ;) I will specially miss my roomie Jay, who has thru his unwitting sarcasm encouraged me many a times. Never before have the words "Aye chal chal kam kar tu apna" said with more meaning and sarcasm! Will miss him.

The reason I remembered all this today is because a new batch of students is here now. And I see the same wide-eyed blokes around campus that I am afraid, I was one of, last year. The same questions. The same excitement. Its like watching a replay in realtime. Hey, don't get me wrong. Everyone goes thru that, gotta go thru that. Its a whole new world, and I remember clearly how that world became my world, as it will be theirs in the days to come. Cant wait for the snowing to begin!

School blues

I thought writing a blog wouldnt be so difficult, but its two weeks into school and I am finding myself short of time. I am sure I should be able to have ten minutes to myself in a day though,
so I am planning to write at least thrice a week from now on. Lets see how well that goes. I am probably not into school mood yet. Boy, do i miss Google days.

The story so far...

To cut a long story short, everyone seems to be having a blog nowadays, and I was kinda feeling left out. Also, I thought it would be cool to put down my thoughts someplace, something I could reflect upon later. I used to write a diary for several years, so this may not be too unfamiliar for me.

The story so far : I was born in India in 1980, had my schooling and college there, came to the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in August 2004. Its been a little more than a year for me in the US now, and I have just about started enjoying it. I have just returned from a great summer in California, so I am feeling pretty good about myself.

Every life according to me is a book in itself; like most of us, I too have had the struggles, hopes, falls and joys along the long winding way. In a few hours from now, I will be twenty five, and if there is something I have learnt in all this time, it is that I should do my best and the Lord will put everything else into place. The lessons are plenty, and will be best said in these lines from the poem "Waiting" by John Burroughs:

Serene, I fold my hands and wait,
Nor care for wind nor tide nor sea;
I rave no more 'gainst time or fate,
For lo! My own shall come to me.