Happy new year!

The old is peeling off

Feelings of newness and hope arise

Shedding off the old,

willing for the new

to be as good as its shiny.

We grow a year older

One only hopes,

we also grow a year wiser

and not as full of vice

as last year 

Wishing everyone 

A Beautiful and Hopeful

Happy New Year!

Abandoning

Flying free,
completely abandoning my restrictions
watching myself finally smile,
with my eyes.
But only I see that smile
of mine
All that the others see
are eyes that speak a language
that no one understands,
looking far far away.
But I felt this smile of mine -
It had finally escaped
the boundaries that others
drew for it.

Beginnings....
A deceptive word.
They also mean an ending to something else.
So what is it?
Shall we call it a beginning or an ending? Is it just change? Is it just a shift?
Or shall we just say that language is such a confusing thing, having many words for just one thing!
Be like the bushmen who have very few words, yet communicate perfectly. Everything is black or white. Greys and in-betweens are simply not given any value. Like the computer binary language - 0 or 1.
Either you are or you are not.
Bloody language, I say!

Familiar Stranger

Familiar stranger,
strangely familiar,
the pattern seem to fit when you look,
at it one by one,
yet the picture as a whole,
seems to be so dissonant.
There is a missing link.
There is some unnameable chink.
Its gone.
But left behind a hole,
that can't be filled.
For there was a delicate barrier,
that made strangers friends
and the unfamiliar, familiar.
Now its gone,
leaving behind a stranger
who was once familiar,
But is now just a face
with a smile that reminds me
of a stranger
with whom I was once familiar.

Fee! Fie! Fo! Fum! I smell a strange smell!?!

I know this sounds extremely crazy. But well… smells matter.

 I was having a conversation with a colleague of mine. She came smelling of espresso and I was immediately tempted to have some espresso then and there!

The smell of coffee in the morning is a major wake up call for me. Sometimes I wake up telling myself that, ‘If I wake up now, then I can enjoy my coffee a little longer’.

I have once been woken up by having a mug of coffee put under my nose…. “Ok baby, wake up now! We need to pack up and MOVE!!!” trust me I was up within half a minute. Cold coffee in the morning doesn’t work well you see…!:-)

But other than my favourite smell of coffee, the smell of good food damp earth, rains, mild perfumes – these things draw me out and make me smile.

Some smells are just so comforting – like my mother’s smell. I know that smell. She has smelt that way ever since I remember her. It’s not something I can name, its just there. Comforting and nice. The familiarity of it all makes me smile with a very deep pleasure.

The smell of wet earth reminds me of paper boats I used to make with my sister and let them float on the puddles in the building. It used to be so much fun. We used to see how long the paper boats last. And whose goes furthest…. An innocent version of the all-consuming boat race that we face in our daily life now….

Then there are other smells… the extremely unpleasant smell of the Koovum river as you enter Chennai by train in the morning. Before you reach Madras Central station, you have to cross the Basin Bridge station which has the once beautiful river which is now a gutter and a natural alarm clock – the Koovum river. This river stinks so bad that even in the deepest of slumbers; I wake up and say, ‘Ah! I have reached Chennai!’

Another smell that has always been completely disgusting, yet a part of homecoming to me is the smell of Mahim creek. I think it beats even Koovum. It has a distinctly industrial waste kinda smell along with the various other unnameable organic smells that accost us as soon as we enter this hot, humid and vibrant city of Mumbhai.

After the air conditioned cool air of the airplane and the airport, once you get your baggage and cross customs, you realize that you have a cold or a blocked nose. Once you are in your taxi/auto and steaming in the traffic, you are trying hard to deep breathe and unblock your nose. But once you are near the Mahim creek and you take a deep breath and hey presto! Your nose gets unblocked and you breathe easy….. Or maybe not!

But well… Shah Rukh Khan put it well enough in Dilwale…. ‘In big big cities, such small small things happen senorita!’

Parents, kids and all that jumble, tumble and fuss....

I always thought that it’s a pretty useless and stupid thing to say that a girl becomes a woman only when she becomes a mother. A woman has to take care of home and hearth. The modern woman also wants to have a career, so she should be able to juggle home hearth family (including extended) and career. No compromises. Some allowances are definitely given. But overall, she has to juggle quite a bit. Even if she is the sole breadwinner.

Why should motherhood be an added burden? The nausea, the cravings, the increasing bulk, trips to the loo, the labour pains, then the mass of screaming bundle that comes out from your body, nearly ripping the female body apart. Sigh! Why go through all that kind of pain? What’s the point of it all? India’s population is already hitting the roof. The world’s population is too much. Why do we need to give birth to more kids? More mouths to feed.

Live and let die.

To what end?

The joy of caring for someone who depends totally on you. Someone whom you know from when they were completely helpless, completely dependent on you. Someone who looks up to you. Literally and figuratively. A little bag of joy, happiness, tears and poo – just waiting for you to cuddle up to it and re-live your own childhood. Refresh the innocence that we seem to have forgotten in our world of adults. Become children to get a fresh new perspective of this jaded cynical world we live in. Marvel at the innocence that is yet to be found. They inject a shot of pure, unadulterated joy into our cynical world.

Being a parent is such a unique job. You grow with your child. You learn about toys and baby products, and as they become a little older, you learn the new kiddie channels and cartoons that are available in the market. Then about schools, syllabuses, exams and latest trends and fashions. Childhood jealousies, joys and happiness.  

Parents take up the role of mentor and friend. Parents are no longer the rulebook or the guideline index by which kids g row up. This generation of parents has begun to realize that kids need them not only as a guiding force, but also as a friend. At least most that I know, have J.

They end up doubling up as friends and parents. Encouraging their kids to talk, share and communicate with them as well as righting their wrongs and teaching them a better or maybe their way of looking at things.

When we become parents, its strange, we become kids and parents both at the same time. Guess kids are born just to bring the out the children in us.

A walk on the clouds...

If the world were to be upside down,

then we would walk on clouds,

Have sky scrapers poking out of a grey green sky

It will rain fruits and flowers,

leaves and dust.

There will be cold showers at your feet.

Everytime you look down,

you can see rainbows.

If the world were upside down,

Just imagine,

we would walk on our heads

and think on our feet!!!

:)

Chalk & Cheese

Chalk met cheese one day.
Said cheese to chalk,
Strange are circumstances!
How is it that we meet and speak?
Replied Chalk,
Indeed! I agree.
So let me return to the blackboard's side.
Why don't you get back to the 'fridge?

Ushering the new...

The Old are dying away. The 21st century is in its first decade, and the weaning of the old from the new has begun. Nature has taken over and the new cycle has begun. Like peeling of the skin is painful at first, it does reveal the new, fresh clean skin underneath. But the process is,nevertheless, painful.
My grandfather told me before his death that the old are unproductive. But I disagree. The old are our moral support. A link. You feel a certain continuity.
There is guidance. There is someone to look up to. Someone to tell you when you are wrong.
Now we have to totter on our own feet and find our way in the darkness.
The gloom made deeper since we never thought that death would so suddenly pull our loved ones, our iconic leaders away so quickly, so suddenly. There is no time to gasp for breath.
This year started with the double deaths of my grandparents. 10 days after each other, they simply left us all alone. Then my ailing aunt passed away suddenly enough. That is on my personal front. The year started with deaths. One after the other.
Steve Jobs died last week on the 6th of October . Now Jagjit Singh died this morning.
Steve Jobs was a great innovator and a great marketeer. He knew that publicity of any kind is good publicity. The superb combination of innovative products and controversy courting publicity made Apple and him the forefront of technological advancement.
Jagjit Singh was a wonderful singer. He brough ghazals to the common man. His heart rending renditions and poetic ethos conveyed itself through his voice and made anyone who listened to his songs go into another plane. Albeit a pretty gloomy and sad one. But there is happiness and sorrow - his tended to be more sorrowful.
One has to give allowance to personal tragedies. Losing ones teenage son to a road accident makes you eligible for such sorrowful songs. Enjoying them is our choice. His songs were more philosophical and tended to convey the message that though sadness comes, we have to trudge the load and move on... life is such.
A beautiful message.
I suppose there is a lot of wealth in this message. We need to move on. We need to make newer icons and learn from our predecessors. In this Aquarian age, where we are lucky enough to be the radicals we want to be. Let us shrug the useless old ways, but take on the meaningful values they left behind and build our future on such ideals that help us make ourselves and our world better.
Like Steve Jobs said, “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
After all, Nature and Change deserve...
Respect!! 

Noise of Silence

Silence
A language that's filled
with wordless everythings.
It is filled with all things
but
Silence....
Sift through the noise of silence,
listen to the magic of silence.

Facebook - Too much on your face now!

Ho! Hum! Hum! as treebeard would say in the Lord of the Rings... I shall start this as quickly as an ent can... So you see, I shunned these networking and these can-i-make-friendship-with-you sites till I was introduced to this site called facebook.com. Then all hell broke loose. Because you see, there are games, friends, photographs to comment on and well, really so many comments, posts and so many things to keep track of, so many comments to reply, so many things overall to do that well.. ahem, ho! hum! hum! I simply did not feel like well.. you know, to leave the website, thinking maybe....maybe I might miss something. Or well, I am bored so what the hell! let me just knock on someone's door and see what they are upto. Or maybe my city needs refreshments, and my cows need milking and my customers in the cafe need more food. Thus days passed till I saw the Vodafone ad for Facebook in their Nokia phones. Well, then ho! hum! hum! hum! I saw that instead of the protagonist, it was me in there. I felt I saw people through facebook. Really, its quite scary a concept to know that I am connected to facebooko and though facebook to the rest of the world. It made me open my eyes and look around. well, and LO! there were the greens and browns and the blues and yellows and the reds and oranges, no colour correction required and bright as you want or dim as you like. The coulours stared in my face and my eyes blinked. In surprise I stared and laughed out loud at the fact that I, who had never thought much of these stupid networking can-i-make-fraandsheep-with-you sites have turned around to see the world of mine through facebook.com.\
So hereby, I make a solemn promise that I shall cut down on my visits to facebook.com and shall wander through the wide avenues of the internet and avoid on-your-face facebook.com!

Stark.

The grey skies open up.
Clouds seem to part.
shadows are sharper,
Images seem to jump into your sight.
Stark.
Sun rays seem to penetrate through
lighting up the clouds like a halo.
Giving it a 3d effect,
Making things so crisp and clear.
Stark.
Nothing to hide behind.
Just you and the blinding reality
With the sun shining down
uncovering, making everything
Stark.

Heights of confusion!!

A sheep in a lion's coat
Or a lion in a sheep's coat?
Scurry away or confront?
Prey.
Or be preyed on?
Confounding, confusing
wondering now and again
If i am the hunter or the hunted

Smile

Words run in a loop,
I am stranded
in a soup of my own making.
Smiles & laughter spew out.
My lips spread wide
in a smile
that is just short of my eyes.

Not by words, but by deeds...

Indian youth are getting more aware. There are campaigns for corrupt free India. There's a campaign for clean cities. Indian youth are getting more patriotic. Indian students abroad have decided that mera bharat is definitely mahan. We don't have visa problems in this country after all!
But we do have some intrinsic problems. Problem of corruption, baksheesh, casteism...these divide our society and cut us deeper than any sword or word can.
Its not a word, but a deed that changes the country. The first division in this country that is deeper than religion is caste. It starts from our homes, temples, schools to government jobs and every other aspect of our life. First thing you know is which category you fall in general, SC/ST, OBC. If you are in general category, you don't get any government benefits. If you are an SC?ST, OBC, you get looked down by society.
In the name of hygiene, there are different sets of vessels for the members of the lower castes in upper caste houses. Are they less human than the upper castes?
In the name of creating equal opportunities, a student of lower caste can get admission in top engineering and medical colleges even though he has 40%-50% aggregate. But a student of general category needs to have 80%-90% for the same college and the same course.
Yet we are the largest democracy. What a laugh!
60+ years after foreigners completed the divide and rule policy, we took up where they left off. We, as Indians, know the intricate social divides in our country. The elite cream of the society who had power then, manipulated the laws to increase the divisions. Social reforms were forgotten and in the name of equality, divisions were enhanced. Now, this mammoth democracy is completely divided.
Religion, caste, corruption.
Everything is saturating this country. Its all boiling up now. Every one is becoming more aware. But can we just look into ourselves and see what we are doing to help or harm? Can each one say and practice, "I am not going to give money to someone to do his/her job?" I am going to give merit to merit? I am going to avoid littering?
Can we be honest with ourselves and live in a way that we want our country to be? So that We have a hand in making our country, the way we want it?
The revolution doesn't start when you speak out. It starts when you practice what you speak.

Slumber

I crave for it
yet when I lie down
my eyes are wide open,
my mind whirs with thoughts whizzing past
unsettled, super-aware,
I try to close my mind,
blink at the ceiling all night long.
ere morning arrives,
with droopy eyes , a tired mind,
laughter on my lips
fatigue in my body,
I crave on
...but sleep.... still eludes me

Hollywood Global Inc.

During the 90's, service industries in the west actually figured a new way of effective cost cutting. Move East! India was the preferred destination. Currency conversion was convenient. Lots of English speaking people to choose from. And Cheap Labour. They don't expect all the kinds of benefits that employees in the western world have come to take for granted. Per hour payment is not really the scene here. Pay Rs.20K a month, and a graduate will be happy to slog his ass for the whole month. So many back offices mushroomed in India that it was a waste of intelligence. get good money but your brains rust, your biorhythms go haywire and you don't enjoy Indian holidays. It was work work work.
But the boom has now stabilised. Now there is a different kind of industry that wants to hold Indian hands and stir us all up. That's the film industry. Hollywood is now reaching out to the talent that is latent in India. The hardworking geeks can now work a little harder and enter into the vfx industry in India and end up working for the greats of the movie industry. So strange! Be American but buy global had become the mantra in everything but movies. But now even movies have been included in this net. It is good for the artists working in the Indian vfx companies, for they get to work on movies like Transformers, Harry Potter, Xmen and many other movies that are more legends than movies. Definitely the western VFX companies also get to profit due to this as they get cheap labour. Artists in the west need to learn more and upgrade his/her skills more often than not if they have to survive in this industry. But do they?
What is the kind of work that gets sent to India? Is it the character layout? character designs? Nopes. The stuff that gets sent here is mostly not creation. We simply follow orders. It is just cheap labour for the VFX industry.
We do the stuff that requires great detailing and hard work. Lots of man hours.
But what about our local movies? Why don't we work in those? Why don't big companies like R&H India, MPC Bangalore work for the local film industry? Reliance, TATA, Prime Focus India, Red Chillies and a few others do work for Indian movie industry. But the quality is just about ok or else American VFX companies have a big hand in creating the most innovative parts of it like layout, character design. The concepts are not so fresh. Though the Telugu and Tamil film industries are getting innovative with their VFX movies, the ideas seem to be somewhat stale. I wonder when Indian cinema will get a movie get its own home made Avatar, concepts that are created and worked for by Indian artists who are many and much more talented than the Indian film industry gives it credit for.

Getting back

Writing...once I considered it to be an integral part of me. I never thought I would part from writing. Its so strange that I had. I had parted with writing so much that i felt a foreigner if i had to write something. Anything at all. It was weird. I would sometimes read stuff that I had written earlier and actually wonder how i wrote all those things. Now, when I have to write something, it no longer flows. My synapses seem to be lagging. I make a nice comment and I am surprised I can do that even now. Its like some old sluggish machine that was once zipping away,amoothly and instinctively, but suddenly crashed and blued out. Now when I am trying to resurface and write a bit, I feel like I am doing something that was once vaguely familiar, yet vaguely fascinating. I cant believe my relationship to something that I thought would never break has now splintered. reforming and growth are so surprisingly reluctant, painful and long thought out that they feel deliberate...
Instinct has now dwindled to.......de..deli.....deliber.....deliberate....

Guess thats how animals became wild for us and civilization means a bunch of concrete buildings, malls and yea...cell phones....but now i am wandering....in the jungles of my weird, patched up existence that believes that if i stick around, then i grow cobwebs and start rusting....but well, i Didn't stick to writing and look! here I am dawdling around with words and trying to be witty and s-s-stumbling around with my thoughts and narration after quitting writing and now getting back to it after ages...

Coffeeeeeeeeeee and...........

The smell of this amazing brew is what I would love to wake up with. Ground coffee beans and hot water simmering off and giving me the blessed filter of pure coffee! Aaaah! Divine bliss! Add a bit of cream and a spoon of sugar and sip it....hmmmmm!!! Amazing!
Coupled with a nice lovely novel, an overstuffed chair, a log fire, a fat cat dozing at my feet and I am in wonderland! O! And it should be raining or snowing outside.
One day....I will make this a reality!

Hmmm....

United we win, divided we fall.
In unity, we dividedly believe.
The chinks in the armour - inevitable.
A divided unity,
Thats uniformly divided
is an existence we have to live with
Being an Indian later,
but first a Tamilian, Malayali, marwadi or whatever first.
Sometimes its soothing,
but some other times,
I just want to be
I am an Indian.
I love chaat, masalas, avial, parathas, wada pav
I love the beach, the sun and the sand,
I love the smell of Coffee and spices, the beautiful sunrises,
the breathtakingly colourful sunsets, the vastness and wonders of nature
that make me feel proud to be a human being first
and then an Earthling
:-)

Hyderabad Blues

This is my second day in Hyderabad. The Telegana issue is burning...according to media and various news channels, literally as well as figuratively. Thankfully I cannot see those amazing footages since I don't have television access now. But life here in Hyderabad is just another day in the calendar. We don't plan for cinemas and outings but well, it is after all, a weekday. A bloody tuesday for all that! So finish work at office and simply vanish behind closed doors and enjoy the company of your friends, fones and laptops. (After all, this is the age of super communication!)
The issue is that 83 MLA's and 11 MP's have resigned. So the city is having an official 'bandh'. But well, its actually the governing office (I dont presume to be politically aware) thats to be closed. Why the city?
Why can't life be as usual? The issue has been a 'burning' issue for years on end. it has come to the fore in the past few years.

So....why is the news media scaring people about violence? Why are the politicians scaring the junta outside the state that there is going to be violence? For, the general junta over here are as relaxed and unconcerned about it as ever when a bandh is announced. the issue maybe sensitive in their hearts, but their actions belie the fact. It is only very few who have their offices closed for the span of 2 days ( and I am completely jealous of them!) and maybe the schools are not running. there is no availability of petrol so auto wallahs quote any number that comes to their mind.

Sigh! I wish my office was closed! I would have slept till late. Had a game of carom, read some books, etc with my room mates friends....but well...!
Hyderabad Blues indeed!