A Tune That Died Young

There is too much noise outside
Drilling into my head
And I can’t just write on love and life
They jar out notes that were in me
Strangling them in one stampede
Of music of undead.
I shut the windows,
Kill the lights
Still, there is this soaring sound
Of all that’s lively, all that blooms
Hounding me for all that’s left
No place to hide
No place to run
And while the noises bang my doors
A voice in me calls out for more
And strangely strangers lift their heads
To look in corner rooms.
Searching for their piece of cloth
They find it nestling in those crypts
Wrapped in which my music slept
Long forgotten.
Long dead.

How does it feel ..... ????

How does it feel to be a part of a 'Happy Birthday'- party in the middle of the road ?

How does it feel to be cutting a cake in the full knowledge that within a minute the cream-smeared you will be embarrassed to death on the way back home ?

How does it feel to smile and distribute pieces of cake to complete strangers whose names you will never know ?

How does it feel to have a photo session spanning 20 minutes, having 15 grown-up boys and girls covering every awkward pose that was ever conceived to the bemusement of clueless onlookers?

How does it feel to be the 'cause de la célébration' of cultured insanity for an evening just because you happened to be born on this day 22 years back ?


WONDERFUL!!!!!

Absolutely Wonderful!!!!


Only that I would have had much more to add to the protagonist's woes had it not been my own birthday today.

Drat!
Double drat!

Finally!

I have a follower.

And no treat/money/points/pastries for guessing who he is.

As it is, I owe a grand treat to him.

And much much more.


Your treat awaits you.

Fly back FAST! :)

Me ? Superstitious ? What an idea !!!!!!

I am not known to be a superstitious person. Yet, for all these years I have had my own set of rituals. Ones which were not overtly visible at all and were meticulously guarded in their execution. I never resorted to them in 'times of peace' as opposed to 'times of war' as we called our examinations during school. Those two dreaded weeks in the year when there was hardly any 'light and happiness' around you. Wherever you looked there were bespectacled boys and girls cramming their last minute notes, revising the revision-worn revisables for the umpteenth time. On the other end were 'Us' - a bunch which swung between amused ridiculing of the 'Others' and feeling the pangs of tension ourselves. Whenever glancing at the sea-like syllabi, taking stock of the situation and resolving to give our 'reasonable best' a fear of retribution at having mocked all the studious people seemed to hang over us ominously . And deep down in our guts ( I say 'our' because I am sure the others felt the same way) there sometimes arose this sinking feeling when D-Day dawned and hence the refuge in rituals. This selective fidelity perhaps makes me inadmissible to the hallowed club of 'Devotedly Superstitious People', the ones who did it all year round. But, then we have our arguments too. We were never the ones who studied anytime but just before the exams were thumping at our noses and knocking at our doors. So, we, of all people had the right to be superstitious unlike the ones who put in their hard-work on a daily basis. They were destined to succeed. We only had hope to do so.

Enough of arguing my case.


My 'acts of faith' during exams ranged from waking up at the same time as the first exam, pouring a generous dab of oil on my hair, bathing with exactly the same number of mugs of water ( and yes, never hot water. Not even in chilly December), combing exactly in the same manner as yesterday, tying the shoe-laces in a pre-fixed order and taking the same seat in the bus/auto-rickshaw that took us to our school. Nothing fancy. But as the years rolled on I suspected I was developing some kind of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I quite liked the name of the ailment then and I have renewed my fascination for OCD since I watched Jack Nicholson in 'As Good As It Gets' but, at times I felt 'it was time to change'.

"What with this silly fixation with rituals? I am getting hooked!"

So, I began to test the efficacy of my 'little acts' by being random from the next exams that I took. I didn't do too well. But then, who does in +2 Science ?

Slowly I desisted from my set of superstitions one by one and finally I was 'cured'. ( I know I sound like those dubbed dum-dums in Asian Sky Shop commercials). Now I hardly have a pattern to my activities. Any of them. I am the first one to cross the road after a cat has crossed it as perplexed onlookers, themselves reluctant to cross the road, gaze at my arrogance.

Why this long winding post on personal superstitions then? All the talk about rituals ?

I have this habit of never leaving a book unread for a long stretch of time once I start reading it or leaving a film midway. I have done just that, unintentionally though, in the past two days. ( I don't consider leaving 'A House for Mr. Biswas' after reading the first 200 odd pages an authentic 'exception' because it was, to put it very politely, a forgettable ordeal. An instrument of sheer torture by virtue of its literary stagnation) I left 'Judgment at Nuremberg' and 'Citizen Kane' midway and went off to sleep. Though I was dog-tired on both the occasions the old ghosts of OCD were troubling me a bit, to have left two films midway in their run in two days. I have never done that before. Hence the post. Hence the remembrances. This might just redeem me.



P.S - I know a boy who had all the makings of a perfect OCD specimen. Someday I intend to write an epic-post on his gamut of rituals and beliefs. But, I hear he is improving too.
He is superstitious about 'improvement'. :)

"Here's looking at you, kid."

It always feels good to read people's blogs, the nice personal ones, dripping with sense of belonging and attachment, adorably carefree, nonchalant to what the accidental onlooker might think of it and the person behind those thoughts. They just don't care. I especially like the ones which do not indulge in furnishing intimate details from their private lives nor lose their identity in the now highly popular recreation of 'bitching' but exude a debonair charm which I find mighty attractive.


I only wish I could do the same.


But, to open up to the world as if no opinion mattered is like dancing as if no one is watching. And I, for one, cannot dance. I have often had this argument with myself as to why or why not should a blog be personal, a window to the real 'you' unaware of the public perusal and unconcerned of the ensuing interpretations. Every time I have wanted to sit down and write about the world around me, not the world far away in Delhi or Washington where our futures are decided on the basis of might and Machiavellian polity but the one that is in immediate contact with me, I have felt both vacuous and reluctant. And that is why it feels great to read people who discover that iota of magic every now and then in their lives. Not that I envy them to the point that I may gleefully barter their life for mine. Not that I don't always like what I write. May be it's just the quintessential "what if......."- feeling thats lingers with me to see such posts every now and then.


But then, as I often quote these lines by Ogden Nash, who always had something very vital to impress upon his readers through his seemingly humorous and cavalier verses :


" I am just glad as glad can be
That I am not them, that they are not me. "

That is just me.
That is just me.

The Part of You That No One Sees

You are powerful, passionate, and dominant. You have a vision of how things should be, and you do your best to make things happen. People rely on you for your strength. You are a rock to many. Underneath it all, you aren't so sure about your passions. So many ideas spark your interest, it is hard for you to get behind a select few. However, you see indecision as a sign of weakness. So you pursue your goals full force - no matter how foolish they turn out to be.

What's the Part of You That No One Sees?

Arriving at the End

A 'Grand Viva' is supposed to span all 42 subjects taught in the past 4 years.
A panel of 4 or more Professors from one's Dept. is supposed to supervise this process of covert humiliation with a considerable amount of pleasure, trying to impress upon you every moment how you have wasted their (and your own of course) 4 long years by just being 'there'.

Our seniors had defined Grand Viva for us in exactly those terms. It is
'The Ultimate Ordeal' known to any final year Engineering student.

Expectedly, I handled the prospect of facing such an 'encounter' with the attitude that characterizes the 'Spirit of Denial'. (One cannot possibly attempt to do anything otherwise due to the sheer bulk of the task. Even the mention of it is pure intimidation)

"Duck at every fiery bouncer and pretend that it never was".

- And it worked.

All questions were negotiated with logically interpreted 'attempts' and as a result there were not invectives or assaults aimed at us but pleasantries which were exchanged while leaving the room.

With that college had come to an end for us. For me.

Four years, which at the start of the 1st semester had looked like a lifetime were now complete. 4 years which were spent in making friends and keeping friendships, meeting people and greeting lessons, clearing stances and fearing supplementaries were now over. Life will never be the same for any of us. Workplace has its own set of values and own pace of proceedings. The easygoing life of college which was only partially disturbed by the advent of the Semesters will forever be missed. Everyone now feels "time just flew". But in retrospect it glided in its own sweet pace, ferrying life, colliding with every little hindrance in the way, disturbed at every little curb where momentum of languor was broken to the need for change and instilling in its own ancient language of silence the lesson of evolution, if only to the observant.


I, characteristically, am not the sort of person who wears his heart on his sleeves. Emoting is not my forte. I believe somethings are just too private. Yet, I cannot help but wonder at how life with all its uncertainties unleashes itself once in a while and everything around you transforms. The people who you grow to be so familiar with and fond of disappear, the backdrop of events shift and again you are just a character, just a number or just a name suspended in the turbulent waters of uncertainty sculpting the face of future. Then again you start afresh, with new tools and zeal. To build a new family of familiars around you and lose yourself in handling present pressures while the contours of the past is slowly washed away into a bleak semblance of forgotten intimacies.

Life will be a prolonged lull for most of us now, before again the spark of vitality enthuses us to action. But then this fallow too is a necessary requisite, I feel. To sit down and ponder once in a while where life's heading is not such a fruitless exercise after all. It won't make philosophers out of us or change the course of our lives or anything. But if it serves the basic purpose of inspiring introspection and answering the 'Why-s' that have till date fashioned our choices it would be a brief session of enlightenment not many would be averse to.



p.s - With an indefinite period of joblessness staring starkly at me at this moment of time I am of the intention of populating my blogspace with more such random posts. I am also deliberating on a different blog for all the poems. A poem a day might just keep the vacuum away.