Hail! Insanity!

Cars and More

2008-07-22T11:00:00.000-07:00

Correction: More Cars and No Car

Now picture this: My father's four- members family has four vehicles, an WagonR, a Ford Fiesta, a bike (Hero Honda I guess) and a scooter (good old hamara Bajaj, what else). My in-laws' 3 members family now has 3 cars. Two Maruti 800 and a brand new Scorpio (latest model) is on it's way. My husband wants more, and is currently thinking about an Alto!

And here I am, spending every day at least one and a half hours of my precious precious time, on an average, waiting for some generous colleague to kindly give me a lift in his or her car to my 25 kms far cross-border office...

Tonight I can write the saddest lines : Pablo Neruda

2008-07-20T11:44:00.000-07:00

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example, 'The night is starryand the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.'
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.How could one not have loved her great still eyes.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.
What does it matter that my love could not keep her.The night is starry and she is not with me.

....................

Tuesday Morning Blues

2008-07-14T23:37:00.000-07:00

Tuesday morning blues...
Well, it happens when you get dead drunk on a Monday night and then sleep actually Tuesday early-early-morning, and then wake up really early morning and then reach office early morning in a non AC car after a 45 min's drive (fortunately, I don't drive) only to discover that the veteran scriptwriter you were so proud of has put lines in the script (lines that the client so happily approved) which make no sense and you cannot change it now because all the animation has already been done to those lines ...
And before solving that problem you realise that you have pain in your knees, ankle, hands, elbows, back, neck and oh yes...head also...
And then you realise you desperately need a break, may be for two months, but alas, you just filled up the leave card yesterday, and have already exhausted 3 extremely valuable hard earned leaves...
These are the circumstances leading to the phenomenon called Tuesday Morning Blues... :-(

hOmE_aLOnE

2008-07-12T03:14:00.000-07:00

...and here I am, left alone again, to remember fondly the rare moments of affection and care. Everything inside the house this time is hell bent on reminding me of him. He stayed for less than a week, and now I cannot enter into the bedroom, cannot even go the hall, cannot go to the kitchen... every corner is so full of his absence!!!
Every time I see him off at the airport or he sees me off at the airport I consider the prospect of leaving everything yet again and going back, to the comfort of home and family, just so that tomorrow even if circumstances take us further away from each other (in the true sense of the term 'away'), I wont have to regret not spending enough time together when we were still so close... But oh well! Who knows what lies beyond the visible, who knows what future holds, and who knows whether 'home' is still there waiting for me...

Lost and Found

2008-07-05T23:36:00.000-07:00

Lost:
People
Poetry
Love
Losing:
Home
Hope
Friends
Found:
Work
More work
Even more work
Lost and Found:
Good ol' solitude!!!

UTNiLTeD

2008-07-05T02:30:00.000-07:00

When confusion overpowers logic and reason...

Just wait, and wait, and wait...

And oh yes, please do nothing!

My Life is Great

2008-07-03T10:08:00.000-07:00

It has been one of my a little less good days...
My laptop screen is showing the third crack in the lcd display. Mobile phone lcd is gone. The landlord at lajpat nagar refused to let the house out to me. Why! Because I live alone. (Oh I so liked the house...)
Informed my business head that I am resigning by end of July. He did not like the idea, but how does that matter.
Husband is out for some party and is not receiving my calls...
Dont you think I have reasons to celebrate? My life is great after all...
And you know what...the worst is yet to come...

Literary Characters...

2008-06-30T08:57:00.000-07:00

The basic premise of this post is that lostonthestreet tagged me to write on my favourite literary characters. Hmmm...now lostonthestreet has worked hard on getting me back to occasional writings, so cant let her efforts go waste.
Ok now, I have read Assamese literature extensively, also exhaustively, and English and Bengali literature partially. There are numerous characters close to my heart. But there is no point in mentioning all of them here, as most come from regional literature. So, here's to lostonthestreet, sketches of a few characters universally identifiable, and also, close to my heart:
(Disclaimer: Please excuse me, all the following interpretations are completely autocratic, and does not claim to have anything to do with any accepted literary or popular interpretation of the books and characters. Moreover they are majorly affected by three characteristic traits of the blogger: very poor memory retention , verbal dyslexia and confused retrieval of stored memory images. So please excuse confused rendering of proper nouns, dates, quotes etc etc)
The Little Prince: The Little Prince by Saint Exupery
The Little Prince from the small star B...something, is the love of my life. He is certainly not one of the 'grown-up's and hence he can see 'what is essential'. This alien prince fell in love with a rose only to discover later that contrary to her claim that she is one of her kind, there are numerous roses, some even better than her. He feels aggrieved and deserts her. Later, on the planet Earth he meets a fox whom he 'tames' and realises that 'one has to feel responsible to someone he tames' and that it is not the beauty and uniqueness of the rose but actually the time he spent with her is what made the rose special to him. Finally the prince departs for his home where his rose was waiting leaving the narrator sad and alone in a desert. What remains with the narrator is an evening star, that reminds him of the little prince and its rose.
Huck Finn: Adventures of Hucklberry Finn by Mark Twain
Now I wish I were either Tom Sawyer or Mr Twain himself, or I would not even mind being Jim, and I wish I was with Huck on that raft of 'escape into a new world' drifting along Mississippi ... " Two drifters off to see the world/ There's such a lot of world to see/ We're after the same rainbow's end/-- waiting 'round the bend/ my huckleberry friend/ Moon River and me"
Do I need to say anything else???
Holden Coulfield: Catcher in the Rye by J D Salinger
Coulfield, I think, is loved by all those who live in the self chosen realm of the imaginary, an world that spreads across three ages, and those who decide to live invisibly, far from the scrutinizing eyes... Does not make sense? Never mind, Coulfield does not care because nothing else matters. Well I can completely identify with his dream, that he will be a catcher in the rye, a keeper of children, whom he would watch playing at the cliff. And if they go near the edge, he will be there to keep them from falling. The whole book imply symbolistic meanings at various levels and with multiple dimensions. I can also identify with Coulfield's anger and disappointment, against an world too arrogant to make space for simplicity and innocence. Tragedy of human life, as the catcher in the rye sees it, is that every child eventually fall, from the cliff of innocence, to the pit called civilization.
There are other characters like Hamlet and Ophelia (my all time favourites), Dr. Faustus, Merasault in Outsider by Camus, the narrator in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog by Dylan Thomas, Huw Morgan in How Green was my Valley by Richard Llwelynne, Scarlett O Hara in Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell etc etc... which I liked at various phases of life ...

Give me a BREAK!

2008-06-25T11:39:00.000-07:00

The fact that despite being married I stay alone itself generates a lot of curiosity leading to a varied range of speculations amongst my not-so-close friends...and foes as well (I am not sure if I have any, except for the former team member who had to quit because I proved to be too uncompromising a boss. This guy, I bet, must be cursing me at the moment) Well, there are couples who are in long distance relationships for years after years, is not it? And they do not always fail to be happy. Why then, every second person, every second day should come to me , as if I am more than their kith and kin, and as if all they are concerned about in life is my marriage and nothing else, and say, dear, please take care, such marriages do not work. Ok enough now, you guys are not the know-how-of-all. And even if you are, i do not care. If my marriage does not work out, that is none of your business. And if it does you guys are not going to be there to celebrate my 25th marriage anniversary. May be you have seen lots of long distance relationships not working, but I am sure by now that you guys are very short sighted, too short sighted to see that there are so many marriages of people who stay not only in the same city, but also under the same roof and sleep in the same f******bed, which fail miserably.

My dear generously sympathetic friends, and self professed welwishers, thank you so much for your concern. But i would prefer you save your concern from being wasted on such undeserving a cause.

Excerpts!

2008-06-17T11:01:00.000-07:00

There was a kite made of hesitant clouds
To the world its strings tied down
Writes life’s annals on the bounds of the sky

Dense clouds deceiving clouds
I come down to earth
As the sorrow of the primordial couple

Harboring in heart
Memories of impossible dreams

What magic what charm
Do you have earth
I am your flitting visitor
The abiding shackles of your magic.

UnTitLD

2008-06-09T07:54:00.000-07:00

My brother had left for home yesterday. I am again alone in my one bedroom apartment that refuses to belong to me. After a long time someone from my family stayed for so long with me. I just started to get used to all his childish demands, his tantrums, his idiosyncrasies... I just started to get used to his hour long bathroom rituals, his perfectionist tea preparing rituals, his all the time being dependent on me for almost all decisions. ...and suddenly I am here left alone missing all of them.

RetREat Oh reTrEaT

2008-06-02T07:38:00.000-07:00

...8 pm, still at office. Been here since 8 pm yesterday. No output. Waiting for a meeting with my politically correct bosses...

Seriously, can I go back to the century when being politically correct was not such a big issue?

Saturday Afternoon

2008-05-31T09:52:00.000-07:00

While coming back from work on a Saturday evening I suddenly realised life is very familiar...almost always.
The weather has been lovely today, not at all like a Delhi 31st May. On my way home there is a garden, and a centuries old mandir, attched to it. In the middle of the garden there is huge Bauri...an ancient royal pond that may have been built to harvest rain water by some progressive king or queen.... But not to be mistaken, the pond is without water, serves best now as a playground for kids from the whole neighbourhood.
I left office early since the electricity supply system on the studio floor conked off today.
I had time... so I sat for a while in the park..watched the children play.
I was almost happy, after a long time... The children were laughing, crying, fighting, hurting, loving and also, hating.
For a few rare moments i enjoyed self oblivion this afternoon sitting in that park.
Suddenly I found myself wondering...will life be a little more worthwhile with a child around. Will it be worth living if i have a baby...
Well ...is life better for the colleague at work who is going to father a baby soon? Is life better for my landlord's son who just got married? Is life better for my brother who lives in the comfort of home and has just bought a white ford fiesta?
Ah! More of questions soon followed... will I be happy if my husband decides to stay with me? Will I be happy if my parents live with me? Will I be happy if I get a pay raise? Will I be happy if I buy a car or a new laptop? Will I be happy with a boyfriend around?
Well, I do not know the answers. I have become too moron-ic and cynical to hope that anything can improve the quality of MY life.

UtnitelD-UntitleD

2008-05-29T12:16:00.000-07:00

Hell is where the prospects of hope are forever shut!!!
Liberation is...realisation of the potentialities of the self...

Life is - Hanging poised between these two propositions...

The Hazel Eyed Girl

2008-05-28T10:41:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time there lived a hazel eyed girl who loved to pretend. As time passed by she grew up… pretending to be brave, brilliant, strong and smart. She grew up without letting any one know that she also had been a child once. She knew nothing about herself because no one else could tell her about her. Inevitably: because she pretended all the time. With time she grew lonelier, quite inevitably.

One drizzling summer afternoon the hazel eyed girl woke up to see the seven colored wonder of a rainbow in the bright blue sky. She never had seen a rainbow before. Beautiful: she thought. This is a bridge that connects earth to heaven. She immediately fell in love with the rainbow. But alas, the moment she stretched her arms to embrace the mighty colorful bow, it vanished. She felt like crying, but pretended to be brave and decided to go out looking for the vanished rainbow.

Since that day she has been looking for the rainbow, day and night, without stopping for a moment, pretending not to know that her bow is in love with rain…and that they were made for each other, and made in heaven.

The hazel eyed girl is still wandering…not knowing what she is doing and alas, no one can ever tell her that she is only pretending, because she has been always so perfectly pretending…

Oh! Hamlet!

2008-03-28T12:11:00.000-07:00

Oh Hamlet! How true! The tragedy of human life is not that man does not have a choise! Its simply that man can chose whether to be or not to be...
Why do we have the power to chose if we do not have the power over the consequences of the choises we make ...

Adam, Eve, Beliefs and Lies

2008-03-17T12:29:00.000-07:00

Man’s desire to believe is ancient. Take for instance the case of Adam. For centuries Satan had been quite unjustly blamed for the fall of mankind. Rather than all the seduction inflicted upon Adam by Satan via Eve, it is his desire to believe that marked the origin of human sin.
The process of growing up is the process of conviction: a chain of sensation, perception, conception and conviction.
Man started believing the moment he came out from the womb. He started believing that separated from one shelter-he had found another, that separated from one world-he had another to fall back on, that there was hunger, there was cold, sweat, sound, touch, milk, smell and then, a human body he would be taught immediately, to call mother.

(And then there are lies...With time there comes another set of beliefs that proves a previous set of beliefs to be white lies...)

Islands and Sisyphus!

2008-03-17T12:26:00.000-07:00

There are times when you feel like an island. You feel as if you are floating on an ocean, dark, deep, unfathomable, solitary and disjunct from everything else…And then you try to understand why you are floating in that ocean, what significance it has! Does it simply mean that you are an island or does it also mean that all human beings are islands! Why is it that you are still floating and have not drowned! What will happen if you drown, and cease to exist! Can you ever choose to drown? Do you float by choice?

Why Sisyphus? Why then push the heavy rock up the hill, climb and climb and climb only to let it roll down again even before you reach the peak?