Sunday, December 28, 2008

The “Livewire”

This weekend clubbed with Christmas was a long weekend and I was supposed to be alone this time. I had planned to wake up the dead poet inside me since I’ll be all alone at home. It really hurts when I see my self so emotional at one point and loosing it after the date changes :(. But fortunately or unfortunately my friend rang me and murdered my dream :-P.

So, I packed up all my stuff for a night stay and half-heartedly reached her home, the other end of Pune. Next bad news after reaching there was I had to play cricket and that too with people I did not know. “Who made this plan”, I asked with my sarcastic tone gathering roughness from the bottom of my heart. “Its me beautiful”, I heard a typical Techno-babes voice that is still hard for me to adapt after 2.5 years in IT industry. I turned around and I saw a girl in track pants with a full cup smile on her face. Her beautiful dark black hair tucked high with ruffle and grey T-shirt decently fitted her. My friend introduced me and she was my friend’s new room-mate. Then she took one step forward and here I noticed she limped. I could not believe this and I kept my focus on her next move and yes she had polio. Thousands of words struggled inside my nerves to describe her. I thought wait Nimisha, lets see her. I asked her that why did she think of a cricket match, who else is coming, I don’t know how to play and blah blah. She smiled at me and said I have never held bat in my hands. She took a pause and said that this is all organized just for change from the routine outings like movie and dinner on weekends. My friend Shivani took a deep sigh and told me this girl is restless. On that she swung both her eyebrows proudly.

Shivani told me that this whole week this girl convinced people to play, searched for a ground after a day long at office and arranged for all the cricket paraphernalia. Honestly speaking, I was ashamed of myself. I wondered how much do I lack the spirit and to be even more honest most of us. I recalled how most of us stick to bed when we are hurt or when it is hard to walk due to injury on leg or when there is a severe back-ache after long working hours. When I am hurt, I do not ever call anyone at home knowing the fact that mamma and papa would sense something is wrong. This is not my greatness. I would have called it great when I could keep my spirits high up even when hurt. These are the times when we loose our spirit and then something inside us brings all the reasons to be sad together making us realize that we are alone, miles away from home.

These thoughts completely prevailed me when Shivani brought me back with usual questions to the real world from the insane universe that lives inside me. Here she came with white cap on her head, a sporty three-fourth and a bat in her hands. She commanded her to come downstairs quickly as her friends have reached.

Finally, we were eight on the ground playing with 7th standard boys. It was a good match and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I never knew I could do balling or even strike a four :). But she was the one who volunteered first for all acts on the ground. Then we went out for balling and air hockey, I love the most. She was amazingly good in all!
We called it a day and came back home. I was lying on Shivani’s bed still searching for a word to describe her and this thought was running inside me with ever increasing speed. Suddenly, techno-babes voice broke the silence and asked me did you enjoy today? "Yes, I did", I said.
I got the word and the word is – “livewire”.

Now, we started talking about the other people in the group. Most of them passed out this year only and had lots of questions to ask me since we had met for the first time. Second reason for loving the day was somewhere down the line I have started enjoying being elder at office and at home. To me it feels so good to listen to juniors, knowing their fears, flirting going on with a new girl in team and the silly jokes. Agree..I am not so old but it is so good and a strange calmness blankets me because I am ahead of something. Though she is much senior to me, this thought of mine got the stamp of her consent too. “Livewire” now looked at me with a strange smile because my face to the strangers is not in congruence with the thoughts that reside inside me. I thanked God that we met. My mobile buzzed and we realized date is changed. She wished me with a beautiful smile, Good Night and left. Finally, the “livewire” entered the dream world to spark the life of the creatures there and to gather energy to enlighten the next morning.

Thursday, December 11, 2008

A thing called “love”

When I look around and see people who have found love in their lives, instead of my heart pumping out, my brain faces a swarm of questions. By the time I try to understand where do my line of thinking lie, a strange feeling traps me. I keep on questioning my self and some of the few friends on whose brain, there is a living hold of my questions about this amazingly strange thing called “love”.

A person who is never getting his friend’s attention and taken for granted every time still loves this girl. This form of love exists between a person who loves loving madly and a person who does not care about giving love and maniac when sees a second went amiss without getting attention. I scratch my head and loose concepts puzzled with the words “love is give and take”.

Another case is Mr or Ms Perfect after totally a nasty fellow. One is ten out of ten in all respects and the partner is looser in each one corner they define of their lives. But still this strange thing called “love” exists between the two. Isn’t it amazing?

Like every relationship it demands


May this truth be denied by millions that they don’t fall in love. But the magic moment thrills everybody. But the big question is “When”. When do one actually feels it.

On a beautiful evening…
With the clouds embracing orange sun…
When the sun is thinking to sleep..
And let the beautiful night treat…

Treat all the beautiful hearts….
Hearts in search….
Hearts left in lurch…
Hearts at peace…
Hearts possessing hearts…

Sun in a strange dilemma questions moon….
When I am gone you will take my place….
I am the one who fills dark space…

On this moon smiles and says…
If there is a dark space waiting for light….
I bet there are spaces waiting for darkness for life…

This is called love…
It may be for darkness …
May be for light …
But surely for all a strong delight!!

Saturday, July 19, 2008

Happy Father's Day

Ever since I left home, “a need to talk home” automatically drives me to dial mamma’s mobile. There is absolutely no potential reason behind this . I love my father as much as I love my mother. But then why I call my mother and ONLY then phone is handed over to father after mamma and I are done with the long conversation?
Perhaps, my mind has already computed all these equations and result says that talking to mother means more Information and talking to father means News.
Had I been calling my father daily, my half an hour call would have been 5 minutes call. The reason is that when me and my mother talks she tells me about my Uncle and Aunt’s health, there new daughter-in-law, our family friend’s son getting admission to MBA, new saree she bought, stuff in the sale she recently had been to etc etc..
But my father talks only about me, my health, his and mamma’s health, my brother and sometimes about our dog Macho.
The same story continues in all the families. This is as natural as red roses can not be grown in desert or cactus don’t find there home in fertile lands.
But somewhere down the line, I strongly feel that we are knowingly or unknowingly not giving justice to the piece of time divided to talk to mother and father. He wants to listen to simple hello and that too becomes once in a week affair.
To make up all the things we mess up in our busy lives, English people have found there ways. Celebrating Father’s day is one of the lovely things they started.
On 15th June (2nd Sunday of June), this year Father’s day was celebrated. I got this lovely opportunity to talk directly to papa. I called my father. He picked the phone with unusual voice. His voice only proved that I have done something not usual. Then I said, “”Namastey Papa, Happy Father’s Day, I am lucky to have you”. Then he only talked and I could not utter a word for next one minute.
Bathroom is the safest place to cry but that day I figured out that phone is also good one.
His reaction was so pleasant, his voice only revealed.
He said. “Thanks beta”. A five seconds pause. Perhaps he was also enjoying the heaviness in the throat and little moist eyes. It was not raining outside but I could smell the wet soil, the feeling that makes my heart go beyond happiness with little ununderstandable pain.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

Paying and Displaying Regards

Daily while returning from the office, I keep looking outside from the window of my bus lost in the thoughts, hardly aware of what actually is happening outside the window. Most of the time I am thinking about the day spent in office and that most of the time trying to understand the theory of “paying and displaying regards”.
All the time this theory chases you like your shadow. But the darkness of the shadow keeps changing, I am glad. When I was small my parents taught me how to pay regards to the elder, to the people younger than you, to the people who are talented and to them who support you. But when I broke the shell constructed by the noble hands of my family and exposed to the world outside, I observed how to display regards; “paying regards” is now oblivious. In the beginning, I kept umbrage but gradually and very slowly gulped by this shadow.

In this world, if you really support your superiors, you are displaying regards and if you don’t then you don’t know how to climb up the ladder. Paying regards and the acceptance of the same is lost in the darkness. Harper Lee writes in her book “To kill a Mocking Bird” – “Before you learn to live with other folks you should learn to live with yourself.” Perhaps just displaying regards which is equivalent to disregard can be done only if you start living with a strange notion that cheats your self.

Somehow, it is the question of “Survival of the fittest” and the fittest are those in my outer world who have learnt to live with a strange notion.

Stars are beautiful and the shine is mighty
How they shine, answer knows Almighty…

If I head to conquer the shine they owe…
And I attempt to conquer the fame they owe…

I know it will be a short-lived charm…
The victory that has nothing but harm…

Somehow mankind has learnt to seek…
To seek and love a victory so meek…

A victory over the shine of the stars…
Concluded by covering sky by dark clouds to bar….

How can they be happy and joyous for long…
What if dark clouds take a path which is wrong…

Then the man would say sorry…
Oh sorry, Stars I know your glory…

Who am I to conquer you, so respectful…
Am I not the person as graceful….

Saying this, man shows the act of “displaying regards”…
This way man exonerates himself from not “paying regards”

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Life salutes Mumbaiites

Mumbai – the city of dreams, the city of countless emotions, the city of ups and downs, the city to be loved, the city to be hated, the city to live all realities and the city where fiction has perhaps no space. If Mumbai is to be juxtaposed with a person, I would call Mumbai a “Woman”. Like a woman it lives all emotions God has made a human being to observe. It is not like that I am born and brought up in Mumbai or I have spent a great deal of time in Mumbai but it is only Suketu Mehta’s (author of Maximum city) words that have taught the true air of Mumbai to me.
Yesterday I paid my third visit to Ms. Mumbai. I am always excited to go to Mumbai as it gives me chance to travel in local trains, place where you can actually see all class of people – middle class, lower middle class, upper middle class, people below poverty line but not who are over wealthy. It is a smarter way to travel in Mumbai as it is the only way to surpass the traffic jams, encounter with very poor faces at traffic lights and of course to reach in time. No doubt Mumbai's Local Trains are called “Life line of Mumbai”.
This time goal of my visit was to attend my colleague’s, a very dear friend’s ring ceremony. She is Maharashtrian and I am happy that I have very few but very nice non-North Indian friends. I used to tease her many times that I would like to come to your home this weekend. But every time she used to end up saying that my house is very small, you won’t like it. Listening to these words I used to tease her even more. Yesterday only I realized the severity of her words. To me small house for a person who is educated, very good to talk to, honest in paying and sharing money, working in a reputed company is as small as 100 yards house. How can a 5 member family live in a house smaller than this? This question of mine may haunt my North-Indian friends who belong to an average economical background but is a very very normal fact. All in all a multipurpose house, one room is drawing cum dinning room cum bed-room cum guest-room cum and other one is kitchen cum bathroom cum washing room cum room where woman of the house keep finding all sort of work to work out the tensions embedded in her mind.
I and my friends entered the house, the bride’s house, my friend’s house. Like any bride’s house all the women were standing with all the make-up paraphernalia making my small, thin but yet sweet looking friend sweat because of confusion caused. I was happy to finally reach to attend her ring-ceremony function, a very important day in a normal Indian citizen’s life as it is supposed to be once. You may fall in love several times but you are supposed to marry once in your life-time under normal circumstances in “India”. I was happy to be with her, more happy because she was getting married to a person whom she loved and chose herself and above all a person whom I actually appreciate, a true gentleman to the best of my knowledge. One corner of my heart was sad and the processor of that corner was running so fast calculating every second - Oh My God she was always true telling me that her house is small, that I would not be very pleased to be there, that how she is so normal, infact all her relatives, they joke, laugh, smile, express regards, like there is no problem, absolutely no problem. She has always shared her problems and listened to my grudges, now I realized how silly all my reasons to feel down were. Suddenly, my mind became a mobile diary where I started writing all the moves around me. Now, I wanted something to write.
Maharashtrians are very simple people. Unlike North-Indians they believe in non-exuberant celebrations. In North-India marriage functions means, latest fashion clothing, dazzling attires, lot of commotion, loud music after pandit ji’s tasks, long meal menu and a share point for the bride-groom seekers as friends and relatives talk at length about their experiences of finding or not finding matches. For Maharashtrian wedding, only last choice is valid not others for sure. My friend’s ring ceremony was also very simple but lively. I kept staring at ladies wearing navarri (Maharashtrian saaree), men very simply dressed with Gandhi topi covering their heads. After the ceremony was over we sought the permissions to make a leave.
After the whole day of the continuous struggle my mind was experiencing I felt relieved. Somewhere inside I was happy now. It was really nice to see different people and experience what they do. Since childhood, in my vicinity, friends and relatives, people struggle to seek privacy. Siblings don’t want to share same room and they get the opportunity before they get married. A couple wants to move in to new house different from their parents’ with the thought of getting privacy for them once they expand family. Even two pets don’t want to share a single room and they get their wishes fulfilled. But 40% of Mumbaiites cannot even dream of a word called “privacy”. No doubt why parks in Mumbai are no more a place for children to play or elderly people to have a stroll rather these parks are the result of search for “privacy”.
Life is like a multiple choice question with options – (a) you choose to live happily anyways, (b) you choose to be sad for a valid reason, (c) you choose to be sad for no reason, (d) you choose to live anyways, (e) you choose to live for no reason.
If you have chosen option (e), I’ll recommend you to meet a Mumbaiites to change your choice to option (d). Truly life salutes Mumbaiites!!!

I am the “Unknown”

I am visiting my home town- Kurukshetra yet again. But this time only I realized the strange feeling of being an “Unknown” in my town. This feeling used to blanket me earlier also when I used to come back home after 3-4 months. The fact is that I have diagnosed the problem now only.
Whenever my mother asks me to bring some grocery or some other stuff from the Sector-7 market, where we have our house, I am hesitant. I am proud that such big house like ours in Sector-7 may not be matter of surprise people living here but such houses are called as bungalows in Pune and Mumbai. Space problem is gulping these cities down and under. Coming back to the problem and the probable root cause of the same. The feeling of being an unknown is partially developed by the people of my town, my native place. When I walk down the road, they look at me with such a sight like trying to find the resemblance of my face with someone known to them. Why? I do not understand. I am forced to think that are they able to smell my deodorant that is a costly one and probably can not be found in any of Kurukshetra stores or is it my hair length or may be the tattered condition of my hair is strikes there eyes. I am not obviously not as beautiful as the people belonging to my belt that their brain demands a second sight at me. May be there eyes have the same sensors like dog’s nose that can distinguish the stuff belongs to which place and because some different waves coming out of me that there eyes capture and they start calculating how distant my current location is. This way I can guess thousands of reasons of the strange angles of eyes and heads people manoeuvre to crop the feeling of being an Unknown in my hometown.
But this feeling never makes me feel proud rather nostalgic. The feeling is more like the strange nervousness that captures you when you are introduced first time to a group of intellectuals who look bright and can tell you zillion reasons that your mental level does not match with the pile of degrees you owe. I end up in a dilemma that something in me has definitely changed. It is acceptable or not…..

Loosing an identity in a known place…
Finding your self in a strange race…
Asking myself all this just in case…
Just in case, I forget one day who am I
And plead myself a little liberty to pry…
To dig out my self from the self made wrappers…
Do it before I see failing my tool to unwrap, my drillers…

Saturday, February 09, 2008

Seasons

It is almost an year and half in pune. The change in seasons in this city can not be judged. But living in a 2BHK home for 1 year 6 months, I have stayed with 6 different people, one after the another.
If i close my eyes and try to smell the air and try to judge the seasoin outside and inside me, who was stayinmg in the house answers what season it was then
People changed, but one thing never changed - a constant feeling of being occupied.
Emptiness could never find a corner inside me and I am actually glad. It is only when my friends tell me that whole weekend you were alone or you were in the office but nowhere else. Sometimes, 2 whole days spewnt in "bevadagiri" - watching movie, having food out and walking foolishly on M.G. Road.
At times I had a feeling of looser but soon after thgis feeling tried to blanket me a winner's crown was there to make me happy. The winner's crown holder used to be one ot another person staying in D-105. This concludes the story that I was never unhappy here. Unhappiness was a spike in a constant DC line. OOOppps I can not untether the world of voltages and currents. Pardon me... :)

Seasons I can smell,
The memoirs donned on my mind so well,

The rains of love and hatred siometimes,
The warmth in air and breeze jingling like windchimes,

The spring of Hopesm joys and confessions,
Softness in the surroundings and calmed regressions,

Summers of fading sadness andgathering courage again,
Scorching sun, humid air, refreshing and calling hibernating brain,

Autumn came with heart soothing silence,
Thrashing and thwarting speed of wind and yet so harmless,

Winters peaking up n' above dryness and fears,
Moving away for no reasons and wishing to be close in prayers,

The seasons I had here are all mine,
The seasons I remember and cherish,
The seasons I have lived, died, loved and hated,
These seasons are inside my heart so much alive,

Nature is nobody to conntrol and thrive,
It is the people I lived with...
All my seasons they only drive.