AKS

26th Jan, 2009- Today is our Republic day. Our Tiranga will proudly flutter everywhere in Indian and abroad with its head held high. Inspite of what occurred in November this year it will stand high as if chalenging the offenders, showing them how we have won against voilence. And how we strongly triumph even in the most critical of conditions.

But come tommorrow, and the most offensive of direspect will be shown to it. Pople will trample in under their feet, throw it on roads and even tear it recklessly without thinking about the dignity of our National Flag!

I sincerely request you to treat our Flag with the highest epitome of respect it deserves to be given. Let us strive to not subject it to such abandoning and disrespect. So many Martrys have given their lives for its pride. It is afterall an object of our pride, integrity and affection. It is our duty to pay due respect to it! Our National Flag is more or less an integral part of every Indian ever born! Jai Hind!

tujh mein rab dikhta hain yaara mein kya karoon
tujh mein rab dikhta hain yaara mein kya karoon
sajde sar jhukta hain yaara mein kya karoon
tujh mein rab dikhta hain yaara mein kya karoon

kaisi hain yeh doori,kaisi majboori
maine nazron se tujhe chooliyaaa…
kabhi teri khusboo,kabhi teri baatein
bin maangein ye jahan pa liya
tu hi dil ki hain ronak,
tu hi janmon ki daulat,
aur kuch na jano mein
bas itna hin jano

tujh mein rab dikhta hain yaara mein kya karoon
tujh mein rab dikhta hain yaara mein kya karoon
sajde sar jhukta hain yaara mein kya karoon
tujh mein rab dikhta hain yaara mein kya karoon

Its 3 am of a lazy January Sunday morning and I am sitting here browsing net because I am not sleepy, while my winap player is playing Tere Naina from Chandani Chowk to China for the 11th time I am sipping a hot cuppa of coffee. Just a thought rushed my mind now and I decided that I should pen it right away. When I was in sixth standard, our English teacher had taught us that all animals including man adapt to their surroundings sooner or later. That means they adjust to the changing environments by bringing a metamorphosis in themselves. For example Man turned to Homo Sapiens Sapiens from Ape when the climate of earth changed for survival reasons.
I had been suddenly jolted into a "situation" 8 months ago for which I need to travel up and down Thane-Pune several times a month. Its amazing how when I am in Thane I do not remember or recollect anything of Pune and vice versa. I think this was something that was missing all these years. The attitude to behave like a Roman when in Rome.I have started treating places, people, events and behaviour in isolation. There is a certain level of subjectivity and depth that has come to my thinking! Its amazing how our brain compartmentalises certain memories for good so that we can feel comfortable, at ease, attentive and at home wherever we are. When put in a different environment you go back to the cat combs of your memories and adapt again to your current situation! I don't know how it happens but it does for sure. When at home I do not think of Pune, work, loads of friends, loss etc when I am in Pune I don't have the time to think about home! Its like I live in and out of my two private microcosms such that when in either of them I forget the other. It fascinates me how we can live in harmony with our inner self even in altered surroundings and continue our pursuit of living and loving every second of it!

Have you ever met complete strangers who you seem to have struck a chord with! Out of blue they have arrived in your life and added a certain amount of value to it! Well I am writing about three such women that have touched me in a way or two in minimal interactions.
Everyday, I walk towards my Bus-stop. On my way just opposite the Ganesha Temple sits an old lady. She is very clean and fair. She always dons a nine yard saree in gay colors which comes upto her knees. She seldom has a woolen Shawl draped around her. She has a design of green tattoos on her face. Her wrinkled face always greets me with a warm smile. Everyday she asks me the same question of what time is it. Occasionally adding a sentence or two about how pleasant the weather is or if I am running late and whether I will be able to catch my bus. I always have this underpinning feeling that she wants to talk much more but since I am in a hurry to rush for my work, I do not have time for her at all. On a couple of Sundays I have tried to locate her but have never found her sitting there. It’s strange how pleasant you feel when you look at her, she sits just opposite the temple soaking in the morning sun. She is exceptionally radiant and looks like a guardian angle to me.

Many times in a week I come across this another middle aged lady. She is very lean, wears a 5 yard saree and below it she wears sports shoes. She keeps on running from place to place. She always greets me with a hello and communicates with me. The other day she saw me gawking at her sports shoes and gave an unwarranted explanation, she told me that she works as a cook in several households and morning time is generally the time that she has to run from house to house and prefers wearing these shoes. She wears pastel colored flimsy chiffon sarees along with a floral purple scarf wrapped neatly around her head. She sports a dark line of kohl under her eyes and puts a thick layer of face powder on her wrinkled face. She always enquires about me, my health, where I live and what I do. She is very friendly and we end up chit-chatting about sweet nothings while we walk together to the Bus Stop. I know from her talks that she is a lonely woman who works very hard to make both the ends meet. I like her a lot because I respect the fact that she personifies a strong sense of individuality.

One Sunday morning while I was on my regular walks to Parvati, I decided to take a halt at the Smabhaji Udyan. I spent some 20 odd mins, sitting on a bench there just observing people. Soon every body made a big circle and started a laughing club. I had never seen one before and watching all of them( All between the age group of 10 – 80) dance, twirl, put their hands up in the air and laugh like no body watched had me in splits. An old lady who could barely walk was escorted towards the group, she inched towards them with the help of a walking stand. She stood there all the time and had a ball of her time. I really felt huge gratitude towards her. At her age and condition she was making most of her remaining life. I felt a dire need to walk up to her and strike a communication with her. So once her laughing club was over I purposely walked beside her and greeted her Good Morning! She kept looking back at me and in a mini-second reverted my greetings! I am sure she must have tried hard recollecting whether she knew me. I was just happy that I came to know someone who had such a huge appetite for life.

There are people around us who are special in their own way! Who can inspire us and bring some kind of joy to our life! All we got to do is just look around, find them and learn from them!

Nostalgia!

Does this happen to you love or is it just me,
When I go to all the places that we have been, my eyes get moist
And I choke on words

Does this happen to you love or is it just me,
When I walk beneath your window late at night,
And wonder what you might be reading in the lamp light

Does this happen to you love or is it just me,
When I am eating something you like, something that you really devoured
I brace my heart tight!

Does this happen to you love or is it just me,
When I am doing something you wanted me to indulge in
I think of you every time

Does this happen to you love or is it just me,
When festivities call in, I wonder what you are dressed in
I wonder how you celebrate it

Does this happen to you love or is it just me,
When I am down in the shackles, when everything seems dark
I remember your smile to illuminate my past

Does this happen to you love or is it just me,
When I get hic-cups, I know it might be a rarest of possibility
That you are thinking of me

Does this happen to you love or is it just me,
When I imagine you working late, tirelessly
And wonder if you’re eating on time

Does this happen to you love or is it just me,
It has to be me love, coz it cannot happen to thee!
How easy it was for you love, you deleted me in a day
I still cannot erase you from my memory
But don’t worry, today or tomorrow I will find a way!

Have you ever come across a book that is all pervasive- it is strange, complex, high hitting on the emotional bandwidth, appealing and yet disjoint all at the same time. Well if you haven’t then “Timoleon Vieta Come Home” is just the book for you. Author Dan Rhodes tries to signify the theme of the book in the Title itself, where the dog – Timoleon Vieta represents the happiness that we all seek. The longing of the characters of this book is coined in the phrase “Timoleon Vieta Come Home”. This book is divided into two parts. The first part helps in clearly establishing the background of the book. It paints a perfect picture of an Italian country house, an old gay lonely retired Musician and a stunningly beautiful dog Timoleon Vieta. Everything seems perfect- both the old man Cockfrot and Timoleon finding happiness in this camaraderie thus killing the ensuing loneliness. Alls well until the evil Bosnian steps in. Timoleon Vieta and the Bosnian share an open animosity and are quiet expressive in communicating the same to each other. When given a choice, the old man under the strong influence of the Bosnian abandons the dog in the fervor that Bosnia would provide him with a better company than the dog who lived with him for almost 7 years. And of course he acts selfish for the sexual favors that the Bosnian offers him.

I believe the second part is most important of all. It is like a colorful collage of different stories- filled with emotions and dreams. As the dog touches the lives of many people on his way back home, most interesting shades of human longing, compassion, problems, behavior and coping are revealed. Each person including the Bosnian has a story of his/her own and the dog is like a missing link that runs parallel in all the stories.
The stories are all different and do not follow the usual mode of story telling, they start in the centre and go about explaining the flashback and the future. At some point or the other, everyone sees and tries to retrieve a part of their lost happiness in Timoleon Vieta. The girl form London feels good after feeding Timoleon when depressed because of a painful relationship break-up, the Cambodian girl who has lost her face in a landmine blast longs to see him when she is in Rome(she is staring at the picture of her beautiful sister and her European husband by tower of Pisa with Timoleon is looking at them in the background), the mentally challenged girl’s father who regrets to get up for shooing away Timoleon because that’s the exact time his daughter passes away(He imagines that if his daughter was alive he would have probably adopted the dog), the guy who loves a girl so much that he gives away all the nefarious activities for her and when she declines to love him anymore, he burns himself and goes blind. When Timoleon puts his paw on his lap, he feels the love of his life has come back. All these stories are highly emotionally charged, they at any point do not look as if fabricated to be compulsively put in the bracket of entertaining. They are just different stories of humans like you and me in our day to day lives- Living with both our dreams and our disasters.

Timoleon for all of the central characters of these stories represents their dreams- dreams that couldn’t be fulfilled because of certain inevitable reasons. Timoleon is a symbol of their longing. The author has tried to convey this sentiment though as a cogent under current and not stating it openly. When Timoleon comes near his home the evil Bosnian slits his throat and kills the dog. This conveys that the longing of these people is reflected for a while, they are filled with optimism but nothing changes after that. Infact their dreams die with Timoleon. Through Timoleon the author tries to explain, the hope of many people who live in the world of “ifs” and “buts”, imagining that things would change for them someday. I absolutely loved this book for the creative thought-process and framing of the storyline. Though I feel the emotional aspect is thrown a little overboard. Dan Rhodes has certainly used an intelligent narrative to churn out a book that touches our lives beyond the ambit of its premise.

I saw the following sentence set as a status on my Friend Saurabh’s Orkut Profile. I generally refrain from talking about the forsaken four letter word LOVE but I couldn’t help taking a notice! It just won my vote of compliance hands down! How bout you?

Pleasure of love lasts but a moment, Pain of love lasts a lifetime...

Remember that there is nothing stable in human affairs; therefore avoid undue elation in prosperity, or undue depression in adversity.

- By Socrates

Finally my first post of 2009! Been waiting for this one for a long time now!

Just now I finished reading the book Holly’s Inbox by Holly Denham. The book is in small snippet kind Mail and SMS dialogue format! It holds the fantasies of the readers with its lucid story line and witty & humorous takes on work life! I borrowed the book from British library on Thursday evening and have finished reading all the 552 pages today (Saturday). It was so captivating that I had to put on hold my friend’s calls, my usual listening of songs, my usual poetry readings, journal writing and fun chit-chat & outings with Hostel mates. But it was all worth it!

Here are some of the paras that are very close to my heart. Though they do not do complete justice to the book as they do not represent the mood of the book! Read Holly’s Inbox to find out more!! It’s such a funny and interesting book, that I couldn’t put it away till I finished it.
There is also a website www.hollyinbox.com


FROM:Holly
TO:Toby

That’s just fantastic that is. I can’t believe you. If you hate living with me so much why don’t you just move out? All the time I’ve been looking forward to having you home, you’ve been dreading it?? Is that what’s happening?
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FROM:Holly
TO:Toby

So I’ve been on trial? You’ve been judging me, wondering whether I’m good enough for you, have you?? Do you know how that makes me feel????
[ if !support Empty Paras]- - > < !- -[ endif! ]- - >. ...

FROM:Holly
TO:Trisha

Every time I open a email, I get one of those lurches, the ones you get when you feel your ankle go in heels and you know you’re about to fall and you get that rush. Every time the phone buzzes, even if it’s the bloody alarm, I’m hoping the phone’s malfunctioning and it’s a call from him. I miss his voice, his touch, his smell, even when he was away I used to sleep on his side of the bed. I know people think he’s serious, but he’s not. He was always making me laugh: he’d make complete strangers laugh and feel good about themselves. I miss having someone to answer the door to strange looking salesman and even miss being told off for leaving my cds in a pile on the floor. Now he’s gone I keep forgetting to put a glass of water by the bed, because he always did it for me. I miss being forced to watch the occasional thriller instead of a comedy or romance and I miss sleeping on his chest, I’m sorry, I drifted off there. Writing about him was nice, and bad. I really miss him Trisha.
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FROM:Holly
TO: Jason

I have been living on this fluffy white cloud for so long. Because I loved him so much, I thought he’d feel the same, like we were telepathically linked, thinking the same things about everything. We knew we’d never want anyone else again. When everyone was telling me things weren’t as perfect as I thought they were, telling me he was having an affair, all I kept thinking was if they only knew what I knew, they’d know they were wrong.
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FROM:Holly
TO: Jason

The other thought is just too horrible to think about, and it makes me feel instantly sick when I begin. It’s that, as much as I still love him- actually, he doesn’t love me anymore, hasn’t done for a while , if at all and certainly wont ever ever ever love me again. I’m going to get some air.
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