A Reader's Apology

Books have been my window to the world. They have helped me learn a language well,taught me about places,customs,cultures and peoples. More importantly,they shaped my ideals and convictions. What follows is my ode to some books that have profoundly influenced me.In no particular order.

Fountainhead, which taught me that the highest morality is to live by your convictions and sacrificing that is compromising your integrity.

"Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision."

"I could die for you but dont ask me to live for you" 

Catcher in the Rye for the portrayal of a frustrated individual. For showing me Salinger .

To kill a Mockingbird for reminding me of the simple pleasures of life. For telling me why we must stand by our convictions. As Atticus puts it " I must live with myself before I live with others".

1984 which painted a stark picture of what governments could mutate into if we are not vigilant enough.About how freedom is worth more than anything else. For painting a harrowing dystopia.

A brave New World which portays an utopia where there is no suffering, no guilt and where you live a life which you were literally created to do.It made me think if its worth compromising passion,emotions and freedom for pleasure and security. 

Dreams from my father for its honesty. For giving me an insight into the issue of racism and for making me ponder on the issues of origin and identity.

Lolita for the beauty of prose. For shwoing that a man cant help his sexual preferences and for showing how manipulative the "victim", at times, could be. it taught me to look at everything without prejudice.

O Jerusalem for teaching me empathy. Showing me how the will of a few men can shape a nation. 

Freedom at Midnight.for telling me more about my country, showing the Mahatma in his glory.  Making me love my country even more.

Selections from the Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda for the sheer inspiration it has provided me every time I turn to it . Showing the greatness of our land and the grand ideals which were conceived by our forefathers. For showing me that being spiritual does not mean compromising on logic or blindly adhering to tradition. Showing me to what lofty heights man's mind can soar. For Showing me The Man Himself. Of everything I have read so far, none can match this for sheer impact.

"Strength is life, weakness is death. Strength is felicity, life eternal, immortal. Weakness is constant strain and misery; weakness is death."

Lord of the Rings for the sheer wonder. If a man could conjure a whole world including peoples,histories and languages, there is no end to human creativity. 

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time for presenting a haroowing descent into madness and illustrating how simple it is to being the descent. Madness is just another way of thinking.

Neti Neti for the ethereal writing style. For the title. For portraying emptiness .

The Hannibal series for showing me that contradictions exist everywhere. That what we call madness is just another way of thinking. For the horror, intrigue and beauty(Yes Hannibal Rising).

The Harry Potter series for the countless hours of joy. For the magic in Rowling's prose. For all the madness, obsession and fun. For the 20 re reads of The Order of the Phoenix.

Sons of Fortune for being the first proper novel I read. For being unputdownable. Not a penny More Not a Penny Less for delight. Jeffery Archer for making me become even more interested in reading.

Jurrasic Park series for redefining edge the seat thriller. Never has a book scared me more. Michael Chrichton for kindling interest in technology. 

The Godfather for being a classic. For Vito Corleone. For the Mob. For Puzo. For " Ill make him an offer he cant refuse".

Shalmar the Clown for the magic. For the beauty of Prose. For the beautiful portrayal of Kashmir. Enchantress of Florence for the magic again. Rushdie never ceases to amaze. 

And more,many more, many many more.

Im pretty sure I have missed out a lot of books. And Im also sure that this post is long enough not to miss them :D 

Oskar Schindler

Schindler: I could have got more out. I could have got more. I don't know. If I'd just … I could have got more.

Stern: Oskar, there are eleven hundred people who are alive because of you. Look at them

Schindler: If I'd made more money … I threw away so much money. You have no idea. If I'd just …

Stern: There will be generations because of what you did.

Schindler: I didn't do enough!

Stern: You did so much.[Schindler looks at his car]

Schindler: This car. Goeth would have bought this car. Why did I keep the car? Ten people right there. Ten people. Ten more people.[Removing Nazi pin from lapel]

Schindler: This pin. Two people. This is gold. Two more people. He would have given me two for it, at least one. One more person. A person, Stern. For this. I could have gotten one more person … and I didn't! And I … I didn't!

What a man. What a movie.

Of moms and metal

Today I was singing Master of puppets.

Me: Your life burns faster

Mom:Obey your mother.

My mom knows  the song well enough to parody it.Shows how many times Ive played it  and how tolerant she is to what she calls "music with awful guitar tuning but great guitar playing"

What are we really after?

The three meal eater with no appetite
The child who starving twice each day

The agnostic pretending to believe
The bloody, ignorant fanatic

The uncaring indifferent sweetheart
The introvert forced to socialise

The teetotaller who yearns to get high
The alcoholic thinking it will work out

The fitness freak hoping to prolong life
The mystic who hopes for afterlife

The nine-to-fiver in it for the dough
The coding freak, computer addict

The family man desperate for a divorce
The woman who stays on for the kids

The kid who wants to grow up
The midlifer who yearns to be young again

Contradictions, pretensions, delusions
What are we really after?
What makes a content life?

Why are blogs Dying?

What happened to good old blogging? Why are blogs dying?

Remember the time when we used to get excited every time we post something? Of checking our blogger dashboard to see if the blogs we follow have something new ? The simple joy on seeing a well written comment from a random blogger was so much that we would happily pay a return visit. Random blog surfing used to be very engaging.

Nowadays, I open my blogger account once in a blue moon to post new stuff and to remind myself that I blog for my own sake. During those rare visits, I force myself to have a look at the blog updates. I find that highly popular blogs update every other day whereas the little blogs, the ones I used to take so much pleasure in reading, are mostly dead.

Why bother with a blog when you can put a note on Facebook right? It automatically appears on the home page of hundreds of "friends". Moreover you can tag the people you know will like this note. Guaranteed eyeballs.

Its easier from the readers point of view as well. All he /she has to do is to click once to show he/she "likes" your writing. It eliminates the need to come up with sensible comments and feedback. Many even like notes with no clue of whats actually meant.

Is that all there is to writing? Posting on your wall, allowing the same people to read and getting "likes"? Where is the pleasure of dicovering new writers and new blogs? Where is the joy of mkaing your blog look exactly the way you want it to? What about the intrigue of not knowing who the person actually is , but getting to know them through his/her writing? Have we lost something?


This is what I feel . Do tell me you feel about this.Lets discuss.

Suicidal Tendencies?

Warning: Not reader friendly.

You’ve decided to do it. Life is impossible. Suicide is your way out. Fine—but before you kill yourself consider these facts: Suicide is not usually successful. You think you know a guaranteed way? Ask the 25-year-old who tried to electrocute himself. He lived. But, both his arms are gone. What about jumping? Ask John. He used to be intelligent , with an engaging sense of humor. That was before he leapt from a building. Now, he’s brain-damaged and will always need care. He staggers and has seizures. He lives in a fog. But, worst of all, he KNOWS he used to be normal. What about pills? Ask the 12-year-old with extensive liver damage from an overdose. Have you ever seen anyone die of liver damage? You turn yellow. It’s a hard way to go. What about a gun? Ask the 24-year-old who shot himself in the head. Now he drags one leg, has a useless arm and has no vision or hearing on one side. He lived through his “foolproof” suicide. You might too. But…Who will clean your blood off the carpet or scrape your brains from the ceiling? Commercial cleaning companies may refuse that job- -but SOMEONE has to do it. Who will have to cut you down from where you hung yourself or identify your bloated body after you’ve drowned? Your father? Your mother? Your wife? Your son? The carefully worded “loving” suicide note is of no help. Those who loved you will NEVER completely recover. They’ll feel regret and an unending pain. Suicide is contagious. Look around your family. Look closely at the 4 year old playing with his cars on the rug. Kill yourself tonight, and he may do it ten years from now. You DO have other choices. There are people who can help you through this crisis. Call a hotline. Call a friend. Call your minister or priest. Call a doctor or hospital. Call the police.They will tell you that there’s hope. Maybe you’ll find it in the mail tomorrow. Or in a phone call this weekend. But what you’re seeking could be just a minute, a month, or a day away.You say you don’t want to be stopped? Still want to do it?Well, then, I may see you in the psychiatric ward later.And we’ll work with whatever you have left.

Of Intentions and Gifting

To get above it all
To where money reduces to mere numbers
And it is not monetary value
Or desire for approval
Or fear of ridicule
But the intention that counts
When you gift and recieve

Comments *cough*

On every Music Video on YouTube

1) “This is the best song in the history of mankind.”

2) “ *insert artist * is GOD “

3) “This sucks .If you want real music listen to Justin Beiber or Lady Gaga.”
A huge volley of swearing in return.

4) “I so hate the music scene of today. Its all filled with pretenders and emo kids. Real music was made by Pink Floyd Led Zep etc or*insert metal band name*. Im only fifteen and I know all this. No one in my school even hears them.”(so can someone say how cool I am please?)

5) Hip hop/rap vs metal/hard rock debate (Swearing match)

6) Some rank amateur trying to talk technical and getting owned. “ The lead guitar would sound much better tuned 12 octaves down”.

7) One or two sane comments which are usually liked the most.(proving that sanity still exists)

Maya Swirling

Many have always thought, no believed, that gender does not influence who you are. You are more than that. You are a person. At the most basic level, a person tends to make sense of himself, to define himself by external means.Your gender, the way you look, your family and place in society, language, politics, the people around you, what they believe in, your role models, what others see you as and so on. You get stuck in cliches and stereotypes, thinking that to be bound within these crude frames is integrity, honesty to your ideals. You wilfully cage yourself in this mesh .Incongruities are ignored for the inconvinence they cause to your notion of yourself. Your actions are based on and motivated by external sources and not by what you think or what you want.And thus stepping on what you think is soild ground you find yourself sinking into a quagmire. Contradictions become so prevalent that you stop thinking about all this, bundling it into a single sentence" Philosophy. Who needs it? ".Thus does the temptress work. Taunting ,luring, seducing,enmeshing you in her web of deceit. Her sting numbs your soul.You become just another person out there,a cogs spinning endlessly.




You does not mean you literally*

Not light reading i know*

Bach

Read Bridge Across forever by Richard Bach a few weeks back. It was Ritu who got me back into Bach. There are some beautiful quotes Id like you to see:
       
     *Has it ever happened, you’ve seen a striking film, beautifully written and acted and photographed, that   you walk out of the theater glad to be a human being and you say to yourself I hope they make a lot of money from that? I hope the actors, I hope the director earns a million dollars for what they’ve done, what they’ve given me tonight? And you go back and see the movie again and you’re happy to be a tiny part of the system that is rewarding those people with every ticket...the actors I see on the screen, they’ll get twenty cents of this very dollar I’m paying now; they’ll be able to buy an ice cream cone any flavor they want from their share of my ticket alone. Glorious moments in art in books and films and dance, they’re delicious because we see ourselves in glory’s mirror.

* Learning is finding out what you already know.
Doing is demonstrating that you know it.
Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you.
You are all learners, doers and teachers


* Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years.

* You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however.


* What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.


* If your happiness depends on what somebody else does, I guess you do have a problem.


* I’m here not because I am supposed to be here, or because I’m trapped here, but because I’d rather be with you than anywhere else in the world.

* Here is a test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: If you´re alive it isn´t.


*If our friendship depends on things like space and time, then when we finally overcome space and time, we've destroyed our own brotherhood! But overcome space, and all we have left is Here. Overcome time, and all we have left is Now. And in the middle of Here and Now, don't you think that we might see each other once or twice?


*There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its
hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts.


* Believe you know all the answers, and you know all the answers. Believe you're a master, and you are.

Its been ages since Ive written original stuff.I know. :(

Wilde

When I Googled Oscar Wilde by some random impulse, I found this:

"Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!"

And this:

"All trials are trials for one's life, just as all sentences are sentences of death; and three times have I been tried. The first time I left the box to be arrested, the second time to be led back to the house of detention, the third time to pass into a prison for two years. Society, as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to offer; but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed. She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole."--"De Profundis"

........no words for it.

Dewdrops

Sometimes it’s the really simple things you feel like doing .The ones which bring a smile to your face.

•    Like lazing around on your bed, listening to Billie Jean.

•    Getting totally engrossed in a novel forgetting the world around you.

•    Having a long conversation with someone you enjoy talking to, with whom you share a warm, comfortable rapport. It’s something as comfortable as curling up on your favourite bed.

•    Letting your head meander, following vague streams of thought and soliloquising; a memory that brings a smile to your face. 

•    Writing something just because you feel like doing it.

•    Having a sumptuous dinner at home, relishing every morsel.

•    Sleep for at least eight hours at night. No staying up just for the sake of it.      

•    Getting up with a smile on your face ready to face Amrita.

•    To be able to say, as Calvin puts it, "Here I am, happy and content ".

For I Am

Warning : May not be very reader friendly. But then again, my stuff never has been.

As usual, I've took a hiatus from posting. This was one of those times when nothing goes your way. In short, you get screwed by life.College messed me up, had a conflict with mom and dad, friends suspected me, Badminton Racquet got smashed, Ipod crashed, Phone got confiscated by college , My gym membership was stopped by mom and dad .My head started asking questions it had no business asking " Why am I doing CSE Engineering?", "Why engineering", "Is it too late to swap?"  etc. I realised how arrogant I sounded in my writing. Truckloads of shit happened. As usual, reading Vivekananda, Swami, and my cousin kept me sane.

These were things I defined myself by. When all these were gone, I realised, that I still am. That I am more than a combination of my interests and relationships. I am more . I just am.

The point is, with these things happening posting was the last thought on my head. And my writing tool happens to be my Mobile phone. With that gone, I feel like a cripple. I had 10 pieces written in it. Damn.

Anyway, things are starting to look up now.Almost all issues I had with people around me are resolved.Gonna get a mobile today. Finally.Did pretty well in recent quizzes. And looking forward to a lot more.

Have a lot of books piled up on my shelf.

1) Dr Zhivago

2) Catcher in the Rye

3) Parthiban's Dream

4) Sophie's world.

5) The Prize

6)A spot of bother

7) The Journey of a master 

Aand so many more. Too lazy to type. Movies too.

Anyway I almost normal now. I guess I'll start posting more frequently. My cousin, a sound engineer cum composer, has recorded a few of my poems .Will put them up soon.

"Life goes on.I'll sleep when I die.Bring it on."

Marching through life

Marching through life
At every step of the way
Each and every day
I light a candle
To light the way

So looking behind
The past is seen
And looking ahead
Hope gleams

Marching resolutely onward
Knowing not when the path ends
Still trudging still moving forward
Till death for me sends

A Perfect Day

Wake up after a rare nine hour nap. Go to Avatar with friends. Hog at That's Y Food. Sleep for an hour. Play Shuttle. Go to Laughathon watch a good skit in proper English. Read Dorian Gray's last pages.Music on my Ipod. Off to sleep.

My day today :D Lovin it.

Age of Poetry

Toddler poetry
Beautiful word shapes,
Simple joys,
Of poetic license

The Power
To spurn grammar
To ignore punctuations

Awkward adolescence
Gangly growth
Big words
Here and there
Mauling rhyme

And slaughtering scheme
Exposed to masters;
Inadequacy seen

Teenage poetry
Hope flourishes
And Ideals sown
saga's spawned
And skills honed

"The world will change
Love will prevail"
says the hoping soul .

Ageing is seldom graceful
Dead weight of expectations
Faded Realms of fantasy
Reality crushing you

Grand vocabulary
Enchanting imagery
But nothing left to say
Inferi of literature

"The Pen can but pen
Nothing ever changes "
Despair and helplessness
Pound you to submission

The Pen falls
Through the air
And the Mind,
It Fades to black 

All that he ever could be,he was

What if  a person can be all that he/she ever wants to?What if all your dreams can be intertwined to be the one driving force of your existence?What if these would define who you are,be your  epitaph when you pass away,and linger on as your legacy?This what I'm thinking of right now.

I want to work for India,but I am not the kind of guy who can live in villages and serve.I like to write.I'd like to be an entrepreneur of some sort.Since I'm doing my Computer Science Engineering I'd like to make an impact there as well. I would love my life to be in the company of people who are not afraid to use their brains,who are comfortable with who they are,who do not tread the trodden path,"who go instead  where there is no path and leave behind a trail" . I would not want even an ounce of my potential to be unrealised. It must be said that "All he ever could be, he was"[my quote].

What it all came together like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle,everything integrating to one glorious whole.A mixture of inspiration,passion,the right company,creativity,logic and independence.What if dreams were for real?

Reality

Am I getting illusions of grandeur? Delusions of self importance? Face the facts old man. You are redundant in today's world . Sure,you were a mover and shaker in your prime, the world paid rapt attention to your every word,limelight hogged your every move.

Heads of government ate out of your hands. But now the mantle has passed. The legacy remains, not the power. It is the legend they pay respect to, it is but a show. You are but a figure head, the face of the cause, a cause which has surged ahead, leaving you behind, impotent vulnerable.


The strings have slipped from your hands, the puppets now dance to their own fiddle. What you have is, at the most, a respect for what was not for what is. Face up old man.Your values are outmoded;dead values. You are dead to them;like a Che in contemporary culture.

It's over.

Integrity

She refused cash
He refused to call
With a lamb's pride
She said go ahead
Man of integrity
He kept his word
Her little courage
Began to wither
Bravery to begging
Son please answer me
Sensing weakness
He steps up the demand
A shared account
She shudders

Squeezed mercilessly
Between love and integrity
Integrity which refuses
To destroy by caving in
For him she must be strong
She must prevent character suicide

This she knows
But her courage
Is that of a lamb

On seeing the knife
He brandishes
Threatening to stab
Her forevermore
Prometheus and the eagle

She caves in
Cash in hand
Black at heart
He dumps her

So long mother
What started with balance
Lost balance
Lost. 

Within

Declare me a lunatic
Straitjacket my cloth
Bury me deep
Within bowels of thought.

Llock me in
Free from sin
Never do I cease
Relentless beast within

Emotions are pawns
Free the king bound
Rethrone the kingdom of the mind
Throw open dungeons of the heart

How ever you deny
Im the reality within
For what is man
But beast beneath skin

I will occupy
Ii will help you die
I will run through you
Now i rule you too
Sad but true [:D]

The last stanza is Metallica I admit.Suited perfectly though.[:D]