The Rose

I am not a person who usually likes to listen to soft and mushy romantic songs...but here is an exception... :)

The Rose

Some say love it is a river
that drowns the tender reed
Some say love it is a razer
that leaves your soul to blead

Some say love it is a hunger
an endless aching need
I say love it is a flower
and you it's only seed

It's the heart afraid of breaking
that never learns to dance
It's the dream afraid of waking that never takes the chance
It's the one who won't be taken
who cannot seem to give
and the soul afraid of dying that never learns to live

When the night has been too lonely
and the road has been too long
and you think that love is only
for the lucky and the strong
Just remember in the winter far beneath the bitter snows
lies the seed
that with the sun's love
in the spring
becomes the rose

Now, I do confess I am not teary-eyed after listening to it but yes, I like the emotions with which Bette Midler sings it...Awesome!

I Walk the Line

No.It is not about the Johnny Cash song...
Well technically I did "walk the line"... a ramp is an inclined line.
This is how I got the chance to walk on a ramp…

I was returning from guitar class on my two-wheeler and felt that something was not right with my rear wheel’s air pressure.

It turned out that it was punctured. So I decided to keep the vehicle with the mechanic as I had urgent engagements and my schedule was at a risk of going awry.

So I decided to hail a rickshaw to take me back home. Four rickshaw-walas said no..fifth one said “Rs. 30 extra for the return journey…”

Stoically I said no to him….The miser in me was all alive.Inspite of a tight schedule I decided to walk a few yards to take a public transport bus.

I got on the bus and paid the fare. As my destination came near, I jostled through the crowd to reach the exit.

While elbowing through the crowd I was smothered by a bevy of middle-aged women who were trying frantically to reach the exit…At least this is what I thought they were doing.

Two of them trampled my foot and one of them groped my guitar.

Also, the inclement weather was not helping my mood. My footwear was smeared with mud and the foot-trampling made it worse.

Consequently, we exchanged a few heated words and then they got down. I got down at the next stop. Again had to walk a kilometer to reach my place.

Then I had my meal and I got ready to catch a movie with my friends.

I reached for my wallet at the usual place and I could not find it.

I call myself a “fairly” organized person, though the percentage of “fairness” may be disputable. Panic seized me as it dawned upon me that I had lost my debit card.

Anyways, after searching whole of my apartment I concluded that my wallet has been stolen by the gang of middle-aged women which I encountered on the bus. Being true to my spirit, I was all flustered and shaken, plus there was an additional burden of my bruised ego as a few days back I was preaching wisdom to my father on how to avoid getting pickpocketed.

Somehow I reached the theater and asked the usher for my ticket which was left with him for safe-keeping by my friends.

At first the usher ignored me as he thought I was mooching for a free movie then I guess by divine intervention he remembered that indeed there was a ticket kept with him for the movie on screen-1 which was almost half-way through.

That was it!

After mumbling a few words he opened the door of cinema hall for me and then shut it tight. I stood there squinting for a few seconds and then I saw the ramp which divided the hall exactly into two parts.

My seat was at the end of the ramp. As I started to walk I heard noises which were coming from all sides. Although the noise was garbled I understood that it was a human sound …The sound was getting louder…I must confess I almost felt like beauty-queen who was magnanimously strutting the ramp…And then I realized that people were booing at me. Finally after a lot of fumbling and floundering in the dark I settled on my seat…The narcissistic fool was catapulted to reality.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

Time

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine
Staying home to watch the rain
And you are young and life is long
And there is time to kill today
And then one day you find
Ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run
You missed the starting gun

And you run, and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter
Never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught
Or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone
The song is over
Thought I'd something more to say

I am speechless...Truly sublime.

Note of Appreciation

K, I am dedicating this post to you .

Let me confess...I took lot of efforts to convince myself that you were not really worth writing about but somehow this is a proof that I couldn't convince myself.
But your very existence has a deep impact on me...(Actually the depth of impact is 1.23 picometers :P)

Anyways I want to pickup where we left...

You are :

1. Illogical
I say this because you said,
"I have many secret admirers."

Your claim to the existence of such phenomenon contradicts the truth universally acknowledged that,
"Man is an intelligent animal."
And by man I mean human race.
With adherence to Principle of Contradiction your claim becomes void, as an axiom cannot be refuted.
Q.E.D.
So I can safely ascribe the attribute illogical to you.

2. Intelligent
As you are intelligent enough to understand the above argument and making a mental note of you telling me that

"I couldn't follow a thing.You wrote all crap."
while successfully giving me an impression that you really couldn't understand a thing.

3. Unpredictable
After reading section 1 and section 2 you actually change your mind now and think of telling me that "I followed your argument perfectly and it was true."

4. Fickle
With all the mental notes you took and everything...at the spur of moment you say to me,
"Chalo..OK...I think my admirers are not human." and I am back to square one trying to prove it in a different way.

Please note that the confession of the fact that,
"I think my admirers are not human."
to debunk the proof stated in section 1 is not a streak of brilliance. It is a purely coincidental that you uttered these 7 words one after another...It is a product of your fickle mind.


And yes you may take the above attributes as a compliment.

Need I compliment you more?
The fact that I have spent 54 minutes (that includes 35 minutes we spent talking on the phone on monday + 15 minutes to write this post + 4 minutes to type it) is a proof enough. And don't discount the fact that I am writing this note of appreciation for whole world to see. :P

By the way, just for the record, Sigmund Freud's last words were,

“This is absurd! This is absurd!”

;)

Alice In Wonderland

Throughout my life I have been concentrating intensely on studies (so they say…), music, books, or even on an activity like, coming up with something really mean and horrible to say to my loved ones so that they feel horrible for next 100 years..... or sleep.People are amazed by the deep concentration levels which I attain during slumber( slumber somehow sounds more respectable than sleep ;)).Anyways, a few days back I was surfing the Internet (with high levels of concentration and determination) for some dose of Java (not coffee beans but programming language)…One thing led to another and finally I found myself reading about Aldous Huxley and LSD. Just for trivia’s sake , Jim Morrison’s band was named ‘The Doors’ because of Huxley’s book named “The Doors of Perception”.The title comes from William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell:

"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man
as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things
through narrow chinks of his cavern."

I got really contemplative and tried to refine my thoughts in search of Jim Morrison’s inspiration. After lot of thinking I finally concluded that I couldn’t understand the head or tail of it.
But then LSD….Why do people prefer it over sleep?
Google tells me that latest rate for LSD is 3000$ per gram.
Sleep….you can have it for free… Any genre of entertainment you want it you can have it.For months I was watching a rerun of an episode where I was failing in my final Hindi examination and sweating profusely...it was a real thriller...sending shivers down my spine.(Just for the record...Hindi exam did send shivers down my spine...it is not a dreams "special effect")
When I was young and had high fever, I was hallucinating about large round “pebbeles” falling over me.My mother tried to bring me out of the stupor but no avail…the dream was an extension of reality for me…it was awfully convincing!Last month I dreamt that I was idling in the Swiss Alps.The scenic quaint shot was complete with lush green meadows and snow-capped peaks tinged with the amber hue of the setting sun.Of course I realized that I was viewing the Himalayas(Because that’s the closest I have come to the Swiss Alps in reality) in the backdrop instead of Swiss Alps after I was catapulted to reality by a mosquito bite.Considering the fact that these days I get no time to watch TV , leave aside National Geographic channel, this sojourn was invigorating. Who knows… if I am as lucky as Paul McCartney someday my dream will turn into a money-minting device by coming up with a song as popular as ‘Yesterday’ in my reverie. Or maybe I can try offering my dreams to people in instead of materialistic things as Yeats did.

"For I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread upon my dreams."

P.S. : Kudos to my concentration! Java to LSD to Dreams! :P

P.P.S. : :D Excuse the shoddy layout of the post...I am high on dreams!

Intellectuality Litmus : Part 1

I recently read an article from NY Times titled It’s Not You, It’s Your Books.

I wanted to comment on it.

Warning: Pride and prejudice ahead!

So, here it goes…

At the risk of sounding pretentious, let me declare that I do have low opinion of people whose favourite “book” is Archie comic-book and those who feel that it is unfair of Nobel committee to have not honoured Sidney Sheldon on account of his literary brilliance!

But can this be a true yardstick for gauging emotional compatibility?

My answer is YES.

I suppose my outlook is parochial but I can’t see how I can spend my life with a person whose only diet is Mills and Boons or some other publication to that effect (including Jeffery Archer, Sidney Sheldon’s etc.). I don’t mind people who read Somerset Maugham and Mills and Boons with equal interest…at least they have gone through a been-there-done-that stage.

The article says that,

The author (a person named as Augusten Burroughs) recalled a date with one Michael, a “robust blond from Germany.” As he walked to meet him outside Dean & DeLuca, “I saw, to my horror, an artfully worn, older-than-me copy of ‘Proust’ by Samuel Beckett.” That, Burroughs claims, was a deal breaker. “If there existed a more hackneyed, achingly obvious method of telegraphing one’s education, literary standards and general intelligence, I couldn’t imagine it.”

Well, some people do like Proust especially an artfully worn, ancient copy…you can’t hold that against somebody!… So what if the copy is beautifully worn out?! I think the message it gives out is “Hey I like Samuel Beckett's work…Would love to discuss it with you. ”

Bottomline: It attracts people of same kind to interact.

I would respect a person's wish to not to interact with me because of the books I read...perfectly understandable.My distaste to Archer or Sheldon books may not make a favourable impression on him/her.

Someone did point it out to me that there is more to life than Marquez, Camus, William Blake or Hemingway. But fortunately or unfortunately I end up sleeping with Orwell, Marquez, Pamuk or Chekhov etc. tightly clutched my hands.It is not how it sounds though… :P. After one or two hours of togetherness usually the book falls from my hand on the floor. The experience of reading that genre is thoroughly relaxing.

Jokes apart….. for me books are an indication of a person’s intellect…language of books is of course immaterial…A person reading Yugant by Iravati Karve in Marathi is equally interesting as a person reading books by George Orwell in English.

All said and done Iravati Karve or George Orwell are not the only indicator of a person’s intellect. Don’t get me started on music! (That is Part 2 in the making.)

My Guitar

Finally bought a guitar! :)

Race : An Inspiration

The movie began with the introduction of the lead characters of the movie…
There was dashing Saif who was sporting suave pair of shades throughout the movie…I think the effort made by Saif to hide behind those oversize sunglasses paid off, it did hide his squint.
Then there was Akshay Khanna…who played the part of scheming, alcoholic evil brother with a hipflask glued constantly to his hip pocket. His lines were predictable, even the jokes he was made to say were insipid! After sitting and reading so many email forwards all day…I knew each and every joke made by Akshay Khanna!
Bipasha played the part of an eye-candy perfectly.Also she was trying her best to help the producer of the movie with her skimpy wardrobe…Atleast the cost on fabrics must have drastically reduced!
Katrina could have sported blond hair…that was the only thing lacking for completing her dumb blond image.
Sameera Reddy was as always, dumb as ever playing Anil Kapoor’s side-kick. I think a category just below the blond-bimbette must be named “Sameera Reddy” inorder to honour her pea-sized brain.
The only positive thing the movie had to offer was Anil Kapoor and Atif Aslam’s song.

The movie is set in Durban, SA. I know that SA has a lot of Indian population but that doesn’t mean that everybody who is involved with the characters is an Indian and speaks chaste Hindi! The stunts in the movie were awesome…gravity-defying. At one point of time I was convinced that the movie was a science fiction. There are million twists and turns in the plot, one at every second. It will give Fredric Forsyth a run for money on that front(I mean inducing twists and turns in the plot…no offence meant for Fredrick Forsyth).The plot is utterly ridiculous to the core. It doesn’t connect with the viewer. Somehow the movie lacked the skill to set the audience’s pulse racing.

Anyways, all said and done Race was an inspiration for me.
It inspired me to write this review without even getting paid for it.

Auguries of Innocence

The following poem is my favourite simply because it touches my heart every time I read it. The beauty lies in its simplicity. William Blake has awesome vision...I love his work thoroughly!


Auguries of Innocence
By William Blake

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.
A dove-house filled with doves and pigeons
Shudders hell through all its regions.
A dog starved at his master's gate
Predicts the ruin of the state.
A horse misused upon the road
Calls to heaven for human blood.
Each outcry of the hunted hare
A fibre from the brain does tear.
A skylark wounded in the wing,
A cherubim does cease to sing.
The game-cock clipped and armed for fight
Does the rising sun affright.
Every wolf's and lion's howl
Raises from hell a human soul.
The wild deer wandering here and there
Keeps the human soul from care.
The lamb misused breeds public strife,
And yet forgives the butcher's knife.
The bat that flits at close of eve
Has left the brain that won't believe.
The owl that calls upon the night
Speaks the unbeliever's fright.
He who shall hurt the little wren
Shall never be beloved by men.
He who the ox to wrath has moved
Shall never be by woman loved.
The wanton boy that kills the fly
Shall feel the spider's enmity.
He who torments the chafer's sprite
Weaves a bower in endless night.
The caterpillar on the leaf
Repeats to thee thy mother's grief.
Kill not the moth nor butterfly,
For the Last Judgment draweth nigh.
He who shall train the horse to war
Shall never pass the polar bar.
The beggar's dog and widow's cat,
Feed them, and thou wilt grow fat.
The gnat that sings his summer's song
Poison gets from Slander's tongue.
The poison of the snake and newt
Is the sweat of Envy's foot.
The poison of the honey-bee
Is the artist's jealousy.
The prince's robes and beggar's rags
Are toadstools on the miser's bags.
A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.
It is right it should be so:
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know
Through the world we safely go.
Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.
The babe is more than swaddling bands,
Throughout all these human lands;
Tools were made and born were hands,
Every farmer understands.
Every tear from every eye
Becomes a babe in eternity;
This is caught by females bright
And returned to its own delight.
The bleat, the bark, bellow, and roar
Are waves that beat on heaven's shore.
The babe that weeps the rod beneath
Writes Revenge! in realms of death.
The beggar's rags fluttering in air
Does to rags the heavens tear.
The soldier armed with sword and gun
Palsied strikes the summer's sun.
The poor man's farthing is worth more
Than all the gold on Afric's shore.
One mite wrung from the labourer's hands
Shall buy and sell the miser's lands,
Or if protected from on high
Does that whole nation sell and buy.
He who mocks the infant's faith
Shall be mocked in age and death.
He who shall teach the child to doubt
The rotting grave shall ne'er get out.
He who respects the infant's faith
Triumphs over hell and death.
The child's toys and the old man's reasons
Are the fruits of the two seasons.
The questioner who sits so sly
Shall never know how to reply.
He who replies to words of doubt
Doth put the light of knowledge out.
The strongest poison ever known
Came from Caesar's laurel crown.
Nought can deform the human race
Like to the armour's iron brace.
When gold and gems adorn the plough
To peaceful arts shall Envy bow.
A riddle or the cricket's cry
Is to doubt a fit reply.
The emmet's inch and eagle's mile
Make lame philosophy to smile.
He who doubts from what he sees
Will ne'er believe, do what you please.
If the sun and moon should doubt,
They'd immediately go out.
To be in a passion you good may do,
But no good if a passion is in you.
The whore and gambler, by the state
Licensed, build that nation's fate.
The harlot's cry from street to street
Shall weave old England's winding sheet.
The winner's shout, the loser's curse,
Dance before dead England's hearse.
Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born.
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.
We are led to believe a lie
When we see not through the eye
Which was born in a night to perish in a night,
When the soul slept in beams of light.
God appears, and God is light
To those poor souls who dwell in night,
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.

Trying to Buy the World

When you are 22 and have just got a job, your mind is burgeoning with schemes of buying the world with the handful of money you have. I started out with buying a guitar or at least I thought I will make a start by buying a guitar. Also, it was a step towards full-filling my life-long ambition of mastering a musical instrument. The closest that I have got in producing a “musical melody” is honking the horn of my two-wheeler for atleast two minutes (I think this will be appreciated by modernist futurism music advocates :P) for shooing away a herd of goats that once crossed my path. The musician in me was successful in captivating the audience as they stood there in a trance chewing cud. Later I had to call a boy playing nearby to do the honour of shooing them away.
So there I was last Sunday visiting shops in Pune trying to increase the list of my possessions, which by the way includes an old but handsome navy-blue coloured paper bag having a huge golden embossing of the emblem of Indian Air Force. (You-know-who, if you are reading this then kindly note that now the bag is mine and you are not getting it back.) So, anyway coming back on the track I began inspecting various semi-electric guitars with a I-was-born-with-a-guitar-in-my-hand kind of a look. My mind was teeming with questions, so I asked the attendant that why was “this” thing protruding from the base of the guitar? At this my bro turned to me and gave me a blend of please-don’t-ask-what-the-strings-are-for and I-don’t-know-this-creature kind of a look. As it turned out “this” thing is called a pickup of the guitar. So before I asked another question, we were out of the shop and heading to a different shop. After reaching there, I had Eric-Clapton-can-play-better-than-me-so-what-? kind of a look. Judging that my expression had become an inch demure than before, I think my bro didn’t mind me asking another question. This time I played it safe by asking about the price of the instrument. Looking back now I think the attendant was convinced that I did play guitar professionally. I believe my "look" and the fact that I was silent throughout did it. My mission of buying the world encountered a glitch when I had to postpone the acquisition of guitar indefinitely.
Finally, today I decided to download guitar tabs for every Pink Floyd song. I got this file ‘Pink Floyd-Guitar Tab Anthology (Guitar Songbook).rar’…I was already in my day-dreaming mode and was strumming a guitar along David Gilmour at a concert when my reveries were interrupted as I tried to open the file…It was password protected. So, if anybody reading this has the password to it please pass it on to me so that I can Dream On uninterrupted. But this time I think I will give Aerosmith a chance to play along with me ;)

Feelin' Groovy

Naming my blog was one of the hardest things that I have done. (Duh!)
Well, I am descending to a cliché here, but that’s how my “hard toil” ;-) fits into words.

After lot of pondering I decided to name it “Feelin' Groovy :-)”. ..Couldn’t help it actually...I was listening to Simon and Garfunkel while I was choosing my probable ‘display name’. I think I can safely blame Simon and Garfunkel for making me believe that I was feeling groovy :-P.

Anyways, the song ended after 1min. 23 sec. and so did my groovy feeling. After signing up, I thought ‘Always quirky ;-)’ would have done justice…I think I am 66% quirky (that amounts to distinction grade) …that’s quirky enough…which means that I am pretty quirky but normal enough to hide the fact that I am quirky.

Coming to the point, me "Feelin' Groovy"?!
By and large I think the people who know me will totally vouch for the fact that I can be counted among the most “ungrooviest” people in the world. But that’s why music is here for…It made me feel groovy for for precisely 1min. 23 sec. :-P …Enjoy this video.