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! :)