TFN10: Am Waiting!

The Best Job i Ever Had

Arms ache from the effort,
i gave up a long time ago.
Just one more blow though,
And She yields
As She did before.
Blood trickles from my brow, Still
i feel like one more.
The sun makes me dizzy,
Must've collapsed long ago.
But the clickity-clackity monotony
Is what i won't miss,
Long as another blow
Can follow.
A Hundred lines intricately linked,
Strong coffee at Three,
Then a Hundred more, maybe.
A Million little pieces,
From an over sized stone.
Shattered.
Just because,
I had One more Blow.

Inspired By the Poet :)

(Might want to shoot me if you're a Dylan fan for mentioning him in the same breath, so use discretion!)

Well, its been nigh on five months since I last wrote, so this lazy effort is a surprise more than anything else! I have heard great music during this time, my only respite from the daily grind, the vicious cycle of work-food-sleep-work. Anyhow, Dylan's poetry would be the inspiration behind this piece which has been rolling around in my head for quite some time, but never got out.. As it is with all inspirations, its Anu Malik-y at best! (and yours truly-y at worst) I was aiming to write something a bit cheerful for a change, but i guess u can't cheat nature can ya? :P Oh well, better stop the rant n see how this goes for u!

The strawberries with cream are delectable in June, I know,
Exquisite too is Ladakh's sandy snow.
There's lot of snow in the Rockies too!
Am gonna scale the mountains,
And feel the harsh winds blow.
For now,
I'm the Armchair Tourist though.

In my fingers I can feel the Nile,
My heart pounds with the mills at the Theater.
The rolling greens, with Bessie, call out to me,
And Champs Elysees makes my head a-flutter.
A kiss under the mistletoe,
And a few cliches more maybe,
Is what this Armchair Tourism makes me.

There will be days of action,
In Vegas maybe, we'll blow the dough!
The times, well, they'll change.
We'll gorge on Pizzas in Napoli,
And the bubbly from Champagne will flow.
Till then, well,
We'll be Armchair Tourists, ya know.

PS: For those who managed to complete, do suggest a title.. Other than Armchair/Easy chair Tourist though!

Little Tibet: Stories from the valley and beyond

"A house for Ladakhi and Tibetan Curios and Curiosities"

I think it was the word curiosities, which spiked mine up. I wanted to go into the little unassuming shop with the dusty board and the hazy display showcasing odd silvery objects, studded with jade and other precious stones I could never hope to name. A half-meter silvery pipe, slender and graceful, with a minute cup, about the size of half a walnut, upfront, proudly adorned the central glass shelf. We stepped in and it seemed we stepped through a portal of time and space into a room which belonged to the silver age probably. Brightly painted and embroidered banners and wall flaps adorned half a wall. Rest of the walls were stacked up to the ceiling with a million other 'curios and curiosities'. A bit like Diagon Alley where at the first glance you wanted to watch everything but had to keep your eyes fixed in one direction, feeling the for about eight more eyes!

I was at a blessed heaven on earth, Leh, where it seems God forgot to put the very human tendencies of rudeness, unfriendliness and plain boorishness into the hearts of the people. 475 km from Manali is this place, still untouched by the excesses of modern tourism, which incidentally has wasted Manali. Maybe its just the grueling journey, maybe the prohibitive cost of air travel, fact is, Leh still has that old world feeling that many other 'hill stations' have totally lost.

It was at this hermit kingdom that we spotted Little Tibet, the aforementioned charming little place. I remember it vividly. Indeed full of curiosities. Animal shaped locks with the tail as the key and the tongue as the latch. A multitude of Tibetan praying wheels, called 'Maaney', in various types, wooden, and metal and ivory, hand held and those meant to adorn table tops. Flaps with intricately beautiful embroidery, depicting various religious Tibetan symbols. And paintings. Small and Large and Medium with natural colours and delicate shadings, devoted to the Lord Buddha and various stages of his life. Oh and Uncle. An ordinary old chap, with patchy skin and sandy hair, complete with the spectacles and smiles to match an Uncle character right out of a Wodehouse story.

I guess the first thought that flits through the mind of an antique shop owner on seeing a bunch of early twenty somethings is "Typical window shoppers who will look around feigning interest and in the end buy a cheap pendant or ring or maybe even a bracelet. Not much prospect and certainly not worth wasting an hour delivering my whole anecdotes collection on them". Well Ashraf Uncle was different from your ordinary antique dealer in the sense that he really loved his 'Little Tibet' and each of its lovingly polished curiosities, all of which came with a story that he inevitably knew..

For instance the European guy who offered to buy the pipe displayed in the window for a King’s ransom. Or Uncle’s friend, the painter, who only depicted the life of Buddha in his work and the fascinating colors he used from flowers and ground stone. It took him about a week for the larger paintings. Then there were stories about buying the antiquities for a basket of potatoes and onions at the time when food was scarce in the valley. And of course stories of the region. We were respectfully silent as he described the ancient charmed monasteries. We felt the breathtakingly scenic Nubra valley and the cool wind from the gigantic Pangong lake, part of which was in Chinese territory.

We didn't end up buying much of course. A half inch exquisitely crafted jade Buddha pendant was my most cherished curiosity though. Mine the moment I set eyes on it. A curio from the valley of memories.
The thing is that the charm of Leh never fades. Be it the first visit or the fifteenth. In part due to the harmonious valley sights and sounds. The harsh desert, so eerily beautiful in its white silence. Maybe due to the charming little anecdotes and the mementoes one digs up after the sands of time have settled on the memories. One remembers the minute details, the way the stars seem like massive silver coins on a clear night in Sarchhu and how the grass smells at the first ray of light. Most of all, one remembers the people. The chai walla who warmed your bones with some soupy maggi and a steaming cup of tea. The next door restaurant whose owner didn’t mind you sitting there watching tennis. And the old man from an era bygone who was easy with the tales. The little things are what make this hermit kingdom a dream destination.

PS: I did it! :)

A Mid-Summer(?) Night's musing

The Sun has come up finally. It's a bit wierd seeing the sky lighten before my very eyes. Usually it is dark when you sleep and bright when you wake up. After a long time I have seen dawn. I am sure many of my friends would claim the same (if they manage to wake up in the wee hours just once that is!) Not sleeping when everyone is, seems to be a very lonely and sad experiment. I'm sure many have endured night-outs. Preparing for IIT, the mid-sems, the end-semesters, etc, etc. Today is nothing special. I got no test tomorrow for which I need to stay up to complete the syllabus. It was just another run-of-the-mill, ordinary day. Still I have stayed awake for so long. Doing nothing. Sometimes dreaming. Gazing at the stars and the moon. Wondering about everything. Climbing to the topmost point in the hostel to be the nearer to the moon than anyone. There is a peculiar serenity about stars. I know they are really hot balls of a multitude of gases with some sort of omnipresent turbulence. But from here they look just fine. There is nothing hot or bothered about them. When I reach the top, I lie down and they seem closer than most. I vividly remember the galaxy Orion. It has a dark beauty about it. It represents a warrior. But oh such a peaceful warrior. I have no real important stuff on my mind then. Just run of the mill, little stuff. But suddenly they become larger than life. Just because they are there..

PS: Don't remember at what point in college I wrote this. Might have seemed a bad idea at the time, but I see I don't need to work on it. Qualifies as a musing, which is the point of this blog anyways.. :)

A Number Ubiquitous..

Ask an engineering student that what's the one thing that identifies him the most and in all probability he/she will wryly say 'CGPA'. It is seemingly a necessary evil. The question a professor mostly asks when you get up to ask an uncomfortable question is, "What is your CGPA?" As if it is the thing that defines who you are. Are we really so naive to believe that a person, an identity, an entity, a living breathing soul can be represented by a number? Can you really reduce a person to a number?
Its not only professors, the equivalence thing actually goes up to the highest echelons. The companies want CGPA. Simple. It doesn't matter whether you can kick ass when it comes to matters of the mind. It doesn't matter if you can speak for yourself. They come with a rigid mind, a fixed 'criteria' and that criteria unsurprisingly is CGPA. I mean don't they trust themselves to be able to differentiate between a good and a bad prospect on the basis of the test that they designed and interviews they will conduct? Apparently not.
Something happened recently. In an unfortunate accident, we lost a friend, a lovely person and the world lost a promising young man. Always greeted me with a cheeky grin and a "hello sir!". I vividly remember him arguing a case against a wrong judgement meted out to them just because they were freshers. It was hard to come to terms with the loss of such a wonderful person in such an unfortunate manner. I hope he is at peace now.
We had a little ceremony in the college. Many people gathered in the auditorium. The director asked us to observe silence for two minutes for Tarunvir Khurana, 2010 batch CGPA 6.25. Everyone did and the ceremony was over. The sad part of the proceeding is that even at such an unfortunate hour, for the institute, he was 6.25. I'm sorry Sir. He wasn't a number and no human can be just a number. Everyone is a wonderful being. Not knowing everyone doesn't mean we can know about them through a number. He was Tarunvir Khurana, Tarun to everyone. Not 6.25. And its a grave insult to his memory to remember him as just that.

Something about Happy Recovery..

Q: Your friend wishes an ailing soul happy recovery. Later shares his faux pas with you. And you draw a blank look and say: "Happy recovery? Wait. I've heard of Parallel Recovery, Safe Mode Recovery and a hell lot of Database Recovery Concepts but never of Happy Recovery!". The friend begins laughing. Now my question is quite simply: Tell the time?

A: Placement Time in the College

PS: Yes its that time of the stay in college when you got to cover everything sidelined during three years of fun 'n' games. The above Q&A was a half-hearted stab at humour, just to keep the blog going really.. I'm not sure really how many can find anything remotely funny about it (Except maybe the friend in question. Then again, maybe..)
PS 2: (a la Arnie in Terminator) I'll Be Back!