foggy mornings in delhi

another 48 hours to go before i am greeted by foggy delhi days and cold nights. it's perfect season to be afflicted by the seasonal affective disorder.

Rear window

this classic by Hitchcock is  a must see, for its sheer dramatic sequences, all in the space of one room. great story-telling.

delhi.....here i come

don't be fooled by that headline....i have always hated delhi and if someone has had the foresight to start a hate delhi club, then i am in, as life member.....why? the cold, the fake people, the fake attitudes, the power play, just abt gets to me...the only redeeeming grace, all those historical monuments that breathe, and chandni chowk, the most living, bearable place in the city....already, i shiver to think of the cold that will greet me...i see my brilliant brain freezing in anticipation......hmmmm.....all ye readers, forgive me if yu don't hear from moi for quite a while ...call it the five-year moratorium on thinking that comes with all delhi sojourns...

baran

majidi has come up with a love staory that isn't. memorable, with the Afghan refugee problem simmering in the background and some great camerawork and editing, as usual. now, that completes three films by my fav director, all different in theme, but united in their humanitarian focus. do watch this movie and children of heaven and the color of paradise.

sea inside finally!!

happened to catch that on zee studio. don't know what to make of it. i mean, is it right to ask for assistance to die? is it cowardly to think that? is it difficult to make that choice? is it tough living the way the character in the movie, Ramon (played by Javier Bardem), has been doing? the rights and wrongs of it are extremely grey. catch it if you can!

missed a friend's wedding

it was supposed to be a trip down memory lane, into a city that spawned and later spurned many a dream. hiccups, not entirely under my control, led to its cancellation. now i am rueing why i didn't go. anyway, may be i will make it later. hope 2008 is a time for meeting and renewing old ties.

too cold to think

the cold wave looks like it will kill. after 9 my brain shuts down, and refuses to wake up before 9 the next day. which leaves precious few hours for eat, sleep and telly time..reading and blogging, and introspection seems to have become muddled by the sub-10 degree weather. god, at this rate, i will dread delhi, if i have to go....

off to God's own country

For a few days..will be off blogs....so see ya all next week...until then, tata and cheerio!!!

The Sea Inside

Got to watch nearly three-fourths of the movie, but the DVD played truant. So waiting to see the rest later. Must say it is well shot.

read this ye all who work late!

This came as an email forward, supposedly Narayana Murthy telling his employees on work etiquette!!!

It's half past 8 in the office but the lights are still on...PCs still running, coffee machines still buzzing...And who's at work? Most of them. Take a closer look... All or most specimens are something male species of the human race... Look closer... again all or most of them are bachelors...And why are they sitting late? Working hard? No way!!! Any guesses? Let's ask one of them...Here's what he says... "What's there 2 do after going home...Here we get to surf, AC, phone, food, coffee that is why I am working late...Importantly no bossssssss!!!!!!!!!!!" This is the scene in most research centres and software companies and other off-shore offices.Bachelors "Time-passing" during late hours in the office just bcoz they say they've nothing else to do...
Now what r the consequences... "Working" (for the record only) late hours soon becomes part of the institute or company culture.With bosses more than eager to provide support to those "working" late in the form of taxi vouchers, food vouchers and of course good feedback, (oh, he's a hard worker... goes home only to change..!!). They aren't helping things too... To hell with bosses who don't understand the difference between "sitting" late and "working" late!!!Very soon, the boss starts expecting all employees to put in extra working hours.So, My dear Bachelors let me tell you, life changes when u get married and start having a family... office is no longer priority, family is... and that's when the problem starts... bcoz u start having commitments at home too. For your boss, the earlier "hardworking" guy suddenly seems to become an "early leaver" even if u leave an hour after regular time... after doing the same amount of work. People leaving on time after doing their tasks for the day are labelled as work-shirkers...Girls who thankfully always (its changing nowadays... though) leave on time are labelled as "not up to it". All the while, the bachelors pat their own backs and carry on "working" not realizing that they r spoiling the work culture at their own place and never realize that they would have to regret at one point of time. *So what's the moral of the story?* Very clear, LEAVE ON TIME!!!* Never put in extra time " *unless really needed *"* Don't stay back un-necessarily and spoil your company work culture which will in turn cause inconvenience to you and your colleagues. There are hundred other things to do in the evening..Learn music...Learn a foreign language... Try a sport... TT, cricket.........Importantly Get a girl friend or boy friend, take him/her around town...* And for heaven's sake net cafe rates have dropped to an all-time low (plus, no fire-walls) and try cooking for a change. Take a tip from the Smirnoff ad: *"Life's calling, where are you??"*
Please pass on this message to all those colleagues and please do it before leaving time, don't stay back till midnight to forward this!!!
IT'S A TYPICAL INDIAN MENTALITY THAT WORKING FOR LONG HOURS MEANS VERY HARD WORKING & 100% COMMITMENT ETC.
PEOPLE WHO REGULARLY SIT LATE IN THE OFFICE DONT KNOW TO MANAGE THEIRTIME. SIMPLE !

Kindle for readers

in ten years, people who read and those who pretend to do may forget there were even such things as books. kindle from amazon may just be just that spark that will produce more and better ways to e-book. till such time, i will continue to invest in all my fav bookstores in town!

andrei rublev

it is a period flick, set in 15th century Russia, even before the first Tsar. it deals with the iconic painter andrei. but it is a touch bizarre as the action weaves in and out. but a realistic movie by tarkovsky. looking forward to catching Baran, by Majid Majidi. this will be my third majidi film. 

blogger's block

it's been nearly a week since i wrote to you all. things happened meanwhile of which i am still quite wonky. a former colleague passed away. no one knows if he took his own life or if he was killed. in goa. he was found drowned. and he was quite an excellent journalist, very informed, with a deep interest in many things, both current and past. and he was quite a movie buff. must have seen all the good classic stuff. he was a storehouse of info on the show biz. could quote entire passages from movies like it were poetry. his death seems almost godfather-like. "it's not personal. it's business." may his soul rest in peace.

becoming a fan of majidi's

Majid Majidi touches my heart with his simple, lyrical and longing stories. while bergman, tarkovsky and others make me think, majidi hits me where it hurts the most. and thus, i look at his work with a certain rapport, although his stories are set thousands of miles away. have just got hold of Baran. waiting to see it.

met a dear friend after ages

and remembered the good ole college days, when she had dropped me to the exam hall and back to a sane place where i could board a bus from. both of us discovered we had changed, rather mellowed with age, and exchanged notes on that. 

back...got to catch up on sleep

hectic week the last was. now i sound like the Jedi master in start wars. be back soon

do read this issue of Fortune

the cover story is about the confession of a CEO, who neglected family for work and what it did to his life. for all our desi business mags used to hyping our biz netas, this should be made mandatory reading, not just because of its content, but because this is how ideas can drive magazines and how great mags are driven purely by ideas.  

Paki bashing

it's  time they cleaned up the place. mushy boy seems to have lost control with the mullahs calling the shots. in a way, serves him right for cosying up to them earlier. but seven years ago, he seemed like the best bet for our neighbour. benazir bhutto has come across as a sham, a self-seeking politico wo is willing to sup with the devil once it became clear that her arch-rival, sharif, would be put out of the way. and the US, as always is left groping for answers.

ex-ET reunion

should likely happen the day after. that should be fun. 

been a long six days

broadband conked when the phone line came online after a studied silence of a week. so, left with measly dial-up data card left little choice. had a blog relapse. things have been going on sedately, excepting i have finished reading that wonderful book, KA. wow! the things the ancients discussed, metaphysical queries that will make your head spin. and the sheer erotica of Indian myth. lovely. just bough the Mahabharata by Ramesh Menon yesterday. still superstitious about keeping it in-house. anyway, let's see. have to read the rest of from the holy mountain, by dalrymple. and waiting in the wings is a thriller by baldacci, history of the sikhs both volumes, and a pc hardware book. that should take up until year end. hopefully before that. my mag's website is up. the url is on top of this post. check it out and let me know what you guys think. 

Tehelka sting

Seems like everyone joined the "kill Muslims" party in Gujarat, the police, netas, aam admi, everyone with an ax to grind. Killing women, the aged and children, and violating women are not condoned by any religion or way of life, Hinduism including. That, to me, seemed really despicable and downright cowardly. If the Hindu way of life, so sublime in its beauty and compassion and well-regarded for its deeply thought out philosophy of life and the after-life, is left to these marauding hordes, then i shudder at its prospects. A belief system that has withstood wars, invasions, crusades and savagery at the hands of countless "others" should not be appropriated by brutal usurpers who have little clue about its great ethos. It is the duty of every proud Hindu, yours truly including, to wrest Hindutva (which means the Hindu essence) from scavengers intent only on using religion to futher their short-term political ambitions. 

Oh this Ka has become fascinating

Ka, by Roberto Calasso, is part novel, part myth, part everything. but what is becoming interesting is how deep he is going into Hindu philosophy, the Vedic thought, concept of the Saptharishis et al. It is getting better and better. 

sore yee

down with conjunctivitis....will be back in a day or two.....

johnny gaddar

very interesting movie. whodunit, but yu knwo whodunit!!! good performance by dharmendra and vinay pathak.

invading my dreamscape

i like the quiet of the night. that's when you invade me with thoughts of you. when i pen down the longing, the fear and the hurt, trying my best to separate them one at a time. you have a knack of catching me unawares. i miss those walks and easy chatter. i miss you. above all, i miss the searing want that comes with missing you.

be

i touch your fingertips,

while you gaze at the waves.

you drop into my life, like a raindrop

you have stepped in

unannounced, like the familiar Autumn drizzle.

once, i was scared to lose you, raindrop!

no time for friends

some people have no time for friends, or for what they say or what they want. they have all the time to pick up the phone and speak to you when they need something, not when you ask them for help. then, they develop selective amnesia, don't check the internet or can't even pick up the phone to talk. all they do is crib, about how little time they have. they don't realise how much time they waste on frivolous things. i don't get angry about the big things. but i certainly get riled by the small things. like people returning a call, replying to a message or sms. when they don't do that, i mean, when their courtesies are misplaced, that's when i express my anger. people assume i will forget their injustices. i don't. nor do i forget the good turns. that's my way of saying i reward good behaviour and punish the bad. people who don't understand this side to me can conveniently disappear from my life. i don't care. and people who try to make me feel guilty for succumbing to their own weaknesses can also take a hike. 

seems a strange day

when i feel very incommunicado. just do work, and blog an check orkut and mail. and read. and probably watch a movie. 

today's recurring motif is death

shocking pictures of scores dead in the Karachi blasts, all dead while the targeted escaped. this is really meaningless. a really smart assassin would prove his mettle by hitting just the target, not collateral damage as the Americans would say. why make an enemy of perfectly law-abiding citizens while trying to score political brownie points? seems terrorists are the same everywhere.

so many deaths on the road

saw a gruesome accident today. the biker was dead. a public transport bus parked a few feet away. whether the bus hit the biker or the biker ramemd into it is irrelevant now, for the man is long gone. but the sad state of our traffic endures. 

Peanuts, and being bullied

It seems Charles Schulz, the creator of the Peanuts strip, never ever forgave his bullies--even as he lay dying. That seems incredible, yet beautifully humane. how better to affirm your faith in humanity than in not absolving childhood bullies of their sins. Newsweek's piece on a biography of Charles gives us a well-rounded picture of the guy, through his biographer's point of view and his family and friends'. Which makes me want to read the book, although i find the cartoons themselves very depressing. Give me Calvin, Garfield, Hagar, Wizard, Animal Crackers and Beetle Bailey. And, of course, Gary Larson. 

elimination

now star singer is down to its last twenty participants. things are getting more exciting. some boring singers have somehow made it to the last 20, i wish they had been booted out a long time back. anyway, this will take until December end to decide the winner. it is a sane, participative format and funny in parts. and some real talent!

i seek you in a tattered telephone book

you stare at me 

as a ten-digit number

from the well-thumbed

confines 

of a faded telephone diary.

it's been years, i muse

peering intently

at your name for several

long seconds in discomfort.

memories of you zip through

my care-worn fingers

in many telephone conversations, 

in shared cups of tea

spent at a dilapidated canteen,

and long walks to nowhere

to no purpose,

except professions of love

and sacred vows.

you are just a name now,

not even a sharp intake of breath.

the time machine

if the space-time curvature is true, it seems time travel is theoretically possible. in the late 19th century, one man thought time travel would be possible, at least in a story he wrote. he penned the time machine, which, to this day seems so incredible. that someone sitting in dreary London, possiblly writing long-hand could devise such a means to meet one of many possible futures. or pasts. since space bends everything, including light, due to the force of gravity, it should be theoretically possible to reach where you started from if you travel much faster than light (now impossible). which means, you will alter the journey and when it began. sounds mad? no. think of a giant spherical ball and a point above it. the point is travelling faster than the speed of light. but the light ray on which the point is travelling bends, almost to the shape of the sphere that the giant ball is. the bend, all along its circumference will push light to meet its starting point, won't it? so what happens to the point the ray carried with it. has it begun the journey or ended it? or is it going to change the past by travelling to the future and coming full circle? these and other questions are agitating scientists the world over. if an Einstein among them manages to devise a way to travel faster than light, or punch a hole through the space-time manifold so that a journey along the circumference can be cut through the diameter, then we can travel faster from place to place, or meet ourselves before we started. 

conspiracy theories

Was Sonia Gandhi introduced to Rajiv Gandhi so that she may, 30 years down the line, control the Congress party, and, eventually become the power behind the throne? Were the tragic deaths of his mother, brother and of course himself part of that same design? which, incidentally was to let US capitalist interests gain a foothold in India? Is Manmohan Singh a membe of a secret society that includes teh Bushes, Clintons and other prominent men of this era? All these were asserted to be part of a grand capitalist conspiracy by a friend recently. I reserve judgment on these. to each his ow conspiracy claim!

ever watched star singer

it's a competition for singers, on Asianet. the format is in interesting, the participants are decently good and the judges are a caricaturist's delight! my fav contestant is a visually challenged boy from Bangalore, Ritvik Rajan. He is endearing and he sings very well. Thushar, another from TVDM, is good too. He may just take the top prize. 

Gene rules, but

We are back to deifying the gene, or even better, junk DNA. and the letters in it..A, T G, C. this century, Newsweek tells us, is possibly biotech's. so that should be good news for all those who seek to grow a new hand or keep a spare eye. and, growing old? not if the biologists or geneticicts are to be believed. welcome to the brave new world. the greying shall inherit the earth. and goodbye HIV!

met a friend

after years. but strangely, it seemed just like we were meeting after just a few days. interesting conversation and same camaraderie. that felt good.

another day, another blast.

seems so commonplace now. these bombs going off everywhere. ajmer??? where next? in flood-hit villages of orissa? a bomb for every indian, is it? that will make it 1.1 billion bombs and counting. that many bombs in the mind, ticking, waiting to explode. why don't the terrorists simply plant one in their houses first? just for fun, like they do elsewhere? or should that responsibility be taken up by all the innumerable victims of countless bombings? maybe they should just start a vigilante force that specialises in bombing the homes and beloved ones of the planters, and their handlers and the cowardly, faceless slime that instigate these hatchet men to do the dirty job. pity! if the earth were indeed flat, as friedman says so pompously, we could have just pushed these bombmakers off the ends and waited to hear their dying, screaming echoes. well, as of now, everything seems fine as long as no one acts to bring these guys to justice. looks like minority report will sooner be reality than later.

goooglyeeed

Indian cricketers seem to be high on talk and low on the real stuff. The match I am watching is ample testimony to that. Tendulkar and Dravid ought to be dropped. And India should play a young team that is fearless.

The Fellowship

It's a book by John Gribbin. Talks of how a few gutsy scientists brought the age of experimental science into being in Europe. How the natural philosophers challenged the Curch and the heresy fear to turn Europe into the scientific powerhouse it has become today. Galileo went to medical school, instead got interested in mathematics and eventually dropped out of med to teach maths. Interesting trivia like these make it engaging. Still long way to go before i finish it.

you are one with the mist, now

i memorise your silhouette

before plunging

into the icy labyrinths

of want,

yet again

even as you fade

ever so gently

into the foggy night.

somewhere,

a clock strikes

the appointed hour

as if ready to 

pounce

on the stillness

of your passing.

someone said my blog reeks of melancholy

every blog is a bit of the blogger. the story may be made up, the verse twisted to suit the frame or the mood, the anger palpable or the indignation feigned, even. but in essence it is an extension of the blogger's real self. that makes melancholy, inertia, pleasure and pain inevitable. it is an effort to fill up the cosmos with debris, with the detritus of feeling that has been sapped beyond simple concepts like pain and bliss. it is a husk, a shell that has seen better days. it is an empty tin that's been stripped of passion. words that transmute feelings do that. that is what this blog is, will be. not empty rhetoric or mere letters bereft of a soul. this is an attempt at post-mortem. in the world of lightning-fast optic fibres, there is no right or wrong. it simply is, it exists as a miasma of thought, feeling and passion expressed in the best way possible. it doesn't mean the world is a trivial place for my sorrow. i think it is richer because of it, inspite of it. as my fellow blogger said, "everything happens for the good." maybe, in the long run. and i accept the pristine beauty of that concept. but as some witty economist observed," in the long run, we are all dead."

story again...

...dinner was a rather quiet affair. which suggested that we were both hungry, and mulling over this new-found intimacy. we were headed back, when she caught me by surprise with the question. "why were you standing in the rain?" i mumbled. i hate lying to her, as i did even then. so i stayed quiet. "what if i hadn't turned up?," she was insistent. "oh! love is blind," i said, without even thinking. oops! i didn't know where to look after that impulsive statement. she looked as if somebody had knocked her cold. slowly,  a smile tugged at her and she reached out to touch my arm. "will you marry me?," i asked then. that shocked me even more. our acquaintance was barely weeks old, and here i was proposing marriage. this really stunned her. " i mean it," i said. "this may seem too fast for you, but this is exactly what i would do, if that's what you too feel." she put a finger to my lips. "shhhhh, we will talk about this later. now let's get back to work," she said. i felt so insecure, yet strangely happy that she hadn't dismissed the whole thing. for the rest of the evening, or night, she seemd so bubbly, helped me with a difficult testing software and smsed me in between work so often i thought she would be rapped by the project head. "let's meet up for lunch tomorrow," she messaged. "yippeee," i smsed back. when she was leaving, she said," i will sms you when i reach home." that made me sit up. we had never done that. i had never asked, although i used to worry. this was beautiful, i thought. i went home doing mental cartwheels. yet, a strange voice inside my head felt troubled. the voice refused to let me be completely happy. it said: " you guys are never going to make it to the altar." i dismissed the sugegstion angrily. yet it came back, forcefully. by the time i hit the bed, i was praying that voice was insane. it was not. but about that and other things, later.

This is the pits!!!

beating up a pregnant woman, and her child, whatever the reason, that too, in the land of the supposed intellectual, and one that professes to stand up courageously for the marginalised and downtrodden, is totally unacceptable. she may have stolen that chain, which is not proven as yet, or not. but what divine right did the people have to thrash her? it is gross injustice. the perpetrators of this heinous crime ought to be punished. 

you refuse to talk

or text, or receive my rings

this, after i stuff your notebook

with a zillion links 

to salvation.

why did i bother, i wonder

isn't it common courtesy?

Insensitivity toward the meek...

A friend listed this as a turn off on his blog. Phew! For once, I am convinced there are people with their hearts in the right place. Haven't you noticed that this is one the rise in today's world. And, insensitive is an undertstatement. Most of us are downright brutal to the meek. But, be assured, as the Bible says "The meek shall inherit the earth"

Telemann to soothe nerves

Of late, i have been a bit jumpy and snappy. I figured the irritability peaks just after i put down the day's paper. Every day, stories of betrayal, deceit, high-handedness et al. Enough to shoot a few troublemakers. What restores sanity are the Cavins and Garfields of the world. Now, that is something I wouldn't miss for anything. Have you ever tried Gary Larson and his Far Side? Do. A friend introduced me to him. His strips are so irreverent, obtuse and wacky. As of now, I am listeneing to George Philippe Telemann. His viola concertos can stuff the best garbage out of sight and out of mind.

Read the paper and your BP will shoot up

Several things that I read in the papers today, and just about everyday, makes my blood boil. What was it today? For starts, it was the fate of several thousands of our soldiers, fighting to keep the senseless terrorists at bay. Very young officers and jawans getting killed in battle and the trauma that must cause their families. All this while our politicians sit back and pontificate about, what in essence is a political problem. Another story that made me angry was the delayed justice to Krishnaiiya, the DM who was killed by mobsters in Bihar. To what purpose? Absolutely senseless acts that don't achieve anything. At this rate, we will all have to forsake this beautiful country.  

a rational man may also be superstitious

i frequently fall prey to superstitious beliefs. for instance, i have avoided buying Ramesh Menon's retelling of the Mahabharata, because of a fear that, once brought home, it will cause fights in the family. or so, goes the old hand-me-down that the Bharata shall not be kept at home. 

or, i try to avoid wearing a bright yellow-strapped watch because i am convinced that the day i wear it i shall spend beyond my means, or a 1940s wristwatch because it would make me angry all day or a slim watch that my sister gifted for fear that it will make me maudlin. as some superstitious poet said, "how do i avoid theee, let me count the ways"

continuing the hate tirade

People who think that power, money or fame can replace good old friendships also fall into that aforementioned list. Which brings to mind an interesting turn of conversation i had with a dear friend yesterday. While rounding off our talk, she asked me "Do you mind if i send you interesting jokes thorugh the sms?" and i said, "no, i don't" to which she replied.."i usually ask beforehand because some people may not like it." And i said..."sure. no problem, as long as you are not sending me stuff every two minutes, it's fine." 

The point of the story being, simple courtesy can go a long way in deepening a bond. that is what irritates me about so many sophisticates who claim to be intellectual iconoclasts, but who can't differentiate between the lefts and the rights of decency.  

I hate people who don't have the courtesy to reply

To my Orkut posts. Who think it is beneath their dignities (if they hold on to one) to be courteous, to respond to a birthday greeting or a simple courtesy scrap. And this goes even for my smses, emails and any form of communication. And for those who think that being indifferent is the new fad, let me be precise, it is the last resort of the uncouth.

Join the Anti-Delhi Club

It is just an idea, but all those of you who vehemently hate Delhi may post comments on why our Capital just needs to decay and rot, and why its culture of money, power and subjugation should be shown the door.

why the subprime mess sucks

At the core of that problem is poor people, or let's say peole with spotty credit histories, being lured to take mortgages that they should have been advised against. unable to meeet rising equated instalments, many (1.8 to 2 million, Fortune says) may just have to just let go of their only shelter. What is the world coming to? Is the Indian realty space headed for a similar setback? Sit tight, and hope not!

i figured out what's good for me...

being lazy and fit for nothing else, and have idealistic visions of changing the world through a few keystrokes, i have decided that henceforth, my pen, or rather, it's modern-day verison, the computer keyboard will do the talking. mostly angry talk that can't qualify as PC, sometimes, as i recently discovered, not even good netiquette (whatever that means). so, the anger and the compassion that will otherwise go unchallenged even by myself will find a place here. and you, poor reader, will be silent sufferers. 

Rushes...An Arabian Tale

Everyone, absolutely everyone, whether Leftist or Right-leaning or somewhere in the No Man's Land that they call Middle, must watch Arabikatha. It is a Malayalam movie by Srinivasan on the failed Communist vision. It made me angry, to see how ordinary people are taken for a ride in the name of an ideology that has veered from its lofty ideals long ago, especially in present-day Kerala. To see thousands of hard working folks cheated of their money, their lands, their livelihoods and their dreams, just watch it. By the way, the movie also doen't spare the Capitalist economy, as exemplified by Dubai's skyrises, being built by people forced to work in the 50 degree noonday Sun. 

The way to right injustices, especially those that seep to the dispossessed in every society, is for conscientious folk like you and me to write about them, for a start. This blog is an attempt to show up these venal, parasitic creatures (who make money at the expense of the "aaam admi") for what they truly are.  

after the lights have dimmed

you visit me in conversation
like a repetitive nightmare,
too good to stanch
too good to interrupt
and too beautiful to resist.

knowing you

it could have been
so easy
to understand
what you wanted.
but then,
what kept me
from knowing that?
why did i keep you,
and the darkness
and the sleeping pills
when you let go
why didn't i let go?

one conversation and two adjectives

you held my hand as we crossed the road,
i thought time,
and conversation,
and all those flowery adjectives
that thrive in a vacuum
between want and despair,
stood still, then.

story rumbles on...

...and the view was splendid.

It had been raining for days, some depression in the bay, the weathermen said. the cups of coffee were getting endless. work was humdrum. debugging the errors of the night before, putting more lines into mundane code and rain-breaks to catch the whiff of the sleeting torrent.

dinner beckoned. i looked across the cubicle, at her. she seemed busy, typing intermittently and staring fixedly at the screen. "want to catch dinner?" i said. she didn't even turn to look. "you go on da," she said, "this work will eat up my dinner-time too."

that's when i missed her. suddenly, going to the cafeteria seemed pointless. some of that hunger died, gasping at this change of heart. i couldn't put a name to it then. a quick bite would do, i thought.

the rain lashed at me as i got out. that seemed to wake me up. i desperately felt like running back and skipping the meal. for a long time i stood, in the rain, undecided.

i hadn't even realised she had tip-toed to where i stood. "the cafe will shut if you dance with the rain," she teased. oh! with a start i turned around and held her hands. then, both of us started laughing. i felt so relieved. we walked all the way holding hands. she knew. that's why she had stuffed the code-writing for later, i told myself.

if only everyone grimaced instead

of grinning vapidly, then the fetid online alley ways would be more tolerable...

lost friends on orkut

they seem to be connected...karmic discord comes to haunt yu even online...and wonderful days of madness kept simmering in turgid cups of tea suddenly seem so mundane in virtual snapshots...a grinning face here, a profile shot there..or some curves to beat the midnight grumble....where were these lost souls, bak i college everyone seemed so nihilistic....now the same lot seem to be cryogenified into virtual mindspace, exchanging fervent greetinsg and pleas for friendships....where is the fine art of sitting across a rickety table and mumbling of broken hearts? orkut seems to have replaced that table.....thank god for blogs (TGFB)..............

what makes the world go around?

hmmmmm.......

iPod fetish

let me confess. for about a couple of years now, i have had one abiding technology fetish. apple may have invented the iPod, but that has where it has left off. to make a fetish of an electronic object that has, let's say, redefined how music is consumed, for it is consumed these days, and how photographs and movies are stacked up into a virtual library of gargantuan proportions, is the easy part. what is harder, is to acquire the object of your desire. now, after pursuing amazing austerities of the yogic variety, i must gleefully say that i too have arrived. with this 160-gb black beauty i have finnaly unshackled music, movies, fotos, and contacts from terra firma. it is as you all know, my emotional security on the move. thanks to steve jobs, bach and brahms, yesudas and rahman, ilayaraja and ilanjithira melam have started cohabiting. what next from apple? maybe a gizmo that will convert thoughts into song, novel or verse!!!

i decide to be an intellectual (pretensions and all)

Sarkozy may frown, but i am about to gladden many a french heart, if not their eyes, by deciding to turn intellectual. why? because it is the second most lazy thing to do apart from laziness itself. which suits me fine, as i definitely do not dislike lazy people, and if they are intellectually lazy then i do not detest them even more. we need thinkers who can sit in an armchair, or in my case, a bean bag, and pontificate on the best vaccine cure for the deadly HIV, or on the pleasures of being an autorickshaw driver, especially one who refuses long, traffic-stopper trips to the hinterland. so, here's to a remainder life of intellectual vigour and supine reflection, and oh! maybe a bad back!

ho hum....

This 20:20 was exciting, heart-stopping fare. Pak nearly pulled it off. But waiting for the ozzie series to start.

verse is over before prose starts to form

poetry, especially in the writing, seems easy, quickfire, like Twenty20, and is like a tsunami unleashed upon hapless feeling. to me, verse comes before all. verses of want and longing and familiar despairs.

you have been gone a long time
and aeons separate our shared dreams.....

is it possible to pick up the shards of a dream shared long ago? and keep it from splintering further. maybe. maybe not. there are years to live to know.

speaking of rain, and a face in the raindrop

i remember
staring at a pouring rain
through thick-glass windows
one night after work,
and you, barely a few feet away
discussing the apostrophes of life
with a colleague,
an after-dinner gossipy interlude
before more work,
we were just metres apart,
secluded from the torrent,
breathing in the soft breeze,
yet in different worlds--
worlds hyphenated by a
seeping divide that refused
to yield to paeans of want

back to blogging

it's been nearly a month. no blogs, just the thought of it. no poetry, no short history of space and time. absolutely like an average joe, circa pre-internet. felt good. now, writing, letting the thoughts run dry on black keyboard is equally liberating. surfeit of rain and laziness, coffee at 10:30, sleep at 9:30, reading, poking fun at the raindrop, squabbling with tiny-tot cousins, all fun.

looping rain and sparkle

kerala during the rains, for those who know, is nothing short of a miracle on terra firma. this is my lazy vacation in god's own country. the first really lazy one since school.

living, day by day

...or even minute by minute seems strange...no thought of tomorrow, how it will all end....what i will do, will i get to write that book.....so many unanswered questions......but it feels nice not to know........

i got up to the sound of you.......

many demons were vying for my sleep time
you came last (no, i don't mean to compare)
and i could see, clearly
that you had put on a smile
and a blue headscarf
and seemed, not threatening at all
in the dream, you reached out
to touch that part of my dream
that was battling all the others
in a moment, it seemed
every body else had vanished
felled by your smile
and a kind slap
i noticed you had eyes
only for me
i didn't know whether
to be fearful or be glad
i saw you ripping off
that blue scarf
and walking towards me
i didn't knpw whether
i should stay or run
in the end, it didn't matter
you were too quick for me
the scarf was around my neck
before i could say, "Lord"
your grinning face and the colour blue
that were the last things i remembered...

story continues......

......well, at least there would be a monotonous quality to my days, i thought, sipping the tea thoughtfully.....two other colleagues trooped in at just that moment to down another round of endless caffeine......they nodded, perhaps noticed my isolation, but thankfully left me to alone...
We got to know each other quite accidentally.....but i am unsure how or when, except one passing conversation she had had with a colleague, with me staring resolutely at the PC and trying not to overhear the chatter....did it ring a bell? did i know she was going to be the woman in my life? no....not then..........of that i am pretty certain.......what happened after is a blur...how we got talking from there on and how we discovered each other in the initial few days is a misty series of conversations...ah! but i remember...the conversations were seemingly endless..with friends, without....and all of them memorable in some vague way , without knowing specifically why...........in between writing endless code, i would sneak out to the balcony that overlooked a dilapidated textile mill, for a smoke..and invariably, a few minutes later, she would saunter past to get a coffee from the vending machine.......we would steal conversations, in between smokes and coffees, about Kafka and his Metamorphosis, the intricacies of data arrays, black holes, family, dogs, poetry, everything....soon, we found we were having lunch together, or a dinner or two...nothing specific, just, you know, from one lunch to the next...we would avoid talking of weekend dates or movies, just one small coffee break to the next or one lunch to another dinner.......this, i noticed in retrospect, went on for about two months........i don't even know when we exchanged handphone numbers....then the smses started....something like "how was your violin class (she was learning to play)?" or "did you get wet in the rain yesterday?" sort of thing........invariably, she would ask me, "what did you have for dinner?" (i was away from home, i think i said that) or "what book are you reading?" ....soon, those too started taking the contours of intimacy...like office gossip, who was seeing whom, the boss being a meanie and so on........and slowly, as texting became too cumbersome, it became easier to talk.....after work, or during weekends, any time that was idle, not given to specific chores for either of us............one day, i remember, it was a weekend and i had no particular plans.......it was drizzling like it usually does in Mumbai, post the immediate monsoon season.........i was staring at some fracas on the street, from my 8th floor window..........the scene seemed like an action replay of any sport...from up high, it looked like everything was in slo-mo........

Chasing a dream...

The destination is Pondicherry. To write, and read....and sip coffee in between, and mind the bookstore............and walk by the sea in the light of a fading day........Pondicherry, where my memory was born, and lies shattered in a thousand familiar longings..........

take me to those days

when pain was a constant companion
when you were miles away
blocking my fervent pleas
for talk
drifting across corridors
not noticing
typing in those stories
without regret, or a kind word
between pauses
bereft of feeling
give me those days
of rootlessness
of wishing you were there
and escaping the suicides
of thought
where did you go,
leaving only a broken-twig
want only in name

This Left should get a kick in its posterior

When the so-called intellectuals on the Left of the lunatic fringe want to damn a deal, they take it apart, not on its merits, but by getting personal....poor doctor must be rueing the day he told the left to go take a hike........

lost evenings in dreamtime

it was just so good
while we prayed
at an altar of indeterminate faith
she, kneeling in, reverential
and I, sitting cross-legged
gazing at the women with incense
chanting familiar liturgies
and hoping we make it
to the altar of a different faith
praying even, that that day
may come to pass
and stifling the urge
to touch her tassels...
that was an eveing to remember
of all days of want
she and i, it seemed
couldn't have existed in different, yet
shared worlds...
longing and pain
fused into one balmy evening
of prayer...

one windswept evening

The last word found its familiar coffin, and i slowly mopped up the pieces, a half-chewed pencil, a diary that was fraying at the edges and my handphone, before slipping on my coolers to walk out....the window looked as if it had been washed clean just that afternoon...through it i could see motes of dust and polythene staking a lazy dance for the night...."this would be a windy torment," i thought....running down the stairs in twos, i spied sandhya sitting on a ledge, trying to hide the smoke...."hi there, see you tomorrow," i whispered, going close enough to her to smell the ash-burnt lips...she shooed me away like a mongrel and i went jumping down in anticipation of tea at the nearby velu's dim-lit stall.......the wind tore into my shirt with a ferocity that i couldn't place at first.....ahhh.....it reminded me of her....like, when she was dissecting a topic to bits, the same ferocious attitude......the same cool, logical take on the subject...the passionate rebuttals...everything......the windswept path reminded me of her..passionate, cool, fixing me with a sigh........."better get to the tea before velu shuts down," i told myself, amrvelling at the mundane that can intrude even into the most searing moment.......Velu was grinning when i showed up...."oru tea thana sir," he asked, in that familiar lilting tone..i couldn't remember his village...must be from the south...south of madurai, even, i thought..........."aama velu," i said, nodding..............."madam???" he asked, glancing up and down that road, expecting her to come down running.........."no madam today velu," (or for that matter, any other day from now on, i thought), i told him grinning sheepishly...by then he had started pouring out the steaming cuppa into a styrofoam.........he knew the "madam" very well.....she was his favourite even, i could guess...she always asked him about his wiffe, back there in that obscure village that was untouched by any politician's promise.....after that, he would go on and explain everything about family to her....she had heard it all before, but wouldn't indicate that..........and, the tea he would mix for her would have just that bit of elaichi, and other spices...making it very special in his eyes..........but for me, the normal tea would do, just as fine............no sign of rain.....sigh..how i wished it would just drizzle....just like my home town, even in spring, i mused........but of couse, this was a different city....a city of dreams...a city where i thought i would get to dream, again after that traumatic time...................and it did seem so, indeed, for a while.....in all the while that she was there............now, it looked like it would be no different from a lot of other days....... (to be continued)

random musings

my cousin's just got himself a dog...a black labrador....it's still a pup really.....otherwise, life goes on barring minor skirmishes.....my next post should hopefully be a story...may be one without an end or a beginning..............

long after all the daisies are plucked

there is still a long way
to go, before i call it quits
from vestiges of your memory
in sleep and wake times alike
you have moved on
letting the space between us
fill like charcoal-grey dust
of a smoggy afternoon,
i can't see through the haze
even after all these years
of longing and want
diluted by the chisel of
time and weariness...
to me, you exist as a phantasm
too careful to be touched
or refreshed in conversation
with friends, only recurring
as some dried husk of feeling
from an age long past recall.
i let my mind denude your
touch with bouts of
nervous laughter.

dreaming of footprints in the sand

you take away my dream time
in perfect snores of delight,
you stir, as if in a nightmare
too dark to let go
i caress the folds of your skin,
letting the wrinkles settle in
my mind like feverish raindrops
on a misty monsoon evening
you sense the touch and
move, content exhaling a sigh
that belongs to neither us nor
me or you in separate wistful
spaces of want....
i let you carry your nightmare
to climax, staring at the ghostly fan
for a longish thirty seconds
before the cold of the invading sea
makes me press close to you
and kiss your hair......
you skip the nightmare
with a start, letting me intercept
your dreamspace with a quiet nod
and a snore too diffcult to decipher,
i miss you in the sleep
as i did during the waking....
and this, finally, i know
that i cannot possess you
even in sleep.

existential angst

nuthin worth writing about.........

Reading KA

By roberto Calasso......it's a little difficult to understand...may be things will get better as the book progresses..........

Spending time alone

watchin a movie, wandering the hot spots of the city and making friends with a shopkeeper can best be done alone............you are not pressed into doing anything, just wander and chill out...let there be more such days........being single is bliss!

everyone comes back

You know you are having a bizarre day when a friend, an acquaintance until today, comes back from the back of the beyond and you suddenly discover you have so much in common with her. May not have been always so, but there you are, may be it's the day or just that both of us have turned 29, i mean she will soon...or maybe it's just life intersecting at a bizarre moment when both of you all are going through a similar state of mind...or may be it's just menat to happen........anyway, suffice it to say, i think the friendship has deepened..starting today.......yipeeee!

this is so addictive!

hmmm...every man must have a vice..and if he has several, then al the better...mine i think, i sblogging if you can call it that........got to write, it's becoming addictive...and i like the simplicity and the anonymity of it..........

Ramayana read!

Ashok Banker's Ramayana series was a jolly good read. It was vivid, funny in places and written in an easy style that keeps the dictionary firmly at bay. Having said that, I must say that Banker's Ravana scores just as easily as does Rama, maybe more so, especially toward the final pages where Ravana is shown, not only as a vile, brutal and arrogant bully (which he is no doubt), but also as a creature who is fully in tune with the cosmic forces of good and evil, and accepting the inevitability of good triumphing in the end. But, just to play spoilsport, the last book felt a little rushed, especially toward the end. It was as if Banker wanted to be done with Rama and turn to Krishna, for the Mahabharat is his next book. The book also conveniently skips Sita's banishment and offers droll excuses for that.

60 years and floods

For anyone who has been reading the newspapers of late, the coverage of and run up to the 60th year of our independence has been nauseating, with one paper even claiming to lead india from its morass of problems...be that as it may, but the irony that was tucked into those pages should not be missed......as everyone knows already, floods continue to ravage a large part of our land, and many people have lost their lives as well over the monsoon season thus far...crores have been lost...whole villages have been marooned and many are fighting for air dropped packets of food.......on august 15th an update of these floods just got, about 150 words, that too in the indise pages, suffocating for space in a page crammed with ads extolling our glorious freedom struggle...how ironic and deeply disconcerting....that's the state of teh nation for you....if you want to read about the real india, just pick up this issue of outlook, skip the bal thackeray bits and get to true stories of how little india is reeling, variously, under naxals, malnourishment, starvation et al.....no 9% growth will percolate fast enough for the man who will be dead in a few days due to lack of food.

Clicked and modified...

For those of you wondering what the picture signifies,well, it does nothing of the sort...it look scool, that's all.............happy blogging!

Calvin, Hobbes, his pa and ma and susie

God created Calvin, he created his hobbes and they, in turn, created, transmogrified and terrorised their pa, ma and susie........that, dear reader, is my humble take on one of the best strips to grace a newspaper.........the rest, as they say, is history!

People who have fond memories of childhood are lying, or they just didn't grow up...

This is a familiar mirage, of happy childhood, grinning mates and pig-tailed girls who didn't care a whit for your antics. Childhood is terror, a heart of darkness novella aka conrad. yeah, in between phases of sheer terror, there are some pristine moments of bliss. like slipping a love note in between the covers of a notebook, hoping she would not tell the teacher (and if she did not, assuming she loved you too), or defying a parent knowing fully well that you may not be able to sit on your backside for months, or saving up the pies to buy that lolly after school. but....you can do these things, not twice, but when you do it that once...i tell you, it's sheer poetry! ask calvin...

there seems to be no dearth of poets, your's truly including!

i wake up
to the sound of sweat
on my bare back
dripping in fear, measured
across eternity's time-piece
i smell the taste of
my loneliness
at the pit of night
filled with gleaming meteors
i gasp for the touch of fresh air
and find it has slipped
through that window of guilt
i peer at the clock
dark, melancholy bringer
of sorrows
and there is yet time
to feel fear
there is yet space
for want, and popcorn-crunching
movies in plush multiplexes
but there is no want
the want has escaped
with the nightmare
leaving a chill on my bed

getting serious, seriously!

Today, i will write about poverty. No, that's not what i mean. I mean, why are so many Indians in a land that is hurtling at near double-digit growth rates, poor. Is it because they are born poor? For then, the reasons seem straight-forward, even dynastic, enough. But, you and me know, it is not so. True, many may have been poor since birth, but why are they still? why are they not getting to lead a decent life? why is it that not one of these kids get to study, or study beyond a point? why is the educational system crumbling? lack of teachers, infrastructure, funds....and why can't a poor man, through hard work and merit, achieve a better standard of living? i don't claim to know the whys to all these posers, but why are fewer and fewer people asking these sort of questions anymore? and acting on their answers, however skewed, or misplaced...That's what makes me mad!

blog, beautiful blog!

this format is great for some intellectual onanism..............nobody chatting with yu in real time.......no spam..........no moderator........no fotos........just text and text...and thankfully no messy smses that say it has ended and she is getting married next saturday to the US-educated silicon valley geek............

this is a short story (masquerading as one)

once upon a time, in a land far far away and near an ocean that was huge and the water drops mighty and the grass green and the monkey skittish and the sharks good-natured, there lived a man..who was named ravana.....he did not know then that all he had to do was sit in penance for a thousand years before the lord shiva appeared before him to grant him any boon, short of his own life...so our good ole ravana palmed off substantial boons, and screamed....and since that day the good lord shiva has gone into hiding, never to be seen gain........

now comes the sequel to this story...........our man in lanka picked mandodhari for a wife and innumerable concubines to keep her company (honest, that's what he is claimed to have said to her) and was rolling in the lap of luxury, with an aeroplane (pushpak, that was also, incidentally, not unlike the divine kamadhenu, the bestower of gifts) some tv that just needed to run on gangajal, and closed circuit television to keep track of his ever-fornicating asuras..........one fine day, our screamer had a dream........and what a dream it was.........

here's the final part of the trilogy.............
hiding from all, in a forest dense with musk deer and lush grass, the one who makes the universe scream saw a lady humming..............since ravana had ten heads and he could stare with 10 pairs, he had eyes only for the lady...out he flew in his pushpak and after some subtle arguments, persuaded our lady in panchavati to accompany him............but little did he know that her saas had given birth to a warrior par excellence....so out he went, along with his half-brother and tried to snatch her right back.........their efforts were not in vain and eventually ravana was slain.....and, rama, sita and lakshmana thought they would live happily ever after.......but little did they realise that in his next birth, ravana would be born as a dhobi and his conversation would be heard by rama...so, out went sita again, banished for no fault and finally swallowed by her maker.......and ravana had the last laugh..............

PS: Moral of the story: Trust in God, but keep your clothes pressed!

what i do for a livin'

it's like this. when nobody is looking, i chop inane copies to bits. then i sneak up to some unsuspecting reporter and bare my fangs and slap his copy on his head and run. after a few such incidents, the reporter has his revenge. he tells boss, the boss tells his second in command and so on and so forth till i get the copy back, mashed like pulp, but essentially the same, spelling bees and all! like this snippet from a copy that had me offering all sorts of prayers to the almighty.. trimming lazy, runny-nose sentences will surely make me insane. this is just to reassure you that i was sane once!

Mani's Wand

A beautiful expsosition of why India should not ignore those teeming millions without hope.....i believe in the thought...not in the marxism but the humanism of it all....it's also a slap in the face of business magnates out to make a profit at the expense of everything else.....so here goes.........although beware of the petty political brownie points .....




'I was always Leftist. Economic reforms made me completely Marxist'
Mani Shankar Aiyar


In a speech at a CII meet, Mani Shankar Aiyar argued that policy is hijacked by a small elite. That the cabinet he belongs to is quite comfortable with this hijacking. That India's system of governance is such that Rs 650 crore for village development is considered wasteful but Rs 7,000 crore for the Commonwealth Games is considered vital. The classes rule all the time, Aiyar says, the masses get a look-in every five years


A few weeks ago the newspapers reported that the number of Indian billionaires had exceeded the number of billionaires in Japan, and there was a considerable amount of self-congratulation on this. I understand from P. Sainath that we rank eighth in the world in the number of our millionaires. And we stand 126th on the Human Development Index. I am glad to report that last year we were 127th.
At this very fast rate of growth that we are now showing, we moved up from 127th to 126th position. This is the paradigm of our development process. In a democracy, every five years the masses determine who will rule this country. And they showed dramatically in the last elections that they knew how to keep their counsel and show who they wanted. We, my party and I, were the beneficiaries and we formed the government. Every five years, it is the masses who determine who will form the government. And in between those five years the classes determine what that government will do.
In determining what that government will do, the CII has played an extremely important role. I am not surprised, as that is its job. It represents industry, and therefore it argues for the interests of the industry. Industry has been enormously benefited by the processes of economic reform that we have seen in this country over the last 15 years or so. But the benefits of these reforms have gone so disproportionately to those who are the most passionate advocates of reforms that every five years we are given a slap in the face for having done what the CII regards as self-evidently the right thing for this country.
It is a sustainable economic proposition, because our numbers are so vast, that there are perhaps 10 million Indians who are just as rich as the richest equivalent segment anywhere in the world or in any group of countries. There are about fifty million Indians who really are extraordinarily well off. That's the population of the UK.
But if you look at the 700 million Indians who are either not in the market or barely in the market, then the impact of the economic reforms process, which is so lauded by the CII, makes virtually no difference to their lives. That is why there is a complete disjunct between what the democratic processes are trying for in the short run and what those who have made an enormous success of our achievements in the last fifteen years deem to be, at least in the short run, their own requirements.
So when you talk of a nine point two per cent growth rate, it becomes a statistical abstraction: 0.2 per cent of our people are growing at 9.92 per cent per annum. But there is a very large number, I don't know how many, whose growth rate is perhaps down to 0.2 per cent. But certainly, the number of those who are at the lower end of the growth sector is very much larger than those who are at the higher end.
Yet what happens when you have the budget? As an absolute ritual every finance minister (my colleague Chidambaram is no exception) will devote the first four or five pages of his budget speech to the bulk of India and there will then be several pages, including whole of part B, which deals perhaps with one or two per cent of our population. Almost the entire discussion that takes place at CII or CII-like forums, will be about Part B rather than Part A.
There are comfort levels that you get from statistics — for instance, suddenly Arun Shourie, announcing in the NDA government that our poverty rates have fallen from 35 per cent to 22 per cent. He did it by changing the basis on which you estimate poverty. You cannot compare apples and oranges. The next national sample survey has shown that our poverty levels have actually increased. Are we going to be mesmerised by these statistics or understand that 700 million of our people are poor?
So we have an Indira Awaas Yojana which will ensure that there will be a 'jhuggi' for every Indian round about the year 2200. We have the PM Gram Sadak Yojana which was supposed to complete all the gram sadak in seven years — we are in the eighth year. And where we are told that the education of 1000 may be covered, who knows only the education of 500 will be covered. And if you happen to be a tribal in Arunachal, you are told that because of your social custom you are to live in one hut atop a hill, we can't provide you a road.
I was always something of a leftist. But I became a complete Marxist only after the economic reforms. Because I see the extent to which the most important conception of Marx — that the relationship of any given class with the means of production determines the superstructure — holds.
This ugly choice is placed before the government. An unequal choice, because you have organised yourself to say what you want to say but the others are only able to organise themselves and that too without speaking to each other in the fifth year when the elections take place. That is why this expression anti-incumbency, although the Oxford Dictionary says that it is a word belonging to the English language, is a peculiarly Indian phenomenon. Because everything that goes in the name of good governance like the economic reforms either does not touch the life of people or affect them at all.
We have seen what happened at Nandigram, we have seen what was happening at Singur and we have these propositions that say that SEZs are going to come and lakhs of hectares are going to be utilised for the good of the country. For what's the syndrome in all this, it's still 'do bigha zameen'. The chap says that I want my one bigha of zameen to be reinstated, but you offer double the compensation and "baad mein dekha jayega". You go to Hirakud, which is where Jawaharlal Nehru actually used the expression modern temples of India, and you ask what happened to the tribals who were driven out of there. Absolutely nobody knows.
Coming to the cabinet, you see what happens. The minute suggestions are made as to what would perhaps benefit the people and what would benefit the classes, the tendency is to say that our great achievement is 9.2 per cent growth. Our great achievement is that Indian industrialists are buying Arcelor and Corus. That Time magazine thinks we are a great power.
In these circumstances, when a proposal came before the government to spend Rs 648 crore on the Gram Nyaya department, we were solemnly informed by one of the most influential ministers in the government to remember that we are a poor country. I was delighted when the next day he was with me in a group of ministers and I reminded him of his remark and said in that case can we stop spending the Rs 7000 crore on the Commonwealth Games and he said, "No, no, that is an international commitment and a matter of national pride." This national pride will of course blow up if you spend Rs 7000 crore on the Commonwealth Games. We will be on the cover of Time and Newsweek.
I have always wondered why this rate of growth and economic reforms process is dated to Manmohan Singh. Because actually it should be dated to L.K. Jha's book Economic Strategy for the 80s. It is the decade in which we quickly recovered from agricultural depression and registered a double digit growth. At the beginning of the decade our biggest import was crude oil and after that it was edible oil. By the end of the decade we were exporters of several kinds of edible oil.
Why is it that Nehru became successful with his Hindu rate of growth? The reason is that the Hindu rate of growth was five times what our pre-Hindu rate of growth was. From 1914 to 1947, the figures of which are available, the rate of growth of the Indian economy was 0.72 per cent. And we got the Hindu rate of growth which was five times that and it made a difference to the people. The minute you had solid land reforms, the people had their 'zameen'. That is what Mother India was all about. People felt that they were involved in the process. All the political talk was: gareeb ke liye ham kya kar sakte hain. Indira Gandhi matched it beautifully when the entire political spectrum joined hands against her by saying, "Woh kehte hain Indira hatao, hum kehte hain Garibi hatao."
There is nobody so marginal in a government as the minister of Panchayati Raj. I count for nothing. Nothing! When I was the minister of petroleum, I used to walk surrounded by this media. I kept on telling them that petrol prices can do only three things — go up, go down or remain where they are. And it was all over the place. But try and get them to write two words about the 700 million Indians — absolutely impossible. And now with terrestrial television it is even worse. You have to be quarreling with your mother-in-law or hitting your daughter-in-law to be able to hit the headlines. It is impossible to get particularly the pink papers to focus on issues that affect the bulk of the people. And it is so easy to get them to focus on issues that are of high relevance to only one or two per cent of the people.
I believe the CII, if it is serious about the issue, should not be restricting itself to 25 minutes discussion before lunch but hold discussions for ten days and maybe something will come out of it.

I love windmills

The first I saw windmills, towering hunks in space-time, it reminded me of a sci-fi movie...aka 2001, not pacy and adrenaline-thumping like Alien, but more sensuous, languid like 2001...or solaris by tarkovsky.......this was in nagercoil in 2003....since then i have seen them in chitradurga and also caught afaint glimpse of these beauties on the kovai-palakkad route................never been atop one (teh last time i wanted to, they ahd forgotten those special boots that take yu to the top)...........next time, yes, definitely...............it is one of the cleanest sources of energy.........root for these quixotic landmarks.............

Pickpocket...

Defying all the conventions of what cinema shd be....in his shots, choice of music...where the music wafts in or not, using non actors...shows alienation and rootlessness in breathtaking fashion...msut see....by Robert Bresson......

Yesudas..in nee en sarga....

Listen to Yesudas' "Nee En Sarga Soundaryame" by, let me guess, Ousepachan......very melodious......Do you guys like Jayachandran? I do....better and deeper voice than yesudas' but Yesu has that divine quality about his singing that's hard to beat.....

Miles Away by Carol

I want you and you are not here. I pausein this garden, breathing the colour thought isbefore language into still air. Even your nameis a pale ghost and, though I exhale it againand again, it will not stay with me. TonightI make you up, imagine you, your movements clearerthan the words I have you say you said before.

Wherever you are now, inside my head you fix mewith a look, standing here whilst cool late lightdissolves into the earth. I have got your mouth wrong,but still it smiles. I hold you closer, miles away,inventing love, until the calls of nightjarsinterrupt and turn what was to come, was certain,into memory. The stars are filming us for no one.

enough for today....

makes the head swim, all that talk of want and desire crushed like chocolate cake on a rainy evening.................................more follow, tomorrow and otehr days of dread..................by the way, have yu read carol ann duffy....one of the best poets of modern britain.........love her, love her love her............................................beautiful way that she skims time to drop it on a wedge in your heart.......

the beast within...and other pomes

you speak to me
through the distant rumble of thunder
stilled by a falling raindrop,
intermittent,
plastic in its monotony,
fleeing from alleyways,
anonymous in the trickle of life.
i keep the warmth of your smile
tucked between pages
of a cheap magazine --
never careful with holding you there,
just letting it be a bookmark
that shifts with the pages
of my want.


today,
i feel like
speaking to you
about the monsoon rain.
of the longing
that's rising
with every falling droplet,
every echo
of the distant thundercloud.
you are so far away,
even in memory.



there was a time once.

when wanting was easy,
as natural as talk.
you sat cross-legged,
blue shirt & blue denim
on a stone parapet,
holding a cuppa
next to me, only just so,
as our conversation
escaped into the humid air,
breathless
from the proximity
of your touch.
you gripped the brew
like it was crumbling porcelain.
and i knew, looking at your careful fingers,
that you were the one for me.



some conversations...
...like swinging leaves,
going nowehere,
swaying in the spring breeze
across topics of want, love
and of death.
i remember those,
and the walk across
shifting sands
on a moonless night.
what were we talking about?


i miss you,
and the lingering smell
of those dangling conversations
that will forever remain
incomplete, unresolved.

ha...grow tired reader

) it took your going to convince methat you are here to stay." I will sort of miss you, i guess," i saidand you liked the way i said it.you said you would miss meand then the talk slipped into bread n butter issues.but only when you and iwalked away, did i realiseour lives have beenonly just so many conversations.

b)you went awaylike a conversation;abruptly, reminding meof how it waswhen silence was best.at least, there's no going awayin the silence.

c)you liked my shirtnot once, but whenever i wore it,reminding yourself, and mehow much you liked it each time i did."nice shirt. oh! but i've told youthis before. but never mind,"you would say,as if reassuring yourselfthat you haven't missedsaying that.but i knew you never did. and that each timewas just as beautifulas the last.

d) some conversationsare just like fine winethat sniff the tonguefor just that second longer,before disappearinginto the still night air, like a sigh thatspreads slowly like a carcinogen.you remind me,of one of those

.e)the city excludes youand mebut keeps our chatterin someobscure corner of its mind

.f)you have vanished, like the flame afterall the moths have died,alone, quivering in the cold windand afraid to take awaymore lives.

nauseating pomes

1)
once more, you return
to strip phrases out of
quiet solitude.
this time it's a book you do not want,
as you delve into the morning mist
to pull meanings out of dreamtime.


2) St George's Cathedral

sitting on worn-out steps
that's felt the leathered feet
of the 18th century dead,
you listen as i hum inane numbers.
i do not want to skip that evening
of no consequence, from memory's tryst with pain.
when you held my hand
as we crossed the love-speckled road
to prayer's end,
i thought you wanted me forever

this be some verse or verses of despair

Fingers crossed

I don't remember us
Speaking of roses, or the weather even
But yes, I do remember speaking of passion, fingers crossed,
Of wanting you to share my space from now on,
And I remember very clearly, keeping my fingers crossed every time I uttered those lines,
Like an actor at his first audition, practising his lines backstage, visualizing future stardom
And every time I kept my fingers crossed, you had an answer (you had an answer for everything)
Put you finger to my lips, saying "shhhhh"
Leaving me dumbstruck, with only a finger to kiss
Come to think of it, that's how I remember you leaving
I still didn't know what to say to keep you from going

Lonely walk to the gallows

You are in an 8 ft by 10 ft
Staring through a slit
At life—of a past that haunts
In wait for a future
That's on extension
Every day of the week
The food you eat may
Just be your last
You don't know
You dread the lonely walk
At 4 am when the world is asleep
Just in time for the daily
To report another grim statistic
"the gallows are lovely, dark and deep"
you might have written
if this weren't happening to you,
the books you read come wrapped
in letters that urge you to
count your days
and the nightmares that co-habit
your 6 ft by 8 ft sturdy bed
speak of futility and past crimes
in one breath
but for you
the certainty is death.


Sharing a bus journey

We were coming back from Paradise
In a rickety bus. I remember feeling very protective about you, almost like a husband of his expectant wife. I remember being tossed around as the tyres gobbled up the miles, bringing us closer to destruction (which I didn't then know of course). In hindsight, it all seemed too perfect to be true.
The bus had to give. But not that way, way too abrupt, without warning, and certainly not so soon.
We didn't even have time to hate each other.


The wings of my wish

This cold brings some poetry
Into the mind, like
A letter slipped under the door
Touched only by the departing ray
It contains a wish
To slip into a letter
And journey across the ocean
To you,
So that, one day when you
Reach back,
Turning the key slowly
And pushing open the door
You would find me
Waiting to be read.


Lost, but breathing

Somewhere along the way
I realized I was lost
And didn't know which way to turn
To find my way back
After searching for a while
I gave up,
Not knowing you were hidden
In the darkest corner of my mind.

Smelling your hair smelling of sea

I remember, waking up to the sound of the clammy ocean,
Waking up to smell your hair,
(Smelt salty to me),
Smelt like you didn't care
If you carried a bit of the ocean, or not inside your head.
I remember,
Telling you you looked lovely
(although your hair still smelt crabby)
I remember waking up beside you
Cold, shivering from the cold of the invading sea that had stealthily breached the warmth of the room during the night
I remember you had slyly taken away the quilt, leaving me to face the sea
I remember the angry roar I conjured up out of my fear, as the waves carefully lapped up the blackness with their intensity,
You were beside me then, blissfully unaware of the deep, dark ocean beating against my heart--wakeful me, dreaming images of dread, of not letting the sea break us up like it does a lonely catamaran out to fish
That night, you slept, while I waited
Counting your heartbeats for the faintest
signs of love.


Sometimes,

It's hard to tell
If the body drives the want
Or if it is the love that wants
You. You have invaded my body, my time and space
But kept a part of you so well hidden
That I can't disown your presence, outright.
You have mocked at my fears
Played on my want for you
And stripped me of essential dignity,
All, in the space of just a few months.
You have kept yourself
While I have lost you to the perils of want.

Why couldn't I keep you forever, raindrop?



Winters bring that dread

Of long waits
Crushed tea cups breathing life
In sips of neglect,
Hurting the shadow
Thrown up by the lamp post
With a kick of dust,
Staring at a mongrel—
As hungry as you are—for
Kinship and talk,
Since you refuse to pick up
The phone, and keep
A part of my conversation
On your bookshelf,
Before taking it to bed
And sleep.
Winters bring the chill
To carefully-woven relationships,
Piercing the heat of spring,
Unraveling all the pristine
Conversations in one cold sweep,
Setting on fire all those sun-filtered
Memories of a lazy summer
You recede in winter's soft light
Leaving just enough glow
To read a sticky-note quick.

Rejected

When you pushed me away, it was still dark
You hadn't turned on the light
All I wanted was the reassuring comfort
Of your touch
I didn't want your body
I wanted just you.

The day I dreamed of you

I had programmed my existence
According to the four seasons.
Books for the rains,
Walks in the park for fall
Dreaming in the cosy confines of home
For the winter,
And cycling, early in the morning, during spring.
But one day,
When the flowers had gone off to sleep
And the sky was waiting to exhale
I dreamt of you.
Enslaving me with a touch
And a kind word.
After that, the seasons were a blur
And my thoughts muddled.
You stopped my keystrokes,
Inverting the commas and letting the semi-colons
Run without meaning.
And I, stripped of feeling,
Waited for you
Counting the days
To bridge the distance
To your heart.

The wrist watch that separates us now, in time and space

I remember the day I felt vulnerable enough
To tell you I am lost without you, it was the day you wore a part of me on your wrist, but not your heart. It was the day of the beautiful, indiglo pink wrist watch, the day you explained to me why it can only be 99 per cent, what you share. It was also the day I stopped pretending that I wasn't vulnerable, a day when my pride deserted me and the day when longings were expressed over a McBurger—Can you beat that?
I remember this day as I remember many others.
But I wish I didn't have to.

Majid is a genius with a lens

Have you heard of Majid? heard he is some iranian director with a penchant for blind schoolkids and daisies....you have heard wrong....it is just one blind boy and not daisies........watch colour of paradise for its languid shots and the many close-ups of a troubled face or faces.....watch it for the horse that loses its step...like all horses do when confronted by their masters' burden...by guilt by association and well, just when confronted, by an angry river and a fickle bridge.....terror is the colour in paradise....

Nobody gives a damn

Well...that sounds like Jason Bourne..But Bourne knew the CIA, or, for that matter, a thousand others gave a damn...they did enough to see him out of the way....it's another matter they didn't succeed....so what makes you think you will?

The end is nigh

It took all of 29 years to realise that blogs exist....in all that time, though, blogs did not...i am told it came into net view only about ten years previously....this is to fill all yu people on trivia..some poetry...some fiction, and especially to let yu know that the ned, when it comes is laways expected...don't believe all that spiel about how it is unexpected and stuff..it is not....20 years from now this blogger will be no more...so on that grimy note we shall trawl the web for succour...and, by the way, ravana was a very interesting character...yu will knwo only if yu read the ramayana with an open mind..........that is what i am doing now......on to my last book....he isn't dead yet, but will soon be....and then the universe can continue to hum along, for, without ravana, there will be no body to make it scream......................................................