Puzzling..

When we were kids, there was this puzzle that our teachers used to ask in which they would draw a line segment and ask you to make it big without editing it.And when you were exhausted with all the ideas, they would tell you the solution with their cryptic smile....just draw another line segment shorter than that.
Come to think of it now, that one bloody puzzle has become the basic principle of our lives. To make yourself big, you just have to make others look smaller.You can be better or worse but not good.Absolutes don't hold meaning anymore...

Orange sky

It must be 2:30 or 6 AM,I thought. The screeching fan woke me up. Something had gotten stuck in it. Yes, I thought, something has got stuck somewhere.
My notebook was playing the song "Orange sky" for god knows how many hours in the repeat mode--

"...Sometimes sometimes
my mind is too strong to carry on...".

I rolled over to the other side of bed to free my arm which had gone numb because of me falling asleep with my hand cushioning my head. Half asleep, I thought, may be my mind has gone numb due to same reasons. Bloody squeaking fan was driving me crazy.
I tapped on the track pad of notebook to see the time. It was actually 4 AM. Clicked on gmail,it read -Inbox(1).Had received a mail from my brother -"congrats...will call you tonight!".Congratulation was for me taking up a new job in India.For some reasons I found it funny.Funny,I thought,it was indeed funny. How, in school days, me and my brother used to make fun of all the teachers and we were perfect at that.How he used to write speeches for me, which I would just mug up and win prizes.How in my science project final presentation, one of my partners gave up at the last moment and he jumped in to take his place. And he spoke more than me! How he knew that stuff is still unknown to me. And the project won 3rd prize in the city. How, when I used to ask him spellings of some words like "nascent" he would say "sc" knowing where I would have got stuck. Stuck -- I thought again- Something has got stuck somewhere.
"Orange sky" was still in its repeat mode--

"..Brother you know, you know
It's a long road we have been walking on..."

I read the mail again - "congrats...will call you tonight!" I wondered if he had mistakenly put the exclamation mark after second part instead of congrats. I mean the stirring part was supposed to be me taking up the new job and not him calling me tonight. Or maybe not, I pondered. He had called me 2 times in past 1 year, one amongst which was on my birthday. Moreover, there is nothing really exciting about my new job. Things have really changed over the years ,I thought. I started wondering how and when,if at all.Almost nine years back he left home for his college. Maybe after that. No. I was glad I was wrong again. I remembered him calling me up during my engg prep days and telling me that it won't be too tough for me. It never actually turned out to be. Maybe then, it was after me entering into college life. You know, both of us having made new friends and the whole new life thing. And for the third straight time to my pleasure I was wrong. Recalled the day when I borrowed a big sum from him for my Germany trip and promised to return it asap, to which he said "Don't say that; I am your brother and not your friend". It felt so right to be wrong.Stupid bloody noisy fan- I can't even reason out properly. And what more, I couldn't even guess the time correctly. 2:30AM, my ass. Time- yes this is the problem. It has changed and beaten me.I can't predict it correctly anymore.
"Orange sky" had started looping again from the start --

"well I had a dream I
stood beneath an orange sky..
with my brother standing by...."

Then,I fell asleep again.

(F)Art of Living

There are times when I have found my nerves literally bursting. One amongst these is when I came to know about Sri Sri Ravi Shankar , founder of Art of Living . I swear to every single drop of blood in my body, if I ever get a chance to meet him I would literally beat him to death.He is the real cancer spreading in the society. If I get a choice between killing him and Bin laden, without a second thought its gonna be him.Terrorist kill humans ,he kills what makes a human a human- mind.Unlike others in his breed he doesn't seek money : he just wants you to surrender your thinking.He is one unidentified criminal who ,if left to grow, will eat us all.
And to all his disciples-- If you dumb asses really need some guru to tell you how you should live your life, why the fuck do you even bother to live. I mean how stupid are you really that you need a prick like him to tell that mantra of life is living it happily and warding of all your worries.

Jai Gurudev!!

Post Script:As much as I have always hated discussing anything about society and its problems, this post had to come.I don't usually have emotions in its either form-- love or hate,so strong.This SOB really tipped me over.

Convictions

Me and Kuldeep had almost similar opinion about everything.Maths, physics, philosophy and how the first two take care of the third one.And our discussions used to go in the same order, from the day he interviewed me for the job till both of us left the company .
On our way to Jim Corbett on an official trip, after a couple of shots of vodka I had already reached the third phase of discussion, philosophy.I don't recall what I was blabbering ,but suddenly Manish said that you speak everything in terms of logic and Maths which soon translated to ,"you think only from your mind and not from your heart".Had it been any other time I would have said- no. I do think from heart. But with vodka and kuldeep on my side and a good amount of time to waste , I took the other way.I said," Nobody thinks from heart.Heart has only function , to pump the blood.I am not saying emotions don't exist , but even they come from mind. I am talking the most basic science as you read in junior class ,that heart pumps the blood and mind controls the actions and thoughts.".Kuldeep as drunk as me declared it to be an eternal truth . But this didn't go well with other people.Manish and shewta just couldn't agree that it was right.They knew it was ,but couldn't accept.And they were not arguing to me but explaining to themselves. Manish pulled the old trick that I can't know everything as I cant explain how did the universe start, and when you explain that they ask you what was before big bang...till the time you say you don't know.But again, when you are drunk you have two advantages- you speak loud and you tend to say things repeatedly.And so I kept saying about the heart and mind stuff.

Now after two years when I think about it,the reason why Manish and Shweta opposed so vehemently was not because of what I was saying.The problem was that you believe in something throughout your life and suddenly one fine day you wake up to find that it ain't the truth.Doesn't count how simple and clear it is, you can't take it.And the more time you have believed it , more painful it is for you to accept it.Like no matter how hard I try to explain my Mom that God doesn't exist and all these religious prayers are nonsense, she won't accept it. I quote her examples from our own lives but she just wont agree.She cannot. A person who spent her entire life believing in something can't just give up on it.Your entire body would fight against such a thought(okey..thats just a metaphor.only the mind fights).Its like as James Taggart in Atlas shrugged who when confronted with the truth that his life depended so much on John Galt's intellectual that If they let him die he will die as well. And he chose to die rather than accepting the truth.

I wonder if this can explain how some people don't try new things in life.People say they are afraid of failures. I say they are afraid of success.They have always believed that wont be able to achieve.And when they do ,even though they succeeded in achieving they lost one thing:their convictions.But you have to have convictions as long as you are alive--right or wrong.The only problem comes when one has to switch from one to another. Well...the fundamental conviction was we all like to live.Rest follows.

Fear Factor

Justin. Another guy from India in my office .On the second day after his arrival in Mauritius, we had a little chance to catch up with each other in the Bus.Not exactly catching up , because I was not very eager to know about him, and I guess neither was he, but probably the fact that both of us are from India and living in the same country, and traveling together at that time forced us to fill the silence.
After a bit of talking , he asked me, " So, you live alone? "
I replied ,"yes.".
"How do you live alone?".
I laughed and said,"By not letting any body stay with me.
"I mean aren't you scared ?"
"Scared of what?" I was a bit puzzled.
He paused for a while and said ,"Scared of yourself ".

It was one question that I knew for such a long time ,still never could frame into words.A question that is more abstract than its answer.But we simply don't have the courage to ask it to ourself.Probably because we are too afraid of the answer.
we are all scared of ourself.Its not the boredom that frightens us from spending time alone.But the fear of confronting those facts which we try to avoid throughout our life.The questions that ask us about our existence and the fear that the answer is as simple as null.Or may be talcum powder. I don't know. I cant find it. Probably it doesn't exist.But I do know that its not what we think or want ourself to think.
That its all illusion. Life, success, fun, family, love ,emotions .Anything and everything. That we are all of merely chemical compounds who believe that they are not.That the best of you which you happen to define as soul is also nothing but merely jumping of an electron from one energy level to another.Or may be something else. I don't know.

I don't remember what exactly I answered to Justin,that's not important.But the answer is yes,I am afraid of myself . But I am fighting against it.I am fighting to end this fear.It hurts.But someday I will. May be death will do.
Someday I wont be afraid of the questions. And someday I wont be afraid of even the answers.Someday..

epandit

Had been thinking of writing about college days for a while but never really gathered enthu.Finally its triggered by the fact that one of my friends ,Gyanesh, is getting married.Of all the people in my group he was the least expected to get married first.So,this blog is all about him..
First things first. His name is Gyanesh Sharma, likes to be called pandit, happens to be called gaandu ,and he doesn't mind any of the above names.We call him gaandu.
On one of those after dinner walks through campus,some security guards heard us calling gaandu.After a 2 minute lecture from those jackasses about why boys like us, belonging to good families, should not use such unparliamentary words , one of us simply said that thats the name he has told us.Thats the name we have known and called him ever since we have known him.He never said he had any other name. No kidding.It was true.

They say necessity is the mother of invention.In gaandu's case it has translated to laziness becoming necessity and invention to perennial source of brain.With almost half an hour meeting with Dean , convincing him why he shouldn't be completing his assigned NCC hours on the grounds that he didn't come to IIT to do NCC,he really gave a big hope to all the lazy bastards of the world. No, the Dean didn't ask him if he is doing , what he actually came to IIT for.
I remember ,in an another evening walk, we had our dearest sweetheart,Paromita, on her usual jog.On some level she had become a part of our group,with us stalking her every evening, and she really not complaining about it.Anyways, somehow an idea struck gaandu which was bit different from our usual ,following her and singing songs.Gaandu started walking in front of her and swinging his waist just like Paro. we started whistling and appraising gaandu for his newly found mast kamar.Very much loud to make Paro hear it. After 50m or so, suddenly a car stopped in front of Paro, and she started talking to the man in the car. It took us only a few seconds to recognize the man and a couple more to vanish magically from there.But gaandu walking ahead of her couldn't see it. It was Paro's Dad,one of IIT Proff. Yes, gaandu did get his degree.

There was another incident which probably none of us will ever forget . 3.30 AM in morning, some of us got hungry, and started leaving for the dhaba. Right before we were exiting, we heard gaandu screaming from his bed,"abey kahin jaa rahe ho kya?".we all burst into laughter and said ," tujhe kahan jaana hai". He replied," nahin , kahin chal rahe to main bhi chalta hoon". That was kara B||.Damn the IIT curriculum, to hell with the btps,my time is mine and I will spend it the way I want to.And who better than gaandu to express it.He had a unique way of planning for the exams in which he would sleep till midngiht before the exam so that he can be awake to study for the rest of night and then declaring that syllabus can't be completed in just half night ,so better sleep again.His theories don't end here. How he convinced himself and others that eggs are vegetarian stuff based on his nishechit n anishechit principle is something still to be figured out.But what really amuses me is that this is what we talked and did throughout our college life. No big deals, no big fishing. Those talks in which he would say something, bhaduria would hear something else and then me explaining and establishing synchronization between the statements.Just cant get over them.And then those night long card games in which me and Abhishek bluffing like hell and gaandu being the only one spotting it.And the best time ,of course, remains those drives to gaandu's hapur fields where we would just sit in the fields past midnight doing nothing .Seriously, big things become memory but small things are the ones that make you smile.

Gaandu is one of his kind and his stories even more so.Looking at his biceps for 3 minutes after every 2 mins of workout, drinking an entire bottle of water after listening to some song and then explaining how this is significant in a way, getting an A grade in btp in which he probably didn't even meet his professor, making us walk 3 km in Hrishikesh at 10 in night so that he can eat kaju barfi, not going his home even during the semester holidays just because he cant get off his ass out of laziness; everything is so peculiar and distinct and thats why so him.

With the first one breaking out of the kara B|| group something does seem to be lost...

just like that

wrote some time back...

naakam mohabbat , adhoore khwaab aur tum
dil ka wo rishta jo na hum jod sake na tum
har jahan mukammal karke bhi shikasht hi mili
meri jeet , meri haar aur sirf tum...

to be contd...

Déjà vu

This one is dedicated to Varun Bhadauria, one of my closest friend and the first in my group who dared to dream.Whose puff of smoke, if put in words would read "I am not the road , your yardstick can measure "

Déjà vu
A familiar place and a usual day
but it occurred to me ,I had lost my way
"Where are you heading to"?asked someone
and with a hit of déjà vu ,the flashback began to run

Somewhere in the distant memories
a child filled with uncertain pain
for all those years to come
and a fear of loosing self in vain.

With all ignorant climbs up the hill
the soul trying to reach the sun
An unthought wish to achieve
the little boy waiting for his turn

A silent moan and a loud sigh
just one tussle and the last try
No one to stop , no one to judge
To find a place where dreams survive

"There will be a way "the boy kept saying
and the fogs of reminiscence began to clear.
"There is the way " stranger's finger was pointing
and the déjà vu ended as I recognized the stranger.

The Question

I was in 6th standard then , and it was my school annual prize distribution.I was to receive the prize for standing 2nd in class. Pretty much insignificant affair.I got back from play and started rushing towards school for the occasion.My mum said ," change your clothes before you go". I said " I am fine."
Mum asked, " What will people say seeing you like this."I replied ," I don't know ". I thought it was a question and answered it honestly.How possibly I could knew what people would say ,when in the first place I didn't even have the slightest clue who actually those people were, about which we were talking.It was not a question, but an information that people will not think pretty about me.Of course, if they decide to think of me at all.I was obedient.I changed my clothes.
Its been years. The question hasn't changed.

I have become disobedient.

Acting

Its so weird.I mean we start thinking about something, and our mind switches between things so fast that within a fraction of second we even forget what was the initial thought we began with.Typically we start thinking about future and end up smiling at past.
Last night , while cooking, the word "Acting " popped up in my head and disappeared.Disappeared because I was busy with cooking. In the hours that followed I tried hard to remember which word it was but couldn't .
Then all of a sudden ,while watching TV , it appeared again. But this time I was prepared. I switched off the TV and started thinking why it clung in my mind. Then I got the answer. Arun had written me a recommendation today in which he mentioned about my acting in a skit I did in my last company.That was one horribly scripted skit I will never forget . It won the first prize. I was amused to see how stupid people are in judging things.I felt good. But very soon it backfired. The skit had won the first prize because of my supposedly good Acting. Now I couldn't laugh. But we won cash prize of 500 bucks each. That eased things a little bit.
"Delhi Times". Another word popped in my mind. I wrote down "Acting" on a piece of paper so that I could come back to it again after figuring out where the fuck this "Delhi Times" came from.
Back in college days, the only thing we used to look in newspaper was the Delhi times.Rest of newspaper was junk, not just according my thoughts,but in general TOI has always been trash.
Then all of a sudden an interview talk flashed in my mind that I read in Delhi Times.Some bollywood actress spitting some crap about her life. I cant figure out exactly why I would have read that interview. Probably I was staring at the actress picture and was expecting to read in her interview that she is feeling like a big idiot standing in the pose viewers are seeing her right now.I do remember of that interview or may be from some other similar interview that the actress said that generally people think that actors get undue money and appreciation . And that they work really hard for this. They do acting for like 15 hours a day , so as to finish everything on schedule.

Then my mind went into further past. As a 10 year old I asked my brother how come a labor who carries bricks on his head throughout day in Sun get so less money while someone who sits in office get more money. The typical childhood question with which we
grow up. My brother ,two years elder to me, had said that the labor cant do what the office guy can do but the office guy can do his work and he is capable of doing labors work as well.I was happy with the answer.Although that might not have been the exact answer, but it was true in itself to some extent.I tried relating the labor officer logic to what the actress had said. That the actors can do what most of us can do. But vice versa is not true.Didn't fit. I didn't try hard to think. Probably I knew that I knew the answer .But all this while that I had been thinking, my eyes were fixed at the letters I had written on paper. Acting.

And all of a sudden everything was clear. And that the actress was right . They are certainly fairly paid.Its such a tough job.
Acting as someone else ,15 hours out of 24 in a day is definitely one hell of a task.Take 6 hrs. out of 24 for sleeping . So, out of 18 hours they are not themselves for 15 hours. This is crazy. How can someone not be himself for almost every moment of his existence. And on top
of that some of these actors even go to the extent of saying that they like acting.I wonder what it could be so bizarre and disgusting in their own existence that they prefer to be like someone else. Some even say that they like doing diversified roles which means that they can be anyone but themselves. But whatever it is , they certainly need to be compensated for it. In any way they want. They certainly make a better sacrifice than the soldiers on border.Dying is easy. Living is tough.And to live like someone you are not is....

Life Divided by Death

life - l ,death - d
10/ 2 means how many times 2 has to occur before 10 is crossed.
conclusively ,l/d is equivalent to how how many times one has to die in his life.
Of course, this factor is individualistic. Most of us have it approximately equal to
365 * years that one lives. Approximately because some die many times a day while others die once in many days.

we come to life when we go to sleep and die when we wake up.

Although ,vice versa can also be true with an equal probability.In either of the cases, the duration of life or death is never generally more than a day and cannot be as a rule ,more than 5 days. A person can live without water for 5 days but not without sleep.

we have to die in order to live again .

some might say that life and death are not just numbers . Okay , lets give a direction to the life,as most like to do . Now,its a number with direction attached to it.

A Vector.

A vector divided by another vector. Doesn't make sense mathematically ,as such ,but its possible to write an expression like

Vec1 / Vec2 = t

but this holds true only if Vec1 and Vec2 are parallel and t is just a scalar.

Using life and death as vectors ,having both magnitude and direction,we find that
life and death are parallel.They have the same direction.

whether we live or die; its the same. Doesn't really matter.Not to time .Not to space

Shooting the sun

''The outsider'' is a book which talks about
the absurdity of life . The protagonist,Mersault, is
a person who is capable of feeling only physical things.
There is a lot more to explain than this, but
its worth mentioning here about one of the incidents in which
he kills a guy and the reason was because he had a knife in his
hand ,and the sun's light was getting reflected from it very strongly
which compelled him to kill that guy.Thats it.
while I don't suffer from any similar psychic disorder(as most of u would call it),
for some reasons I feel, sun might be ....whatever.
This one is continuation to "Right to Die" and acknowledgment
to Abhishek with whom I studied and discussed "The outsider".

Shooting the sun

My plea for the right to die
was rejected without a reason.
but crazy humans are just the puppets
The real culprit is,I think,the sun.

The sun gives the light
and the light gives the hope
the filthy game of life begins
and the soul begins to choke.

It keeps revolving round the earth
so pleased to see us under the bar
how can we trust someone anyways
who hides half a day and lives so far

but the loser sun doesn't know,
its fire is my road to freedom.
someday it has to come closer
and make the ashes burn.

but until then I must keep me alive
eclipsing its victory every morn
and let its fire grow everyday
with every bullet shooting the sun.

mehek of Phoenix

This time I had phoenix.Its Mauritian beer.For the uninitiated,

Mauritians have established themselves as the most vestigial

people on this planet, or amongst all homo sapiens in the entire

galaxy.they don't manufacture one goddamn thing themselves

except for beer(drinking which they have become even more useless).

Drinking this cheap brand , the cheap shaayar inside

me (Altaf Raja. further ref:kara B|| ) is raising voices.

This shaayari is an ode to the immortal Mauritians, Altaf Bhai,kara B|| and my

5th crush( u can use an exponential function on this variable) ,

Mehek Mathur, a cute girl from my previous job

(not necessarily in this order).

If she ever reads this stuff ,which I feel is a bloody inspiration

from the all the fucking pathetic shaayaris I have heard

during IIT Days(again thanx to kara B||), she will forgive me in the

light of my eternal love for her and the mauritian beer effect.

ruh se nikali har saans mein sirf teri hi mehek hogi

is toote dil ke sheeshey mein sirf teri hi jhalak hogi

daaman chhodaane se pehle socha to hota

meri khawahishon ki kabr mein kahin teri yaad bhi to dafan hogi.

Right to Die

The clock stroke twelve,and the trial began

I pleaded for death and began to explain.

"without a fault I have been made to live

and it may be wrong to die but to live is insane.

The problem with my life

is my problem with the life

perennially trapped in this vicious circle,

every conscious moment is a pain to survive.

I was born without a choice,

but let death give me one.

how long I have to fight this battle,

either way to loose in this already lost run"

But the life and the logic

have seldom worked together.

the lawyer of the life

is also the one with right to order.

The nib did not break and the verdict was read

"every moment that u wish not to exist,

your life grows longer by a second,

never out of the circle,i would insist".

And as I moved handcuffed in the darkroom

with my shadow fading away with each cry

I could hear someone talking faraway

The obligation to live ,and the right to die.

A second before I die

okey... I am 3 beers down and it reminds me somehow of 3 doors down..

This one comes from 3rd kingfisher bottle...

one more day to the week
the reasons to live still so bleak
my skin ripping out of body
kill me before i freak.

some live and some die for some
thats what they think as they continue in oblivion
they all lie to themselves
as its always nobody and none.

its a game ,u would not know
so will not I
until a death is blessed,
a second before i die.