Dis-Strings

On weekends, they play music on the street just outside my window in my office. Now they are playing Imagine of Lennon. And I feel like writing after some time. The work can wait.

Long long ago, I had this vision of the world where I imagined thing would be like they write in story books. Story books I snuggled up in bed with, the classic like The Count of Monte Cristo, The Prince, Robin Hood or Chander Pahar. And I thought the world is really like it, brave, loyal, and fresh forever, like these classics. A world where we would love to live forever. A world where we could have friends forever, who would die for us, and make us proud to die for them. It was a little strange, for money didnt matter except as means of adventure. I mean all you needed was fifteen men on a dead man’s chest and a bottle of rum. Or Heathcliffe or Edmond Dantes or Sankar. I never believed they did anything more than just enjoy the moment, and the journey to their heroic pinnacle. I imagined all those, but.

Then came the time when I finished the classics shelf of my home, and moved on to move ‘adult’ stuff. Of Camus, Kafka and Milan Kundera. All along I played the cynic to the cynics, I wanted my romanticism back. However, the world around me was made of what these latter guys wrote of, cruel, indifferent and sepia hued. No, I wanted my Long John Silver, I wanted my Robinson Crusoe. But K persisted, so did the strangest or Strangers. I struggled to force myself to believe it is just an illusion, maybe very persistant, but still an illusion. It was just a bad day, or simply blues.

 

But friends cant be friends forever. Relationships can be quantified. Emails, chats and coffee. (Diego Alvarez RIP) Floating notes of meaningless conversation over wooden tables and plastic chairs. Things can be repaired, things can be replaced. So can people. So can memories. So can all of us that make us. For we are the hollow men.

 

I have never liked cellular phones, nowadays i only use it for business communications. Like I pompously say, I cant speak to a person without seeing their eyes. Even now.

 

It is not so good for things(for things and people are same) not to change. For their own sake.

The darkness is not a rebillion against light. For you fools, there is no light. The darkness is the rebellion against the darkness. The darkness within darkness, which is best left alone, best quickly forgotten.

Villavicencio

It is pronounced Bijabisensio, and in short called Villao (Bijau). And it was my honeymoon destination, without a wife, that is.

Possibly one of the most beautiful towns i have seen in my life, it stands right in the edge of the Llano plains, bordered by the Peidimont de Llanero. The hills are green, the weather is sultry, the houses are red and low, the roads far far less crowded than i am used to. And the poeple are mostly relaxed, living upto the Latin spirit, enjoying a beer in the afternoon, or partying hard at night.

My weekend there was quite a refreshing one. Wake up, swim, eat at some beautiful restaurant, enjoy the cool breeze in the late evening, and go out at the night. I have been back a couple of days, and i miss it already, which is something unexpected.

Well, aah, this is turning out much better than i expected. Touchwood!

4am
Work or play?
Apprehension, anxiety and maybe a little bit of excitement
The superman feeling that we crave for
Strength or stamina
5000 pound square inch
Gamma rays and fast neutrons
RDX
Vigilance Task
Music: loud
Friends
Comrades
Brothers
And then the hot sun and the strong windy rain, and cold chilly night
Life at the core of it
Or walking the line that separates it from death
Or why life is better than death
Or why life can be so much more
And why is it worth making it so much more
Smile
Covered with dust and grime and sweat
But no tears
But no regrets
And no feelings
Of good or bad
Of beautiful or ugly
Breathe
And be alive
Like a man and not an insect.
11 am (next day)

So long and thanks for all the fish

Well, before anything else, i must confess, i am really fortunate to have the friends and family i do. I dont know what i would be without them.
The last year had been torrid: punctuated by good times in Tavarekhere, Brigade Road, Vasant Kunj, Gurgaon, among others. Ofcourse, there has been the odd Jaipur and Patiala House and Mhape thrown in, when it stooped even lower that the usual low. There have been times when i refused to move and became even more taciturn than usual. Apologies to all who bore the brunt of it. I didnt mean to you know.
But true, there have been times of insane creativity (far from the realm of this blog) and morbid tardiness. What remained the same is the warmth and love of those around me. I change but it doesnt. Thats why i love and hold it so dear to me.

Well after a long period of vacant and pensive moodiness, there came the change. A week in Abu Dhabi(an obscenely rich city with appalling malls and highrises and fast roads), a breakfast in Amsterdam (i love the high cheek bones of the girls there), and then Bogota.
So far Bogota has treated me well. Blue mountains, green avenues, amazing food and dance, soothing weather, and beautiful people. What amazes me is how ignorant the English speaking world is of the non-English speaking one. I mean, i never knew such a paradise existed tucked away neatly in some corner of the world.
Well, i am off to Villavicencio tomorrow. More later

Postscprit: i didnt want to describe the place much, rather, i wanted to put in my feelings on coming across it. I hope i did disappoint whoever was unlucky enough to stumble upon this.

Postscript: I just noticed my life has been a like a surfboard tossed in a rough sea. Impossible lows, and unimaginable highs. Is it a coincidence or thats how i choose to live it?

Blog is back!

Well, i need to put some pictures here. And i left my camera at home.

Anyway, life is good. At the moment. About the next. Well, think about that when it comes.

Post Script: I arrived in Bogota on 21st May. Just for the records, that is.

Axe for the frozen sea

Now. There are certain things a lonely man, a sad man, a man whose being the promise of hope is being slowly sucked out, should be allowed to do. Yet, he somehow gravitates to that, reading books that make him sadder, not about himself but at the irony and the strange overpowering nature of the world around. And he has the eternal company of Kafka.

No, he does not, as Kafka says, cannot force himself to use drugs to cheat on his loneliness — it is all that he has. He wanders along pathless lands and meets nobody, when there is nowhere to go.

And there is this meaningless dreams and meaningless daydreams, and meaningless awakedness.

There is this stubborn stupidity as well, which refuses to let go. It makes the days do round and round, till the nights and days look the same.

Yet, in the random cruel world he is, he sees a crucible of  joy, indestructible, which seduces and tyrannises him. He refuses to let go of the pleasure.

Maybe this is how man goes blind. Or he goes mad. Or both.

Realisations

Sometimes all of life’s lessions, all that one has learnt from it can be distilled in a moment, a figment of stray thought, and all that can be summed up in a line. Mine’s this.

No matter how bad life is, it is still good!

旅に病んで
夢は枯れ野を
かけめぐる

- Basho

Since I am not writing much these days…

This is for those people who stumble upon this space, once in a while, and get bored of seeing the same last post.

I took these pics today morning while dropping my sister off to school, as the city was waking up.

The dilemma of a Tomato

Now, lets get our fundamentals right: a fruit is born a fruit, it is a ripened ovary of a plant, and serves as a nutritional support for the growing seed inside. Vegetable on the other hand, is a man made nuisance, purely dependent on how man uses it on his table.

Tomato, therefore is born a fruit, bears an ovary-full of seeds, among which a few would grow to be tomato vines, and some even give birth to tomatoes like itself. However, on a table, with cucumbers, onions, carrots, beet and radish, sprinkled with lemon and salt, it is no better than a vegetable, in fact, just a vegetable.

On a table, no matter how hard a tomato tries to proof itself fruit-worthly, it is resigned to live and die a life of a vegetable. To be eaten perfunctorily, without the usual relish one has while eating a fruit. No one says, “Oh! What a tomato!” like they say, “What a peach!”, or “Grapes, these ain’t sour!”, or “This is the apple that must have tempted Eve!”. No. A tomato is munched between the hotness of a cutlet and the yellowness of mustard, merely to keep the conversation moving. Tomato dies a vegetable’s death!