The Irony of lifelines.

You never know what you love till you miss it.

Though the word "love" is a bit far fetched in this case, I certainly realised the sentiment well enough this semester. All that with the thing I thought i hated the most.Yea, I am talking about the gruelling torturing tiring university life, chipping away your confidence, happiness, youth, energy slowly and by the time you graduate, you will be ready to kiss the muddy ground after your first step outside the walls of the academic prison or become a hollowed out shell that ceases to have any sort of feelings.Maybe I am exagerrating a little bit here, but I guess one has the right after suffering from exhaustion, sleeplessness, starvation for the past 2 weeks .Thanks to the light schedule of tests and assignments..

Anyways, inspite of my passionate feelings towards my uni life, I have been proved wrong, yet again . A little trick Fate played on me - give an opportunity to spend 3 days in a small piece of heaven on earth, away from books, away from my uni, away from the the city that makes a mockery of time and relaxation. A quick trip to Bintan , an Indonesian island, few miles away from SG would be a God Send to anyone in my position. The pristine beauty of the little town, fresh air, clear skies( I could actually see starts at night!), the beach- such beautiful beaches..the first view of the place was a straight kick in the gut. Isolated, quiet, lovely. my dream. or so did it start with..

The very first day on paradise was enough to drive me crazy, senselessly crazy. When I settled down in our stilt house- bunglow, well fed, relaxed, novel in hand, staring at the similar expressions of contentment in my friends' faces, the question stikes me out of nowhere. WHat to do now?! An hour passed, a couple more trailed after.. It was a slow world- completely different and muddled up one with nothing to do other than watch the day pass by you..THe nightmare began. Hours and hours of isolated idlessness , time was killing us inch by inch. The stunning beauty of the land became a prison detached form the world- no phones,no people, no communication, no COMPUTER!
It was just too horrible to go through.

After managing to occupy ourselves for the next 3 days with everything from snorkeling to Spa massages, we were tired.. tired of conjuring up things to do. Somehow in the beaches of the Malaccan Straits, I faced the truth- I am an incurable city mongrel. The rush , the activity, the killing schedule of the city has somehow become the lifelines of such creatures. The name " entertainment" in my dictionary is unanimously associated with a movie in bed, a movie at the theatre, bowling, great dinner or a walk along Clark Quay. Just as we reached the shores of Singaporean waters, for the first time in my life, I was thoroughly , extremely, devastatingly happy to be back into the millieu of mindless work -a-holics. Maybe living in a concrete jungle of people,pollution and power of communication makes us appreciate the world of Tarzans only in the cine boxes. Considering our dependence on the EM signals of this wired world, a future of X men and Resident Evil alikes arent all that hard to believe in.

For all thats worth, with 2 submissions on the morrow, a CA on the day after, drained of energy, filled with headaches,wanting to curse God for this hell I am in, it just takes a 5 minute browsing through those pleasant Bintan snaps to force me back into my life with a renewed vigour.

past vs present

I thought I would understand the world better as I grow up. Now after 19 years,I am much more confused than I ever was. We say the 21st century is more broad minded, liberal, free , with less restrictions than the times past. Especially in Indian context, as I recall the life of my grand ma at my present age, burdened into wedlock and forced to support a family, the past statement becomes a gross underestimation. I cant imagine living the life of our previous generation. ever. The decisions to choose your own future,enjoy a great career, form your own ideals: this freedom of choice ,of thought is unique to the present millenia. Food, clothes, habits, lifestyles, every thing has changed. I believed for good.

or is it so? The same grand mom I mentioned before is also a remarkable lady of extrordinary courage. Illiterate, unemployed, she has single handedly raised 5 kids with enough values ingrained in the blood , ensured to be passed on with their genes.At 80+, she now lives on her own, stable and shrewd, proud and valiant. Strong stock, strong blood, a few might say. I believe there is one such grand mom in every family. inspite of the restrictions, social pressure, backward treatment, they were the anchors of their homes, their society , their progeny.

Now,coming back to our forward 21st century filled with smart, forward and powerful women , ready to excel in all the spheres and take their rightful share of equality in this Men's world.
I met up with a cpl of friends back home recently. A few of them happen to be 'well settled', among them was one of my very good friend since childhood. Nothing agianst being happily attached for life, yet I could not help feeling let down when one such person of a very frank and forthright nature, sensible and always sure of herself suddenly turned gooey and talked non stop for 2 hours about her partner till the my ears started bleeding.. Not to mention my surprise when she sends a 100 sms in between our convo to update her boyfriend on her location,health , mood, company, God knows what else.. IT turns even more horrifying when the never ending talks of their "future plans" is dished at you . Put it together with the sympathetic glances thrown at you when you happen to be (un)fortunate enough to be enjoying the same pleasure as them, you wonder if this is all one can hope/wish for in this magical century. The death blow strikes when they stuff your nose with their engagement photos (even before they graduate) and gaze at you expectantly to shower compliments when all you want is to scream at them for voluntarily wasting their entire life ..

A degree for namesake and a lookout for foreign allainces has become the golden dream of a "happily ever after life" today. Covering a donkey with a passable amount of sheep's skin ensures enough success and appreciation in this world of hypocricy. The place is so flooded with imitators such that those who refuse to wear the costumes are either termed as rebels or madmen. Sometimes, I long to travel back to my grandmom's era to look at honest men,proud and courageous enough to be themselves and simple women who go thorugh their life with the strength of a rock and endurance of a mountain. l

annoying gadgets.

It was a scary night. The huge , fit for nothing black box, cursed to mal function when I most needed it, began its suicide attempt once more. The provocation of a few drops of cofee was enough this time. Thanks to my extensive hardware knowledge and magical trouble shooting skills, i could save it this time around and bring it back to a passable working state. With some major threats of midterms and project submissions,its worst situation to put ur life on the hands of a stupid gadget , that breaks down 90% of the time.. Well, this episode atleast proves some meagre chances of me actually making it as a comp engineer. Now, all i need to do is buy the screws I have lost while tearing down the box.

a good movie after a long long time

boredom of vettiness usually chases a person out of home and turn to other sources of intelligent interaction. Miraculesly, I found such a refugee in "Saroja".
Just a friendly suggesstion: DONT MISS IT. Funny,punchy, tangy was how I found it.
Venket Prabu shows his brilliance in how to bullshit with class and humour and turn it into a good 2 hr entertainment.After a long time., a tamil movie is here, worth seeing. Hope ppl learn from this effort adn try to make less mokai movies.

BOOM! Here goes the next one in smoke too.

It was a calm and uneventful evening. I should perhaps add frustrating too. How else can I describe spending nearly 6 hours of a prime Saturday evening at the study room, writing a 1500 word essay about evaluating the authenticity of web resources for a dumb Singapore History module?! Ploughing through my research with an enthusiasm that I usually show in the Culinary department, I must say that I was barely able to survive my homework only due to some God blessed lifelines like Youtube, Facebook etc developed for such dying souls. Anyways, coming to the point, at around 7.15 pm while browsing through some CNN blogs, I was hit by the sudden news flash about the Delhi Blasts. After a few moments of initial shock , the familiar resentment abt our sincerely lazy Goverment, its spoilt,money sucking bureucrats, the whole bloody policital organisations that are slow enough to wake up even if an atom bomb burst on its face and ofcourse the terrorists groups fed by enemy governments, built the same old bitching fire that makes us , Indians, get together to either throw a few punches on opposition parties or other religious grps or huddle together and bitch, complain, yell abt the sodding mess of the system we are stuck with.

It adds more oil to the simmering stew when each organisation points fingers at the other and involve in active blaming while they make up a "ABC" terrorist group to dump the blame on and close the case. The royal sucker punch thrown at the end when we sit glued to the TV, strikes home as they finally tag the dead by hanging a compensation amount on each corpse and leave a lesser sum dangling for the injured if they make it through. With this the curtains on the scene are closed shut and a few announcements reg the inverstigations are thrown in between by some Tom,DiCk and Harry.

oh yes, I forgot to mention the main role played by us. After swearing, protesting, sympathising with the victims and well, going mad ( for those who suffered the loss) , we wait. we wait in fear, for the next incident., the next strike to hit, desparately hoping its not our town , not our family that is affected.seems this whole blast series is termed as operation BAD. wow, I am so amazed at the ingenuity of the person who came up with that..

THis feeling of helplessness experienced by the many thousand billion people that turns into anger and later becoming hopelessness is the worst damage of all to our country. I dont understand why this happens, this sudden mob of destruction caused by men on men, I dont know how to stop it, I dont know how to take it and live with it.I write blogs unable to do anything.

well, if you are still with me and are reading this, then you can better check in these links.
http://www.hindu.com/2008/09/15/stories/2008091559731200.htm
http://www.mid-day.com/news/2008/sep/140908compensation-for-victims.htm

And an asshole has taken the liberty of speech and expression to print this shit in
a blog.
http://islamicterrorism.wordpress.com/2008/09/14/delhi-blast-victims-is-manmohan-singh-having-sleepless-nights/
hell of a read to know if PM sleeps or not! and ha, just when i was wondering why no
prig has dragged in communalistic crap.

After 45 minutes of intense digging and scrounging to collect every additional scrap of info abt it, I became tired. tired to the bone of everyhting around me.ok, enough.Lets all rest, study hard, make lots of money,get married and reproduce in bounty as long as it stays away from our family. IS THERE ANY END AT ALL? IS THERE NOTHING WE CAN DO? Pushin up my sleeves, I unsuccessfully try to clear these thoughts from my head and continue with my essay. After all each living thing is stuck with its own immediate misery to worry about. .

and so goes the cycle till the next one blows up in smoke.

inside the deep hole.

it was midnight. I lay quietly staring at the florescent light from my digital watch. The alarm went off mildly signaling the completion of 40 years of my life on this planet. I had turned 40. I tossed around to make myself fall asleep unsuccessfully. They kept plaging me. The same doubts, the same questions and in the end, the same feeling of restlessness.I know not the answers, dont know where to find them. I prayed for sleep to wash away this confusions. I tried to remember the scores of assignments filling up my day, the long list of pending ones to complete. I hated it. There was no time. just no time to relax, to enjoy, to remember my dreams.those long forgotton ones that haunt my sleep in the long lonely nights..a hazy picture of a boy running in green fields, the boy flying kites, the same boy lying near the beach, gazing at the star studded skies ..he yearned to know more, learn more, suck up every bit of knowledge about the fascinating world surrounding him . above all, he yearned to fly , be free to explore , rule the skies , far away from the grasp of any control. oh, how wonderful life can be, how sweet it is to uncover each of its little mysteries layer by layer, to marvel at its complex intricacies in the process, to rediscover its forgotten beauties.. with so many places to go, so many things to see, so much more to know.. All of a sudden, a whirlpool arrives to snatch away the freedom. He was tossed around the wind, powerless to stop , helpless to escape.. the world gets torn apart, life changes upside down. Everything is blurry, muddled up. He is trapped in the heavy chains of the nature, the nature of things, the nature of life itelf. The whirlpool sucks him onto its bottonless vortex. Along the void of a mundane hole, he falls deeper and deeper for the rest of his life, for eternity..

Atlast I fell into the same pattern of disturbed sleep in those few patches of time, a mere few hours spent in a bliss , away from everyone, everything. . There i lie, in a land of green fields, orchads, of kites and beaches. I smile in my sleep , something that is becoming extremely rare in the 40 years of my life.

A harmonic evening with Harmonica

Tired of being vetti, I dragged one of my friends to attend a free concert of HArmonica recital at University cultural centre yesterday. From what i could see from the advertisement pamplet, harmonica is something like a mouth organ. So, planning an emergency escape route in case of extreme mokai, we sat v. close to the exits. TO our astonishment, it turned out to be far more than fantastic.An instrument , totally dependent on numerous tongue techniques, its supposed to be v. helpful to one's social life too. I could only then appreciate the talent of our balloon vendors playing 5 rs mouth organs on the roadsides.. THe second surprise was the soprano song .HAving seen opera as a joke on bollywood films all the time, with fat women screeching our heads off, i was truly stumped when the lead singer started her piece. The voice, the vibrations ,the emotions all bottled up in a sound so pure and magical, it brings out the most exotic and esctatic feeling, carrying us to the realms of strange far off lands. I wish ppl stop portraying wrong images of art forms they know not just to create a joke out of it for commercial entertainment purposes.

One of the advantage of being a layman in music is that we can happily enjoy the art, appreciate it, relish it without having the burden of identifying mistakes or having an inclination to judge and compare it with other musical forms. So was the case in my first experience in witnessing live wierd music.