It rained all day tonight.
'Twas an early morning when the rains tried to steal in. But because of the many ghissus up at that hour, the wake up calls went around quickly and the houses and balconies were full of cheers as the first drop came shooting from the skies.
The thunder applauded.
The rain came pouring, unfurling its silvery sheen, its full glory and richness of sound, down onto the waiting trees, the thirsty soil and the outstretched arms. In minutes, the world stood transformed as a certain banana republic of a place called Roorkee bade its minions to the cursed confines of examination halls. Though not even a thing as cross-eyed as an exam can spoil anything that's got a dreamy 'first' prefixed to it. First Crush, First Car, First Rains..you name it!
You just need to jump into the puddles, or lip-sync with a frog or freeze-frame the spiralling droplets and the dreadful hangover of the aweful-est exam goes cartwheeling into the misty horizons.
Rains are magical.
In the sheer audacity of their suddenness, in the bountiful beauty they inspire, in the music they leave behind.
Rains heal. By giving back life to parched land, by washing the dust off old memories, and simply by showing up.
Rains unite. By getting people together over cups of coffee, by pulling out the livelier sorts onto the streets and forcing the hydrophobic ones to stay huddled under shelters.
The leaves must have dried up by now. Just hoping my shoes have too.
Friday, May 7, 2010
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
So you think you could just be dancing
The party is on.
Every face is a study in perfect composition: the women wear their painted smiles and the men their bluff heartiness. But when the music begins, light-hearted spirited strains off a piano, a small scar of horror cracks through every mask, for it reminds them of how far away from rhymes and revelries their lives have come.
But they still step up to the dance floor, hand-in-hand with the partners they secretly hate, envy or cheat. And yet they pretend to look at them as if they were in love, because that is part of the whole scheme of their life...doing as the occasion demands.
From above the dance floor, the maginficent chandelier watches, its icy white light a little whiter than usual.
The clock ticks silently but the gap between each hour is slowing.
The witching night has gobbled up half the moon.
As the hours grows late, the grandest of the guests arrive, they who wear their inhuman aristocracies like heavy armors- armors which are meant to be formidable defences, but which themselves turn inwards and chip and nick a little flesh when they can.They are dressed richly, in furs and wild colours but the real difference lies in how perfectly their masks have become one with their skins. Pecking and cooing with false pleasure, they run into familiar faces- old affairs, friends they duped, fellow millionaires they secretly conspire against but their painted smiles stay just as wide.
Ofcourse, every now and then a sharp, jealous glare slips out unbidden within the sea of impersonal greetings, but this is a ugly, naked breach of conduct and no one acknowledges it.
Now the music slides into a wild, feral romp on its own. The pianist appears to have gone missing, the piano seems to have walked by itself, to a chamber upstairs.
An invisible finger trails down everyone's spine but they try their best to keep guard. Sip wine and play-talk, wading through the thickening atmosphere with a set stubborness
The grander guests kept their high-handed hauteur and the lesser mortals their chilling courtesies. Not a face has yet betrayed the horrors that are wrecking their insides, the strong grasp the wind's hand suddenly has made on their very throats. Because acceptance would be defeat.
Until the unexpected guest walks in.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Hippies Don't Lie
'Twas Theoatmeal.com that sent me into the depths of despair all this while. How could I even poke the issue of randomness with grandmasters like Mr. Innman around? Utterly hopeless, I had given up this-is-so-random and drifted to lower crafts like drafting and rendering,well, at least in my dreams.I wasn't the only one having troubled dreams.
The Troublemaker had a dream about her past life. That she had once been Christopher Columbus, the chosen one, the great man who never let the wind go out of his sails, the intrepid traveler who introduced his companions to the wonders of scurvy. She regaled tables, chairs and a few walls who were ready to listen with how travel was the only ambition in her life.
Meanwhile, the Beanstalk lost her mind and her heart and bravely masked this great tragedy by putting up her autobiography in installments through periodically updated status messages.
So it was a nervy and twitchy audience that the Troublemaker had, when the Beanstalk and me accidentally caught her in an impassioned " Why the hell won't you ever move your a*ses out of Roorkee? " kind of speech. Beanstalk burst out and declared- " ALL RIGHT THEN. Tomorrow, the land of Rishikesh it is! You can do whatever you want to - hog, amble, raft-
NO!
@$%^##%!
Why the hell would I say draft!"
Which is how we found ourselves ensconced in a bus, still rubbing our eyes, on a trip that we decided to improvise as a food trail. Since ambling sounded suspiciously bovine and I firmly put an end to any discussion on drafting, and also since two out of us were consummate foodies, we decided to go as on-the-job gluttons.
...And it was heaven. It doesn't take long for one to come under the sublime spell of Rishikesh, and nothing can ruin it, not the supersonic roar of the auto engines, not even the charging cows, not the jostling crowds.
While we stuck to our hogging plans, soon food wasn't the only thing on our minds.
Hippies.
Don't Lie, Look Awesome, Are completely at peace, Come only in One's or Two's and are God's Gift to the Opium Industry.
And now it wasn't only the Beanstalk who had lost her heart.
Their faces are unusually unlined and carefree. They spend all their life in pristine unwashed glory. They provide home to stray birds in their magnificent coiffures and they can make a raggedy cloth ,that a non-fussy mechanic would scorn, look like the most elegant line of pret wear.
A hippie will think nothing of squatting by the curb to read a book, something of the nature of The Tibetan Book Of the Dead. A hippie will revise yoga postures in the middle of a cafe. A hippie will, more often than not, be accompanied by a thick cloud of smoke. A hippie will walk hand-in-hand with mendicants and write on how beautiful and divine the beggars of India are.
Hippiedom is the pinnacle of pointlessness, what they call nirvana. It is a sublime state of existence, where soap, comb and sanity are shunned, where laziness is but a way of life..
???
Where was I?
Something about on-the-job gluttons. Heaven. Mystical.
I was mystified into the world of magic stones , as a cross-eyed shopkeeper showed us a memory-reviving stone. I would have liked to buy an entire (double-strung) necklace of those stones but the Chief Treasurer forbade any investments in anything that wasn't edible. FOCUS! commanded she, and we treated our intestines to an interesting mix of pancakes, pasta and deserts. The Troublemaker refused to eat at one place unless we sat in the view of the river and this being neatly overruled, a killing silence followed that made me fish out The Tibetan Book Of the Dead for advice. Anyway, from where we ultimately sat, we had a good view of an Italian hippie, resplendent in a lungi, who referred to the waiter as 'You- CHINK!', and thus restored us to good cheer.
But all good things must end and soon we were back on the jolting ride home. Back to the 360 acres, back to a Monday, but back as sworn believers of the hippie cult...
Aloha!
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Season 2
Officially it's spring. The sound of sniffles, sneezes and prolonged snoring will soon be replaced by more musical notes. Swishing trees and twittering birds and suchlike ( though of course, it is no longer necessary for one to be a birdie to twitter) Yes, spring is on the move and let us hope that the wool has not reached uptil our eyes.
Winter has been a slow time. The library clock, in fact,gave up waiting for it to pull up at 8:40 one day. Several other clocks also decided to call it a life . The one in my room however insists on being the maverick of the Clock Kingdom and keeps ticking to glory, smug faced. Stupid thing should join Enid Blyton's crew. No music, the bellow of an alarm, even if 'tis spring.
Speaking of spring, one's conscience might hesitantly try to put in a word about spring cleaning. That is a wonderful thought and a very pertinent one too, especially since it is only by using the most sophisticated of GIS tools that I could locate my only remaining clean sock's twin. Of course the missing twin had picked up a couple of piercings and quite a tan on its vacation so the other twin denied recognizing it and soon a sad song that K-serials save for dying/rebirth/slapping scenes filled the room.
And then suddenly spring happened and well, it was Season 2. Stay where you are, we'll be right back.
Winter has been a slow time. The library clock, in fact,gave up waiting for it to pull up at 8:40 one day. Several other clocks also decided to call it a life . The one in my room however insists on being the maverick of the Clock Kingdom and keeps ticking to glory, smug faced. Stupid thing should join Enid Blyton's crew. No music, the bellow of an alarm, even if 'tis spring.
Speaking of spring, one's conscience might hesitantly try to put in a word about spring cleaning. That is a wonderful thought and a very pertinent one too, especially since it is only by using the most sophisticated of GIS tools that I could locate my only remaining clean sock's twin. Of course the missing twin had picked up a couple of piercings and quite a tan on its vacation so the other twin denied recognizing it and soon a sad song that K-serials save for dying/rebirth/slapping scenes filled the room.
And then suddenly spring happened and well, it was Season 2. Stay where you are, we'll be right back.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Frost-Byte
Initially this post was supposed to be a parody on the Six Concepts, a die-if-you-haven't-read-it kind of architecture essay, by Bernard Tschumy ( and go die if you haven't heard of him ).
However my optic nerve refused to have anything to do with the essay and also passed the unfair judgement that Tschumy talked gibberish, and also that Six Concepts was itself a parody.
The post could have taken shape much before, since the world is not short of gibberish ideas but then there cropped up another obstacle. Something far more personal, even physical.
Frosted Fingers.
Beglove 'em, burn 'em, boil 'em, they're still bound to turn a bitter blue if the winters in your place are bad enough to trigger Penguin Sighting Expeditons around. Mummify them and they may turn a putrid green. Other rainbow colors might show up if you explore other sciences of frosted-finger prevention.
Those sciences are crap, I learnt when one faced by this terrible affliction and so this post was put on hold for an indefinite time.
Now today when some unexpected sunshine interrupted the grey weather's miserable run, I felt defrosted enough to put my fingers to use. But fingers, one learns, show a large amount of hysterisis or they probably like to stay stuck together, so all I could manage was some random WHAM!!!! WHAM!!!! on the keypad. And so this post came out to be...
When one skims through it, one can almost sense an undercurrent of coherence through the jumble of random alphabets. Can you? I am fascinated by how that bored WHAM!! WHAM!! session could produce a couple of intelligible words. In the middle of this experimental post, if you search hard enough, you'll find TWO words which can be spotted easily in any Archaic English Dictionary. WHAM, WHAM ofcourse. To decode the rest of the words, try the Pox-ford Dictionary of Gibberish.
Infact, Tschumy might have chanced upon the same happy discovery too. Master of everything that he was, he might have got up and danced on the typewriter keys to roll out that gobsmacking piece of work- Six Concepts- that was hastily lauded by critics worldwide, before anyone could mention actually reading the sticky essay.
Magical, it feels, to be sharing a century-old secret. And also glad, that one escaped nearly burning one's retina in pursuit of reading the Arbit. I only wish that you, dear reader, could say the same!
However my optic nerve refused to have anything to do with the essay and also passed the unfair judgement that Tschumy talked gibberish, and also that Six Concepts was itself a parody.
The post could have taken shape much before, since the world is not short of gibberish ideas but then there cropped up another obstacle. Something far more personal, even physical.
Frosted Fingers.
Beglove 'em, burn 'em, boil 'em, they're still bound to turn a bitter blue if the winters in your place are bad enough to trigger Penguin Sighting Expeditons around. Mummify them and they may turn a putrid green. Other rainbow colors might show up if you explore other sciences of frosted-finger prevention.
Those sciences are crap, I learnt when one faced by this terrible affliction and so this post was put on hold for an indefinite time.
Now today when some unexpected sunshine interrupted the grey weather's miserable run, I felt defrosted enough to put my fingers to use. But fingers, one learns, show a large amount of hysterisis or they probably like to stay stuck together, so all I could manage was some random WHAM!!!! WHAM!!!! on the keypad. And so this post came out to be...
When one skims through it, one can almost sense an undercurrent of coherence through the jumble of random alphabets. Can you? I am fascinated by how that bored WHAM!! WHAM!! session could produce a couple of intelligible words. In the middle of this experimental post, if you search hard enough, you'll find TWO words which can be spotted easily in any Archaic English Dictionary. WHAM, WHAM ofcourse. To decode the rest of the words, try the Pox-ford Dictionary of Gibberish.
Infact, Tschumy might have chanced upon the same happy discovery too. Master of everything that he was, he might have got up and danced on the typewriter keys to roll out that gobsmacking piece of work- Six Concepts- that was hastily lauded by critics worldwide, before anyone could mention actually reading the sticky essay.
Magical, it feels, to be sharing a century-old secret. And also glad, that one escaped nearly burning one's retina in pursuit of reading the Arbit. I only wish that you, dear reader, could say the same!
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
H-EAR-SAY
'It's that time of the ear' , rang out a warning on the radio. 'This New Ear..' spelt out an ad, in red letters. ' Want to make this New Ear Really Really Big?' asked a stupid female in some booze ad on the telly.
I sat up, eyes saucer-wide with shock! How could they take it so lightly, how could they think of night-long parties and soirees in the midst of these all -important nation wide alerts?
"' 's Matter?" asked my long-suffering M.O.M, not at all impressed with the state of utter ruin my room had fallen into. The phone began to jangle in the other room and M.O.M turned to go.
"MOM! Can't you see..all these things..telephones and all.. ARE NOT IMPORTANT ANYMORE. Mankind is done for. We are all dying..Hey, You can't just GO!"
She just rolled her eyes and exited, leaving me alone to deal with this catastrophe.
A New Ear. Sounded like a highly tumorous affair. I could take in a few bacteria, but THIS would be the pits. Dubiously, I checked my head for any growing appendage. There was a small wart but it was too early to predict what unearthly thing it might transform into.
There was this friend at school ( Highly Classified Info), she had this tiny third ear behind her left one. I had envied her then but times had changed, I wasn't sure if three ears were in vogue anymore.
After the morning coffee had been gulped down, and the fog cleared off my mind a bit, things started to fall in place. Oh ,a new year. Nothing tumorous, though it was highly disgusting of December to come and go so quickly and tip us into frosty, vacation-devoid Jan. Old, sepia-tinted memories of Roorkee reeled by..Last Sem suddenly seemed so distant, so far-away. Next sem- Not So Distant. Just a measly ten days more and...
My thorax prepared to let out my hourly sigh (observed to be more punctual than the Big Ben) but it never came out. Because I was busy turning saucer-wide eyed again.
Something had just cleared its throat. Ahem, ahem, ahem.
"This is crazy!", I howled, stricken. I knew I was alone in my room, excepting a few visiting spiders.
That something suddenly buzzed out of my ear and made itself visible. My optic nerve was fair frazzled from the very task of resolving it- it was TINY as hell, luminescent and had wings. Whatever it was, it had to be friendly, because it was waving wildly at me and trying hard to look cute.
" Who? Are? You?" I gurgled.
" An Ear Fairy Am I
Neither Friend, Nor Spy!
Hear Ye, This is the Gospel fact
As I implore, you must act!
You must resolve this New Year
Never to crib ever!", Its surprisingly high -wattage thorax rang out full force.
It was hovering around my nose. Its trying-hard-to-look-cute efforts had long since snapped off and now it sported a furious look. Moody, like all fairies.
Promise." it demanded, in a sinister whisper. Made my skin crawl. And I used to think fairies were in the business of granting wishes.
SWAT! Down spiralled the ear fairy, its wings lifeless. Brave Agent M.O.M had wielded her deadly mosquito- swatter. " Pesky mosquitioes!", she said before rushing back to the ever jangling phone.
A Year-Fairy? Or was it really an Ear Fairy, since ,after all it had taken up temporary accomodation in my ears. To tell you the truth, I was glad it was silenced for ever but then..that was quite some poem ( rock song?) it had belted out, you know...Resolve This New Year, Never to Crib Ever...Maybe it wasn't just trying to bug me. Maybe like all fairies, it had had the Greater Good in mind.
I sat up, eyes saucer-wide with shock! How could they take it so lightly, how could they think of night-long parties and soirees in the midst of these all -important nation wide alerts?
"' 's Matter?" asked my long-suffering M.O.M, not at all impressed with the state of utter ruin my room had fallen into. The phone began to jangle in the other room and M.O.M turned to go.
"MOM! Can't you see..all these things..telephones and all.. ARE NOT IMPORTANT ANYMORE. Mankind is done for. We are all dying..Hey, You can't just GO!"
She just rolled her eyes and exited, leaving me alone to deal with this catastrophe.
A New Ear. Sounded like a highly tumorous affair. I could take in a few bacteria, but THIS would be the pits. Dubiously, I checked my head for any growing appendage. There was a small wart but it was too early to predict what unearthly thing it might transform into.
There was this friend at school ( Highly Classified Info), she had this tiny third ear behind her left one. I had envied her then but times had changed, I wasn't sure if three ears were in vogue anymore.
After the morning coffee had been gulped down, and the fog cleared off my mind a bit, things started to fall in place. Oh ,a new year. Nothing tumorous, though it was highly disgusting of December to come and go so quickly and tip us into frosty, vacation-devoid Jan. Old, sepia-tinted memories of Roorkee reeled by..Last Sem suddenly seemed so distant, so far-away. Next sem- Not So Distant. Just a measly ten days more and...
My thorax prepared to let out my hourly sigh (observed to be more punctual than the Big Ben) but it never came out. Because I was busy turning saucer-wide eyed again.
Something had just cleared its throat. Ahem, ahem, ahem.
"This is crazy!", I howled, stricken. I knew I was alone in my room, excepting a few visiting spiders.
That something suddenly buzzed out of my ear and made itself visible. My optic nerve was fair frazzled from the very task of resolving it- it was TINY as hell, luminescent and had wings. Whatever it was, it had to be friendly, because it was waving wildly at me and trying hard to look cute.
" Who? Are? You?" I gurgled.
" An Ear Fairy Am I
Neither Friend, Nor Spy!
Hear Ye, This is the Gospel fact
As I implore, you must act!
You must resolve this New Year
Never to crib ever!", Its surprisingly high -wattage thorax rang out full force.
It was hovering around my nose. Its trying-hard-to-look-cute efforts had long since snapped off and now it sported a furious look. Moody, like all fairies.
Promise." it demanded, in a sinister whisper. Made my skin crawl. And I used to think fairies were in the business of granting wishes.
SWAT! Down spiralled the ear fairy, its wings lifeless. Brave Agent M.O.M had wielded her deadly mosquito- swatter. " Pesky mosquitioes!", she said before rushing back to the ever jangling phone.
A Year-Fairy? Or was it really an Ear Fairy, since ,after all it had taken up temporary accomodation in my ears. To tell you the truth, I was glad it was silenced for ever but then..that was quite some poem ( rock song?) it had belted out, you know...Resolve This New Year, Never to Crib Ever...Maybe it wasn't just trying to bug me. Maybe like all fairies, it had had the Greater Good in mind.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Enteritis The Dragon
Contrary to popular disbelief, it has now been proven that exams are highly injurious to one's health. Yeah! They gave me the nefarious Salmnonella Typhi! Stuff that does something to your spleen and gives you the sensation of being a saucepan on the sizzle.
Buried under a five inch thick layer of blankets, I dreamt many dreams. Hot, boiling pasta..sinful tiramisu..and then,slowly, like a black shadow loomed into my sight the blasted SP lunch- the REAL cause of all the brouhaha!
I tried to punch down the shadow but it stuck its tongue at me and vanished.
The carnival however truly took off when they began the vaccines. I have had enough needles ploughed into me to make a tattoo out of it. Cute, innit? And a cute intravenous thingy sticking in my vein. One turn of its valve, and hurrah, out floweth the blood.
I got a cute alternate tagline for this post. Tyfried.
Stay Warm.
Buried under a five inch thick layer of blankets, I dreamt many dreams. Hot, boiling pasta..sinful tiramisu..and then,slowly, like a black shadow loomed into my sight the blasted SP lunch- the REAL cause of all the brouhaha!
I tried to punch down the shadow but it stuck its tongue at me and vanished.
The carnival however truly took off when they began the vaccines. I have had enough needles ploughed into me to make a tattoo out of it. Cute, innit? And a cute intravenous thingy sticking in my vein. One turn of its valve, and hurrah, out floweth the blood.
I got a cute alternate tagline for this post. Tyfried.
Stay Warm.
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