The build up to the World Cup-part 1

It's just 69 days away. Once again the hopes of an entire nation would cream up together and come to the surface. In India, my great country, where emotions are on a all time high, definitely the world cup of cricket brings out the best of the sporting audience or may be just the not so sporting sports' audience. Remember the semi final debacle of the 1996 world cup where seemingly the Eden Garden pitch turned into a minefield right after Sachin's dismissal. It was definitely one of those events in the history of cricket where we as a nation failed to show the true sporting attitude. Poor crying Vinod kambli's live footage on television summed it all. Victory or defeat notwithstanding, the real zeal of playing a sport and that too representing one's nation comes out in the best possible way only after a heart breaking defeat. One who takes the punch right on the chin is a true sportsman. The ones who fail; I call them cry babies! It reminds me of another great one day match where India defeated Pakistan in fading lights in the finals of a tri series played at Dhaka. The then Pakistani skipper, Rashid Latif, just could not take the defeat and almost broke down in the post match presentation. Still, I reckon he took it better than Vinod Kambli did.

 Anyway, all of those things are a part of the past now and what we have today in front of us is very different from what things were 14 years ago or even in the year of 2003 when India reached the finals only to lose to the rightful winners. As the reaction would have been in a country like ours, we blamed the then skipper Sourav Ganguly, who in my opinion was the first masculine captain India ever had, for putting Australia to bat. Those things don't matter or even the early dismissal of Sachin Tendulkar in that final. It wouldn't have had mattered because all the arguements put aside, the fact remained that India were not the best team in the world at that moment. The best team, unfortunately for India was playing against them in the finals. It does not matter in a team sport if you have the best player of your generation playing for you. What matters the most is the fact that are you as a team able to achieve what is your expected best. The moment the team starts beating the expectations of their perceived best, they truly belong to the league where they know they have it in them to go on and be the world beaters. It's not about being better than the other teams. Instead it's more about being better than one's own expectations on a consistent basis and the belief that comes is the tonic required to be what we know as winners! Remember the Pakistani team in the year of 1992. Led by a charismatic captain who took pain killing injections on field and operated with a shoulder which could loose its socket any moment, who allowed the be(a)st in Wasim Akram to be unleashed in a way which was totally unknown to the world, who had faith in a new comer Inzamam Ul Haq who took every team by it's horns and beat them to dust. And that faith which people think was more blind than based upon the skills of players took Pakistan to their first world cup title. The fact is for someone to comment on a team without actually being a part of it is as difficult as it is for a vegetarian to comment on the taste of beef steaks.

The past and the history is all gone by. The new era saw the rise of India in a manner never seen before. The team transformed itself from being a group of exception talents to a nicely gelled team. And lucky was India as a country that saw the return of the little master in a big way. This team has that heat and power to be where only Kapil Dev could take India to. This team has a captain who is unorthodox and not unwilling to accept defeat. Except he never lets those defeats to enter his mind. he learnt his game in the streets playing with men and not boys. talk of mental toughness and the team as a whole has it. being in winning positions and actually going on to win are two different things. This indian team knows that difference. If they can translate that potential in a successful campaign or not is a question which only time will answer. As spectators we should cheer for good cricket and quietly say our prayers.

Kaun Disha me chala re bahuria

ना जाने कहाँ जा रहा है आदमी
अपनी ही धुन में
कोशिश करते करते जीने की
ना जाने क्यूँ मरा जा रहा है आदमी

छोटी सी उम्र में हैं चेहरे पे झुर्रियां
माथे पे पड़े हैं ना जाने कितने बल
एक राह दिखी तो चल पड़े
छुटियों में भी काम किये जा रहा है आदमी

संवेदना को दूर कहीं देखा था उसने कभी
कई बरस पहले बारिश में भीगा था वो कभी
मिटटी की खुशबू को बस यादों में ही महसूस किया था
ना जाने किस ओर चला जा रहा है आदमी

शायद किसी पिछले जनम में बगीचे में खाए थे आम
किसी पुराने मकान में हासिल किये थे वो मुकाम
याद नहीं कब आलू से मिटटी झाड़ के सब्जी बनायीं थी
पर उस समय तो यूँ hygiene की आंधी ना आई थी

नौकरी और प्रोग्रेस की दौड़ में फंस  चूका है आदमी
कांच के महलों से घिर चूका है आदमी
चिट्ठी लिखे ज़माना हो गया आज
दिल की बात कब जुबान पे लाएगा आदमी

दिल खोल के हँसना क्या है
याद नहीं इसे
सिले होंठों की बंदिश कोई क्या जाने
lol के ज़माने में कोई क्या ठहाके मारे

चाय की चुस्कियों का है कोई जोड़
हाथ से बुने sweater का क्या है कोई तोड़
machine made के ज़माने में finesse की चीज़ें आती हैं
रंगोली भी बाज़ार से लाके फर्श पे चिपकाई जाती है

ना जाने किस ओर चल पड़ा है आदमी
बेखुदी से खुदगर्जी के सफ़र पे निकल पड़ा है आदमी...

Orkut----Facebook-----Tweet is sweet-----The big Daddy Blogosphere:Part 1

Hey, remember me! I am Orkut! I truly shook your life but that was once upon a time and not now. Good old days were they. The whole world was crazy about me. Everyone wanted me. Things change very fast these days. From being the most wanted I became the most used and then overused and then like a prostitute who has done her first two three years of fame, I was side lined by most of my customers. They still are there but only for the name sake. Like those cheating top business executives who do get married to a ever present in the malls/market/club/spa wife, but never have sex with them after the last of the kids are born. They do come home, usually late in the night, usually not hungry for food and you know what and they settle down with a glass of scotch and then read some boring stuff before turning off the table light on their side of the bed and pretending to sleep. Eyes open yet dreaming about the last- half of their age- girl who joined their office at the entry level. You guys have also started behaving in the same way. Once in a day or in a week or in a month, you guys do log in to check on me or to check on the photos of your ex who is not in your friend's list. I do give more liberty to browse in other's people life. For that very thin you do log in from time to time but that's the end of our relationship as far as I feel. No longer do you spend those long hours like before, sometime round the clock as well. I have gained weight. I am no longer the young, attractive and most importantly the "unexplored" thing in your life. Simple but brutal, you have had enough of me. And not that I didn't try to renew myself, reinvent rather. I tried everything possible. Like those in their forties housewives do. They go to the parlours, go for a variety of skin tightening sessions, botox and I don't know what all. But do they help? Not really except they end up having some short term affairs with men much younger and way way frustrated. Similarly, even I tried to all that. I gave you new themes for a lovely background. A new layout on the screen, new folders to store your photos, more space for better quality and what not. Did it help? No it did not. I was a fool, I never realized how you all slipped away. I don't know how many of you found your lost love through me but do you ever bloody acknowledge. Why would you? I have overheard people saying stuff like-'What? You still are on orkut!' As if its a matter of shame to be registered on orkut. But that's how things are right now. And I know the new thing you guys left me for. I now the race to be really upmarket and urban. I know you guys seek more privacy now for many of you have multitude of relationships and all should be handled with enough privacy. I understand all that but let me warn you of something! There will be a day that my substitute, the other woman is gonna face the same fate and that day would arrive faster than it arrived for me. Today, facebook is not here to share her story with you because she is busy handling her new found attention. Who does not like to be the show stopper in a fashion show? I know my days are over, but who knows I still may have a few people coming back. There are people who have a thing for the older women, isn't it?

A historian who painted

It goes back to those days when I was a painter. Being a painter was not really a hip thing back then but still I persisted with it. I don't know why today I am not one but in those rather my days I sure was a painter. Looking back I realize I definitely was a bad painter because if I wasn't I still would have been painting. The reality however, is quite different from what I thought then would be like. That means, I failed. In a slightly brutal way of expressing the same thing, I am a loser. I mean no shame in acknowledging the fact that I lost. And not that I lost to someone who went on to become another M.F.Hussain! Still at the back of my mind it reminds me of my inability to do something nicely which was really close to my heart. They say that all good things come to an end. In my case, even the bad ones came to an end pretty fast. So that was good for me, right? Who wants to throw good money after bad? I don't; so I quit.

Talking about painting reminds me of why exactly I started painting in the first place. If you guys are thinking, my early promise caught the eyes of either my school teacher or my neighbour or my mom's best friend (because as it is early signs of brilliance never catch fancy of parents at least), you are thinking on the wrong course. Once upon a time, when I was really small, like a small kid or something, I caught fever. Now I forget if the fever caught me or I caught the fever. Some experts in some really unique state of their minds had discussed on a similar if not the same topic at length in a very futile manner with potentially dangerous outcomes. So, being a good student of history, and taking a learning from what has happened in the past I would much rather leave this issue aside. We'll have a secret discussion or an anonymous post some other day. Ah, from this I remember, I am a historian these days. I studied history after I quit painting. Not the brightest of choices but even I wasn't bright enough to have made a bright choice and then managed to survive with the choice I made. Allow me to draw a small analogy here. Imagine what could have happened to Sachin Tendulkar's fragile back if he continued his dream to be another Malcolm Marshall. At least one job pretty well done. Wait for a second while I finish giving myself a pat on the back for doing what I did. That was truly smart!

This little brain of mine gives me a hell lot of trouble. It is so vibrant that I lose what I am supposed to be holding on to. Like I forgot my own history where I was telling you guys why and when I started painting and stuff like that. Coming back to where I was, I caught fever or the other way round and I was really small. Suddenly I had the entire house looking after me. I was the prince, I thought so at least. So, one good afternoon while I was truly enjoying my illness in the comforts of my home and away from the sick and boring school that I was in, my grand father got me a surprise gift. It was a sketchpen set which could write from both the ends. That gift still is the best gift I ever got in my life. And it ranks higher than the suit my father got me after a lot of resistance for my school farewell. Well, that suit hardly even qualifies as a gift. I loved my grandfather so much and that sketchpen set had a great role to play there. But sometimes I think, I would have loved him anyway. He was a nice gentle yet very firm man. I played with his moustache. I had access to his trunk. He counted his money right in my presence and even showed me the hidden corner where he kept all the cash. No one else had that privilege in my house. And I never stole from my grandfather. Later, I did steal from my father but he never counted his money in my presence or to be more precise, only in my presence. So whenever I got an opportunity, I stole from his pockets. I even got beaten once. Yet, it is my greatness that I never carried any grudge against him. I mean who keeps a grudge against one's own father. That is the bare minimum a son is supposed to do. But my grandfather was definitely a rockstar.

The very same evening, I started sketching. Random sketching I did. I took the newspaper and made moustache and beard on the faces of all the pretty heroines. I gave hair to the baldies. Bald is definitely beautiful! If you are reading this, this previous line is for you my friend! Then I filled the letters in the news headlines with red colour. Red was my instant favourite. I filled the As, the Bs, the Ps and the Qs. Oh! how could I forget telling about the Os. But for some reasons, I ignored the Ds. I could do nothing with the Gs even though I wanted to. I hated learning the letter G while I was in kindergarden. I just did not know how to move my pencil. I don't even know if my teacher back then thought I was dyslexic or something or some kind of a bloody retard. Hell, I was not a child prodigy but definitely not a retard! I am sure she must had thought so. I don't know if she still teaches there in that school I went to. Then I started sketching in my school too. Like all good things, this one also came to an end. I think I used this cliche twice. How does it even matter if I used it twice or thrice or totally ignored it. A cliche remains a cliche irrespective of how many times one uses it. Its like you murder one guy or a hundred of them, still the punishment stays the same! So my fellow students were pretty jealous of my prized possession and I sure showed off. I tell you I was one hell of a nasty little prick. I did enjoy my superlative state back then. Some of those people on whose cost I had fun went to great colleges. They are rich now. It makes me real sick. Not really sick but I don't really feel great about it at all. It sort of shows me who I am and how much could I achieve and all those stupid things you see in movies these days where guys hit depression like the ecnomies and never recover and end their lives having a heavy dose of some white coloured pills whose stock I don't know why the hell do they always keep in the closet at the backside of their bathroom mirrors. I also can't understand why they have those pills with the tap water from the basin right below the mirror. I mean they can always go to the kitchen or the fridge and get potable water to have those pills. They seem to have enough time for they keep looking at their boring emotionless (John Abrahim like) faces forever before making that great move.

Anyway, so my sketchpen set got lost. I am sure somebody stole it. I remember keeping it in my bag and going to the bathroom to take a leak only to find the whole thing gone when I came back after two minutes. I cried a lot. My eyes were all red, I remember. That is one of those days, I lost something for the first time. That day was the beginning of the story of how I became such a big loser. That story some other day. Today, I feel a little happy and liberated. I am feeling pretty light in my heart today for sure. Still my love for painting did not die. Soon, my father got me a new set but I wrote from only one end and every other guy in the class had the same thing. My advantage was brought back to deuce; thanks dad! Then I started making sceneries. Not my original idea though. I stole it from my uncle who once did an exceptional work in my art pad. My teacher saw that and I was an instant star. But again, as destiny would have had it, like all good.................(you know what is there beneath the dots :)) But I kept trying not by improving my painting but by changing schools. It used to be great till I dropped out and with it my painting story came to an end. But even that end was short lived. I went to school again but never got the chance to paint with a sketchpen set. All we got were oil pastels to do the work from. Oil pastels look like wax crayons which I always found very childish and hated them. I never graduated to the water colour level.

Then I realized that I need to look beyond the obvious things, I need to be an historian. I need to look back at myself to know what I am meant to do. That is precisely the reason I became a historian, to look back and look back long till I know what I want to know. In between I tried my hands at many more things but those stories....not now...some other day..today I am happy :)

The night saga

Nights are slow, painful, disdainful, scornful and yet peaceful, romantic, lonely, private, like a kingdom where one rules, like a garden where one plays, like a canvas where one paints, like one's own territory. There is something excruciatingly beautiful about nights. It instills the fear of unknown and provides the charm of adventure. It glamourises the twinkle of stars which we miss in the glory of the sun. It offers apprehensions to take the next step further, yet injects that confidence to probably do that one thing one always wanted to do. It takes the civilization out of the practised behaviourism, unleashes the brutal spontaneity of passions underlying the skins of animals.



Ask the romantics, they would die to live a night with their beloved ones! The beams of the moonlight, sieved through the leaves of the old gulmohar tree, falling on the most beautiful face in the universe and you sitting a foot apart, probably a little closer than that, devoid of anything even remotely associated with lust, gaze in total admiration, in total awe, wondering if you could hold this moment forever, if you could ask the globe to stop revolving, if you could manage to freeze everything for ages? A tiny precious little drop of dew, still in its childhood, falls upon your fingers. You come out of this dream of yours and realize that all your thoughts are mere thoughts. You realize that if you keep realizing and analyzing just like this, you would miss the vibrance of the bubble you made. So you give rest to your mind and allow the heart to take it over. You look towards her, her eyes are closed. There is a definite serenity and clamness on her face. You put your hand on hers. She smiles, still keeping her eyes closed. You love every bit of it. You shift your weight towards her and she leans on your shoulder. Her locks falling on your chest, eyes still closed, she is in total peace! You want to close your eyes too, but you choose not to. Rather you keep looking like you can see only for that moment and never again. You encounter serendipity, love, affection, emotion, a charge, a voice unheard, a satisfaction you never had before. This is what a night does for you!



A bunch of folks walk down the road. They are in a mood only they can be. It's past mid night already but they don't care for nights are where they belong. Nocturnality is their second nature. They are the kings of the empty roads, looks like all the street lamps are there to greet the great procession. They climb up the bridge and scale to its middle point. They lean from the sidewalls and shout their names to the world, a moment of authority, a moment where you feel like GOD, a moment where you have the courage of a lion and charisma of indian cheetah. Even the frustrations have the power of the "black snake moan". Probably, they are high on dutch courage, probably not! They look around and find the glistening black in the flow of the river beneath. They look for their reflections but their eyes can barely see, they want to script their names on this ungainly world, but only can hear it back! They are quite indistinguishable from each other, they are a mob. Night is their hood and the darkness is their mask. When the birds start chirping, they disappear, like the mist in the summer mornings. They seek shelter and go to the vampire land and out they come in the nights. The night saves them, gives them a fake promise, a pseudo support, an (anonymous) identity.




Down the street, in some obscure corner of the town, she lived. She had a kid. She was a mother. In those dark nights, when the moon and the electricity department both joined hands to darken her small but neat "kholi", "the little one"(to be read contextually ;)) would turn around, trying to find her. He was nervous when on the first touch he found the bed and not her. He would keep his eyes closed and try again, with an increased radius this time, only to find the corner of her sari. The same corner which had been chewed in an endless fashion by him. The threads of the "pico" had been turned soft with his saliva and teeth. The darkness didn't let him see it and the fear of darkness didn't let him open his eyes, but the touch of that torn, softened corner, the feel of his own saliva on it which was left only a couple of hours ago, spared him the torture. She turned, whispered in his ears. He opened his eyes to find her. In the backdrop of black, he witnessed the most assuring and loving face of his life. He dragged his body and somehow managed to reach the familiarity of comfort. The clarity of forth, sometimes, is attributed to the intensity of the back!



The glory and charm of the day might be mighty enough but the honesty of night is underlined by the fact that it offers us the truth, in whatever meanings, some pleasing, some provoking, some soothing, some disturbing, some hollow ones, some sound ones........Matter of fact, they(nights) simply are the agents of unleashment(Allow me the liberty!)

Thoda sa roomani ho jayein

Life is really funny. It was yesterday, I was frustrated with myself for I was in some dilemma and today I get plenty in my head. I think the funny part resides in me rather than the life. The weather is so 'roomani' and the examinations not millions of years away, I feel its the right time to write. Creativity shoots up, specially in my case, when the creative room is cramped for space and time. I call it the squeezed creativity. Under similar circumstances, love also shoots up. Beautiful weather, chilled breeze and a arousing shiver in the body-all of them sum up to just one point and love definitely is that point.

The great romantics from the history of classical english literature have said that love knows no boundaries, no limits, no modus operandi to achieve in this field is considered wrong and why would it be so? As it is, there is so less of love left these days, anyone pursuing the cause of love has to be looked upon as a messiah for emotional upheaval. Experts say that people go crazy in the quest of love. I say they just become what they are. For the good actors, indeed, love is a hypothetical concept. But again, there are rivers which change courses, there are mountains which lose heights and there are plots of lands which get submerged in the waters. After one of the floods they disappear only to resurface next summers. Some pieces never come back. Some come back so different from what they were before going, we fail to recognize them. The farmers are so apprehensive of those lands, they don't set a foot on it. They don't even give these pieces a chance to bear the suffering at the hands of the plow for they truly miss the pleasure in the pain part of the entire sequence. The lands lay barren, cracking, the cracks widening with time and the hopes fading. They know how hard it becomes to wait when you wait against no hope, no expectations. They get impatient, sometimes paranoid. They are so unsure of their own time. There are apprehensions, anxieties of different kinds. They fear the rains for the rains would bring the floods. They fear the floods for they will be lost again for no fault of theirs and come back with that label on them. The farmer might have left by then or could have changed professions or could have done something which would never bring them together again. The mind plays dirty little games. They break resolves, they test character but for all practical purposes, the lands don't have much time, either to convince or to survive. The watery eyes, the increasingly upbeat vein on the temple, the ever drying lips, the sweaty palms, the shaky knees say it all in one go, only if someone listens or even bothers to.

Love is hard, never futile. Farmers...farm some..don't bother if it grows or not...Read the GEETA....ends are not always what you seek in life....even a painstaking process has honey like pleasure....

A Writer's Dilemma

I have so very much run out of ideas and thoughts that I don't want to write anymore. The case here is not that I am totally out of ideas but the ideas I am getting these days are pretty random and I have not been able to figure a line of trend in those ideas. What to do man? Where do I go from here? As a result of all this, I have to keep everything that comes to mind only to myself and not tell it to any one. I can't because they are very personal things and I hate writing about my personal stuff. More than that, I hate to have my personal stuff read by others. I want to keep my emotions to myself and yet I want to express. That's why, i use a number of analogies, pretend to be someone else and write stuff about them. People think I have goten under the skin of the character. But no the fact and truth of the matter is that it's me who feels and writes. I wrote everything I felt but now this is the end of it. The writer inside me is dead. Atleast he is dormant and is gone for sometime. I guarantee you that. I can't force myself to pen stuff down just like that. I ain't no writer. I have my own stories and I tell people my own little tales in a way they think its good. People like to know what happens to other people.

Sorry for the abrupt transformation of thoughts. I actually was not getting to write because of lack of moments or moments which were too dear and near to my own soul. It takes a lot of courage to write stuff which involves the writer directly, in a way which is too grounded to the core of the person that writer is. I have a lot of stories to share but I am a scared man. I hate to see people knowing me inside out. I hate to see them speculate about my nature and general behaviour. In fact, I am scared of them for they will know me, for they will come to know I am no different from them, for my thoughts are no more unique than theirs and hence I will lose what I have in their eyes atleast! Oh mother, check out the selfish me.

Today I met the other breed of writers in form of an individual. This person writes so good that I get lost and then I stay lost for long. He writes like a fairy tale and yet gives me the touches of reality. The reason for such an impact is that he/she is not scared to write. He is not scared to share. He does not care to care about what people have for him. But sometimes, he does. The human touch is not lost in totality. I like that.

This little comfortable of world of ours is cruel actually. Most of us are pretentious people. In fact, all of us. As humans, we are nurtured in a way that does not allow our nature to decide what we would become. Everyone is too bothered about what we should become. The concept of benchmarking is a total waste. People have idols from every walk of life. Good to admire people but not at the cost of letting go your own self. Losing oneself is the biggest flaw of the entire sociometric system across geographies and cultures. And I am a small, almost irrecognizable portion of this great expanse. I can't and don't have the guts to fight it out. Neither alone nor with company. The existing empire always sees the change agents as rebels. Being a rebel is pretty stigmatized. I don't want a stigma on me. I am a writer, just a writer. I can't serve the truth to everyone. Everybody'd truth is different. Is it not? Perceptions are declared reality these days. I feel powerless, out of breath. I won't yet feed you with my true realities for they are no perceptions. For the stories, I have a few thought up, a few stolen from other's kitty. Signing off.... a coward...