Schizophrenico-hallucinato-totallyjoblesso-dyselixcosis ...

Yah i think that's what comes closest to what I have been suffering from ever since I was 5 years old... And why alluva sudden am I writing about this? Bingo! another proof that I have that disorder. ( I should call up my 10 std maths teacher to tell him that I can finally prove theorems :D ).

My first memory of that is when my unassuming mom sent me to the next door grocery store in Pradeep Market to get some sugar ( Umm i guess it was sugar, coz it cannot be what I think it was). Well, on the way I saw this scooter, pale green in color, which was I think a Bajaj Priya. Since obviously the color was very amusing, and it reminded me of an Italian movie I had seen then, I thought how an Italian would speak while riding his scooter in Italy... what if he actually hit an American while riding, and they get into a fight? and in this, one of my classmates (Montu Sharma) gets involved, and the Italian and American then end up beating the shit out of Montu. Yah! that way he will not find time to study and then I will come first in the class! yahoo! then I will get a prize in the school day celebration... :( till now I have only participated in school day in the group songs.. so totally not cool ... Then when the principal would call me on to stage I can maybe kiss the school head girl! she is sooo pretty, and then even mom will not scold me for kissing her, coz I came first in the class! :D... then mom will send me to Pradeep Market to get that big box of crackers that I have always wanted to burst alllll by myself!! :D ....

umm wait... where am I? that's when I realized that I had walked almost 1.5 kilometers and had left Pradeep Market almost 1.3 kms behind! I was very sad that I was back to square one and will not get to kiss the head girl, that I thought I almost had.. sigh...



Standard 10th. I was sent to my room to study Geography.(yawnnnn...) . anyways I open the book and begin to read.. I was looking at the map of India, and suddenly I looked at Bihar... Its structure looked like a side profile of a woman, with a pretty stylish boy cut hair style. umm something like that of my principal who was to give me the prize when I was to come first in my class... I imagined this face turning towards me and that it was the most pretty face I would have ever seen... what I saw is still etched in my head very clearly, but the trouble began after that. All I could remember from that learning session was that face. The next day in the Geography class, my lecturer walks in. Although I am very sure I am straight, and especially my lecturer was not even in my wildest imagination, someone I could fancy, but as soon as he walked in, that pretty face replaced his umm rather, umm not-so-pretty-masculine-with-moustache face... I don't remember anything from that class... all through that class all I did was doing a lot of rather interesting things with that face .. all around some park...


Its very dark in the night in a jungle, and there are dark clouds all over the sky. A storm is impending, the tress are all dry and most of them dead. An old black crow is squeaking somewhere near. From somewhere, an innocent young girl draped in a tattered shawl is slowly, aimlessly walking through this forest. She has very recently been hurt in love. She is walking and wandering... The sky begins to thunder and lightning strikes into the forest dangerously close to her... but she doesn't notice... A creepy shadow is following her closely. But she doesn't notice.. she is just walking and wandering. Lost in her own thoughts...

This is picture I got in my head when I listened to the song 'Dil cheez hai kya jaana' by Bally Sagoo. Do this. Click on the link below and listen to this song, with ur eyes closed...

Link Click here!!

Now you would agree with me on either that my imagination is right, or that I have that above mentioned disorder that i don't wanna type again...

Hence Proved :D (Yahoo! Thankachhan Sir! R u listening :D ?)


psst: okay I suck at creating a horror movie scene, but in my head, it sure looks creepy :D

Where were you when I was hurt and I was running
where were you when those dark clouds were coming

If I call you my acquaintance to say the least
where were you when the devils were on the feast

Where were you when I made the seat next to me free
Where were you when I was drowning deep into the sea

And now when I am kinda used to being without you,
You come down and say 'I will see you through"


It doesn't happen that way my fickle friend,
am sorry it is a little difficult for you to comprehend

But I think it's time we go our separate ways
and let time heal this messy haze...

Go Bottom up on these pics and observe how does this fight progress...











I was just waiting for some time to post this...
these are a set of 10 pics taken continuously of a fight scene during our southern illinois trip...
only one thing comes to mind when i remember that time... Awesome!!!

Sometimes I Remember

Sometimes I fondly remember
A pair of sleeping eyes
Those sweet nothings and those apparent lies
A phone call from across the land
Us just walking hand in hand...
Those awaited letters in a small chat box
The moments of silence in between our talks
The letter that came from nowhere after years!
And my eyes inside my helmet, filled with tears
The bench that sat us for numerous days
And the painful smile on her face...
Sometimes... I fondly remember...

Boys' Days Out

Senseless humour, not so decent words, singing on the top of ur lungs, eating all weird combination of stuffs, rock climbing, cave crawling, fight scenes, race to the top of the hike, posing in psychedelic forms, sneaking into a ferry to cross the river and then taking a U turn to take it back, shouting F U to anyone who overtook us, stopping over at a place after heated discussions etc etc...

That is kinda the gist of what we did for three days as soon as we hit the road. Writing an account of the journey is not the motive for me here. The motive is to remind all the guys stuck with their gfs that an all guys trip is way, way much more fun than the beaten path (Yeah Yeah I can hear people shouting sour grapes ;) but in this case grass is greener on my side :D). Just read further to agree with me:

The Characters -





The Facilitator: Thakur (Prasad)












The Fooder : Sanju Baba (Sanju)











The Sleeping Beauty: Roaiep (Zoiab)







The Navigator: K Thakur (Ankit)








Location : Garden of the Gods

"Whoaaaa" was the last thing i remember hearing from anyone of us as soon as we saw the first rock. The next thing I remember is three of them standing on that rock and err umm jumping...
(That does prove that we evolved from monkeys :D)

And this was only the first rock...we were totally unprepared for the ones that were not yet seen. After this it was more abt "who gets there first" race on almost all the rocks.. the view from them was splendid!

"View from the top"

The next thing we spotted was a cave. small enough for two of us to declare that we couldn't go through, the other half dived right in! As we went in, the rocks started to behave weirdly. "Please don't fall, Please don't fall..." was our murmuring as we slowly clawed our way through the cave. When we did see the light at the other end... we had no words... just yelled crazy and crawled out.

in the cave

Just out!

I have put in all these pics coz there is soo much to write and I am too lazy... And a picture says a thousand words.. doesn't it? :)

To Be Continued...

Thank you God for the world so sweet,
Thank you God for the food we eat,
Thank you God for the birds that sing,
Thank you God for everything!
psst: God thank you the most for (hopefully) saving me from today's near (touch wood) debacle
Boy!
sometimes u just thank God ( well touch wood and fingers crossed) for the many times he saves you from almost inevitable disaster... and having said that, once an engineer, always an engineer! even if u r doing a management course now!

There was this seemingly unscrupulous MS Excel course in my program. There was a full proper announcement about it and everything, and our instructor was very strict and the features he was teaching looked pretty 'weird' to learn... In fact so much so, that people in my class actually started to stay up late to work the problems and make sure that they did their assignments in time and did them well. otherwise it was almost impossible for anyone to remember the stuff. Add to it that the instructor was gradually turning into a monster, and increasing our work load, making the problems in the assignment ever tougher to work.

This was the first time I saw my other wise cool roomy actually sweating it out in nights to finish the assignments, talking to many people over the phone to understand the problems and tediously working towards a probable solution. Classes began to remain fully occupied with students with peeled eyes glued to the screen in the class and ears cocking open to absorb all the stuff the instructor spewed out ( including his very special way of saying awwwigghh (allright))...

Nobody was sure as to how would they face the test due next week. Wait! what? there is a test next week? oh Wait, is there a test for this course? and thats next week??? umm where is it written! Why didn't anyone tell me! ....

Yah... that's what my first reaction was when I was told last week about this test. Already taken by surprise on this, I had no idea as to how I should react to this .... ambush!!! Yah! it's NOT fair and enough to just email everyone in the class about the test and talk about it in the class at least 3 times! PEOPLE DON'T PAY ATTENTION!!!!

Anyways... the world IS a sick place... everyone knows that. And I have been dealing with it ever since I was born. But now that I have to live with that, I thought i might as well think about preparing for the test. I planned. well, thats a rare thing anyhow, but I did... and planned to prepare the night before the test (goto: line no. 8 abt engineers).

Cut back to yesternight. With all the true intentions I start preparing for the test. Just to get all the variables initialized I asked my roomy "What if we flunk"? He replied that due to some weird credit score logic, what we score in the test wdn't make a dent in our overall scores.

Now believe me, even after hearing that I wanted to prepare whole heartedly for the test. By the time I was in my room with the laptop in my laps, the rational side of began to speak up and said : "You wdn't get a score anyhow for this test, and u wdnt flunk. So why don't u utilize this time better and go to sleep!" . Hmm.. I thought... there is a point! After all logical analysis of an argument is what I learn day in and day out!. Rest is as they say, His Story....

Day : Today. Time 940 am ( 4 hours and 2 classes before the test). My classmate tells me that we need to score at least 80% in the test to pass, or we wd have to re take the test. shit.

Time 1 pm ( one hour before the test) in the lunch room, discussing the excel problems with my roomys and the Omen inducing classmate ( the one who told me the 80% thingy), I realized that now its a futile exercise. The rationale was that since I don't have enough time before the test to prepare, I should concentrate on the final thread. The Help function in Excel. I plan an elaborate strategy based on the information I retrieved from these fellows around me.

Test: After looking at the question paper, I knew one thing for sure. I knew nothing. Then from somewhere God comes in the picture. And I look at the help function. Question One, search for it on the help. Got the method. Question Two, back to help. Q3,4... Rest as they say is... ;)

I think ( hope, pray and everything) that I pass. But, thank u God :)

rishtey to nahin rishton ki parchhaiyan mile...
And what not...

Generally when u r sitting in a 'University Accommodation' after a hard day's work, when ur thighs are almost out of gas and ur head just about hangs in between a persistent 'dnnnnnng' sound and the outer world, u feel the need of someone... someone in whose laps u cd just rest ur head and go sleep.

I guess everyone everywhere feels that way. Its just that they don't speak out in open. Or, they don't speak out in open unless they find someone?

In that case the thing is pretty self explanatory here. I have found someone.

After landing here, and feeling bereft of the envelope of emotional assurance around me, I wanted this 'someone' that could fill this gap. That could maybe complete me?

Her name is Rakshanda. umm I dunno if she is pretty or not, but yes she does give me this sense of belonging. A warmth. An assurance that whenever I need her, she would be standing right there with her arms wide open as if to assimilate me totally into her.

It started a month and a half back. I almost bumped into her near my apartment and almost hurt myself! ( dunno abt her :P ) but I'd rather say thank God for that :)... Till now its just been a beautiful ride down the lane. I guess both are busy in our very different lives, but when we do meet after I get back, it just the two of us. I talking about my day, my struggle with things, my experiences, my joy, my sorrow and she just listens to me with this smile that I almost naturally empty myself in front of her.


In the past one and a half months we have tried to know each other as much as possible. Maybe this is why we feel so comfortable in each other's company. Sitting with our backs on each other, I can talk about anything from skies to sea to philosophy and what not, and always find in her a listener who could by her looks extract the soul of what I am talking about. Many a times I have just sat there with my arms around her and lay there just like that for loong with no words spoken or no sounds heard.


With the change in weather here, however, she hasn't been keeping too well... As winter set in, her color changed from soothing green to pale yellow. People say it is the fall colours and love the
new ambiance everywhere, but they forget that this beauty is at the cost of Rakshanda's salubrity. With every passing day she loses herself and it won't be long before she would stand there all barren in this winter with nothing to cover her!... Nothing to keep her warm... And she would have to wait for what seems like an eternity to bloom again...

In all this I stand at a corner when there are other people enraptured by her beauty. when these people will be in their homes carefully tucked into their blankets, when their temporary obsession with her beauty would be done with, and when she would be not as lovely looking as she is right now, Where should I be? And then all the past moments float in front of my eyes. I should be right next to her when it starts to snow. Or when it rains hard. Even though I would not be able to protect her, but sometimes u just need someone to be there beside you to survive through.

Rakshanda.... It is a beautiful start to a long ending walk on the clouds...

Although it is very late for me to write on this topic, but I always wanted to. Its just that I wasn't finding time for it...

Somewhere in June three of us, Asad (childhood friend) , Anshit (my bro) and I went on a trip to Amritsar. There were 3 places that we wanted to visit : Jallian Wala Bagh, Golden Temple and Wagah Border. I will concentrate on the Jallian Wala Bagh for this post...

For all us who don't know what Jallian wala Bagh stands for, click here.

Amritsar is a very cute city. pretty much like the other small cities across the country, where shops are usually small, the roads only as big as 2 by lanes, the streets even smaller yet all so vivid and colourful! full of life... kids playing across the streets, cars and scooters fighting yet maneuvering within the available space... there seems to be a very highly developed code of driving that seems to have evolved from this specifc eco-system of traffic. It might look very chaotic, but look carefully, and u wd see all vehicles just missing each other! only that it is not by chance, but the skills of the driver...

we were walking through these roads and by lanes, looking at the shops and their interactions with the world outside... we were looking at these buildings that have stood there for 100 odd years staring at the world and its changing ways, testimony to the changes and corruption of its inhabitants.. there was definitely this feel about these buildings.. they looked like these time warped things that were half stuck in past and the other half existing very much in this world with us. I felt that if we went into these buildings we would all of a sudden be transferred to a time that was long gone! Such was the eerie attraction of these buildings that you could do nothing but gaze at them, and then gather ur self and keep moving ahead...

But one such building's entrance kinda held us. unusually coloured, it somewhat melted into its surroundings, yet stood out as something that had a totally different story to tell. As we gazed around the building, we saw the board that read " JALLIANWALA BAGH".



Pretty much like hypnotised souls, we almost floated into it... The entry to this place has forever remained as it is, and is nothing more than a very narrow passage... When we walked through it, it struck me that this was the very passage that General Dyer used to enter into the premises, and much to my disbelief, he also tried to bring in a battle tank!

I don't know if the pictures running in my head were from the movie Gandhi, or I could actually recreate the scene from 1919, but I could pretty much actually feel the soldiers walking through this passage.. with rifles in their hands, marching in, bringing death closer to the people inside who were totally unaware... What also struck me at that point was that the soldiers were Indian ( although working for the British) and the people inside were the same flesh and blood too!

The passage...

If you remember any movie that was based on some flash back concept, try using that 'blackout and reemergence of a picture' stuff of a flashback to this case. Thats what I saw when I waled into the Bagh ( the Graden) where the massacre had happened. It looked like a very peaceful garden, kids were playing here too! sprawling lawns, fountains, people walking around.... this place actually looked very calm... Only that this calm prevailed not from peace, but from silencing of hundreds of lives... people like me, like you... like the shop keeper outside or the copassenger in train with whom we played cards on our route to Amritsar... If for a second we forget the 88 years of time gap, you would feel that those people were just... us...

A lot of us were killed there that day. The calm there indeed felt like the one on a battle field after the battle finishes and there is no one left alive... to cry or to howl... As we moved inside there were these places that stand as a snapshot of that day, that time. There was this well into which people jumped to save themselves from the raining bullets from their own brethren who were just 'following orders' of their masters. More than the people killed, it was them who were enslaved by the British. The well has been covered since then.






The well...







There was another thing that had stood as a witness to what had happened that day. A Wall. Now standing all alone, as if it was punished to first witness the whole massacre and then made to live for eternity to keep remembering that bloodshed and narrate it to all with the bullet marks strewn all over it.

Just near to this Wall was a writing made of stones that read "Vande Mataram'... And it was then that all of this fell more or less into place. The only way we can respect those who died that day is by believing in these words that lay there with the souls of all those who still could be around there watching the world outside just like those buildings as I had described earlier.. staring at the world and its changing ways, testimony to the changes and corruption of its inhabitants...

The riddled wall

Vande Mataram...

I wrote this loooong time ago...
i doesn't quite fit the current scenario... or maybe it does :P
nvm!

Everything seems futile, there is no hope
Maybe I am waiting for my kind of dope...

Leg thumping in a pub, and friends to kill me?

I breathe, I see... Until it's time for me...

Wrong place? Wrong train? never figured...
Another day starts, again eyes open, another inhalation triggered...

From the previous post...

"Why did I do this?" is a question I do ask myself sometimes... I mean I wasn't that cool about ACTUALLY coming down to a far away land... I was also not sure if I was doing the right thing... Yeah I knew that I need to go to a great school atleast once in life, and after 2 1/2 years of work ex I wasn't really sure about going to the IIMs ( not to mention that it is very very difficult to get into one and I simply didn't have that much time to prepare for them... again :P).

I did it coz I wanted to do it all by myself. I have always had this picture of me standing without any help facing all the brunt that is possible.. well not really, but in some ways I wanted to give myself a test and see for myself if I could do it all by myself... All the paraphernalia around me should be my creation.... no legacy to boast of. In fact what added to the kicks was a fleeting risk factor behind joining this course... people who cared about me weren't quite sure about this course... which kinda made me go for this even more... In cliched terms, I wanted to create my own tests, make them risky, and then take them... and maybe pass them too :P


At UIUC's Alma Mater Statue
(With arms wide open... Bring it on!)

This might sound a lil hedonistic but I guess thats how I am! I am usually not on an 'EgoTrip' trying to think highly of me, but yeah i have my own highs... I had one such thing in the past... I bunked a semester of Engineering mostly for kicks, having a good reason helped me then. This time was no different. The stakes were high again , it was about the next step in my career, the rewards were high and so was the cost of giving up a decently forming career to take a 'lift'.

Maybe I mess it up, but most probably I think I should be able to pull it off...

In Aerosmith words I always want to be 'Living on the edge'...

Continued from last post...

If I were to maybe sum up US (only all that I have seen of it) in few words, I can shortlist a few contenders...

a) Keeping the door open for the person coming behind you
b) Multi cultural society ( generally accepting for all sects)
c) Skyscrapers
d) All types of cars ( not that there aren't in other places, but here U have almost All types of cars)

But I think if there is something that maybe represents the US as a society (again as much as I have seen), I would say it's their buses here. Not quite what people might expect, but I have truly not found anything as apt as this to portray the cukture that people have here...

It was my first day on the buses here, and I did not have my University ID as yet... we climb into the bus (here the tickets are sold by the driver himself) and move towards the driver. Here is more or less what the conversation was like...

Driver (D) : Good Morning!
Me (M) ( kinda taken aback coz I havent been wished by a bus driver in my life) : Good Morning! I don't have my University ID... what should I do?

D: Oh! in that case you would need to buy a ticket from me! I am sorry but I hope you make ur Univ ID quickly...
M: ok ... How much do I have to pay?
D : you can do with a Dollar.
M: thanks .. here ...
D : Thanks ! have a good day...

I don't know how educated that guy was.. I kinda think he should be at least a 12th pass...
but his manners pleasantly surprised me... people got on the bus.. and got off... usually people thanked the driver while getting off and he would wish them a good day... people here usually wish each other.. smile while crossing people (even if they don't know each other).... maybe this is because I am in a campus and things might be different in a city ( I wd go crazy if in New York every passing person starts wishing me! )

The buses here have a unique feature.. they 'kneel' by lowering the 'steps side' of the bus, for people with disability, old people or any one requiring a lower platform bus. Not that this is 'rocket science' but this is very demonstrative of the respect given to every human. There are special areas in the bus for prams and handicap people... and the bus kneels for all of them. (although we in India do have a 'viklang' seat but I never saw a 'viklang' sitting on them... viklangs in India either don't get on to buses, or they stand with everyone)

At a bus stop (wherever there is one) you can find either a time table pasted, or an electronic status display for buses and when they are expected... Honestly, it is only here that I have been 'made' to be punctual, and I have started to expect the same from others :P

To sum it all up, I think the major difference I found between this place and mine is the respect given to human life, and the quality expected from everyone. For the diversity of cultures here (which is far more extreme than the one in India) people are a lot more tolerant, in fact even welcoming of people from across the world. You can (at least usually) trust the person in front of you. There is an amicable environment.. conducive for people to.. grow... maybe innovate, invent, and all that ... ( does the bigger picture come across now?). And the thing which kinda pinches is that most of these things don't require much money! just a culture... I wish we could copy these things from them rather than their fashion, music, slangs, accent ... I think they create value... Lets copy them there if we need to... or rather, using a popular sentence 'Do your own thing'!

Its been more than a month now in the US, and has been quite a ride since the start!

I have often been asked what is the difference between this country and mine...
My brother pops this question out every now and then...
well, in the time that I have been here and what I have observed, is probably best explained through the following experiences I had...

I entered the New Delhi airport after saying bye to mom, dad, bro, nani (granny), mama (uncle), mami (his wife), dada (elder cousin)... that moment I felt like being separated from my flesh and blood! I live with them and for them! is what I am going for something worth giving that all away?
I felt that the purpose of living your life is for your family... your people with whom you share your happiness, sorrows and all...

Inside the airport, when we lined up at our gate to enter the aircraft, all the passengers were asked to take their passports out... everyone took out their passports, there were many people and as many passports all around me... I looked around me and saw a group of French tourists take out their passports, then a Portuguese couple took out their, the Thailand boy took out his passport, the German traveler took out his, then the Spanish guy, the American ... passports were all flashing in front of me, and everyone was talking to their people in their own language... I felt like someone all alone with no one by my side... no one to look at with a sense of belonging... no one... my own... It was then when I looked at my passport, and as I read 'Republic Of India', I could feel the whole nation standing right with me... the echoes of thousands of people, just like in a stadium, all around me as if saying 'we are all right beside you my boy'... my passport was the only thing that gave me my identity in that moment. It was my belonging to a nation... my right to a land...

Reached Vienna.. my first stop... I had to take another flight to Chicago from here... This place was different.. majority of people (for the first time in my life) white, and there I was with another Indian by my side, standing in a sea of white people... we were walking in the airport, and we bump into a poster of Longiness watch which had Aishwarya Rai on it! India had arrived...

There on, I was not just Ankit, or the numerous nicknames that I had been know with.. I was an Indian. What ever I did, said would invariably be linked to me, my nation, my people... Had to be ready to shoulder that responsibility... its not as if u take it on you, it just comes... you have to stand up whether you like it or not...

To be continued...

Shoot to kill

I recently got myself a new camera and was trying to put in some stuff with it...
here are a few shots..
have a look and please comment on what do u think their captions should be..
I have put in my captions though...

messy music

time to kill? or just killing time !





jump in or cross over?




light at the end of the tunnel.. may be u

I wont wanna write much .. hope the pics speak for themselves :P

umm what??

Your Chances of Being a Multimillionaire: 60%

You have a decent shot at being a multimillionaire. Surprised? You're confident and a hard worker. Keep it up!

Will You Be a Multimillionaire?

yeah whatever...

Inhale… exhale… inhale… exhale…

Sounds familiar? heh… no if the thought was that of a yoga instructor, u r way away…

This is more like when u smell any random looking thing, and suddenly ur head swings and flashes a special person, moment or place that u had been associated with, and to make sure that it is a smell u have smelt before, u inhale.. exhale…. inhale…. exhale… I am trying to make relevant, the (rather boring) research done by scientists (and they won a Nobel Prize for it too) that tried to link the sense of smell and the memory that it links to…

It has happened a lot of times with me, but particularly when it comes to my ex- girlfriends… you see, I being me (and as testified in my orkut profile) have been a Dog and hence have had the liberty to go around with more than one members of the opposite sex at different periods of time… At that time (and in the heat of the moment, following my Doggy instincts) whichever female was with me, her smell did make a place somewhere in my head. I never cared about the names of those perfumes/deos/scents or whatever ‘Eau De Toilette’ (in simple words toilet water) they used, but now it seems it might have been a good idea if I had done so then, and here is why…

When I am somewhere with a gorgeous entity (otherwise why wd I be somewhere with them!) and by a quirk of fate, I don’t quite remember her name, and God forbid, if she is wearing a ‘Eau De Toilette’ that already exists in the associative array stored in my head (umm I am at a loss of words and had to use some software terminology. L ), the only name I would utter is the one that is already in my head!!!... Many times I have mixed keertana with surabhi, ruby with ramya… and … never mind…

So here lies the problem. Since some scientists enforced the link between what u smell and what u remember, not thinking that sometimes such links are best forgotten, I have to face the music and that too of a heavy metal rock band with a female lead singer whose name and voice are similar to the femme fatale standing next to me (which alluva sudden is the only name I forgot and now remember again, but its too late any ways), singing very emotional morose songs (Alanis Morissette style) and u r the main villain in it!!!

And on the other side, u r walking in a densely crowded market, having Gol Gappe, and suddenly ur head is hammered with the pictures of a person that u had tucked away somewhere in ur head. The side effects? The Gol Gappa gets stuck in ur esophagus, u gulp it down without relishing the taste, and have to pay for one more to guarantee satisfaction…

So the real problem, now I understand, is this. This smell linking actually encourages more spending, and is a threat to the Indian economy, because we end up saving less!

Mr. Chidambaram, are u listening???

Emotions … no this is not the name of a new perfume that I heard about, it is the good old English word that means what It means… yes it seems a lil awkward these days to me to talk about emotions (at least publicly as if it were a lingerie brand), but I think there is an emotional bulb in me that has been switched on somewhere in the recent past…

How or when or why, I dunno, but there is a latent feeling (another word relatively new in my usage) that has become dominant… I would like to call this phenomenon “My coming of age” :P

I am no dna tester or any kind of tester, in fact, being a software techie, I detest testers like hell! So I didn’t try and find out the bug here, but I know that there is a new functionality that has developed, or rather evolved… that of emotions, or simply put, I have started noticing that men are as emotional and paranoid about their feelings as their better halves!

For instance, we had a very old fiat car… maybe for around 20 years and by now it had almost become a dilapidated, antiquated, and almost defunct piece of metal. Kudos to my dad for having the perseverance to drive it as recently as 4 weeks back! Well but finally the time had come when we all knew that we would bid adieu to this family treasure and this beauty would have to go…

My brother and I went to the car, kissed it at all the dirty places (dirty as in full of grease and dirt NO PUN INTENDED), sat in it, cleaned it for one last time (when there was no use doing that) and then, took pictures of it from all possible angles… including its bottom, so that we do not forget the shaft, and the bonnet, to ensure that we have in our memories all the parts that we had replaced since buying it … totally, we might have taken around 30 pics of our car… and with a sorry heart, left for delhi…

Things would have been fine if that was all there was to it. The day the car was to be actually towed away, my dad started feeling the same way for the car, and took another set of pictures with the car... in fact, he got the car out, sat in it, and took a picture as if he were driving it!

I know my dad and I would probably never talk about our ‘feelings’ for our car the way we felt for the car that day, but it showed in the pics… or, maybe it was always around, and its only now that I have started to realize it… I have come of age :)

In dino dil mera mujhse hai keh raha .. tu khwab saja..
hai tujhe bhi ijazat, kar le tu bhi mohobbat..

listening to this song on my comp this morning
feeling sort of low,
in a vest and faded pajamas,
only the coarse side of me left to show..

didn’t go for tennis today!
Prolly didn’t feel like…
Not looking forward to a special moment today,
Maybe it doesn’t seem like…

Everything is working the way it should,
but there seems something amiss
Instead of getting ready for work,
I am writing a thing like this…

The world seems to have shut up,
Can’t hear anything!
The Purpose seems like it was never there
Can’t walk even an inch.