because....

things have been going wrong with me for quite a while now...i think right since early 08, and when my purse got pick pocketed in a very crowded metro yesterday evening around 8, i had finally had enough. i somehow got back to kalyani, told my mother the news (who of course wasn't happy, but wasn't half as furious as she deserved to be, either), blocked my ATM card, and then started ruing my loss. i didn't care much for the money which was there (which was quite a lot, incidentally). i was ruing the loss of some items with a rather large amount of sentimental value. they included :
1. my old hdfc atm card. the account is now defunct but i used to hold it jointly with dad.
2. lots of business cards, some from pune, mumbai, chennai and delhi, most irreplaceable.
3. my 2nd year ID card from FC.
4. All of Mother's blessings and quite a few of Sri Aurobindo's messages, which i had received in class XII, and during my two pondy trips.
5. a really tattered piece of paper, in which my friend sarathy had outlined the routemap and the howto for getting to pondy from pune. way back in 05.
6. the original cover of samya's hybrid theory cassette.
7. a torn Rs. 5 note which dates back to class 12, and an incident involving samya and me.

all these had absolutely zero value, monetarily. but they was irreplaceable. there was also my ID card of Kalyani and my BCL card. which now brings us to today's events.

Sometime after 1 in the afternoon today, i get a call from BCL. They ask me whether I have lost my card, and I reply yes, fearing the worst. The news which comes after that surprises me. They say that the card has been found by someone who had then called them up, and would i please contact the person? and they pass on his number. heart quivering, i call the number up. The person who picks up says that he's found my purse on the dumdum railway tracks, and that it had no money in it save a torn 5 rupee note. he adds that i can come down to dumdum station around 4 and collect it. which i did.

nothing but the cash was taken. not even either of my ATM cards, the functional AND the dysfunctional...this was way beyond anything i might have hoped for. i had given the purse up for lost...and all its contents...which included some with real deep ties to my school and college life. but i found it....

which gives me a glimmer of hope. maybe all is not lost. this is one of the few positive things to have happened to me in a long, long time...and maybe i can build on this. keep making my own luck like i used to before.

maybe, just maybe...lets see....

The Calligrapher - Edward Docx

My letters looked beautiful, no doubt, but writing when you're upset is like writing when you're drunk: it feels great at the time (profound, even) and yet when you read it back in the morning - my God. Even at the most sober of times, words are hardly to be trusted - put two or three of them together and they immediately start revolting, conspiring unintended meanings here, fermenting duplicitous nuances there, and firing off in the wrong directions as and when they please. Of course, what I would really have liked to do was write her something so true, so moving, so elegant, so witty, so insightful, so fin, so direct and so oblique that she could not help but surrender - a poem, perhaps, or a whole cycle entitled 'Songs and Sonnets'. In the end, though, I found that I could not rely on words at all beyond carrying out the most basic tasks. So I settled for three lines - the postscript from my first effort.....

I picked this book up from the British Library in the same manner (and for the same reasons) that i've usually found books and music since class 11...because it looked interesting and i was always ready for experimentation. the book looked alluring (for not just the cover) since it was woven around a collection of poems by John Donne. But it has turned out to be way better than anything I expected from it.

I shall not go into the details of the story. Or the story at all, for that matter. I shall instead focus on how the book goes about seducing (the best word I came across after careful thought) the reader. Spoken from the male protagonist's point of view, the book is witty, candid, thoughtful, dark and heartwarming at the same times. Throughout the narrative, the author keeps on making spot-on observations on life, love, relationships, London, and the universe in general. The storyline is thoughtfully conceived, well woven and flawlessly executed. It never lacks pace, and has its tastefully sprinkled share of twists and turns. and then there is the one which hits you, which would have been the most brilliant climax possible, but the author is still holding something up his sleeve. you (specially if you're well versed with your o'henry and saki) expect it, anticipate it for page after page....and the author carefully sidesteps your efforts to out think him. and then when you're least expexting it. WHAM! the book finishes off with a grand flourish, leaving you gasping for your breath.

i gobbled this book up (ok, that's not new)...and it was some of the most wicked (in a most complimentary sense) storytelling i've seen in quite a while. get it if you can, and read it.

out of _____, out of ____?

distance makes the heart grow fonder, they say....
works for me.
but it also makes the heart look elsewhere...seen it happen once too many times...

but there'll always be home, and friends. the wonderwall.
and there'll always be.
the roadside chai shop.
the place at aundh where we used to sit and talk and talk.
riding on bikes.
singing our favourite songs...out of tune.
shared memories, of which each of us have a fragment, carefully stowed away in our hearts.
going for movies together. the whole gang.
getting caught by the traffic police. and begging and haggling thereafter.
forgetting to put the phone on silent in the library. and people staring when it rang.
going to sinhagad, just sitting there and basking in the glory of our friendship...

there are some things which distance can never make us forget.
or fade.
a million miles away, but always right beside us.

for ishaan, kapil, daniel, vibhav, shanky, amit, vedant....

what?

this is about nothing in particular...
about crushed roses, maybe...
or a song which keeps playing in my head...
a tune which refuses to go away.
scraps of verses written here and there.
a half finished paperback.
a verry old photograph which got me really nostalgic.
going to see a friend off to the station.
coming back through a city of empty roads, halogen lights and unexpected draughts looking for some company.
takes and re-takes while jamming.
things left unsaid.
some said...but too late to make any difference.

wonderwall.

of friends who make my world go round...

malda and avik - my brothers. my guarding angels. the reason i've made it this far.
prateek and abhilash - my friends through all my troubles and a million memories.
samya and puja - the ones i fight with the most, and the ones who have been there in almost all my favourite photo-freeze moments...
auto, dibbo and bhupen - the ones who have walked the same roads with me for so long, that no memory is complete without them.

daniel and kapil- two people so different and so similar. full of life, and full of quiet.
ishaan (and his bike) - the one who has no clue how important he really is for me. even without his bike.
deepti - the only person who'll never be shocked at anything i say or do. my wonderwall.

once upon very long ago

photo taken on 6th may, 1994.
class II A.
teacher - aditi miss.
students -
top row (from left) - Arindam Gupta, Supratim Gupta, Souparna, Rohit, Swagata, Uttara, Mainak, Ritabrata.
2nd row - sayantani, pallabi, tania, Debashis, Niloy, Snigdha, Kaushik, Manisha, Sourav K Dhar, unknown, Tanuka.
3rd row - Nilanjana, Samik, Rounak, Shiladitya, Sayantika, Rituparna, Bidyutparna, swarnali, unknown, tanima (?).
Bottom row - Siddharth Sankar, Reetam, Soumabho, Abhishek Karmakar, Arpan, Sayan C, Debashis Pan, Arindam Ganguly.

conversation with a best friend.

Ishaan : fuck.. Dont you have 1 more yr to finish??
Reetam: results shud be out by august. round the time u return
Ishaan: Return of the King :D
Reetam: riiiite...
Ishaan: ahahahahahah
Reetam: anyway il need people around me to prevent me from hitting the slf destruct button now and again...heh
Ishaan: Tell me bout it..Luckily i have a few friends beside Phirrangs here. otherwise id be a goner..
Reetam: lol...and finally...i think i need a gf...a nice one...dont u dare laugh....
Ishaan: You cant have my girlfriend either!! Il pay for one if you want!!!!!
Reetam: dont want her....
Ishaan: Ahahahahhahahahahahahahhahaha
Reetam: and no, you dont need to pay
Ishaan: Ahahahahhahahahhahahahahhahahahahahhaha
Reetam: il be looking for one for keeps..
Ishaan: Ya thats good man. trust me. Im goin thru it!! :D
Reetam: goin thru what...paying for gfs? :P
Ishaan: I consider myself lucky to have found one!!
FUCK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Reetam: and you almost ditched her too once, remember?
Ishaan: She pays for me OK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!??????
Reetam: WOW!
Ishaan: Ya i do
Reetam: so ur a professional gigolo now? with a single assignment? :P
Ishaan: And you remember the time when were unwell and i forced you to go to Barista
with me just so i could have an excuse to meet her..
Reetam: awww.....cute lover boy....
Ishaan: By pays….i meant for my needs :)
Like food
Reetam: lol. LOL
Ishaan: YOU JACKASS!!
Reetam: ya i get it...you're still so easy to rile up.. :P
Ishaan: Hey i miss this shit man!! Im kinda miserable here..
Reetam: so do i....remember the first time you brought vibhav over to my old room?
it was raining…and we had one umbrella…and we went to mcdee's
Ishaan: Fuck i dont!!
Reetam: and argued abt who'll go and order
Ishaan: FUCK I DONT!!
Reetam: you had that job then...and u used to come and have chai every evening near my place....the kothrud one
the time we 1st went to lonavla. you me and vibhav
Ishaan: Ya i remember
Hehehehe…that was fun!!
Reetam: and u used to read one piece on your friggin mobile
which took a bath in lonavla :P
Ishaan: Naazkashi na..
hahahah ya
Reetam: fuck! i miss those times....
not the mobile bathing bit...the rest
Ishaan: That phone survived so much!!
And the way it got away from me is the WORST!!
I just went to that triangle park to have a sutta
1 simple fuckin sutta and i lose it in my society!!
Ive fuckin dropped it from the 5th floor and still worked..
Reetam: thats how you usually lose stuff...
way you least expect it...trust me
Ishaan: Haha
Speakin of phones im buying the N97
Reetam; FUUUHHKK!
btw im in half a mind to post this conversation on my blog....
Ishaan: I dont mind..
Reetam: not even the gigolo bit?
Ishaan: I would be honoured :p for some reason..
Reetam: it'll be imported into my fb notes...
Ishaan: Especially the gigolo bit!!!!!
:D

beyond.

i lost a friend yesterday. he got in a bike accident near kothrud on friday...rammed into the divider while trying to avoid a car which had taken a right where there was no right. this is the 2nd such incident to happen in 2 years. last time i was there in pune, battling the worst of my demons....so it passed in a haze of stupor...kinda. this time i was in kol, at home, mostly jobless, so the news, when it finally came yesterday evening, hit me rather hard. since then i've been having the weird depressing thoughts that are so me.
the worst bit came when i was returning home yesterday by the metro. it was quarter to ten, and i was there on the platform with my back against those pillars, facing the tracks...and as the light from the train fell onto the tracks in front of me, i got this very odd thought....i was literally 3 steps away from death. that was the distance between me and the wheels...and for one (later scary) moment, i wondered about the possibilities of walking those three steps....but sense prevailed, thankfully. then when i was on the train, this song started playing on my mp3 player (which was on shuffle, for a change) - switchfoot's dare you to move...its a song which has meant so many things to me so many times...and this time too...it just blew my top...i kept on hearing the song again and again right till when the train entered garia....and the song which came on next was even more prophetic under the circumstances....good charlotte's the young and the hopeless...these are the situations which make me look up with a raised eyebrow, say 'riiiight'...and wonder whether there's someone up there smirking at me right now....heh.
i'l miss nikhil...terribly...another strand tying me to pune snapped...but its made me realise what's important once more...for a tiny moment of extreme clarity, i knew what really matters...its lost again now, but somewhere deep down inside, it still echoes...i just have to look hard enough...

this post shall have three bits. the lighthearted bit, the introspective bit, and the obscure bit.

part one : where my life stands.

i have exams which i might bungle again (okay, this is getting repetitive), my friends leave one by one for their jobs, emptying the city of the young, the restless, the bros, and a large section of wierdos (in quality, if not quantity). all the while as the friend who promised me financial support till get a job teetering on the edge of educational bankruptcy (if there is such a word). there are bandhs all the while (read reasons for getting a holiday from univ) and there's my delicate practical attendance. there are feelings of jealousy i never knew existed, and there are bleeding fingers and the sheer joy of being able to play my favourite songs on the guitar. there are bits of life definitely looking up and bits wondering which way up was again. the most interesting of still lifes are noticeable amidst incessant flux. and there's my deliberate attempt to cut down on the usage of long pompous words.
there's one of my favourite series possibly in its final season (HIMYM) and there's another due to start the final season in a few months (Lost). there's another killer movie with a killer guest appearance by simon pegg, and there's the cold...brr...but i'm still bathing every day, in cold water...and i intend to keep it that way...hehe.

part 2 : how my life stands.

people walk in, walk by, walk past...walk out at times. i usually am a mute spectator. sometimes i make half hearted attempts to raise my hand or speak the words which might make a difference, but i rarely do so. optimism and fatalism weave patterns in and out of my life, and my guitar gets de-tuned once too many. people ask me questions i do not have answers to, i have questions i keep locked away. still, guess things could have been so much worse. there still are enough people smiling around me, and enough reasons to smile myself. my singing gets less and less crappier, and i've made peace

where my life stands.

this post shall have three bits. the lighthearted bit, the introspective bit, and the obscure bit.

part 1 : where my life stands.

i have exams which i might bungle again (okay, this is getting repetitive), my friends leave one by one for their jobs, emptying the city of the young, the restless, the bros, and a large section of wierdos (in quality, if not quantity). all the while as the friend who promised me financial support till i get a job teetering on the edge of educational bankruptcy (if there is such a word). there are bandhs all the while (read reasons for getting a holiday from univ) and there's my delicate practical attendance. there are feelings of jealousy i never knew existed, and there are bleeding fingers and the sheer joy of being able to play my favourite songs on the guitar. there are bits of life definitely looking up and bits wondering which way up was again. the most interesting of still lifes are noticeable amidst incessant flux. and there's my deliberate attempt to cut down on the usage of long pompous words. there's one of my favourite series possibly in its final season (HIMYM) and there's another due to start the final season in a few months (Lost). there's another killer movie with a killer guest appearance by simon pegg, and there's the cold...brr...but i'm still bathing every day, in cold water...and i intend to keep it that way...hehe.

part 2 : where my life stands.

people walk in, walk by, walk past...walk out at times. i usually am a mute spectator. sometimes i make half hearted attempts to raise my hand or speak the words which might make a difference, but i rarely do so. optimism and fatalism weave patterns in and out of my life, and my guitar gets de-tuned once too often. people ask me questions i do not have answers to, i have questions i keep locked away. still, guess things could have been so much worse. there still are enough people smiling around me, and enough reasons to smile myself. my singing gets less and less crappier, and i've made peace with people, life, and myself. well, most of the time...but this ferris wheel has started to spin faster and faster....

part ? : where my life stands.

i hope there is no almost by the end of the year.
i long for the feel of the sunlight between my fingers.
okay...the above 2 lines are not part of a poem. its just luck they kinda rhyme.
silence does have a sound...more so in music.
minor chords can be used to convey smiles. and major chords for the wistful smile. its just how you want it to be.
if i hold out my hand, sooner or later i will be able to feel the wind against my fingers....i believe that.
faith can be such a fickle minded word at times.
time draws near...

the song without a chorus

so many smiles,
so many faces,
so many lives
leave their traces.

so many nods,
so many tears,
so many feelings
over the years.

the fingers that softly
touched your cheek;
the voice you wanted
to hear all week.

those little things
that mattered a lot,
they never go away,
or so i thought.

so close, so far,
a heartbeat away;
to and fro thoughts
all night all day.

hands that push away
in both directions;
redundant feelings that
were your world once.

'tis a lonely song
that only sings alone,
like a dead letter,
or a ringing phone.

so me and my guitar
wait for a chorus;
for one more rainbow,
a silver lining for us...

HELP!

i.have.exams.
the above statement is a fact.

i.need.to.study.
the above statement is a conjecture.

or, actually, fact. i'm very close to a repeat telecast of last sem's disastrous result. disastrous used here as a gross understatement.
i'm one of those people who're come pre-equipped with a panic button. all these years, i've happily put away studying as long as possible. then when exams would be appropriately near, the panic button would get activated automatically and i'l start having nightmares about flunking, which would then propel me towards books.

but i think this panic button has a shelf life. i'm becoming surer by the day that it's acting up.

when i was in school, the panic button usually activated roughly 3 weeks before my exams.
by the time i waqs in 3rd year of college, that time had reduced to a week.
1st sem of my msc, that had come down to 2 days.
2nd sem and it didnt activate till i had the question paper in hand and actually blanked out.....

that was when i figured out something was very, very wrong.
so i've managed to temporarily fix it for the next 3 sems. but its coming apart again. 5 weeks left and i ain't half as scared as i ought to be. which equates to next to no studying. that's bad, right?

so, as i said earlier......HELP!!

Thoughts of rain...

What would one say of a singer-songwriter who died at 26, having released only 3 albums which received next to none commercial success, a victim of depression all his life? We know our Dylan and our Gilmore and our Parker, but Nick Drake was not just a musician, he was a poet......a poet of words and of notes. He isn't loud, he doesn't demand your attention. His songs form images in your mind, of all that he sings and of all that he does not...of spring and autumn, of leaves and lakes, of rain and sand....of all the things we seem to forget about whilst we live our conveyor belt lives.

You don't just listen to his music, you feel it with all your senses, and at times with senses you didn't think you possessed. He looks for the profound in the mundane. His every note is filled with so much emotion it cannot fail to touch you.

Turn off the lights. Listen to pink moon, or river man, or road, or black eyed dog, or thoughts of rain...go take a walk, or sit on the terrace and gaze at the stars, soak in his music...You won't forget that feeling...ever...

Music has had better heralds, better musicians, better lyricists, better storytellers...Nick Drake might or might not be one of them...only time will tell. He is one of those rare musicians who bares his soul through six strings and his fragile voice and draws us into his world.....

You can say the sun is shining if you really want to
I can see the moon and it seems so clear
You can take the road that takes you to the stars now
I can take a road that'll see me through
I can take a road that'll see me through...

memories in motion III - Aila re

the afternoon that Aila struck, we were in college. it was a monday, and they let us off right after the break. pointless, since it was already raining heavily by then, and trains had stopped running. there was no way out of kalyani....
i was the first one to dare the 15min walk back to our outhouse. i wore my bag like a kevlar vest since the rain was lashing (yes, i mean it very literally) from behind. i managed to open my umbrella (possible for the aforesaid reason), not to protect myself from the rain, that would be impossible, but from missiles flying around in the wind. the normally 15 min walk took almost 30 mins. i was being constantly shoved from behind by the wind and the rain, and every time i would see a bike or a van approaching, i would hastily come off the road, scared that a strong gust might throw it at me. progress was excruciatingly slow. the videos i took are pretty bad, since everything around was a blur. luckily i reached my room unscathed, with more or less everything in my bag dry, including my mp3 player and my cell.

memories in motion II - the menthos experiment *shiver shudder shiver*

during my last month in pune i met vedant when he'd come on holiday. amit, ishaan and he came over at my place....we were on the terrace and decided to conduct the menthos experiment.
step 1 : take bottle of cold drinks
improvisation - since we were not sure how intense the reaction would be, we reduced the level a little from the 500ml thums up bottle we had, a sip per person.

step 2 : take menthos and literally shove it down the bottle's throat.
tidbit - ishaan, dyslexic as he is, took a lot of time in placing them on the palm of his hand properly. even then i think a couple of em fell off.

step 3: enjoy as shown below.



end result, in ishaan's words....the fizz is fucked....
cheers to that.

memories in motion I - school friends through the viewfinder

this is over a year old...sometime in june last year, probably....auto, bhupen and samya came over to play CS at my place...i had got the switch from pune (was on my last ever 'holiday' then)....we hooked up my lappy, my brother's, auto's and sam's. though i am obviously the worst player of the 4, i must have been in luck that evening. when sam teamed up with me initially, we won. when auto and i teamed up later for a GG (garia guys) vs BB(bansdroni boys) showdown, we won again....heh. this is just us setting stuff up.


we'd gone to play football at benricke, and dibya made a befitting entry...seriously, we've known him since class 4 and he still cracks us up...


this is an instructional video as to why you should wear atleast 3 levels of clothing over your undies. sorry about the quality of the video.

i keep forgetting about these.....result of an extended jammin session...sam, me and riddhe da...we played all nite and then all morning...

about a phone call (for lack of a better topic)

vandy, my friend in pune, is getting married next february. much to the surprise of some, but, somehow, not to me, it will be an arranged marriage. she'd called me up yesterday night to invite me. i've asked for an engraved invitation card before i consider going. both of us know i'm just playing around. i won't miss something like this for the world. heh.
once our 18min conversation got over, i spent the better part of the next hour reminiscing (ruminating?) over my pune days, specially the 1st 2 years which can be summed up with one word....F1. Our lives back then were totally inseparable from that house...its airy, large ceilinged rooms, quentin's comp upstairs, the room below the stairs where rahul had his den, the backyard where we played frisbee, cricket, football....
WE, in my previous sentence, comprises so many people, in and out, that its mind boggling....harsha and sarathy, quentin, aaruna and sallu, zaheer(for a little while), rahul and abhay, harsh, kavish, prerana, vandana (vandy) and vandana, kavita, geetali, rohan et al., payal, pranjal (one night), me (more nights/days than i'd care to name), sunny, manish, tanu and anu....the original pune anime people...vedant, ishaan, amit, dan, shanky, kapil, sheetal, deepti...then there was siby and aarti (one a cousin, another the sister of harsha), and kamalika and satpal (the reds maniac)....the list can go on endlessly...this is just me scratching the surface.
that was a time of high morals and carefree living...we laughed, cried, ate, slept, lived, died, played, fought, sang...all together....life seemed so simple....
classes...and bunking classes...basketball court, long walks, congress bhavan, noodles and pasta (we were frequently broke)...open space and ice golas, fc road and fc hill, dorabjee...all fragments of colourful pictures, or smells, or tastes, or just indescribable feelings...they are still so real, just beyond a closed eyelid or at my fingertips, they aren't just feelings...they are something much, much more....the world moves on, life moves on...we've moved on, gone our ways and liveing our lives, but i'm sure everybody still remembers F1 much more than i do, and probably more than me...it defined us...those years will forever be an anchor in our lives from now on, where we'll look back to at the unlikeliest moments and wish we could walk in those rooms again and hear the echo of our own laughter and live that life again....

i suddenly miss pune like i've never missed the city before....

Thoughts as i stood on the Crossroads to Nowhere

following the footsteps
of the great idiot;
painting onto the canvas
of forgotten dreams,
with colors you can see
only with your eyes closed.
learning to perform miracles;
practising, believing,
until they are easier than breathing.
laughing the clouds
off the face of the sun,
and crying the rain down
to wash away a broken, battered heart.
wanting to be for just a day
a flower;
or maybe a drop of water in a calm pond.
killing time, waiting for something
to happen. the phone to ring, maybe.
smiling at nobody for no reason
in particular; and seeing an expersated face
across the looking glass.
living life in slow-motion-turbulence.
we are all but mannequins on a stage,
the backdrop for a great play
for a yet invisible audience
(whose sense of humour intrigues me).
you're most cordially invited.
your laughter and tears shall suffice
as the price.....

Yume no Tsubasa

what colour are my dreams?
red, blue, green or black?
are they real or just streams
of cotton fluff lying around?

should i try and touch
them? i dunno what will happen.
honestly,i really don't know much
about all this dreams and stuff.

i supposedly am real.
whatever that means.
its only that sometimes i feel
my dreams are more alive than i am.

i woke up in the middle of the night
to find dreams floating over my head.
wispy, slight, translucent, bright,
a kaleidoscope of shapes and hues.

the only thing i wanna know,
...are they a part of me?
and what happens if i let go
of them? do i fade away too?

can i please see your dreams, too?

E-minor

i play a tune...
of wide open skies
with cotton clouds and clear,
of my family and friends
and all that i hold dear.

i sing a song...
of chilly winter evenings
when sentences turn misty;
spent with hot chocolate
and books, old and dusty.

i hum along...
to life on a conveyer belt,
and unless we stop to stare
at what's all around us,
we'll never know who we are.

5570

we sit for hours facing each other,
you and i; companions inseparable,
and anybody who would bother
to look at us would say we're in love.
worlds apart; yet made for one another.

i love to have you right beside me,
hold your hand while we share
a million adventures; would i be
insane if i wanted you to stay
with me for ever after, my dear lappy?

ANGEL

So let it rain now,
the colours of the sky,
whle i look up and ask
you how when where and why.

and then let the world come
crashing down;while you and i
stil hold hands and look on
into each others' eyes and smile.

and if we let ourselves step
right out of the map and fly,
we'll go to lands beyond the horizon;
careless, carefree, as days go by.

and then lets walk on oceans
as far as our eyes can see,
for i've waited for you snce
when you first painted a question for me.

and still i look to you at times
and wonder whether you are real.
wishing myself to build the courage,
to hold you back and tell you how i feel.

for i know the time will come,
when you'll spread your petal wings,
and even as i fail to tell you to stay,
fly way to a sky of forgoten dreams...