~and winter takes leave.

winter is an odd season in many of ways.... its silent. summer, monsoon, spring, autumn... they're boisterous. winter comes slowly. you hold autumn's hand... and then suddenly its not autumn any more... its winter. autumn is never a season proper out here anyway; though spring is, or at least was till a couple of years ago... anyway, autumn is just a fleeting touch before the the biting wind drives home the point. and then you learn to live with winter all over again, with its mood swings, its beauty and its cruelty....

...and then you wake up one morning and see the sun shining a bit brighter than usual. and the wind bites a little less. the breeze against your face feels nice. and you can hold that elusive patch of sunlight between your fingers once more. slowly, unknowingly, when you were least expecting it, right at that moment when you were looking in the other direction, winter walked away.

i've been noticing winter leave every year for quite sometime now. learnt not to look away this time of the year. always remembered that last touch as winter's hands let go of mine. i never get along well with winter. its the season i like the least. but somehow right before i start rejoicing at the coming of spring, for one tiny moment before winter lets go...when i feel our fingers brush for one last time, i feel an indescribable melancholy inside...which is strange, since no other season makes me feel this way.

wish there would be somebody to explain exactly what this feeling is...

but i know this one thing. if i ever walk away... this is how it'll be. when nobody's expecting it. when everybody is busy looking away. no goodbye is sometimes the best goodbye.

nostalgic bits of randomness

Have you ever stopped to stare at roadside flowers? run around on dewy grass on early spring mornings? enjoyed the musty smell of frayed pages of old books? smiled back at strangers? Ever felt like walking back home in the rain? stopped whatever you were doing to listen to your favourite song on the radio? become teary eyed during mushy scenes in movies? Ever called up long lost friends for no apparent reason? wanted to believe in something that cannot be explained? ever loved? been loved? ever lain spread eagled on the terrace, counting the wishes amidst the phosphorescent sea of a million stars overhead, wondering whether yours was somewhere among those waves too?

see,i told you you know me..

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.