I figured

Flipping through webpages of intrigue,
pages with words of love, hate, romeo and juliet
I wondered propels or prompts me to write?

is it sheer boredom?
a willingness to see how efficient i still am at expressing myself ?
proving a point to someone?
reacting to someone's writing / blog / incident whether personal or otherwise ?

I keep coming up with newer ones newer reasons, newer justifications.
yes justifications is closer to the truth than reasons.

I do not have reasons to write, it seems.
Sad, but honest to self.

And yet justifications are abundant.

Flitting through the innumerous social networking sites
the only thing i ended up doing was to realise how my peers / friends are faring in life.
Reading blogs gives a more personal insight into a few more people's live's...

So here is a list of things i felt through this week's net surfing:

I figured this week, that my first crush has married and i'm still shy to speak to her
I figured that most of friends from school have ended up as techies and are either married/ getting married or to busy working to bother
I figured that i am so bored with myself that weekends are better slept off than stay awake.
Figured that i have nothing figured out in life and am not even getting there...

Figured that IM meant more than instant messenger, and that so many of our own youth are are so hurt and so disillusioned that educated and savvy that they are, they use their skills to trigger more than 6 bombs in the last fortnight at the heart of our country's capital.

figured that optimism isnt a positive thing its a disease

Figured that no matter what i say or proclaim
The I in me always gets centrestage
I figured that i had had enough of writing help files for an alien software (at least for the time being) and finally accepted that i have to move on proffessionally.
I figured that my inability to figure out what i want from / in life is creating havoc in so many people's lives.
I figured that i have to vent my angst out, every now and then, lest it numbs me so, that it doesnt matter anymore.
I need it to matter, my private angst to fuel something, even if its in the form of senseless mumblings like this.

A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London

Never until the mankind making
Bird beast and flower
Fathering and all humbling darkness
Tells with silence the last light breaking
And the still hour
Is come of the sea tumbling in harness

And I must enter again the round
Zion of the water bead
And the synagogue of the ear of corn
Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound
Or sow my salt seed
In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn

The majesty and burning of the child's death.
I shall not murder
The mankind of her going with a grave truth
Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
With any further
Elegy of innocence and youth.

Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter,
Robed in the long friends,
The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,
Secret by the unmourning water
Of the riding Thames.
After the first death, there is no other.

When we had first studied this poem, we had all instantly fallen in love with the essence of the work, the intricacies of the layering that Dylan Thomas displayed, today, i understand the emotion, perhaps for the first time.
As DT perfectly sums it up "After the first death there is no other"

We need to celebrate life and celebrate it well, lest we are prey to the intricate larger design of life.
Unfortunately, what we have today is what is called a pregnant poise, silence that eats up what remains of our soul(s).


May we have the strength to live through this ordeal, this senseless existence where we grow our callow selves with the hope that we may engineer our life through the bane of existence, adroitly.


Alas, we realise the folly of our belief, of even the slightest moments when we have felt in control.

The day i wrote this, almost a couple of months back, i was numb yet raw, stung yet hopeful.
Today its been replaced by a stoic acceptance of the wheels and the three ladies.

May the yarn still be spinning

Finally the Circus is over !

I have done it again! Proverbially, put my big foot in my big mouth .
The Semi finals were the perfect anti-climax to an otherwise fascinating 44 days of exciting cricket.
After the DD where thrashed out of the competition by the RR, one expected the K XI P to trounce the CSK, but that was not to be. (Me and my big mouth)


However Captain Cool (MSD as called by the SG the little master), finally succumbed to Captain Cooler Text, not after he had tried all the "rascal" stunts that he had up his sleeve, Mind It.


Finally my faith was reinstated !


RR reigned supreme albeit the last ball, credit to the CSK lads who fought their hearts out, but for a few dropped catches, a few tactical errors in their batting lineup and their bowling order.


to be contd...

5 posts in a day

For those who commented that i have come to the end of "My Literary Career", and unless i start "practising" writing, the pen shall fail me...


A rude reminder, that productivity and quality have but the faintest correlation, when it comes to the queer.


Not for nothing that a Swapnil Asnodkar, having played donkeys years for Goa, has to make his mark under the Evergreen Shane Warne. Sad that he shall perhaps never earn the India cap...


(Alas, i digress again..., No more of that for now...)


Likewise, i may end up with 5 posts within a day, but if that is any benchmark to go by, then i shall quote this poem by the enigmatic Robert Frost, which i first read when i was in class VIII perhaps, heres's to all who read my blog:

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

"Mending Wall", Robert Frost, 1915

The Road oft travelled

Seldom do people realise that, it is so much more tougher making ur mark on the road oft travelled.
Mine, as always is not only oft travelled but also often the dogmatic, much to the shock of my friends wo have come to expect a Harry Houdini off me oftener than not.

Some of my steadiest ideals / icons have been people who have made it big (in their own way) having followed the traveled road.

Sometime, in my early years of fascination with literature and literary figures, i came across these lines (by Samuel Beckett) while embarking on the never ending journey to James Joyce...

"His Writing is not about something, it is that something itself"

Contrary to the above i had always agreed with D.H. Lawrence when he said: " Never trust the artist, trust the tale. As for the artist, he's usually a dribbling liar"

Years later, when i examine the statements , i find little to choose...
For my well wishers who complain that i limit myself too much to the Dickens, Hardy's, Swifts', and the Joyce's and so on (basically those who comprised the erstwhile cannon).

Is it not fair if i complain that the Llosa's and the Marquez', the Seth's and the Pamuks' of the world by whom they swear are but the same, only representing a different generation.

Ponder....

Delhi Disappoints

For those who follow Indian Cricket...
The DLF IPL is almost at its wee hours or almost there ie...

For all who follow Indian Cricket, it is a moment of deep introspection, and of course unheralded joy.
Ever since one haryanvi jat called kapil dev nikhanj captured the imagination of the nation by holding aloft the 1983 Prudential World cup at the mecca of Cricket the MCC (based out of the Lords cricket ground).

The centre stage of Indian cricket has certainly shifted from the metros namely Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi and Chennai (not necessarily in that order), to the hinterlands, chiefly the cow belts .

Today, Team India is lead by a Jharkhandi, and is supported by a punjabi from chandigarh(yuvraj), the loci of the team is decided by the harbhajan's (jalandhar) sreesanths' (kerala) , piyush chawla praveen kumars, and of course the pathan brothers, not to mention the partihiv's and the kaifs, the munafs and the asnodkars(goa).

What the IPL has done effectively (now with the rajasthan royals cake walking to the finals), is that it has accepted the pattern and patronised it,

No longer are bastions safe, the Mumbai's , Delhi's, Kolkata's and Chennai (assuming that the Kings XI Punjab, based out of Mohali trounce Chennai and make it an all small town finals for the biggest tournament (arguably) ever in INDIA)


to be continued...

Sigh ! i let myself down yet again

Amongst other things i have been preoccupied in telling myself that indulging in any literary endeavour when one earns his bread by writing the following day in day out, is but a fallacy, the vainest of ironies.(so much so that ones thought process is constrained by the logical, sequential, chronological, and brief.) Much to my chagrin and grief.

Please find below an example of creating a new blog:

Do the following:

1. Click the Create Post link.
2. A new Compose window is displayed.
3. Enter the required title in the Title box.
4. Click the Tab button.
5. Start keying in the series of vague thoughts that are straying / drifting along the milky way of your mind.

And Viola !
The new post is posted.

Such is the irony that is wasted even on ironical. (God, Kudos to myself for coming up with a statement like the one above.)

It just shows that even the great Holden Caulfield (Jr) or a Bertie Wooster had a clearer mind than the i one i possess right now.

Nevertheless, i shall motor on and not give in to such self criticisms, after all isnt a self doubting self critical mind better than a Writers block.
Dont know whether thats said before. Feeling high for coming up with something as original. (Pun Intended)

So, where was i ?
Ok, now i remember, i was about to come up with my first post after a self imposed hiatus that stretched way beyond the limits of my own imagination.

And here i am gibberish as ever...

Clarity of thought, is all that is required, and boy isnt that something that comes naturally to me.

Far from being apologetic, i question my audience (self vanity at its best) whether this will qualify as a valid post.

To Hell with Reader Response Theory.

This IS my latest post.

Take it or leave it. (Read Leave it)

So; Till my ramblings begin again, peace to my readership. (Convinced i am that some people will actually take the pains to come to this line)

May you always be Forever Young.

Sparking the Renaissance

1 year 2 months and 2 days post my last blog, i finally give into the realisation that i have been downright lazy and just not given vent to the creative juices within.

As a result, a vile bile it has turned to!
and made me not just react(to any attempts of pointing to the same by my well wishers) with vitriol of the highest quality, but have shamelessly blamed the rigamarole of life for my own inactivity and lack of interest.

It is not that i have nothing to write anymore (i convince myself), its just that i find it too lowly to give in to the pressures of maintaining one (i tell others).

The time is rife for an uprising! , (or The Rising as Aamir or Ketan Mehta or YashRaj would have liked it)
[ Sorry for missing out Farrukh Dhondy, i still believe (from whatever little i've read of him) that he couldnt possibly have anything to do with the term The Rising, after all the guy does have a sense of humour and wry, dry one at that :P]

This is to herald a new awakening, a fresh blowing of the bugle announcing a dramatic reprise, a la phoenix.

So that, for another 1 year 2 months and 2 days, the Rip Van Winkle within lulls the phoenix to sleep.

Till then.

Ciao.