as you like it

and often the humming birds do sing
a tragic tale of valiant bravado
never once do they partake
the venomous words that prey

and then the little schoolboy
with freckles on a cheddar
skip over the puddles
dreams of the summers

and then the worker who toil
with which to take home
the spoils of his sweaty palms
and perchance to dream
a different dream

and then the aged with fluttering eyes
sits atop the bench as he sighs
the moments of consternation
seeking again, the bubble reputation

whereupon lie the carvings
while the bird perches itself
and then the wind doth blow
this way or that, you would never know..

 

VJ

A Million Sparkles In The Eyes, say it with the pirate Ayes!

While there are a million small things that find its way into the tiny membranes of my brain I choose to not conveniently ignore the insignificant ones. I choose to, instead direct all of my attention to those nuggets of superficial gratification leaving behind in its wake the milestones that could not have been anything but path-breaking. I would love to carry my past as I move into the present and drool over the future. I would love to remember each assumption and liaison, each trip and each highs. Alas, those ephemeral roses wilt under duress, go odorless with the gentle passage of time and become only, a reminder of the innocent adolescence.

There are some who chose to stay, who chose not to travel afar but stay back and watch others do so. From my vantage point, my life seems debauchery at best. From where I see it, I have digressed again, as I so often do. I drift like a log drifts in the sea. I fly like a paper flies in the wind and I sputter like a spark does as it escapes the cauldron.  I am my cauldron and I know it. It makes me not happy to be dawned with this realization. I carry the guilt around as if time is of essence and I have to make amends. I am not running for cover, I am not regretful after-all those were my own sculptures I tore down, those were my own castles I burnt and those were my own epitaphs I wrote down. I worry though if ever I would return. I doubt my existence not because of what I did but because of what I might not do.

There are cleverer ways to spill the beans. I have my constraints not to dither.

I detest the word. I deny its relevance yet move towards the same with extreme fluidity. Is there an end to what is now not only in perpetual motion but hoots and conkers so as not to be conveniently overlooked. The strata that is the meta-physical fetches the crucified insignia. I have but failed to live up to it. I have denied myself the one thing I deserved. This, and things to come portends an ominous realization. I am not alone. Sadly, this “enlightenment” lifts you in ways the yogi would fall short of. We are, as we used to learn in fifth grade, a social animal after-all. Simple pleasures, like being termed an animal used to be amusing then. The institution that was the school, our alma-mater, then, was a closed church with domes so high it was impossible to look too afar. Now, as we stand outside the shrine our eyes roll not away from the skies. The infinity we knew not then, for better or for worse I cannot tell. To each his own, I say; to hell and alone it might into stray.

Sorry, I should not have told you this.

take me to a place so far..

To a place so special lets leave it all..

a destination that ends it all

you look back to see the journey undone

you look ahead to find a path under the sun.

where waves touch the feet in not an ephemeral way

where soft cool breeze holds a permanant sway

a life so distant it seems a dream

a dream so vivid heaven it does seem.

take me to a place so far

relive the moments I have had so far

i would be glad to end it all

a heaven for me I would have seen it all.

blissful joy I have never known

is it me or everyone I have known?

there is a path that takes us all

the dreams that keep our body and soul

dream a dream for you never know

a shooting star it might into grow.

©Varun Jain

Mira SE102

I never understood what kept her going. Obstacles of such kind would have been enough for me to succumb to the comfort of a retreat. But she was not deterred. She had this intensity that was visible right from the moment one laid his eyes on her. Such was her passion for things that the world seemed to revolve around her and her alone. A distinct flavor those days had. With tired limbs and sleepy eyes we walked around. Through packed buses and choked local trains our days were a mixture of anticipation and exhaustion. I had been like that never in my life. Yet with her, it strangely felt like this was destined to be so. When we walked around hand in hand through the streets of Mumbai looking for urchins and those hapless destitutes it was not that sympathy for them led us onto it, seemed like it was  a natural progression of things.

When you meet someone for the first time, you go into the conversation with a vigor and energy. You try your best to project the best possible image in front of the person, more so when you consider them worthier than thou. Strangely, when I met Mira for the first time on that April day, I had completely misplaced my well crafted sense of steering the conversation. Words that were before elicited in a jiffy found it hard to come by. Eyes that used to wander aimlessly were stuck in a terrific jam. I know not what had come of me. This was only the start.

We met regularly from that day on. Why, I had no answer to that. It just became a daily ritual for us to meet and share the things that we were too afraid to share even with us. It was surreal to have found the person who held the exact mirror image of your dreams and thoughts, who looked at the world in a way you had never imagined anyone would. She told me stories of the orphanage she grew up in. While one would imagine, given the context, for it to be tragic it was anything but. When I listened to her recounting anecdotes and childhood stories I would dream of turning the clock back in time and transporting myself there with her in all of her stories. She relived  each one of her experiences with Father David and Sister Basil, the caretakers of the Holy High Centre for Orphans, her home for 17 years. I now knew of 2 of her best friends, Tamanna and Bhawani. She told me of the times she tried running away to pursue meditation in the Himalayas only to be caught at the station. She told me of her childhood fantasies of becoming a Doctor, travelling to Egypt and fighting with the mummy as she knew them then.

I had known it all along. The ride had been too good for its own sake. I had let myself be pushed by the hands of fate. The dream had lasted too long for it to sustain and I had grown suspicious of the same. Her rowing brown eyes had a magical bind that was impossible to conquer. Her lips were in a constant tussle to master her enchanting voice and her hands moved like waves do in a dancing sea. Spell bound was I and determinedly so.

When you look back at things that were you wonder about scenarios. Multiple paths that lead to the same destination. You could redress the grievances, you could heal the body but what of the tattered soul that knows no foul play? What happens to the innocent spirit when it is guided onto a perilous journey of self-destruction? I had been a victim of idealism. I had fallen into the trap like wasps in the net and there was no way out. It was like the wet mud, the harder I tried the more entrenched was I.

To be Continued…

Mira SE101

She stood still on the porch with distant eyes and bouncing hairs. Her gaze, dreamy and stance suggestive. Yet, she demanded attention and a prolonged stare. I had succumbed to the beauty so much so that time had stood still for those precious 10 minutes when she just leaned onto the iron bars with a submissive push. I had run the imagery over and over multiple times. The more I did so, the more it made me determined to stand there right in front of her with not a tiny morsel of shame. Such had been her effect on me that the scorching sun was unable to deter me from my shameless mental voyeurism.

I was new to the city. My presence in Mumbai had been just a week-long and here I was looking right into my idea of paradise. I looked at her with penetrating eyes. I searched her for any traces of flaw. Flaw, I did not find any. Perfection, I did. She reminded me of something. I could not recall then and there what that thing was. My inability to unravel the resemblance was unnerving and unsettling. I knew not of the connection within.

Mira. The exotic flavor with mystified embellishments. Mira, the one sight I could not let go. Mira, the girl who brought my world tumbling down.

I had always been the proverbial common man. The usual engineering-management-job kinda guy whose world revolved around things that were mundane in the eyes of Mira. I was a content chap. Life had nothing extra-ordinary to offer me and I had made peace with the fact. Little did I know that in a span of 1 week my secure bird nest would be a distant history. Fate is a strange thing,at face value it keeps you wondering and in hindsight it keeps you interested. My fate had been sealed on that sunny Friday, my trajectory defined and locked.

I was unperturbed. Drenched with the afternoon sweat, I paid scant attention to the happenings around me. My eyes were fixed on that angel who had unknowingly inflicted on me her flawless elegance.

Our eyes met and stayed there for a little too long. She registered my presence without a sign of acknowledgement. Somehow she seemed to understand the hapless guy standing beneath her porch looking up at her with shameless and persistent eyes. It was surreal to think of having met a person so delightfully perfect without actually having met the one. Sometimes a glance is all it takes to understand the person in full, sometimes a lifetime falls short of achieving that objective. In my case, here on this deserted road beneath that fateful porch I had known. I had known that if there was such a thing as bonding, I was experiencing it first hand. Bonding is not a two-way street mind you. Neither does it demand reciprocation. All it takes is a sense of satisfaction and intriguing calmness that descends on you and keeps you on cloud 9.

It took me 3 days to finally convince her of my purpose. 3 long days of April summers. Finally she seemed to give in.

We met on a Monday. The last day of April and the sun seemed to shine brighter than usual. I walked her to the Costa Coffee nearby and sat there without any of us having said a word. I was content with it being that way. I was terrified of ruining the one thing that had me in a state of trance the whole of the week.

Seldom do you come across those fleeting sensations of satisfaction, seldom do they cross your path but when they do you hold onto them like a child holds onto the last candy in the jar.

I was the child. With expectant eyes I stared at the stranger in-front of me. A stranger though not entirely so. Then she started talking and words flew out of her like shells from a battle howitzer. Ans she was at her restrained best then!  The pent-up energy was all too visible even then though it had understandably been belted down. I just sat there mesmerized while she did the talking.

They chased me through the streets of Mumbai in dead night. Pratap and his goons had left no stones unturned in making me pay for the carnage at Mahalaxmi. Numb with paralysing fear I had nothing left to hold onto and fleeing away from the maddening scene seemed to be the only way out. I had come to accept everything by then and the death and the destruction left no effect whatsoever on me.

To be Continued…

Jibber-Jabber

From my office workspace I have a bird’s eye view of the busy road and the not-so-busy office lobby. People come and go, always in a hurry to reach somewhere. None looks up, none stays, and no same face do I get to see everyday. It’s strange sometimes to find myself running around in much the same way as those I see from my nest atop.

The specification of my job demands minimum or no interaction with my colleagues. They say its as if you are an entrepreneur working on your own, day in day out. Not that there is zero conversation on the office floor, quite opposite to that but as far as the job is concerned you are on your own. They say working in a team, having a team-leader and the hierarchy-denominations hinder growth and prohibit a positive working environment what with the office politics and bitching invariably coming round to haunt you either in your back or someone in the back. I find myself strangely attracted to the possibilty of working coherently in a group, mixing my thoughts with those of others, absorbing ideas, throwing my weight around, waiting to see if it actually has some. I sometimes wonder if going solo is indeed the right way.

The life and times of a jobber aint an easy one, this you should know. Dealing with losses that come dime a dozen, humbled by bad views, demeaned by a pathetic ego and crippled by a prolonged patience makes you see that darker side of human emotions. As is the case with every damn profession it all boils down to the EQ. While IQ is glorified EQ is mushified. The lesser of the two brothers is often made to be the scapegoat of everything that is wrong with anything. Emotional Quotient is quite under-rated. Oscar Wilde says thus, “Life is too important to be taken seriously”. How succinctly put ain’t it? Thrown the EQ in the dustbin, fling IQ out the window and live as you have never lived. How men wish to be free of all things that they are not free of and sadly can never be of?

Jst a thot

It is unsettling to see oneself being uncertain about what one wants in life. When there are so many things that occupy your mind at any point of time you sometimes fail to understand what it is that interests you the most and then you start to doubt yourself; what it is that makes you happy. Is it the never ending thirst for perfection or the instincts to satisfy the creative intellect, or is it the exhilaration of a debate won or a point scored?

I sometimes find it hard to identify myself as a person. I try to believe it to be a result of the limited years behind me but then I see people around me living like they never had any doubts about their intentions and desires? I on the other hand have desires one so many, intentions far fetched and varied.

There cannot be one reason that I can ascribe to this trait of mine. After all dreamers all and sundry have been like that, or so I believe. But then how am I to know which dream it is that I should attach the most value to, which ambitions should I prioritize, who and what should I care about? There are times when I limit myself to the thing that stands erect infront of me, tall and imposing, it stands upright and asks me to follow it, then there are times when I want to bring out the tiny nano-fragment of austerity and innocence that I value dearly. What is the point, I ask then.

I look at it through a prism. An angle that presents all dimensions fair and square. It is only then that I realize its not me and my thoughts alone. I am one among the crowd and yet I have to be alone.

Testing Windows Live Writer

This post is intended to check the application convenience of Windows Live Writer. The desk-top application for blogging seems a cool and no-frills attached application for the writers in people. The editor is simple to use and intuitive. The options to choose between html/xhtml is there in the offing. Advanced image insertion is the one thing I am hooked onto. Not many desktop clients do that. On a first-look basis the application looks cool and worth a try. In any case here at Kharagpur, the WordPress server takes ages to upload and more often than not it trails behind FB to get the matter clean and easy.

I will see how and when it affects my frequency of writing. But one thing is for sure, Windows Live is a killer app, atleast for me it is. Well, they couldn’t download the editing style from the wordpress for me but Video insertion and in-line spell checking will work fine with me. I would have to use it more often to see where this thing is headed. As for now, I am hooked onto WLW.

Technorati tags: Technology, Testing, Review, Blogging

P.S:I am not a tech-geek, nor am I too up-to-date with the latest in the tech-world leaving the commonest ones.

Return of the :P season!!

Disclaimer: Please note that all views expressed in this post is solely the opinion of the readers. The author has no responsibility whatsover of whatever has been written or said about anybody or anything. Any resemblance to any person living or loving is purely intended and needs to be taken in the most inaccurate regard. Also, please feel free to comment on the content as it needs a little more of a redo.. me being an outsider in the whole area commented on. Insiders are invited to share their thoughts over the matter and echo their sentiments over this piece of shit. Thank you and have a nice day!!

Now that the season is back with a bang, here are few tips that will help you sail through the test of times and win a few “samarthaks” in the process:

1. Never ever tell the truth.
2. Always believe in what is told to you no matter where it comes from.
3. Start making friends coz if you are not a friend you are an enemy.
4. Zip your mouth except when it comes to Fachhes, you can blast the balance in front of them.
5. Stay away from Biharis, they seem to have a knack of getting into trouble.
6. Put on your best face possible and constantly try to smile and elicit a smile from the stranger infront of you.
7. Organize a Matki Fod competition in your hall, matkas seem to love that..
8. Its that time of the year when you need to shave your goatee and comb your hairs-you never know where and when the thunder may strike.
9. Never ever dare to venture into the enemy’s den. The thing has a history of turning nasty and bloody.
10. As the D date approaches keep the spirit of fair and free elections alive by dining with the candidates and feasting the innocents.
11. Be comfortable with multiple personality disorder you can no longer call yourself by your name.
12. Do not dare cross the line and ridicule a netaji, you may live to regret that later.
13. Start learning to concoct serious alibis about your whereabouts, every second needs to be accounted for.
14. Wash out your orkut profile, no trace of yourself should be visible there.
15. Honesty is still the best policy, you have to sincerely and honestly lie about your “cali chotha’.

To prepare for the next years version here are some important points that needs to be taken care of before you can go into the preparation mode:

1. Start taking some math courses, seems like numbers are all that matters here.
2. Put up a smile on your face and never ever try to take it down come what may.
3. Bihar is the best state in the country, never ever doubt that.
4. Make yourself scarce at the classroom and abundant in the common room. Drams, Choreo and Illu needs you much more than the rest of the tribe.
5. Stay connected always whoever it is you are connected to.
6. You have to be in the thick of the things always, theres no shortcut to that.
7. Save money, you would be needing them later.
8. Learn to use slang extravagantly, its gonna stand by you in good stead.
9. Don your thinking cap and eliminate competition, unethical is the new buzzword.
10. Back stabbing is a useful art, learn it.

Diary Entry

I needed the damn thing so badly that it didnt strike me even once that my desire had so outgrown itself to become an obsession that I had ceased to call a spade a spade anymore. The notion that it was the best thing to do had engulfed me in its wake and I failed to grasp the enormity of the situation, the kind of thing that happens when one hovers dangerously over the oft-trodden path of self-doubt and closure.

I guess it was the mind playing tricks all over again..making me believe things that were a mirage always. Deep down in my shit I constantly failed at identifying and nurturing initiatives. Initiatives, the one thing people find so obvious and inadvertent. Priorities are hazy, decisions lie untouched and resolutions finds no takers..classic example of a break-down? Massive deployment of heart rendering self elevating statements that tend to carve out an image we are not? I think not..

In the end it all comes down to you..you who is the at the centre of it all and always will be ..you who sees the world as he sees fit and looks to others as he deems them to be. When the tides swing your way you touch the clouds..when it retreats the myth shatters and the painful realization sinks in that it wasnt you but the tides that were denouncing failure and drowning critics. How often do we blame it all on fate? Once every moment of your life it seems to me…it depends on human nature and the kind of light he sees himself in.

Losers keep track of their failures..winners keep their success close to their chest….