Hyderabad

Silver jubilee. No big achievements, just following, just moving. Someone special presented me a box guitar! This came as a big surprise for me, as I always wanted to learn and play guitar. With no hard pressing thoughts, I guess my biggest resolution would be to learn it now :). Exciting.

Ankit recommended few songs from Coke Studio and I am totally into it. Aik Alif, Hor Vi Neevan Ho, Nigah-e-Darwaishaan. Beautiful music. Especially these lines from Aik Alif

Bas ik karee oh yaar ilumu
Stop seeking this knowledge (of the world) my friend
Bas ik karee oh yaar ilumu
Stop this seeking my friend

I had an interesting conversation with him. He says "If you are more ambitious, you will never find happiness. Keep your ambitions low". Makes good sense. Simple and neat.

Back to Hyderabad and I love this city. I was deprived of Noise,Crowd,People the last 3 months. Realized that I actually belong here. To be among the crowd, the sweltering heat, Police challan, bargaining, Chai, Samosa and all the bustle that this city has. I dont have a driving licence, but still I can manage to get through to any corner in this city :) All the bad things written and said and exaggerated  about India is true. But life is connected here. We value that. We move on. Its true that ours is the only country where you will find a 27 storey hi-tech residence, which is valued at over a billion dollars, and find a refugee camp style slums just a few yards away. And its not a refugee camp, its where people live. 

Jo na janay
One who doesn't know...
Haq ki taqat
The strength of truth
Raba na deway us ko hemat
God won't give them the strength -- aik alif

Wings of Desire

There are films which have a spark. That spark which calms your senses, and fires few moments which ignite a keen sense of emotional unity in your mind. You just know and feel it. Abandon all your chores, sit back and take comfort in knowing that the world is in no hurry. If time ticks, let it tick. For all I know, time is just another label stuck to our lives. Damn. 

Wings of Desire is one such movie. When the most natural feelings are said or put down in words, it creates a different world. We relate each emotion to our own and savor it. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. The lead role played by Bruno Ganz is quite a treat to watch. The following conversation between Damiel and Cassiel is rich, innocent and what I refer to as art

Damiel: It's great to live by the spirit, to testify day by day for eternity, only what's spiritual in people's minds. But sometimes I'm fed up with my spiritual existence. Instead of forever hovering above I'd like to feel a weight grow in me to end the infinity and to tie me to earth. I'd like, at each step, each gust of wind, to be able to say "Now." Now and now" and no longer "forever" and "for eternity." To sit at an empty place at a card table and be greeted, even by a nod. Every time we participated, it was a pretense. Wrestling with one, allowing a hip to be put out in pretense, catching a fish in pretense, in pretense sitting at tables, drinking and eating in pretense. Having lambs roasted and wine served in the tents out there in the desert, only in pretense. No, I don't have to beget a child or plant a tree but it would be rather nice coming home after a long day to feed the cat, like Philip Marlowe, to have a fever and blackended fingers from the newspaper, to be excited not only by the mind but, at last, by a meal, by the line of a neck by an ear. To lie! Through one's teeth. As you're walking, to feel your bones moving along. At last to guess, instead of always knowing. To be able to say "ah" and "oh" and "hey" instead of "yea" and "amen."

Cassiel: Yeah, to be able, once in a while, to enthuse for evil. To draw all the demons of the earth from passers-by and to chase them out into the world. To be a savage.

Damiel: Or at last to feel how it is to take off shoes under a table and wriggle your toes barefoot, like that. 

Beautiful as I read. There are so many beautiful lines like these in the movie. Amazing.

Untitled on a Monday

I dont know what to write. It is this act of doing nothing that scares the hell out of me. What the fuck is going on in my mind. Why am I not able to do what i really want to do. Another irrelevant life? No i don't want that. Just breathing and living lies. With all the cliches, prejudices, condescending stares. I am just living. Or am i just existing?

"rather than love, than money, than faith, than fame, than fairness... give me truth". Thoreau, Into the wild stuff.

Its time to breathe. There is no focus in life. I have to break all social barriers to set straight my goals.

"Such is the passage of time, too fast to fold" - Rise by Eddie Vedder. I am drunk in his songs. How many hearts resonate to his vocals? Millions. Such influence. Simple words, amazing voice and he kills with his songs. ahhh..

"The theory of Moral sentiments" by Adam smith. Just read few passages in that book online, and it seems to be the most appropriate book for me. Plain truth. I should buy that book and read it twice thrice. And Walden by Thoreau. Respect for his works. Maybe i will just spend my life reading them. Their mind. Their character. Maybe it will infuse some reality in my otherwise dormant mind.

"Careers are 20th century invention" - into the wild

2 years, 5 months, 13 days

2 years, 5 months, 13 days have gone by since my last day in college. Moved on with life. 

Coffee has to be hot. Curry has to be super spicy. Omelette should just be the way I like. I hate butter and ghee and milk.

How much can I take of this world? Can we start over and do what is right? Back in college, I used to be angry at many things. Such a messed up place we are living in. 2 years on and that anger subsided. More with the herd now. Inch by inch moving forward. I have no idea what is in store for me. I just light a cigarette, have 'special chai', take the elevator, get back to work. 

Underground 'Jantha' bar. Fish and whiskey. I am waiting for it. 

I want to be a rebel. Chasing my own instincts. I am too young to be tired soon. I am not, although I feel like.

New Religion

This morning no sound but the loud
breathing of the sea. Suppose that under
all that salt water lived the god
that humans have spent ten thousand years
trawling the heavens for.
We caught the wrong metaphor.
Real space is wet and underneath,
the church of shark and whale and cod.
The noise of those vast lungs
exhaling: the plain chanting of monkfish choirs.
Heaven's not up but down, and hell
is to evaporate in air. Salvation,
to drown and breathe
forever with the sea.

-- Bill Holm

A Poem: Untitled

what power fries my senses
such fiery clouds and such strong winds
i am unmoved
i greet you, let me in
in those hurried moments
let our fingers be tied into a knot
let nature be given our love
for its anger and strength
let our love, freedom and bodies melt and become water
let nature be given our love
let us reach the sea and be unnoticed by the sailors
forever we go up and down the shore
when nature seeks us
we shall form and function as we always did
resting on the other side of the angry world
calm, sensitive and sublime

Civilization

"Hence a certain tension between religion and society marks the higher stages of every civilization. Religion begins by offering magical aid to harassed and bewildered men; it culminates by giving to a people that unity of morals and belief which seems so favorable to statesmanship and art; it ends by fighting suicidally in the lost cause of the past. For as knowledge grows or alters continually, it clashes with mythology and theology, which change with geological leisureliness. Priestly control of arts and letters is then felt as a galling shackle or hateful barrier, and intellectual history takes on the character of a "conflict between science and religion." Institutions which were at first in the hands of the clergy, like law and punishment, education and morals, marriage and divorce, tend to escape from ecclesiastical control, and become secular, perhaps profane. The intellectual classes abandon the ancient theology and-after some hesitation- the moral code allied with it; literature and philosophy become anticlerical. The movement of liberation rises to an exuberant worship of reason, and falls to a paralyzing disillusionment with every dogma and every idea. Conduct, deprived of its religious supports, deteriorates into epicurean chaos; and life itself, shorn of consoling faith, becomes a burden alike to conscious poverty and to weary wealth. In the end a society and its religion tend to fall together, like body and soul, in a harmonious death. Meanwhile among the oppressed another myth arises, gives new form to human hope, new courage to human effort, and after centuries of chaos builds another civilization."

-- Will Durant

Futbol

Surrounded by sea

As I take on the world

Reflections still, as cloudy as my day ends

notes I lose my memory to

I wake up confused

Confused I am

Always wanted to be surrounded by sea. Blogger has finally come up with some pretty good themes that suits my mood :) I remember Chauhan saying "I am dried out. Dont feel like writing anymore". Maybe I am dried out now. I feel like I have lost all the creativity (or watever) I had in me. Such a fucking foolish life. I am all comfy moving around and working, but the core energy in shutting my door and thinking alone is gone. Whoosh! There it is. Floating and dancing in the air.

Football is on. I feel so nostalgic in recollecting all those good memories I had playing in college. Getting up at 6. I would be one of the first to get up, shout, go sleep again, get up again, shout and wake everyone up. Some key moments come to my mind. First intra-college sports tournament in 2005 (if I am right). Our first match with 1st year juniors. We were leading 1-0 at half time. To our surprise they came back and the score was 2-1 just 10 mins before finish time. We had to do something. Jayant moved back to defence and I was up running in midfield. Luck favored us and we got a penalty kick. Throughout the tournament I had my toe fucked up. I couldn't give decent passes. Its a contact game, and my toe got hammered again and again. With a bad toe I was hoping sanjeev or jayant to take the penalty kick. But Nikhil insisted in me taking it. No idea how it worked, but it worked. I converted and we drew the match. Phew! Such a lively moment. Totally enjoyed it. We eventually went on to win the tournament. As defending champions we lost the second tournament :-) And finally in Jan2008, the first Inter-IIIT sports tournament was held. We lost to allahabad and jabalpur. Faced a lot of criticism.. hehe.

Essentially, we were a group of lads who learnt some good football through the years. Not the types you are watching in South Africa, but decent enough in our campus :P Enjoyed to the very core. I wish I could relive those moments. Just running with the ball. Its not contact anymore. Struggling to find time and guys like those in gwalior to play and be lively again. Its not a bad idea to gather in gwalior again and play a match or two. Now this would be crazy. But I love being crazy for moments like these.

As for fifa, Cannavaro is 36 now. But I love his defending. Gattuso is another favorite of mine. Great personality. I think spain and germany would be tough to break.

"Given to fly" - Pearl jam. All is well. :)

Thoreau!

"However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do want society"

 -- Thoreau

Untitled forever :)

{ If within the sophisticated man there is not an unsophisticated one, then he is but one of the devil's angels. As we grow old, we live more coarsely, we relax a little in our disciplines, and, to some extent, cease to obey our finest instincts. But we should be fastidious to the extreme of sanity, disregarding the gibes of those who are more unfortunate than ourselves. 

To speak impartially, the best men that I know are not serene, a world in themselves. For the most part, they dwell in forms, and flatter and study effect only more finely than the rest. 

It is for want of a man that there are so many men. }

-- Thoreau

4 months off this space. Never been away for so long. Thoreau is still keeping me busy :P And I am gradually losing interest in writing new things. I hope it will change.

2010

Earth, 6 billion km's away, snapped by Voyager I in 1990

"The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe , are challenged by this point of pale light."

-- Carl Sagan

So true. Voyager I is now 32 years old. It is estimated that it can keep communicating with Earth at least until the year 2025. Human marvels. I wish I could carry that pale-blue-dot in my backpack and travel the universe. Carl Sagan says 'the insignificance of our world in this vastness of space'.

I can think of nothing than this small quote by Sagan that best explains the momentum I would like to carry and set sail to reach unknown corners of my mind to pleasure and play with.

“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”