Sadly, Nature has Her own ways of telling us that She wasn't totally unaware of the goings-on whilst we were pinning Her down and clambering all over, that we are indeed inhabitants of Lilliput, and not Brobdinag.

Gulliver's Travels . Tall tales. They serve as excellent metaphors though.

Current Music : Life is too short - Scorpions
Have you ever seen the morning?
When the sun comes up the shore
And the silence teach the beauty for the sound
Have you ever set there waiting?
For the time to stand still
For all the worlds and stars
From turning around
And you run
’cause life is too short

Irony. And we run... She is faster. Life is short indeed. The world turns around, wobbles on its axis. The silence later is deafening. Not unlike the sound of the waves that ripped us apart.

Wishing a safe 2005 to everybody and anybody who drops by..

By virtue of one's mother being a teacher, one gets to attend "annual school gatherings" even when one has finished one's schooling a decade ago. The antics on stage, apart from being highly entertaining, never fail to remind one of one's own similar performances (now seemingly embarassing) all those years ago.

Whilst one is sitting there thus, enjoying the proceedings, one tends to (by way of habit) analyse the performers. It is then that one notices something peculiar. Four-fifths of the performers are skinny, very much so, and five-fifths also happen to have quite a many hair strands jutting out of their scalps.

It so happens that one works for a software firm. One is not used to such sights. Hence, the bewilderment.

Current Music : Punjab by Karunesh
Amazing vocals and instrumentals. Recommended as music to be played when zooming down the highways

The meek do inherit the earth. Part of it actually. The part where the rainbow bows down low in deference to the earth. The ground where the pots of gold are buried. The meek sit at that end of the world, guarding over (and inadvertently filling up) vessels not their own. Whilst, at the other end, their counterparts make merry.

Current Music - Hum Hain Is Pal Yahan - Kisna
(Check out Sunita Sarathy's My Wish Comes True from the same album too. She sings well. This piece could easily have been featured in a Walt Disney/Pixar animation effort, based in India preferably, in order to justify the basuri and the tabla)

And who can say
Where the road goes
Where the day flows
Only time..
- Only Time by Enya


They tell me it could be plastic
Or that ants lurk beneath the luscious cover
The freshness is the water sprinkled an hour ago
(It will but dry up anytime now)
Closely cropped? That would be the mower borrowed from next door
They accompany me to the fence
And there I ask them to stop short
The climbing I shall do myself, I say
And if I am to fall, it shall be of my own doing
(Though truth be told, secretly, I wish for them to steady me if the grip loosens)
To rationale, I be an infidel
To my own voice, (however frail and unsteady), faithful
The grass, it is always greener on the other side, they repeat
I listen patiently, oh yes I do
At the same time adamant about wanting to step on it, feel it, pull out a bunch by the roots
And see for myself, a sickening pale yellow deep beneath, if it really is
As they all claim it always is


Current Music : Goo Goo Dolls - Iris. Good rendition. Nice lyrics.
And I don't want the world to see me
Cause I don't think that they'd understand

We can wait hours for tickets to the latest blockbuster, or a cricket match at Nehru Stadium, for a table at Vaishali, or in the serpentine queues during Ganesh Chaturthi, but when you ask us to hold back five more seconds for the signal to turn green, we would look at you with eyes wide open and retort "ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND??"

We, the Punekars. We are like that only. Period.

Current Music : There She Goes - sixpence None the Richer
(Peppy. Feel-good. Seem to have heard this one in some movie..cant recall which one)

Meet Mister Master Big

Hi, I am XYZ and I want to design a car that will run on air
I want to design a program which will help organising travel in space
I am a student of Class VII and I want to be a biotechnologist
My name is ... and I want to..

The search for India's Child Genius. Star World. Sunday nights, 9-10 PM.

Normally I would have gawked at their ambitions at such young an age, commendable indeed, but I pity some of them more than I appreciate their talent. As they proudly announce their intentions to change the very face of earth, inadvertently, they sound unnatural, spewing forth lines written by a third person, harp upon ambitions harbored by a third person (akin to SOPs written by a graduate studies counseller).

Why dont we let those kids be what they should be, free souls, comfortable with themselves, not pseudo-adults trapped in a child? Is a glamorous-sounding plan for his/her future, chalked out at the tender age of twelve or age thirteen, a prerequisite for testing the genius in a child?

If you ask me, even a street urchin, who doesn't want to send rockets into outer space or perform neural surgery wonders, is a wunderkind, a genius at surviving in the most unfortunate of conditions.

(This post does not in any way mean to question the talent of the participants)

Current Music - The Gladiator main theme by Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerrard
(Lovely composition, especially the frenzied drums interlude, midway through the song. The soft worldless lyrics remind one of the Elvish in LOTR)

Of Martian wars and Venusian tantrums..

To quote myself (and stand the risk of sounding pompous;-))

'Tis only twice that all men are equal
When they are born and when the soul leaves the body cold

For the sake of fodder for this post let us reaffirm that here, men means mankind in totality, men+women.

What happens in between the end and the beginning
Is food for thought for all the Freudians out there.

Take for example, one such instance

A red signal that they pretend not to notice. A traffic policeman materializes out of thin air. Shrill whistle. Or flaps his hands and stands in the middle of the road.

The guy. Gets off. Is ready to pay the fine, but demands an authentic receipt. Argues. Argues. Argues. Goes to the police chowky. Writes a complaint in proportions fit for a thesis dissertation. Argues. Complains. Involves all the constables in the fiasco. Finally, after an hour and half, gets his way.

The girl. Gets off. Pleads. Pleads. Pleads. If not carrying a license, starts crying. Promises never ever to do it again. Depending upon how stone-hearted the recipient of the outburst is, she can get away without having to cough up the fine. Even if she has to pay it, she wouldn't go to such great lengths to get an authentic receipt, assuming she had thought of asking for one in the first place. Twenty minutes for the episode to end.

The way Victor Hugo would have seen it (to quote him in Les Misérables),
".. all is balanced in necessity"

The way I see it, the world is the Creator's entertainment channel. All in one. Comedy. Drama. Suspense. 24/7.
(Hmmm..this does indeed throw light on all the inexplicable thunder-like sounds off and on. Its got to be the gang up there splitting their sides watching the antics down here)

Current Music : Someday - Nickleback
(Interspersed with the laughter and babble of colleagues nearby. A couple of them have a cubicle decoration competition on :)

I found out reason for me
To change who I used to be
---- Hoobastank - The Reason

Gradually, the knocking from inside grew louder, whilst they on the outside, helped her break through. Cautious, one foot feeling for the ground beneath her feet, uncertain whether it would hold up. The sunlight wasn't as blinding as she had assumed it would be, the air did smell different though. The breathing was rugged, measured, and she was careful not to gulp in quite so much that it would choke her lungs.

Why does it take you so long to walk though, and what is that you hold in your hands, they ask. Now. Puzzled.

I still have one foot inside, and the closed fist..there I hold on to the broken pieces, so that I am never too far from returning to where I once belonged not more than three years ago, I reply.

For, now, a new day brings with it new people, and subsequently a different outlook towards the partly demolished shell.

The walls that do us part. At times, they may call it a prison and I shall agree, but at other times I would call it an armor, like it was before....and so be it.

Current Music - Nothing Else Matters - Metallica
Would this song qualify as a rock anthem? I love it purely for the rendition of that particular line "Trust I seek and I find in youuuuu"