On the verdict on Saddam...

Saddam Hussein,Wahingtons one time best ally was hanged today under a sentence imposed by an Iraqi court for alleged crimes agisnt humanity.“Today, Saddam Hussein was executed after receiving a fair trial — the kind of justice he denied the victims of his brutal regime,” President Bush said in a written statement released after the execution by the White House.“Bringing Saddam Hussein to justice will not end the violence in Iraq,” Bush continued, “but it is an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain, and defend itself, and be an ally in the War on Terror.”......War on terror,fair trial,democracy..these words sound ridiculous when they emanate from Mr. Bush's mouth...

The proceedings and death verdict agaisnt saddam by a court of the puppet government under the US occupation in iraq are illegal and unfair.The court is a product of Us agression The US occupied iraq on the basis of a delusion...a lie...and in violation of the Un charter.The Hussain Government did not have any weapons of mass destruction or any connection with the Al-quaida...and thus did not pose any threat to the US.

Saddam Hussein was the "prisoner of war" of the US.He could not be tried under the US occupation for any alleged crime committed before the war of agression was unleashed.The timing of the sentence was also politically motivated....in terms of the midterm elections in favour of the Republican Party of Bush.And the fart about fair trial can be silenced by the fact that the series of murders of his lawyers...and substitution of judges....

The charge against Hussain and his co-defendants for having allegdely murdered 143 people in retaliation for a failed assassination attempt on his life.He committed these crimes he when he was Washington's best friend in the Arab world. America knew all about his atrocities and even supplied the gas - along with the British.By hanging this awful man, the Americans hope to look better than him, to remind Iraqis that life is better now than it was under Saddam...The crimes committed by Saddam cant compare to to the colossal crime of agression perpetrated by the US agsints Iraqi people..the US has already killed more athn 650000 Iraqi people since 2003...500,000 children out of the 1.5 million killings of Iraqis during the period of ecenomic sanctions from 1991 onwards...

it is bush who is the dusgusting tyrant and hypocrite..he needs to be put on trial....How do the Americans forget Abu ghraib and other prisons in Cuba...where prisoners were sexually abused and some of the incarcerated there were killed on thh basis of mere suspicion.

Bush ur stupid...Saddam has now emerged as a patriot and martyr in the eyes of so many iraqis and arabs...

The Google algorythm couldnt have been more apt when it leads us to the White House site..when u google "miserable failure"....

Never saw a blue like that before.....

I always thought that Freud was a povert cos according to him the explaination of all kinds of human behaviour boils down to two set of instincts - life instincts (sex) and death instincts (aggression)....but i will spare no efforts in singing praises for his theory of the unconscious in terms of its depth...My favourite technique of psychoanalysis is free association.
It is a direct method of gaining access to an individual's hidden thoughts....and more importantly fears.

The basic rule of free association is that an individual must say whatever comes into his or her mind,regardless of how personal,painful or seemingly irrelevant it may be...usually a client sits comfortably in a chair or lies in a relaxed position on a couch and gives a running account of all the thoughts,feelings, and desires that come to mind as one idea leads to another.the therapist usually takes a position behind the client so as not to in any way distract or disrupt the free flow of associations... all memories are arranged in a single associative network, and eventaully the subject stumbles across the crucial memory...wow i remember quite a bit of what i was taught at xaviers..i better actually.

It works for me and im gonna indulge in meaningless babble today....the best compliment i gave to someone was "talking to you is like free association..." i hope that person understood the relevance of what i conferred upon that person....

as i said..im gonna jabber away today and scribble in this space here...i havent done it in sometime...i hope it at least comes close to the free association exercise tht i havent resorted to in a while...

Today at a weird hour i looked up at the sky.I remembered that song from runaway bride...never saw a blue like that before....blue is my favourite colour..it has that soothing effect on me that is unparalled....i still have the blue neon light in my room - the tube that u break and and the blue fluid shines in the dark...havent broken it yet..only cos after u break it..it shines merely for two days after that or lesser.i wouldnt like that blue colour to fade...so its still there....i havent taken the chance to have it illuminated only cos im deprived of the blue later... The saree i bought for timsy's wedding is also blue...i unconsciously look out for that colour....timys wedding...its scary for me..she'll go away after that to begin a new life far far far away from here..the most 'coveted' land - USA.Timsy,radhika,balkha,munmun....- one word for them has been HOME.....another word for them..FAMILY....i like blue cos i guess the sea is blue...and the vast expanse of the sea has always been my solace,my refuge..what is it about the sea..the sound of the sea..or probably the fact that its ubiquitous...i grew up with these guys always believing that the day i part ways with any one of them is always too far.....its suddenly not so far anymore .... seperation anxiety is something i associate with them.....

star gazing at nite..staring into the pervasive blue.. lying down on our terrace tanki till it felt like you can reach out for the stars.it feels like u can actually touch them and spread out your arms and engulf them in your embrace.

It feels so weird lecturing people around you about strength and solitude and learning to live without people...but somewhere you feel like you are falling into a bottomless pit....cos just how long do u move from one loss to another without loss of any enthusiasm..but then again happiness is not a state you achieve and keep..its something that has to be won over and over again....but then again..dont you feel like relying on the omnipresence of something other than yourself.i mean i know shit happens all the time in life and i really dont mind wading through this shit that life offers us...and the theory of relativity works most of the times.its not about needing something.y always throttle our wants jus cos they are not our basic needs....

its like that song stand by me...by john lennon... Im singing it really loud...and i dedicate it to my gang...:)
When the night has come
And the land is dark
And the moon is the only light we see
No I wont be afraid
No I wont be afraid
Just as long as you stand,
stand by me
And darling, darling stand by me
Oh, now, now, stand by me
Stand by me, stand by me
If the sky that we look upon
Should tumble and fall
And the mountain should crumble to the sea
I wont cry, I wont cryNo I wont shed a tear
Just as long as you stand, stand by me
And darling, darling stand by me
Oh, stand by meStand by me, stand by me, stand by me
Whenever youre in trouble wont you stand by me
Oh, now, now, stand by me
Oh, stand by me, stand by me

DISCLAIMER : If you wanna hold on to your sanity..please dont try to psychoanalyse or try to make sense of it..cos some things are most beautiful if you dont try to explain them....

Somewhere i have never traveled gladly beyond...

There’s nothing like a Sunday morning to fill this space on my blog ….I’m listening to some amazing music…and sipping exotic herbal tea…I have switched off my cell phone. Of course I love my cell…or rather I need it but that’s my point. I feel enslaved.Try switching it off sometimes…anxiety levels go down…. they really do… at least for me. My audumber gang must be cursing me. I can hear radhi say…”what are u talking about? U never take calls cos your phone is always in your bum…”I looove u Radhi…J

I fear that my blogs will make me a recluse cos they have become my refuge…. my safe haven…. sometimes the more u meet people the more you don’t wanna know more people…books are better…Not that I’m a loner…cos people and their ways never fail to intrigue me…

On blissfully unrushed days when i kinda seek a sense of tranquility and churn the ‘windmills of my mind’ I unmistakably tread upon memories of my days as a Xavierite. Once a Xavierite you’re always a Xavierite even if you have studied at IIM after your tenure at Xavier’s. Xavierites are very passionate about their college life. Xavier’s was like a second home…on second thoughts Xaviers was home.

One of the cherished memories in my archives is the memory of my Literature class…especially the day when we rigorously discussed EE Cumming’s poem….”Somewhere I have never traveled gladly beyond…”
My mind begins wandering around the quintessentially arced premises…then the distant sounds of music filtering through the IMG (Indian Music Group) room…then the flight of stairs…. two floors…. huff and puff and swear words to curse the fact that we had to walk so much to reach the terrace classroom…it was almost akin to a journey to the exhilarating peak of a mountain from where the view is rewarding. This classroom up there on the terrace was equally worth it on that rainy day…. We were allowed to carry a cup of coffee to class that day. I remember reaching the classroom half drenched in my attempt to cover that cup of coffee….
A thin pink booklet – 20th Century American Verse…

Page 12 - Somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond…..

Somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond any experience,

your eyes have their silence:in your most frail gestures

are things which enclose me,or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look will easily unclose me though i have closed myself as fingers,

you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens(touching skillfully, mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,

as when the heart of this flower imagines the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility: whose texture compels me with the color of its countries,rendering death

and forever with each breathing

i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens;

only something in me understands

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses

nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands…


What stirs me about this poem is the mingling of the senses… ‘the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses…’, ‘your eyes have their silence’. The chaos of love reflected in the havoc played by his senses is rendered inimitably by Cummings. The sense of inadequacy of the poet to capture his feelings comes through beautifully….It’s a delightful confusion….

The imagery in the poem is more consistent than a first glance would indicate – especially the imagery having to do with opening and closing. The potency of this imagery hits you with all its force when you read the brilliant last line…. nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands…it has a strong tactile quality. Rain is such that it touches you everywhere because it’s wide reaching and pervasive (the rain thus has huge enveloping hands) …but Cummings goes beyond likening his beloved to the rain. She cannot physically shroud someone like the rain and in that sense has small hands but she penetrates everywhere and overwhelms the poet more comprehensively than the rains….hence...nobody,not even the rain has such small hands.



'your slightest look will easily unclose me though i have closed myself as fingers,you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens(touching skillfully, mysteriously)her first rose '

'Or if your wish be to close me, i and my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly…'

These indicate the vulnerability of the lover…of how his defenses are lowered….

“At its most immediate level, it is a poem that honors an inexplicable mystery: how, through the experience of love, one human being can awaken something in the beloved that nothing or no one else has .....” It further delivers the exquisiteness of relationships that cant be trapped in names..in words. It describes the many-leveled intimacy between a man and a woman.

It also reveals a mystical longing for transcendence that grows out of the experience of love. Transcendence is the experience of a dimension of life that is beyond all everyday categories, something that feels utterly complete, is timeless and silent, and conveys the feeling of being at the very root and essence of existence, beyond all distinctions of subject and object, of "I" and "you."

The title also signifies the quality of an incomplete experience….the anticipation….its always the elusive..the unfinished that is more beautiful….it reminds me of Gulzars song…Katra Katra…

Katra Katra milte hain
Katra katra jeene do
Zindagi hai..behno do…
Pyasi hoon main
Pyasi rehno do….
Will post the lyrics later ;)

Last Glimpse of Your Tenderness....

Aur Jab yaad ki bujhti hui shamaon mein nazar aya kahin...
Ek pal, akhri lamha teri dildari ka...
Dard itna tha ki usse bhi guzarna chaha...
Hamne chaha bhi..magar dil na thahar paya...
- FAIZ AHMED FAIZ

Read as....
Somewhere in memory's dying candlelight...
I chanced upon the last glimpse of your tenderness..a momentary vision...
The pain was such that i desired to pass it up..
I indeed wished, but my heart was feeble...it asked me to act otherwise...

LAST NIGHT

Last night your faded memory so came into my heart...
Like spring's calm advent in the wilderness
Like the zephyr slowly drapes the deserts...
As rest comes without cause to a sick man....

Windmills of your mind

Round ....wish the world is really round..where what you may perceive as an end may just be the beginning(eternal optimist me!!!) or what may seem like the beginning may just be an end...(the truth)

Round....implies that theres no dead end....somewhere ends always meet...

Round...a football..the shapes what makes it easier to kick around...

Round, like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel.
Never ending or beginning,
On an ever spinning wheel
Like a snowball down a mountain
Or a carnival balloon
Like a carousel that's turning
Running rings around the moon
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping
Past the minutes on it's face
And the world is like an apple
Whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind
Like a tunnel that you follow
To a tunnel of it's own
Down a hollow to a cavern
Where the sun has never shone
Like a door that keeps revolving
In a half forgotten dream
Or the ripples from a pebble
Someone tosses in a stream.
Keys that jingle in your pocket
Words that jangle your head
Why did summer go so quickly
Was it something that I said
Lovers walking along the shore,
Leave their footprints in the sand
Was the sound of distant drumming
Just the fingers of your hand
Pictures hanging in a hallway
And a fragment of this song
Half remembered names and faces
But to whom do they belong
When you knew that it was over
Were you suddenly aware
That the autumn leaves were turning
To the color of her hair ....

Its always downhill after LALA LAND....

From the surreal to the real....

From the infinity of dreams to the abyss of nullity....

From the familiar smooth skies to the alien coarse terra firma...

From the intense silences to the cage of words...

From the reason in the insanity and the prudence in the frenzy to the madness in the method....

From a decade to a moment

Earth calling !!!!

The woman in love knows the most bitter solitude...

"Man's love is of man's life a thing apart,'Tis woman's whole existence "

A few observations of Nietzsche haunt me....as the self defeating tendencies of women including myself get more pronounced when i see them with men.She chooses to desire her enslavement so fervently that she begins to belive it is an expression of her liberty....

Simone De Beauvoir couldnt be more apt....Many women suffer in becoming adults;and so great a number remain obstinately babyish...prolonging their childhood indefinitely...To become a child again in a man's arms fills their cups with joy..."when will he come..he who can dominate me"

And then they expect themselves to be loving to their men unconditionally even to their own damage...she is content to be the one who is always there and the one who will always wait..eternally wait...cos i would rather wait for you than believe that you are not coming at all....A wait can be a dazzling promise when he si hastening towards her but when the exaltation fades theres an uneasy torment....She is habituated to living on her knees...

Love reveals us to ourselves by making us come outta ourselves....Love as a form of perception brings to light new skies and a new earth...even in the landcape where we have always lived...Here is the great secret : the world is different.I myslef am different.And im no longer alone in knowing it.Someone has apprised me of the fact...

When will women understand this...that she has to love not in her weakness but in her strength...not to escape herslef but to find herself...that day love will be be a source of life for her and not of immortal danger...

So much for our socialist secular democratic republic!!!

Turn a blind eye, shove it under the carpet..keep it under wraps...Doesn't help. You cant escape this ugly reality of our fragmented society - CASTE.Caste is generally invisible from the point of view of the bourgeoisie upper castes but the more we are insensitive to this reality...with greater duress it lashes back...

The desecration of the statue of Ambedkar and the aftermath…is one of those commonplace incidents for us…. It’s a torment that subsides when we are no longer inconvenienced by it. We miss the larger social context… Our mainstream media never tires of reminding us that India is the next superpower in the making. In the midst of such euphoria, it is time we pause and reflect on – away from the glamour often almost invisible – how ordinary citizens are faring, how democratic the largest ‘democratic state’ in the world is for its ordinary, largely poor, citizens who constitute this nation.

In 1989, the Government of India passed the Prevention of Atrocities Act, which delineates specific crimes against Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes as “atrocities,” which include the systemic violence still faced by many Dalits, especially in rural areas. Such systemic violence includes forced labor, denial of access to water and other public amenities, and sexual abuse of Dalit women. This Act is a tacit acknowledgement by the government that caste relations are defined by violence, both incidental and systemic. Although it is a powerful and precise weapon on paper, in practice the Act has suffered from a near-complete failure in implementation - upper caste policemen are reluctant to file cases against fellow caste-members because of the severity of the penalties imposed by the Act (most offences are non-bailable and the minimum punishment is five years); cases are subject to delay and there are abysmal rates of conviction.

FACTS

The four persons killed in the massacre that took place recently in the village of Khairlanji in Maharashtra’s Bhandara district would have remained one cold statistic had it not been for the street protests that brought it to centrestage in the state’s political scenario.

Four members of the family of a dalit farmer, Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange -- his wife Surekha (45), his daughter Priyanka (17), his sons Roshan (21) and Sudhir (23) -- were paraded naked, then tortured and killed. The two women were raped before being killed. When the sons refused to sexually assault their mother and sister, they were castrated and then killed. Only Bhaiyyalal, who was away working in the fields at the time, escaped this horrible fate.


What was the Bhotmanges’ crime?
The village of Khairlanji has a population of about 800 people, most of whom belong to the Kunbi and Kalar castes, designated as OBC in Maharashtra. There are a few Adivasi families and only three dalit families, including the Bhotmanges. Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange moved to this village about 18 years ago and bought five and a half acres of land here, but the upper caste dominated panchayat consistently refused to enter his name in the revenue records, thereby preventing him from building a pucca house. On the two occasions that he tried to build it, the construction was forcibly demolished and he was threatened with dire consequences if he ever attempted to do so again. As a result, the Bhotmanges have always lived in a thatched hut.

In 2002, they found another reason to harass him : the upper caste families who owned land surrounding his fields wanted an approach road through his land. Bhaiyyalal’s wife’s cousin, one Siddharth Gajbhiye, a police patil of a nearby village, intervened and helped Bhaiyyalal to negotiate in the matter and avoid further tension. As a result, Bhaiyalal sacrificed half an acre and allowed a 10 feet wide road to be built on his land.

As expected, the harassment did not stop at this. The Bhotmanges were not allowed to draw water from the irrigation canal during day time. When an upper caste woman hit Surekha on the head with a sickle and she went to complain to the beat constable, he took no action. The harassment was not restricted to the Bhotmanges, but extended also to Siddarth Gajbhiye, since he was seen as the protector of the family and one who helped them in crisis situations. The most annoying aspect for the upper castes was the self-reliance of these two dalit families and the assertion of their dignity. They refused to live like supplicants of the upper castes in the village. Bhotmange’s daughter, Priyanka, was a bright student, had stood first in the village in her class X examination and had ambitions to join the army. Roshan Bhotmange was a graduate and had acquired computer skills. Sudhir was unfortunately partially visually impaired and could not continue his education.

In this background, there was repeated friction between the upper castes on one side and the Bhotmanges and Gajbhiyes on the other. On September 3, Gajbhiye was attacked by a group of people from Khairlanji while he was returning home on his motorcycle. Surekha and Priyanka were witness to this incident and bravely named the attackers to the police, hoping some action would be taken against them. But instead of taking any action, the beat constable leaked the information to the very people named by them. Between September 3rd and the day of the massacre, there were a number of incidents of threatening and assaulting Gajbhiye and his family members. In one such instance, a case was filed against some of the attackers who were summoned to court on September 29th. They got themselves bailed out promptly and gathered at the Bhotmange’s hut with sticks, axes and other such weapons. They attacked the four family members, stripped them and then paraded them naked through the village. Bhaiyyalal was working in his field at the time, but on hearing their cries he ran towards his hut and saw his family being paraded naked. He ran to Gajbhiye’s house and they reported the matter to the police station over the phone within 15 minutes. However, even though the police station is only 15 kms away from the village, the police reached the scene only at night, several hours after the incident took place. The four family members were missing but it was only Bhaiyyalal and the Gajbhiyes who went around looking for them. Only on the next day did the police inform Bhaiyyalal that Priyanka’s body had been found near the canal. The other bodies were found on October 1st.

Collusion between the police and the attackers
Several gaps have been left by the police that will hamper proper investigation procedures by destroying crucial evidence so as to weaken the case against the accused. The medical officer who conducted the post mortem appears to be equally hand in glove with the perpetrators : the mandatory procedure of taking a vaginal swab of women victims of rape has not been followed in this case, as a result of which it will be difficult to prove charges of rape. No videographic record has been maintained. It is most shocking that while the photographs of Priyanka’s body show that not an inch on her body is without marks of physical torture, they are not reflected in the post mortem report! Little wonder then that the Inspector General of Police for that area, Pankaj Gupta, has claimed that the women were not subjected to rape. Now about 44 of the attackers are in jail but no one is coming forward to speak up as a witness in the case. On the contrary, rumours are being spread that the Bhotmange family was selling liquor and into prostitution. The media too has irresponsibly reported that the family was attacked due to an illicit relationship between Surekha and Siddarth Gajbhiye. Tarnishing the reputation of women victims is an age old psychological weapon use by retrograde forces to justify their heinous crimes. And anyways, illicit relationships or selling liquor can be no justification for such a murderous attack.

Response of politicians and the state
In order to pre-empt any mass protest the Congress-NCP ruling alliance brought pressure to bear on the Dalit parliamentary leaders to ignore the issue. In fact, on October 2nd and 14th at functions to mark the Golden Jubilee of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar’s conversion to Buddhism (Dhamma Deeksha), the Khairlanji massacre was not even mentioned by the Dalit leaders who spoke on the occasion before lakhs of Dalits. With the announcement of the financial compensation and registering a case under the Prevention of Atrocities Act, the government thought it has succeeded in suppressing mass outrage at the incident.

Both the local MLA and the MP are from the BJP and the village has always been known to vote for BJP in the elections. None of the BJP leaders have visited the victims’ family to date, nor did they intervene at any point before the massacre to peacefully settle the conflict. Independent fact finding reports have pointed out that the Police delayed action on the fateful day under pressure from the BJP MLA.

A big mob of upper caste persons could commit this murder and rape in broad daylight in full public view. Where did they get this confidence that they could get away with such crimes? They knew that the state administrative machinery would act in their favour under direction from the BJP MLA and other leaders. The anti-Muslim pogroms in Gujarat and the state collusion with the perpetrators of that violence followed by the absence of any significant punishment to the guilty has gone a long way in creating this confidence.

Street protests force government to act
On its part, the state failed to respond to this issue until people took to the streets and protested in Bhandara and Nagpur. People dared lathis of the police, teargas shells, arrests. A bandh was called on 9th and 10th November in Bhandara and Nagpur cities respectively. The people, dalits in the main, organised to demand justice without the help of their established leaders. Hundreds were arrested. Rallies were banned, curfew was imposed, preventive arrests continue. The Chief Minister, the State Home Minister and the media continued to label the protests as an action by Naxalites and failed to acknowledge the public anger. A group of young dalit women staged a surprise protest inside Mantralaya in Mumbai. As a damage control exercise, the CM airdashed to Khairlanji to meet Bhhaiyalal Bhotmange and hand over an appointment letter for a job, compensation of Rs 12.5 lakhs, and an assurance of housing and land (3 acres). Bhhaiyalal rejected the offer and said that the only thing he wanted was that the guilty should be punished. Fearing continuation of mass protests in other parts of the state over the increasing number of caste atrocities and fearing loss of its dalit vote bank, the government also announced setting up of a committee to specifically look into atrocities committed against the Dalit community, a CBI probe and a fast-track court to ensure swift justice.

Compiled from fact finding reports on the incident prepared by the following organisations: report by Sanober Keshwaar, the AIDWA team of Brinda Karat and Kalindi Deshpande; the Samata Sainik Dal; the Committee Against Violence o Women (CAVOW); the Manuski Advocacy Centre, Pune and the National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights.

What hit me really hard was what one of the villagers said about Surekha : "This happened to her because she did not know how to live by the rules..."

Why do we chase everything thats elusive...

Now, I don't want to lose you
but I don't want to use you
just to have somebody by my side.
And I don't want to hate you,
I don't want to take you
but I don't want to be the one to cry.
And that don't really matter to anyone anymore.
But like a fool I keep losing my place
and I keep seeing you walk through that door.
But there's a danger in loving somebody too much,
and it's sad when you know it's your heart you can't trust.
There's a reason why people don't stay where they are.
Baby, sometimes, love just aint enough.
Now, I could never change you,I don't want to blame you.
Baby, you don't have to take the fall.

Yes, I may have hurt you, but I did not desert you.
Maybe I just want to have it all.
It makes a sound like thunder
it makes me feel like rain.
And like a fool who will never see the truth,I
keep thinking something's gonna change.
And there's no way home
when it's late at night and you're all alone.
Are there things that you wanted to say?
And do you feel me beside you in your bed,there beside you, where I used to lay?
And there's a danger in loving somebody too much,and it's sad when you know it's your heart they can't touch.
There's a reason why people don't stay who they are.
Baby, sometimes, love just ain't enough.

exams :(((((

I like too many things and get all confused and hung up running from one falling star to another till I drop. I have nothing to offer anyone except my own confusion.

I guess Jack Kerouac just voiced my sentiments...

why does everything that might appear prosaic and insipid on an ordinary day look verry verry appealing during exams...

guess anything is better than exams...

still have'nt found what im looking for

I have this habit of leaving a trace of me in everything that belongs to me…or rather I like everything that belongs to me to speak something about…gosh I sound like someone who’s so full of herself..conceited…but what im trying to say is that I like to personalize everything that im associated with.. dats y I have a caller tune J (dats apart from the fact that they are available free of cost to me for a while cos my servixce providers screwed up and theyw anna make it upto me..hehe…

Well I changed my caller tune a few days back…it is not one of those songs that have been favourites.That’s actually cos I heard it but I never really listened to it….

I have climbed the highest mountains
I have run through the fields
Only to be with you
Only to be with you
I have run I have crawled
I have scaled these city walls
Only to be with you
But I still haven't found
What I'm looking for
But I still haven't found What I'm looking for

Actually I happened to listen to it when I saw Julia Roberts runaway bride recently….its one of those usual run of the mill screwball romantic comedies..but I really liked something about it..or probably it reflected something about me… probably that fear-driven person inside me who is always in transit… It also reminded me that love can't open our hearts (corny me..loooove and hearts and all) until we stop cheating on our true selves…

I have seen this tendency in women including myself to please men ….to forget what they actually deserve…and to overlook the fact that they haven’t discovered themselves…how can anyone be in a relationship without knowing oneself…cos love is when someone fits in what you know of yourself…

I dunno why I’m so delirious in the morning and furiously typing bullshit….and what im saying now is totally unrelated ..but theres one question that keeps pestering me..where are all the sensitive and intelligent men gone…actually I guess thats a rare combination – intelligence ,sensitivity and to top it all the mail species…

PSYCHEDELIC

Starry, starry night.
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze,
Swirling clouds in violet haze,
Reflect in Vincent's eyes of china blue.Colors changing hue,
morning field of amber grain,
Weathered faces lined in pain,
Are soothed beneath the artist's loving hand.


Dreaming teens saw me being fanatic about Vincent. Not that I am an art aficionado. Van Gogh used colour arbitrarily and symbolically to express himself forcefully. I liked that…because the post-impressionist period in the history of art and literature is one my favourites. As a kid I would identify myself with different colours at different times. It was usually green because I believed it to be the colour that pervades the world…the blood of everything that grows.

No matter what, everyone should have a happy childhood to look back upon. Growing up was phenomenal for me because Holi was an integral part of this period…. It is not only its chromatic quality that makes this occasion special for me but the memories…the lingering images of those days.

It was not just about splashing colours on one another for a few hours but the mood that built up over many days before the festival. My friends and I meticulously adhered to the myriad rituals, though picayune that constituted Holi. Some of these rituals are inherently a part of the festival whilst my childhood friends and I created most of the others. We would begin two days prior to the actual colour-spraying day, to scour the streets of our locality in order to buy powders of primary colours that would come off easily and powders mixed with other ingredients that would make “ indelible marks” on those we coloured. The former, we called “kaccha colours” and used them on people we were fond of and the latter, we called “pakka colours” and used them especially on one of the “uncles” in our building. We detested him. These pakka colours were weapons for seeking vengeance in terms of those who had wronged us. The watchman of our building, who was a telltale, was our primary target. He kept us from indulging in anything that was categorically termed as mischief by our parents. I thought it was very evil of us but then we forgave ourselves since we were not nasty enough to use oil paints. Filling water balloons used to be a walloping task ahead of us that we would achieve religiously the previous night. I would unconsciously label every feeling I had with a colour on the day of Holi. I would feel red while filling balloons…probably because it radiates vitality. We would congregate in one of our flats in the building on the false pretext of “burning midnight oil” (studying). I felt mixed emotions of trepidation over the possibility of being caught by my parents and exhilaration of sneaking up and completing a whopping task. Holi was about this emotional graph of slight fear, anticipation and exultation. On this day we shed our inhibitions in terms of our appearances…we didn’t mind looking like demons in multi-coloured disfiguration.

Bhang was as close as we could get to any form of a drug, as kids. Ghujiyas,bhang ,thandai…add music to that and we had our party… thanks to a family originally from Vrindavan, residing in our building. The best part was when we sat bhang-inebriated. A friend had to be actually pulled away from the washbasin when she didn’t stop washing her hands for over twenty minutes! We mixed different colours in our water tank…mix blue and yellow and you get green, mix red and yellow and you get orange…mix a few other colours and you have a kaleidoscope. I can trace my love for colours to Holi. It’s difficult to define the experience but it would last well into the evening. Intense and distorted perception, vivid colours and bizarre patterns characterized it. Psychedelic! That comes straight out of my psychology books!

Our celebrations of Holi started mellowing down as most of us grew up and moved out. It was a like mass migration of most of my friends residing in my building. I didn’t realize when, being doused in a rainbow of colours started being unwelcome as I walked out of my house for work. I wish I could regain the old intimacy with the festival. I feel blue as I miss enjoying holi…or yellow when I pass those scenes like a traveler. These memories are like unattainable reflections that haunt me.
The stillness of these memories is the reason why they don’t awaken desire so much as a vast sorrow. It is strange that these memories have one quality…they are completely calm but not achromatic!

In the arc of your mallet

I have this knack of hanging on to things…it could be one of the Kolhapuri silver slippers from a pair (where the other one was flicked) that I must have bought on a trip which still makes me all misty –eyed… or a wrapper of a Dairy Milk that I got out of a friend without much persistence (or with much persistence!!!), a shredded piece of cloth which once used to be an item of clothing of the first and only doll that I ever owned...photographs of people, who i loved immensely once and who really hurt me later...

Some of these things are neatly stacked somewhere and some I just chance upon while leafing through pages of some book. A penchant for the place, the time or the person I was with keeps me tied to these things..or probably it’s the link to my past..the link to what I used to be ..a trajectory that leads me to who I am now…

A poem by a Sufi poet, on a frayed piece of paper has never parted company of my softboard…and during my occasional breaks from work or while sipping my daily cuppa tea..i read it and it has never failed to bring a smile on my face. Though I’m not taken in by fake romanticism…I’m a hopeless romantic at heart.

In the arc of your mallet

Don't go anywhere without me.
Let nothing happen in the sky apart from me,
or on the ground, in this world or that world,
without my being in its happening.
Vision, see nothing I don't see.
Language, say nothing.
The way the night knows itself with the moon,be that with me.
Be the rose nearest to the thorn that I am.
I want to feel myself in you when you taste food,in the arc of your mallet
when you work,when you visit friends, when you goup on the roof by yourself at night.
There's nothing worse than to walk out along the street without you.
I don't know where I'm going.
You're the road, and the knower of roads,
more than maps, more than love.

Rumi

Children of heaven

A few days back i watched this film called "Children of Heaven". I love fims...somehow i dont feel alive if i dont see a good movie for a long time.This movie is special for me firstly cos its not easily available..(its an Iranian film that won a lot of critical acclaim at the Asian film festival)...and secondly cos it has been gifted to me by one one of the most beautiful people in my life my Professor,my Boss,my friend...Sanober...(After much persuasion...im finally able adress her that way..sans Mam..Thats healthy irreverance,as she calls it!!!!).Shes a giant heart of gold...someone who loves,laughs,and does almost about everything with great gusto.Her signoff is so profound - with you in love and hope and struggle...Thats so true...nothing of value - independence of mind,an indomiatable spirit,a well-informed mind,a secular attitude -is eveer achieved except through hard and bitter struggle.All we need is omeone to end the isolation in this struggle..Sometimes jus to be who you really are can be a struggle....

Coming to the film...i highly recommend this movie to everyone...i almost felt guilty of having so much in life...Perspective and gratitude are really the two keywords...if u wanna feel lucky u jus gotta look outside and metaphorically go down ur knees after that.I wept during the movie not from sympathy due the maker's Majid Majidis keen view of human condition and the simplicity of its portrayal...its an example of how you dont require an elaborate story to make such a terric film..

It doesn't matter if you grew up in Cincinnati or Tehran, that childhood spirit proves universal...and the movie is like a small window to the Iranian culture...he actually used hidden cameras to capture the presence of real life...the cameras were also hidden from the key actors to get the natural feel.... the child actors are astonishing..i have never seen such a brilliant performance by kids...especially rendering of that poignance..thsi movie is for those who really belive that life is in the little things...

Nine-year-old Ali (Mir Farrokh Hashemian) loses his 7-year old sister Zahra's (Bahare Seddigi) only pair of shoes, and the film revolves around his efforts to recover her shoes or somehow get her a new pair; in the meantime, he devises a plan where the two alternately use his battered pair of sneakers...u gotta watch it...

Finally im here...

One of the myriad absurd promises that i occassionally make to myself prodded me to begin blogging and of course the final shove in this direction was provided kindly by Jaimit...

I hope this proves to be as cathartic as I expect it to be.....

:)))))))))))))