Ah!!bugger...

It's the middle of December, and there is a storm raging outside. I kid you not. Howling winds, pelting rainfall, the whole package. Another Ice Age? Tsunami? Pick your favorite disaster and brace yourself for it, because the world it seems is really going kaput in a short while. Not one of my utmost concerns right now. The gushing cold winds, the light spray of rain, splattering across my balcony, as I sit in it's shadowy recess, music and a warm brew of coffee nestling deep in my palms. Yes, tomorrow I have yet another exam. Yes, I have not studied anything for it, and despite what people think, I know bare minimum about the subject. Do I care? Does it bother me? Not as of now. For now, I am in my heaven. A heaven of peace and tranquility. A heaven filled with thoughts, imaginations, where things are either good, or not that good. Sadly, that heaven is also full of mosquitoes, thus ensuring my hasty retreat into the warm comfort of my room. But the thrill of watching the st...

“And the night shall be filled with music,   And the cares, that infest the day, Shall fold their tents like the Arabs, and silently steal away.”  -Henry Longfellow

I would have accepted kicks too, but I get enough of those while playing. So a punch for now would be a very satisfying change. And one by one please. Form a queue, and wait for your turn...

How to begin? The odd semesters have never been kind to me. There is something about the winter chill, and having to go through thousands and thousands of dumb scientific dissections that really put the paper checkers in a foul mood. You'd think that my take on life philosophies, combined with some light wordplay and abstract art, not to mention song lyrics that totally explain how Bubble Sort works, would come as a breath of fresh air and bring some much needed joy into their dreary, cheerless lives, but nooooo! I staunchly believe that if filling answer sheets were an art, mine would adorn the walls of the Louvre. Take good ol' Leonardo for an example. Here he was, casually doodling, sketching out the lady manning the hoopla stall at the local science fair, with every intention to get laid. She was probably giving him mixed signals, hence the facial anomaly. But that piece of random scribbling is now on the lips of every person on the face of the Earth, popularly known as The...

Making bad, senseless movies is as important to Salman Khan as breathing. Shah Rukh Khan does it now and then, whenever he feels like buying a new sports team, and now, probably jealous of his peers ability to literally crap money with minimal effort on their part, Aamir Khan joins the pack. With a second half that seems to drag on and on, the movie literally inflicts new horrors upon us. "Twist endings" are a nice surprise, but it kind of beats the purpose when the so called "twist" (that everyone guessed at intermission and discarded as ridiculous) encourages the audience to take up a gun and shoot one self, rather than suffer the stupidity that surrounds us. And what is it with making never ending movies, that fascinate directors around this part of the world, so much?! Statistic shows, that one out of every three beggars that you see in the streets of India used to be employed as Bollywood editors. I could swear that the buildings and malls that we saw when we c...

I'm pretty cold when it comes to expressing sentiment. So no prolonged, teary farewells and speeches here. But, a poem in class I, probably my first in that school, suddenly came back to me. I saw a ship a-sailing, a-sailing in the sea And it was deeply laden with pretty things for me There were comfits in the cabin And apples in the hold The sails were made of satin And masts were made of gold. The four and twenty sailors That stood above the decks Were four and twenty white mice With chains about their necks The captain was a duck With a packet on his back And when the ship began to move The captain said, "quack quack." Have a good one, Popeye. And do return my bag sometime. Anytime.

Over thinking is not always a good thing. *sigh* Since sleep is hard to come by, thanks to my sudden craving for coffee at two in the morning, I am going to sit back, relax, and watch Bambi! P.S. I still do occasionally cry when they kill Bambi's mother. HEY! It's nothing to be embarrassed about. There never was, and will never be, a nicer deer.

Oh teachers are my lessons done? I cannot do another one. They laughed and laughed and said Well child, Are your lessons done? Are your lessons done? Are your lessons done?

So I wake up once more to the sound of music, and mother Mary comes to me. Tell's me it's time for the semesters again, and I tell her to let it be. Yes, this is the kind of stuff that I come up with nowadays. Thank your lucky stars folks that I had no internet connection thus far to inflict my thoughts upon the suffering minority that reads these pages. But with the semesters upon me once again, and practicals from tomorrow(today actually, in a technical sense) I had to resign to the fact that my days, for the next couple of weeks, are going to be spent in bored seclusion, so as to successfully pass off the grand illusion that I am indeed studying for these balmy road bumps that pass for examinations. Hence, against my better judgement, keeping aside my new found contempt for the social networking media, here I am once more. Contempt? Why? Those interested might be asking. (Ever the optimist, I am!) Well, for one, they don't afford a hint of privacy. Secondly, it...

Frodo : I can't do this, Sam. Sam : I know. It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something. Frodo : What are we holding onto, Sam? Sam : That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo... and it's worth fig...

P.S. And he still uses Sony Ericsson. I love my phone! :)

bored                                   cored coned honed honer loner liner diner dinar (This is where all the alphabets are successfully rearranged. Yay!) minar miner mined mixed fixed foxed boxed bored Nah! That didn't help.

Strangely, it always reminded me of funerals. We just knew it by the name, 'Meditation Music'. It was much more than that. It was life. Ever since Jaya Ma'am passed away, everyday, right after the lunch break they'd play that piece over the classroom speaker. It was the single most haunting and beautiful piece of music that I'd ever heard. I'd always imagine it being played at her funeral. If there was ever music for the soul, that was it. It swept you away to a distant land of trees and turbulent oceans, torments you with its power, overwhelms you with its symphony before the final release. It was like flying, flying over hills and trees, flying into the cool breeze, flying free. Free of all worries, free of all weariness, free to live, to enjoy, to laugh and scream in joy. It was the best feeling ever. Tonight, as I lay awake in bed fiddling with my mouth organ, that same tune came back to haunt me again. It still reminds me of funerals, but it means so muc...

But that joke isn't funny anymore  It's too close to home  And it's too near the bone  It's too close to home  And it's too near the bone  More than you'll ever know ... 

This would probably be the first story that I ever wrote, barring the ones that I used to write for my English exams at school. Found this on an old battered down leather covered diary. A story about hope. Ah! Such is the naivety of youth. ******************************************** The moon peaked through the drifting clouds to bleach the green slopes of the valley of Antica with a haunting shade of white. The few log huts that lay scattered over the hills, lay dark and quiet. Their owners sleeping peacefully in their beds after spending a long tiring day on the slopes of Mt.Antica, where they were out grazing their sheep, little aware of the approaching danger. A distant blood curling howl was heard in the valley, echoing off the surrounding mountains that towered overhead. Though none of the shepards heard it, for it was too little a noise to wake such tired souls, but it was heard by their beasts of labour and caused great distress and agitation amongst them. They all kne...

Maybe I should try sleeping.

“George was full of hatred. Of his own weakness and stupidity, of his magic, of the stubbornness and the pride of Beatrice and Marit, and, last of all, hatred of Dr. Gharn, who had started it all. But the hatred swayed to pity. Then to hopelessness. Then back to anger. Every once in a great while, he felt a moment of peace, usually when he caught a glimpse of Beatrice and Marit together.  He loved them both in different ways. But that could not be. He turned away, and the cycle began again." ( The things I read. Bleh! )

Bill Watterson on Susie, Susie is earnest, serious, and smart - the kind of girl I was attracted to in school and eventually married. "Derkins" was the nickname of my wife's family's beagle. The early strips with Susie were heavy-handed with the love-hate conflict, and it's taken me a while to get a bead on Susie's relationship with Calvin. I suspect Calvin has a mild crush on her that he expresses by trying to annoy her, but Susie is a bit unnerved and put off by Calvin's weirdness. This encourages Calvin to be even weirder, so it's a good dynamic. Neither of them quite understands what's going on, which is probably true of most relationships. I sometimes imagine a strip from Susie's point of view would be interesting, and after so many strips about boys, I think a strip about a little girl, drawn by a woman, could be great. Some context: So, Susie and Calvin are supposed to be partnering up in class for a project on the p...

I woke up to the roll of thunder. It was around midday (now there, don’t judge me. I’m cool!) A wind swept across my room. Now, that is something truly rare. It is my belief, that a storm could rage on outside with houses, trees and choo-choo trains flying around in it, but not a speck of wind will cross the threshold of my room. It is THAT depressing. I sleep with the balcony door leading roadwards, open, something that drives my father mad for fear of robbery but then, unless I do that, my room tends to become a furnace. Eggs boil themselves over when brought into my room. With the recent curbs on cooking gas imposed by the government, it may not be such a bad thing after all, but more on that later. So I wake up with storm clouds brewing outside. It is truly a heavenly sight. Summers are too hot, winters are cold(not too much, but I’m sensitive) but it is the monsoons that I think holds the calendar together. What better feeling than the gentle pitter-patter of raindrops falli...

The little bell jingled softly as the cart rounded a corner and swung into Park Lane . The tree leaves cast a shade on the road, the sun glimmering in through gaps in the branches. On one side of the road, lined houses, red brick, with little chimneys on top. Some had a small wooden fencing, some, with small lawns where little children ran about with toys in hand. On the other side of the lane, as the name suggested, was a park. Not too big, lined by trees and little bushes, neatly trimmed, the grass was lush green and soft and springy, little slides and swings lined one end of the park where children of many ages jumped and ran around. Under the shade of the trees, were wooden benches, where their parents and babysitters sat around, keeping a watchful eye on them, some knitting, some chatting, some reading in the glistening rays of the setting sun. All this stopped with the little jingle of the bell mounted on top of the cart, as it ambled up the road. It was a small cart, ran on thr...