Saturday, July 01, 2006

A fragrant fleet

I have hardly ever had a friend or a foe who hasnt taught me a thing or two. But there are others still who I have hardly known but yet did not fail to leave a mark on me. These people have blown into my life and darted out of it as I only stood looking... but not without leaving their fragrance behind... forever. A tribute to them and to those moments.

You may not remember me
I must be one of a thousand.
I cannot forget thee
The fragrance has not weakened.

You stirred me, you swayed me,
But you will never know.
It is something I truly felt
But never told you so.

My memories dont summon you often.
You dont make my everyday.
But you will make a story that
My children will know some day.

You wont fly into me again,
For that I dont feel sorry.
I know you blew away for
You were never meant to be.

Thursday, June 29, 2006

Pinnacle of piousness!

My friend's boyfriend's uncle was coming to visit them. So she scurried home several hours in advance to "purify" their home, in preparation. Here goes a true story from the famous uncle's legend: He was once visiting a family friend. While using their bathroom, he noticed a Victoria Secret catalog in one of their bathroom shelves. He promptly took it to the trash, feeling very honored to have helped a friend to become more "holy" and "virtuous"!

Even funnier is when you let you imagination run wild and picture what people would do to "clean up" if he were visiting their home.. LOL! I hope my friend's home doesnt get incarcerated in a month-long purification ritual because he spotted pills on an old shopping bill or "carmen electra" in the search history on their PC :p

What terror are tornados and thieves, when you have uncles like these :p

The next day.

Of course I did ask my friend how things turned out with the visit and what "scandalous" things he helped them renounce. "Hmm.. no.. no such happened", she said. Just as I was getting disappointed that all this hype was in vain and that I lost a good story, she continued: In an effort to find something to do that was far fetched from any controversy, my friend suggested that they all go see this documentary, "An Inconvinient Truth" (In case you havent heard, it is a documentary on Al Gore's efforts to raise awareness on the issues concerning global warming - a very informative and entertaining piece of work). The uncle promptly decided against the idea because he did not *believe* in global warming! According to his orthodox religious beliefs, nature is God and cannot be affected by any of human's activities.

Howizdat for a story! Me likeyyyyyy :D

Sunday, April 02, 2006

"Oh so true..." s

"I need help when I have a fake smile, not genuine tears..."

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." -Robert A. Heinlein

yake artha balige (Why should there be a meaning to life?)
yake artha nalege (Why should there be a meaning to our tomorrows)
artha ondu yaake beku
arali naguva hoovige (Why search for meaning in something implicitly beautiful - like a flower in bloom) - Dr. N.S. Laksminarayana Bhatta

Monday, March 06, 2006

Behold the balloons

I wondered
All these people I see
Some known, some unknown
What do they think of me?

I wished
White balloons of thoughts
Popped from their heads
And showed me what I wanted to see.

I guessed
I would then inspect
How many people found me quirky
And how many found me pretty.

I conceived
Darting out those thoughts
That I knew were misled or those
That portrayed my person untruly.

I realized
I am me to noone but me
And it would take forever
Did I go on a balloon bursting spree.

I poised
Content the balloons are nowhere
And that things are just fine
The way they were meant to be.

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Gold-plated problems

Someone I know was cribbing to me about how it had been two months since he ordered his new BMW and it was yet to arrive. Meanwhile he had to make do with driving his poor old Honda. I voiced my most-concerned-sounding "oh that is bad" and dint voice my "Vaat ye peter" (translates to "Now that you have advertised your very depressing situation, I need to head back home in my second-hand bicycle" - with due apologies from singara chennai's lord labakdaas language to all he whose parents named him 'Peter'). Petering around, he was; but it got me thinking about how most of our problems are "gold-plated" at one level or the other. These are problems we have because we are well-off enough to have them.

For the rest of this blog entry, I could give you a motivational talk about how to think positive and be grateful for one's second-hand bicycles problems. But I realize that in the time that I struggle and fish for words of inspiration to fill three sentences, Oprah would have dished out three talk shows on the topic and three volumes of "The 420 habits of highly problem-free people" would have been published.

So.. I choose to play light and list all those high-end peterings-of-the-problemings that I have said/heard. Join in, readers :)

1. "I am in this big fix as to which of my admit-offers I should accept - MIT, CMU or Stanford. "
(observer's inner voice: "Hmm.. so sad you dint get an admit offer from Aminjikarai Village Community College")
2. "Oh! Dont even ask my pathetic score - I missed a centum in Math by 1 point"
(observer's inner voice: "Shoot! And I was thinking I had a bad score when I've managed to pass the exam!")
3. Typical interview scenario.
Interviewer: "So, tell me - what would you say your one big weakness is?"
Interviewee: "I work too hard. I love my work so much that I dont take a second's break till I have completed the task at hand."
(observer's inner voice: "Sahi Jawaab! But sorry mister, but we only hire people who dont like to work at all.")
(Me: Cant blame the interviewee. What is the point of such questions in interviews anyways when all you can expect to hear is well-prepared, concealed boasting masquerading as self-denigration.)

Finally, a mindful moral of a mindless blog-entry, to make up for the motivational talk that I did not give: While the BMW story is not true anyway (I made it up to give me a head-start on the writing), the rest were not quoted as a mockery (despite the seeming spite in the "observer's inner voice"). My reason for picking on these instances is to provide an exaggeration to put forth my point: To someone else, our genuine problems could sound as as frivolous as those. If we could read into the lives of people around us, we would realize that most of our own problems are gold-plated on a comparative scale.

Sunday, January 22, 2006

When life is listless and times are torturous....

inspiration comes super-size in the form of south Indian cinema. For all those who have been struck by the great misfortune of not having had the opportunity of reveling in its resplendence, South Indian cinema abounds in...

what technology is yet to see: Hypersonic positron emission triggered by the static generated due to triboelectric effect between the epithelial cells and the terminal hair follicles of Namma Captain Sir!

what Keats and P.B. Shelly died without hearing: http://www.youtube.com/watch.php?v=KIcA4aV86Sg