You know you are at the year end when you see "Best of" and 'Worst of" lists everywhere, right from television to newspapers...Fortunately or unfortunately, the business world still respects the financial year and schools/colleges have their academic years to stick to.
Infected by the "year ending" buzz, I too decided to post my last blog for this year...The last blog for which 2010 will appear against it...I know it's still not 31st, but knowing my average frequency of posting, I am sure this will be it for this year. Anything special to write about? Not really...When has it ever been... :)
For a change it's winters in Mumbai and I am simply loving it...I read about people suffering from Winter Blues. It supposed to be a scientifically recognized phenomenon that people suffer from as the days get shorter. Seriously, is this true, I wonder...
Besides the "Best of" and "Worst Of" Lists, there is one more type of list in the air...sacred resolution list...It is so scared that even the maker of this list forbids himself/herself from touching it. So best of Luck for creating yours.
Hope I keep blogging next year too (Not a resolution thankfully) ...See you next year
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Cling Cling and dum dum
I have never missed having a camera feature in my phone...But I really did.... that day.
I was leaving from the office at 3.30. My eyes were still getting used to the bright sunshine after the prolonged rains of 3 to 4 months. My mind was still worrying about the work that I had left half way and planning for the next day had already begun. The joy of leaving early from office was definitely lost. I started walking, with my head down, as much due to the work blues as due to attentiveness that you have to have on the Mumbai roads to spot the puddles and open manholes.
And suddenly somewhere beyond the song that was blaring into my ears through the radio earphones, I heard a drum beat. Then another one and then one more. I looked up and for the first time actually acknowledged the reason why I was leaving early. Trying to locate the source of the drums I started looking beyond my line of sight.
I increased my pace, and even my steps automatically synced with the drum beat. I knew where it was coming from. There were buses and cars and of course sea of people blocking my view. And then I caught the glimpse of the Elephant God, towering above all of these own creations of his. My ears started catching the jingle of the bells and manjira. As I crossed the signal, picture became clearer and colorful. The colorful nine yard sarees followed by the turbaned men and little children clad in white kurtas. Men walked with the beats banging the bamboo sticks they had in hand. Children did the traditional "Lezhim". While ladies with manjira joined the chorus of slogans requesting the Lord to stay longer.
Moving at slow pace along with the deity on wheels, it was not long before I caught up with them. The tar road was hidden in the red colored dust and as I bowed my head before the beloved God of this city I became one of them. The radio was lost in the noise that I did not consider noise any more. Walking past the procession, and observing it I was lost in the moment. I wished I had walked slower, coz the procession had ended and the beats were lost. Bollywood number from the radio had overcome the drums again.
But with a slight smile on my face, office and sun was just a memory.
I was leaving from the office at 3.30. My eyes were still getting used to the bright sunshine after the prolonged rains of 3 to 4 months. My mind was still worrying about the work that I had left half way and planning for the next day had already begun. The joy of leaving early from office was definitely lost. I started walking, with my head down, as much due to the work blues as due to attentiveness that you have to have on the Mumbai roads to spot the puddles and open manholes.
And suddenly somewhere beyond the song that was blaring into my ears through the radio earphones, I heard a drum beat. Then another one and then one more. I looked up and for the first time actually acknowledged the reason why I was leaving early. Trying to locate the source of the drums I started looking beyond my line of sight.
I increased my pace, and even my steps automatically synced with the drum beat. I knew where it was coming from. There were buses and cars and of course sea of people blocking my view. And then I caught the glimpse of the Elephant God, towering above all of these own creations of his. My ears started catching the jingle of the bells and manjira. As I crossed the signal, picture became clearer and colorful. The colorful nine yard sarees followed by the turbaned men and little children clad in white kurtas. Men walked with the beats banging the bamboo sticks they had in hand. Children did the traditional "Lezhim". While ladies with manjira joined the chorus of slogans requesting the Lord to stay longer.
Moving at slow pace along with the deity on wheels, it was not long before I caught up with them. The tar road was hidden in the red colored dust and as I bowed my head before the beloved God of this city I became one of them. The radio was lost in the noise that I did not consider noise any more. Walking past the procession, and observing it I was lost in the moment. I wished I had walked slower, coz the procession had ended and the beats were lost. Bollywood number from the radio had overcome the drums again.
But with a slight smile on my face, office and sun was just a memory.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Creepy crawlies
Long long time since I posted. And yes, truly this time I was busy and it wasn't the usual boredom that causes the big gap between my posts.
I literally had so many topics buzzing in my head that I wanted to write about. Some frivolous and some serious. And yet again, I prefer frivolous over serious.
I am sure you must have already guessed wht I am writing about. I thought it was more of a colloqial word and wouldn't find place in dictionary. No, it does. As a noun it is defined as 'a spider, worm, or other small, flightless creature, esp. when considered unpleasant or frightening'. The creature I was gonna write about does not exactly fit this definition.It is not that small, specially when it grows up or when you are watching it from close quarters (avoid this). But yes, they are definitely unpleasant and hence frightening, at least to me. Nope, I am not talking about snakes. They are frightening hence unpleasant. The other way round relationship is more true for ------ Lizards. Not everyone may have had an encounter with snake, but lizards... I am sure everyone has waged a war with them at least once.
But even though I claim to hate them, I can't help but be fascinated by them. You know how with any animal or insect, there is a default gender that you associate. For e.g: Dog is always 'He', Cat is always 'She', Sparrow is always 'She' and Crow is always 'He'. Quite subjective, but thats how I speak of them. For me lizard was always a 'She'. Reason was that I had learnt a poem on 'Her' as a child. I remember just the first few lines -
Lalita lizard sitting on the wall,
how is it that you never ever fall,
Upside down you hang on the ceiling ,
I often wonder what you must be feeling.
An amusing poem and truly my thoughts too. But everytime I came face to face to one such Lalita or any of her cousins, amusement was the last thing on my mind. Lizard hunting was out of my purview. Whenever others in my house were engaged in any such battle, I would be standing on the top of a bed or chair in the other room, imagining every moving ray of light to be the lizard being hunted. Of course this imagination was never in mute mode and my shrieks though disturbing added the perfect background score to the battle. But that was way back in the past. As everybody staying alone has to fight their darkest fears and inner demons, I had to as well.
My first battle with lizard (in which I returned victorious) could might as well as be the topic for another post. (Don't worry I won't write that, I know you are already bored with this one).Though the fear has reduced fascination has not. I thought I was the only one fascinated by them. But no, there is an entire country that worships it and considers them lucky. Of course they are not ordinary house lizards but colorful ones, native only to that country. It is probably the only place where I saw a lizard print on clothes. I was completely in awe of it, but finally some common sense prevailed and I didn't buy that. But common sense did not sustain for long and now I have a wooden lizard on my refrigerator door :)
I literally had so many topics buzzing in my head that I wanted to write about. Some frivolous and some serious. And yet again, I prefer frivolous over serious.
I am sure you must have already guessed wht I am writing about. I thought it was more of a colloqial word and wouldn't find place in dictionary. No, it does. As a noun it is defined as 'a spider, worm, or other small, flightless creature, esp. when considered unpleasant or frightening'. The creature I was gonna write about does not exactly fit this definition.It is not that small, specially when it grows up or when you are watching it from close quarters (avoid this). But yes, they are definitely unpleasant and hence frightening, at least to me. Nope, I am not talking about snakes. They are frightening hence unpleasant. The other way round relationship is more true for ------ Lizards. Not everyone may have had an encounter with snake, but lizards... I am sure everyone has waged a war with them at least once.
But even though I claim to hate them, I can't help but be fascinated by them. You know how with any animal or insect, there is a default gender that you associate. For e.g: Dog is always 'He', Cat is always 'She', Sparrow is always 'She' and Crow is always 'He'. Quite subjective, but thats how I speak of them. For me lizard was always a 'She'. Reason was that I had learnt a poem on 'Her' as a child. I remember just the first few lines -
Lalita lizard sitting on the wall,
how is it that you never ever fall,
Upside down you hang on the ceiling ,
I often wonder what you must be feeling.
An amusing poem and truly my thoughts too. But everytime I came face to face to one such Lalita or any of her cousins, amusement was the last thing on my mind. Lizard hunting was out of my purview. Whenever others in my house were engaged in any such battle, I would be standing on the top of a bed or chair in the other room, imagining every moving ray of light to be the lizard being hunted. Of course this imagination was never in mute mode and my shrieks though disturbing added the perfect background score to the battle. But that was way back in the past. As everybody staying alone has to fight their darkest fears and inner demons, I had to as well.
My first battle with lizard (in which I returned victorious) could might as well as be the topic for another post. (Don't worry I won't write that, I know you are already bored with this one).Though the fear has reduced fascination has not. I thought I was the only one fascinated by them. But no, there is an entire country that worships it and considers them lucky. Of course they are not ordinary house lizards but colorful ones, native only to that country. It is probably the only place where I saw a lizard print on clothes. I was completely in awe of it, but finally some common sense prevailed and I didn't buy that. But common sense did not sustain for long and now I have a wooden lizard on my refrigerator door :)
Thursday, April 1, 2010
And I post again
It's been a really long time since I posted something. And it's not as if I was too busy or out of topics...sheer boredom. And yet that urge to write has emerged again. The reason being that I have enjoyed reading lots of posts recently. Irony is that it was again boredom that drove me towards it.
I haven't had a chance to catch up a good book in a long time. I think the last book that enjoyed a lot was Motorcycle diaries. After that there have been attempts to find such a book, sometimes fiction...that I did finish but didn't enjoy, some non-fiction that I was enjoying but couldn't finish as they grew a little heavy on me. Whatever the reason but basically I was missing quality reading. And though most people wouldn't associate blogs with serious writing neither do I claim that they are a must for a literature student but somehow I have always enjoyed them.
And so I decided to revisit the blogs of my friends that I generally enjoy reading. Unfortunately I haven't yet added the list of blogs that I follow so that I get automatic updates whenever a new post is added. And I was truly disappointed to see no updates too. And first thing that struck me was ,"Must be very busy." And there in this list of the blogs that my friend followed, featured my blog , very low on the list though. And there on the list, were some really interesting blog titles. And soon I was lost in the maze of blogs of friends of friends. For a second I did wonder whether it was alright to read blogs of complete strangers. I know what I blog are my personal thoughts that I don't mind sharing. But could I be so sure about others. But as I started reading them, these concerns slowly started disappearing. Some due to open acknowldgement or request of bloggers that encouraged friends of friends to read their posts. And some, because I could associate with the other bloggers so well and the things that they had written about. I had never thought there were so many people out there who had similar idiosyncracies as mine or who made confessions about their day to day follies on their blogs and of course those who had to taken up blogging coz they wanted to become a writer some day (like me :)
And the next thing I knew was that I had reached out for creating a new post. As I finish writing what I have in mind, I feel the regret of not having posted for so long. I feel so good pouring out these thoughts even though they may not mean much to anybody. So a small message to all the people who haven't blogged in a long time: Do post, u r missing something that u don't know u r missing.
I still don't know whether it is okay to read blogs of friends of friends. Hope your friends don't mind.
I haven't had a chance to catch up a good book in a long time. I think the last book that enjoyed a lot was Motorcycle diaries. After that there have been attempts to find such a book, sometimes fiction...that I did finish but didn't enjoy, some non-fiction that I was enjoying but couldn't finish as they grew a little heavy on me. Whatever the reason but basically I was missing quality reading. And though most people wouldn't associate blogs with serious writing neither do I claim that they are a must for a literature student but somehow I have always enjoyed them.
And so I decided to revisit the blogs of my friends that I generally enjoy reading. Unfortunately I haven't yet added the list of blogs that I follow so that I get automatic updates whenever a new post is added. And I was truly disappointed to see no updates too. And first thing that struck me was ,"Must be very busy." And there in this list of the blogs that my friend followed, featured my blog , very low on the list though. And there on the list, were some really interesting blog titles. And soon I was lost in the maze of blogs of friends of friends. For a second I did wonder whether it was alright to read blogs of complete strangers. I know what I blog are my personal thoughts that I don't mind sharing. But could I be so sure about others. But as I started reading them, these concerns slowly started disappearing. Some due to open acknowldgement or request of bloggers that encouraged friends of friends to read their posts. And some, because I could associate with the other bloggers so well and the things that they had written about. I had never thought there were so many people out there who had similar idiosyncracies as mine or who made confessions about their day to day follies on their blogs and of course those who had to taken up blogging coz they wanted to become a writer some day (like me :)
And the next thing I knew was that I had reached out for creating a new post. As I finish writing what I have in mind, I feel the regret of not having posted for so long. I feel so good pouring out these thoughts even though they may not mean much to anybody. So a small message to all the people who haven't blogged in a long time: Do post, u r missing something that u don't know u r missing.
I still don't know whether it is okay to read blogs of friends of friends. Hope your friends don't mind.
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