Wake....

I don't know why exactly I start over again. There is a gaping discontinuity that I gaze over. After a very long soirée do I take up a pen again to write. Yes, the break was an enforced one. It is not daily that a Writer writes his own thoughts. Sometimes, he lets his mind wonder, and drift along with the clouds in the scary blue sky... Hmmm..' *yawn* Yes, I sleepy now, and my brain is justifying a closure on all things taking up space in the mind. I will now continue to post the daily happenings of mine, such trifles in front of the grand-canonicals of the Universe. But, I know about it, and therefore it is beneficial to me.

The Song of Music

There is no magic yet, which is as beautiful, as mystical and as enchanted as music. For whatever reason, and I don’t know what it exactly is, humans find themselves inexorably entangled with the powers of music; it is a nature, as latent and ingrained within us as a snail is in its shell. We are drawn to strains from afar, and to us all it appears a little different, yet unexplainably wonderful. To weary travelers, the song of a bird brings joys in gloomy roads, while the gyrating tunes revels in the nightclubs of the cities, but wherever music is being played it invariably is important as a carrier of the essence and atmosphere of the place.
Whatever the case, music is as omnipotent as the variety of human beings who inhabit this earth. For wherever humanity has gone, it has carried music with it; wherever culture has proceeded, there is a particular way in music which it propagates and plays. Music is extensively varied in its tastes and flavors, but whatever it is, it is just magical when everybody joins in and flows in its endless streams. And this magic takes us to lands and countries heretofore unseen, unheard, but gradually understood in its chords, pitches and tunes.
In our hostel, we had a session of this breathtaking drug, and what shall I say of it? It was wonderful.

We huddled on a staircase, and Mr. Zeeshan Khan, with his guitar on his thigh, and with Mr. Subhro Ganguly, with his enchanting vocals, started the proceedings in which we all chimed in together. We followed the course set up by the strings and the rhythms, and tousled over with them along the length of the scales. Surprisingly, most of cannot sing well, and yet we all joined in. It was wonderful, it was magical.

It has the most tremendous powers of all on this planet earth. May we make some more, and continue the magic that we have got from our forefathers. May it always continue.

It is 2.30 in the morning, and my eyelids continue to droop precariously over my eyes, and i do not know how much longer i can stay awake. I have been away for too long a time to realise, but I have come back, and come back to thinking for good.

I am sure I didn't see the glacial ice heading towards me, but consciously or not, it froze within a bubble of air, and I got trapped in the jumble of the clog wheels of the world. I could hardly recollect anything that I saw: they were mostly fuzzy pictures; I could not make sense of any of them. After this, there was momentary silence, and a dark hollow began creeping upon my back. I felt cold for the first time, and it was numbing. Now there was no pain, there was no feeling. I was dead; at least that was what it felt like.

Suddenly, this blur of images subsided, and I had in front of me a little song, which had broken through the barriers of this frozen ice. My body, unaccustomedly, started twitching to its graceful strain. It filled my body with vigour and warmth. and to this tune I danced, how so ever i could. Suddenly, the ice shattered open, and I was to see the most beautiful spring ever unfolded before my eyes.

Yes, I have come back. I have come back with a determination!

Caribbean Splash

I went to see Pirates of the Caribbean: On stranger tides, yesterday with my friends, and must say that it wasn’t the most pleasant of the experiences, even disregarding the extreme heat I had to go through to watch the movie at noon. The chief, and the most ironic, was the reason why went for the show at noon: 3D.

If there was one bad 3D movie, then it was this one. If seeing Avatar 2D was a waste (without 3D you miss the awesome window like effect), then seeing POTC: OST was a horrid torture of 128 minutes. I might have seen half the movie without specs, so, I got a bail out of the pain. The theme was mostly dark and hence was incomprehensible with the specs on. I wear necessary spectacles without which I cannot see, and this causes more pain.

The epitome of nuisance arises from the poor photography. If Avatar showed how beautiful things could look in 3D, POTC:OST showed what pain it could be if they are not properly projected. The front projection techniques, in which the blurring of projection is more apparent nearer to the “window”, actually spoilt some very good screen space. And, to top it all, my head ached seeing the 3D.

Minus the 3D glitches, the story wasn’t so bad, though I must say it wasn’t as interesting as the other POTC movies. There wasn’t much adventure, and the story didn’t have enduring showdowns. Well, I don’t really criticize movie plots, but this one didn’t have a pivotal plot point; but thinking it from my brain would only allow my perspective in view, and not the artist’s, so I don’t see much plot problems, minus the mermaid love story, and the lack of swashbuckling sword fights.

The only thing that I went to see the movie for was, after all, Jack Sparrow! And he was brilliant! I counted five double crosses, two broken promises and one cold backstab. And finally, when I thought there would be a kiss between Angelica and Jack: the scene was awesome.

Johnny Depp and Penelope Cruz were awesome, and so was Geoffrey Rush. It was all in all entertaining, if not a little irritating movie.

I would now meditate, and concentrate on my work, for a lot needs to be written down.

Chugging Train

That is what I would consider my life to be at this moment. It is going on, and I haven't lost anything of my spirit to anyone or anything. But this is hard, this is so much of what I didn't want my life to turn into. I haven't done much except write a good deal of the last two years, and now it seems I have lost much craft of what I had a long time ago, and now I am like a wandering philosopher: no home, no place to rest, and endless toils.

I thought my life would go on smoothly, and will not be stopped by anything. That I would achieve success at whatever I did, and would conquer almost everything that I came across. Some people have it so easy, that I thought I also had it within me to do whatever I would please. But it is not so. One after another I have failed, and now though their were plenty of promises from me, I am nothing more than another failure.

Are failures important? Someone said, that important or not, they happen, and sometimes they are necessary to remind you of what you exactly are.

But the taunts you face with people! My own parents, for example, count on nothing more than my marks, and almost all their love and other stuff, has stopped, and just because i failed to get into a particular university. It seems all their love is only for my marks and nothing else. They even canceled a trip with my relatives just because the results are going to be out then, and they don't think i could do much in that.

But, if the resolve is steady, and the will is strong, their is no wall that can stop you. You must let go of everything, and hold steady on your path, no matter how many times you fail, or get trampled over, or get cut.
I will continue.

Interstices

The great all-rounder, Umberto Eco, author of the best-seller The Name of the Rose, was not only a wonderful novelist, but also a perspective changing professor of semiotics in the University of Bologna. His seminal work on semiotics is well known in the literary circles. And, the man made a bestseller book. How could he achieve all this?

Many people have called him a man of many skills; a master of all trades, jack of none. Yet, what he actually was is merely a great time-manager. ‘Merely’ is a wrong way to describe it, because it is ultimately what differentiates between Steve Jobs and other people. We must accept this fact – we can never become someone like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or Warren Buffet.

We can only be us.

But what allowed Umberto to simultaneously produce to seminal work, both on the fictional and non-fictional spheres of literature. Semiotics isn’t a lightly study. It often requires people to work long at seemingly unending pile of books, and historical texts, trying to link strange signs and make some meaning out of it. So how exactly did Umberto manage it????

In an interview, he explains, that he used to work in the interstices.

It is a well-known fact that if we could magically reduce all the empty spaces within the atom, the universe could fit within the fist of our hand. Of course we don’t really have a chance to put it to the anvil because no such infinite extension charm is available with us today (except in the world of Harry Potter).

Interstices are similarly the times that seemingly seem worthless. He explains further that “consider you are visiting my house, and I am waiting for you to come up through the elevator. In between the time, I try to do something useful. Because, by the time you would have arrived through the elevator, I would have already written a newspaper article.”

This is what interstices are. We must fill the gaps. And our lives would be fulfilled.

Harry Potter and the "maut key taufey"

Would you believe how base these people could become while dubbing??? Diabolical!!!

They turned Deathly hallows into a mortified version of a bloody Hindi horror film! Maut key taufey!
Bless Dumbledore's beard, never thought i would go to watch this stupidity. They even forgot to translate "Deathly Hallows" correctly.

"Maut key taufey" means "The gifts of death"; which i think is correct, as far as the tales of Beedle the Bard is concerned. But it miserably fails when it comes to the fact that they are hallows. They are holy to death, or at least coveted possessions when it comes to the Crypto-Wizards, like X. Lovegood.

What these exactly are, there is little to debate: skilled handicrafts from the most skilled wizards of the times. The Peverell Brothers might have made that out of curiosity, or just for the lust of power, it doesn't really matter. What matter is how a confusion over the name killed a day that i had been waiting for ever since the book came out.

Yesterday was such a day. I woke up, feeling as fleet as Tinker Bell. I went with plenty of time to spare towards the multiplex, with the plot fuzzing through my head like a stream of bubbling waterfall. But just as the movie was about to begin, two asses cam to sit beside me, and that was it.

Along with "Maut key Taufey" you get a free Harry Potter hater but Emma Watson lover sitting beside you, you know the day you had been waiting for is coming to a painful abrupt close.

OUCH. That did hurt.

But the movie was nice. The way they carried the plot was absolutely wonderful. I must give credit to David Yates for reproducing such a marvelously crafted book into an awesome movie.

I will not comment on comments stating that the movie is quite slow. Are you friggin' crazy??
I wanted the film to be even slower. I wanted to savour each moment of intense emotion that the characters go through. I wanted to get lost in the world of Rowling, for once without having to imagine everything myself.....

Huh... expectations shouldn't be so high, especially when you go to Harry potter and "maut key taufey".

DEEPER Regret

I am a big fan of owl city.

In fact, I am a really big fan of Owl City. Some people say Owl city is a rip-of &c. But, I believe those people should hear his music two times over and if no vision breaks in your head, you can qualify yourself as a human without imagination.

Ah, I love Owl City so much that I could go ranting a hundred times over. But that is that. Inevitably, as a fan, I am susceptible to reading Adam Young's humorous and interesting blogs, which feature his insight into his music, his life, and his wonderful power of imagination.

This November 8th post was really very interesting. You can actually go and read it over yourself. It is humorous and slightly true.

http://owlcityblog.com/

I must say the guy is hitting the right areas in the article. For those of you who don't possess the strength of turning over pages (or rather clicking on hyperlinks) "Deep Regret" is a disorder of men loosing there guts and mind while in presence of beautiful women. Like for example if Scarlett Johansson was in front of you, the stakes of you uttering a very stupid response to her is about 198% higher than normal.

LOL. For me that accounts for 258%.

So, has it ever happened to you? Usually this disorder is seen among adolescents over the oh-so-beautiful girl in class &c. But I think it persists for a far a longer period of time.

So what is DEEPER REGRET? The Regret of never having met a girl beautiful enough to have DEEP REGRET.

Let us be frank people. We are men; and for biological, prestige and ... whatever reason, we love to have at least one beautiful woman around. Oh, there are exceptions to presence of beautiful woman: they are most unwelcome in laboratory discussions, mathematics problem solving sessions, hands-on rugby sessions, and of course for that most important game of the season.

I would be lying if i told you I never saw a person with whom i had DEEP REGRET, but then it has never been that difficult. I don't find socializing with women a tad difficult. It in fact comes to me easily. I am more comfortable with exquisite women around than being with a rowdy group of males, banging beer bottles or shouting four-letter-words with them.

Women, and I deeply respect them for that, have class. Yes sir, they have class. You may consider me a feminist, but i consider my mother in the highest manner. I consider some of my friends (who are girls) is the highest manner. I like their behavior, which I find a little more civilized than 65% of the male population of the world.

But then, such a view, coupled with constantly being hounded by girls, make my attitude towards them rather more friendly. But, yes, I miss the DEEP REGRET. I miss it so much. I wish I could find a few faces in the crowd who are like "O WOW". Feminine sensuality tends to miss me at times.

How People Honk

Honking styles can reveal a lot about the people behind the button. It is of course, a continuous earache, especially when you live beside the busiest street in the town. Living in a city of 2.8 million people, with all its honey-beeish people, one can easily recognize these particular patterns.

Every day, just as the clock strikes eight, a cacophony of horns emerges across my front window. It lasts a good amount of fourteen hours since then.

It starts with the late school boy, with his trailing horn, warning the others that his brash recklessness can them in the hospital. How much do you need me to display me irresponsibility? I’m already freakishly late, he says.

Then there comes Mister Busy. He is the guy who drives the slowest, showing his just-washed sedan to all, and honks an unbelievable tune. He would stop behind people on the traffic light, and try to blow their eardrums off. His intention: he wants to stand right in front of you crossing over the white line that says STOP.

Miss Perky travels very fast, zipping across the streets with abandon, literally. Reason: she knows only two speeds, 0 km/h and 60 km/h, nothing in between. She will blow her high-pitched horn, mimicking her own voice everywhere, wverytime. She believes that hearing it everyone will fear that a railway engine is through.

And then comes the Railway Man, always on his scooter, blowing his horn only after the crossing is crossed.

Suddenly you hear a heart thumping noise. What was that? A demon? Apocalypse? Oh no that was only the school bus honking madly because a pupil is late.

Mr. Cool has his own way. He blows his horn differently, leans like a pro on the turn, and does a wheelie every time he sees a girl. Boy, and he thinks he is cool.

Miss daydream is next. She is all about her own business, looking lost and confused. Only after someone honks does she meekly reply with a small jab at the button. I rather like her; she does not disturb me in the morning snooze. And so the sun settles down into her afternoon position.

It so passes, that whenever you are concentrating on something important, Master Rockstar come out. He bends away like a MAGLEV, almost out of touch of the road (and sometimes he does get out of touch). He always blows his horn in a particular manner, always in a tune. He is loud, boisterous, and, my, he is fast. He just whizzes away, with his horns doppling away.

Then, there is Hurry Billy. He is a sophisticate, and always in a hurry. He tries to beat Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo right in India’s dilapidated roads, every time he goes out! He always horns, much like miss perky, but always after overtaking. He does everything honking, blowing five-six peace shattering blasts while cruising in the open road, just to show that he is in a hurry.

Then, it is Miss Meticulous. She’ll always blow her horn a particular way, for a particular time. Always 2.63 seconds.

Mr. Hero. He is the person with perfectly set hair, with goggles on his forehead, wearing a handkerchief on his neck, like a scarf with a open shirt showing his vests, and a low waist jeans. He rides a chopper, and with his polished smile, he calmly attaches his air horn. As if he needs one. Such a character, with so loud a bike, can hardly be missed by anyone. But when he it comes to honking he is a villain for sure. He goes crazy, pressing the button like he is keying in a 80 character phone number.

Oh! Had Beethoven heard it, he would have been glad he was deaf. Though, I believe, he would become deaf after hearing that any way.
But the most lethal of them all is the Ninja. Quiet like an owl, he swoops down upon his prey from sharp angled turns, and blind corners, travelling as fast as starlight. He is the most dangerous, and I don’t like him a bit, even though he is not a honker.

And who’s that? He doesn’t need a horn, he has the siren. Oh, he is the local politician; bloody leech of our democracy.

So where is the simple one? The one who uses his horn just to warn others? Why, he is writing this!

Burn the Koran?! Oh my god!

What? Did I hear correctly on the news? They just said that a group of ill-minded paranoid American Folks are burning the Holy book of Koran. Why? Cause they want to give it as a tribute to those who died on the sad day of 11th September.

It was bad I agree, but this is worse. America, was never like this. America showed the world democracy, and fought for righteous ideals. This was not what was expected of american people, who openly embraced Gandhi and his ideals in Martin Luther King Jr.

http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/pages/International-Burn-A-Koran-Day/134718123226530?ref=ts

Not only does such an occurrence haunt me, but is absolutely ill-timed and absolutely politically incorrect.

We have never been brought up to like this sort of dehumanizing acts. They say they are condemning the Islamic religion. They say that Islam is not a religion of peace.
No religion is! In fact, I must go on to say that Religion has often than not stirred wars amongst Human beings.

But this is madness. People don't understand the Socio-Political unrest this action could create. And another thing, how could humans be so vile that they burn another's Holy Book. People have started to do this monstrous thing already, because some stupid Pastor (I call stupid people stupid) called on this "great drive to salvation".

I dislike this. This is not according to Gandhian Principles. How different does it make you from Osama bin Laden? He is an infidel, so to counter him, must you be the same?

We should be burning (rather not, the global warming is high this year) Osama bin Laden and reading the Koran into his face adn telling him where he has wrongly interpreted it.

Hail Islam! The religion of Peace!

Udaan: Flight of dreams

I went to see a movie yesterday. The plan wasn’t perfect, and we (my friends and I) reached the cinema about five minutes late. What we saw there made us forget our imperfectness, and still sweeps me off the floor. We went to see a movie called “Udaan”.

In a cinema culture where larger than life themes, exotic locales, and seemingly predictable storylines, this film arrives as a breath of fresh air to people like me who like to see the cinema express humanity in a form which could truly be considered as art: aesthetically pleasing, and confident.

Udaan, with its simple location, cannot be truly said as to what it wanted to depict. Perhaps it was brotherhood, or sibling relationship, or atrocious parents, it really told a lot. But I could summarize it for you as the story of a boy wanting to break his shackles and fly.

Now I am not going to write much about its story, and am not interested to give you a review of a movie, you can very well find it in IMDB, but I will like to tell you some of the feelings which flickered through me during the show.

Sometimes you see a film which gets you absorbed in its characters, and make you feel anger, hatred, pity and love for them. The Shawshank Redemption was one such movie which really caused me to apprehend its characters deeply. Udaan does the same. When the boy, Rohan, vents his anger on his father’s car, you feel the rush of blood flowing through your veins. And most of all, when Rohan outruns his father, you feel joy, you feel freedom, you feel flight.

The film displays in iconic detail the struggle under forced rule, and how an aspiring and talented writer, like me, who is entangled in Engineering digress. It is so sad to see his novel being burned by his father, and the way he deploys his mind beside the rivers of Jamshedpur.

And most of all, how it gives you the feeling of righteous flight from the shackles of tedium of this world.

The Long Delay

Yeah, it became a much of tedium.

Writing a blog is great, but to repeat a series of tasks again and again in order to publish it, makes me feel as if I am in a loop. The World Cup was far too much in a fast pace for me. Evidently, I could not comment on it its ending, because more pressing tasks literally are pressing me too much.

The life of a student is wonderful, they say. Might be; but ask anyone in India who is aiming for the IIT-JEE. I am not. I just happen to be a floating leaf amidst a foaming stream. I do not wish to be an engineer; I want to be an astronomer! But as preparing a delicacy often requires us to cook more side-dishes rather than the main course, I too need to give this examination in order to achieve the minimum of my dreams. In India, this one examination kills more people than the king cobra.

It is often not the examination itself, but its hype, its battle like confrontation, and its reputation being a do-or-die one is perhaps at fault. People often spend years (exactly two or more) to try and sneak into the premier institutions of India for Engineering: Indian Institute of Technology. When all hopes and aspirations come crashing, it is often hard to take, and the impulsive reaction is pulverizing both to the body and the mind. I myself is in this mad competition and I myself am a part of this preparation.

This preparation then involves institutes which ‘coach’ you to get into the institutes. Commonly called in India: Coaching Classes. So, now, what is the problem? They flood me with their nonsensical studies. And because of that I do not get time to write my excellent blog.

Thus, I will now commit my blog as a weekly task, and hope no more assignment of my coaching class block me from writing. I sincerely hope that my readers will bear with me.
Though I am not quite sure if that would be a grizzly or a Kodiak……