Happy Diwali !!

Diwali is such an amazing festival that it bring everyone together. After a point, you even forget that it’s a hindu festival the way every other community is equally enthusiastic about setting the city aglow. It’s a great time for agnosts like me coz we get to celebrate without too many ideological hurdles.

Lighting diyas is my favourite part. But I kinda go low on the crackers part keeping the environment in mind. It might be a hypocritical stance considering I enjoy watching others but one person not bursting is still of some help, however minute right?

Anyway this was my last diwali in college as a student and I loved every minute of it.

The rocket fights and bombs created danger zones to walk and the 500 wala type c hains gave me an idea of continuous shelling. But the lights and the sweets (yeah mess guys can be generous sometimes) and high spirits were out of the world.

Just one week for exams and all submissions lined up in a few days didn’t deter the entire campus from putting up a grand gala celebration.

More Random

Ive been wallowing in abstraction for way to long to understand stilted prose in all its simplicity. The humility that drops from every pore of the writing is as fresh and alien as the writing itself. It makes me sad to know that pride of all things has been the sieve.
Pretention has never been easy but suddenly its gotten way easier than before. Ive been defecting to the side of my over personal enemy slowly and steadily. The ones I belittled for not having too many levels are suddenly the better ones. At least that one lever has not gotten glossed over with all the phony liquidity that society imposes.
Is this self-knowledge going to lead to repentance? Because I feel to secure in this insubstantial world to give it up.

Random

Yellow rooms and happy endings don’t match. Cranberry drinks with a hint of alcohol don’t hurt. Late nights and in absentia days have consequences.

But the unexpected and unpredictable holds a charm that the familiar can never give.

I like my city coz I feel at home there. I like this one coz I’m beginning to have a lot of fun here. I like a third city coz it lets you be. But I still choose to finally dog the familiar path.

Flirting with two sides, I’ve forgotten which side I’m on. But the good part is that you don’t have to have a side. You just have to have you .

I don't know

You’ve changed.
Subtly.
The way your eye brows
Are firmer set,
Your smile, a stranger
To me.
Your bickering, not as innocent.
Then again, you’ve also grown
Into a man.
Not the man you would have been
But an admirable one.
Who knows what ‘should’ means?
Everything is subject to change.
I was confused then…
But I don’t like the stranger you are now.
Does that mean I liked you then?
Worse still, am I the one
That made you lose yourself in the worst way?
Sorry.
I was too small to hold your hand then
Caught up in the worst kind of ideals
When love in all its purity
Was staring me in the face.
Do I want it now?
I don’t know.

Ode to my sis and siblings in general...

At this point of time when each of us is staying at a different place, building our careers, we might hardly speak except when we both go home at the same time. But the intimate closeness that we share has a lot more to do with things beyond the mere sharing of everyday happenings with each other. The very fact that we have a shared childhood is beyond any kind of distance that can arise in later years, for it is in those early years that we reveal ourselves the most and also are interested in each other the most.
I had my first fights with my sister, I had my first plotting and scheming activities with her. I cribbed about parents, school, studies and friends with her. We knew each others secrets. I used to threaten to reveal them if I don’t have my way although both of us knew that certain things were never ever going to be revealed no matter what silly fight we are occupied with at that time.
My sister is six years elder to me so I learnt a lot of non-academic but extremely important ‘facts of life’ from her. I have a more curious bent of mind in these areas so after a while Id also contribute to our shared knowledge bank. We learnt about family scandals that were concealed from children from each other by putting together pieces of overheard conversation.
She read my first novels aloud for me and I owe the huge appetite I have for books to this little ritual we had in those years. She taught me to ride my first cycle and in exchange I complained about having to use her hand-me-downs. Thank god there is no-one to bank on me to hand down stuff because they are seldom in usable condition after I’m done using them.
When I hurt my hand I guess for about the first time, I had tried to lick off the blood and found it salty, it was my sister who explained to me that the salty taste is because of the iron content in it. She was then in some 6th or 7th standard when they had started learning these sort of smart things in school.
Now she’s on her way to becoming an anesthetist and continues to give me such gyaan about CVP line insertion and other such incomprehensible things. I tell her a little about the law. But I love the brainless conversations involving name-calling and gossip about people we both know the best. I long for times when we can tease each other about peculiar habits, style of saying things or talking to others.
All the above notwithstanding, the best thing about siblings is the comfort zone we get to share with each other. We can have the worst disagreement about something and still hum the same song together the next moment which friendship can come close to but never substitute.

In memory of Jacko...

Whacko Jacko or MJ, despite everything else, was a creative genius, a phenomenon, an era and many other things. But along with all this he was someone whose childhood was taken away from him and a lot can be attributed to that. Now again that very celebrity has got to him and it filled me with sadness to listen to all the wonderful music he has created. I had spent many hours imitating his moon-walk and his high pitched shrieks.
Dangerous and blood on the dance floor were favorites while Bad has special memories attached to it. Smooth Criminal reminds me of a friend who's also called annie. My mom's favorite was always Remember the times. So much of stylish music, suave dance steps was not for nothing. He meant the world for many people at one time.
Today, when his body is a mere bag of bones, scarred, broken and weak, when his estate is tied up in so many law suits, when the factum of fathering his children is in question, I still maintain that he deserves respect for the creative genius that he was.

The song

The simplicity behind it got me.
That song, its so lame, I’d have laughed it off.
And here you go making it so special
By merely keeping things so clean
Knowing I’d have it no other way.
I’d never thought from your side
But I see now.
It must hurt real bad
And trust me I know how that feels.
But I’d never have dealt with it your way.
You make it all look so beautiful
It stings me to know what its doing to you.