Evenings like these...

Evenings like these-
Where you sit with coffee mugs
And talk till they’re stained dry;
Where you watch people play football
And cheer and boo;
Where you make fun of little things
And rib each other;
Where you decide to stroll down
And see the sunset grow shapely;
Where you talk a little less malicious
And smile a little more;
Where you make plans of meeting up
After the last few days of college.
Evenings like these -
Make you want to laugh,
Make you want to cry.

SWEET

It glows
It shines,
The fragrance fills me,
Envelopes me.
I have my faith restored,
In life, love and beauty of all.
The breeze catches and
I cannot but smile
A sweet smile
For you, for me,
For humanity.

Gratitude

There are times when you feel like you can take on the world.
There are other times when you feel like survival is painful.
So painful, it hurts you that its even necessary to breathe.
And then there are moments when you realize how important people are.
They hold you when you’re falling
And make you smile when you think all’s gone.
There are time when the people you lease care about will reach out
And there are times when the people you love will forget.
Is there no constancy in relationships?
If everything is so dynamic, what is the need for relationships?
If everyone has a redeeming day why make judgments?
If friends can forget, why need them?
And yet somehow, somewhere something is always there
To pull you out of the ditch –
For that I am grateful.

Another Chance

Inspiration comes in many forms.:
Dark as night,
I camouflage the day
And immerse the sentience
In a deeper calm.
Awaken to the newness around
And perceive a fresh
The quality of all.
I am not judgmental
This time around.
Stories came and stories went
Some stories stayed.
But we smile about it all
In that one real moment of finding no proof.
Instincts may be misled too.
I don’t want to know anything anymore.
I just look around
And forget to remember.
Everyone gets another chance.
Ive just given myself one too:
With the world around.

When you're happy and you know it clap your hands!

So many definitions, so many illusions and yet it remains elusive. Plain, simple happiness.
My English teacher once told me that while writing answers you have to sound good. So don’t use sentences like, ‘Tom Sawyer was happy.’ So I took to writing things like, ‘Delighted that his ploy had worked, Tom whistled all the way home.’ But somewhere along the way I started feeling like a fraud. Why should simple things be embellished?
Thinking back, that precisely is the problem with being happy. Its too small a thing to bother about. On the other hand profound concepts like the meaning of life, nirvana, peace etc is discussed ad nauseum.
So where is that simple happiness? Why cant we just have it?
I don’t know.
An email forward with a forty-five slide presentation about being happy made me think back to the happy Tom Sawyer sentence. In the process of growing up, we forgot to be happy and have now started making corporate style presentations about achieving the ‘target’ happiness.
Writing this piece out makes me happy. Listening to Hotel California as I write makes me happy. Taking notes in class, I hear the Prof say ‘fillfull’ instead of ‘fulfill’ and I’m happy. I can think of so many other things. I feel like I should make a HUGE list so that I don’t have to make a presentation about happiness twenty years later.

This and that

Nearly a month has gone by in the brand new year and college has been more relaxed than ever. Yet I find myself busier than I’ve ever been in the past thanks to a number of other activities. Not least amongst these is the recruitment process that few of us in the student run committee are in charge of. I’ve begun to see it more as a challenge than anything else considering the top rung of the class is now out of the process. Getting the last twenty recruited will need us to prove ourselves as both competitive and innovative at the same time.
Two days ago, we were tied up in meetings till evening and then there was a little time in between when we went to have a cup of coffee and freshen up. As I walked back I noticed the beautiful hues around the setting sun. I’ve earned myself this sunset, I said to myself. It was then that it occurred to me that there is a sense of pleasure in doing the thing you love and tiring yourself out with it. It is more than the monetary benefits and more than the service-mindedness we try to portray. It is something deeply egotistical within us that such work feeds. To know that you are doing something you consider worthwhile is hugely important for an inner satisfaction.
Before I start sounding like a spiritual guru, I’d like to add that the very same sunset also left me feeling deeply uneasy and acutely aware of the fact that I was going to officially start work which in a high paying firm within the next 6 months and that was not exactly the kind of work I loved.
Well of course I had a meeting to attend and I tried to enjoy that sight of the setting sun the best I could and shifted my focus to the discussion that was to follow.

Its a bit late but happy twenty ten everyone!

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.