Tender Truth

The relentless heart, a lively soul,
many a dreams, there within the fears,
hope inextinguishable, smiles plenty, tears,
corners of guilt, moments of pleasures,
harbouring feelings, evolving thoughts.
All that it holds, all that it bears.
Forgetful and rude, yet honestly in love.
Noises abounds, only to be masked by confusions,
questions of what and why,
simplified to when, where and how.
Does it really know? Memories past mould thus.
Being a fool that is, in love and thought,
all it knows, flies like the beautiful dove,
pretending to know its home,
yet conflicts itself to a dark abyss.
A tumbler of paradoxes, continuously learning,
shocking truths and mundane facts,
impressions indelible, of fury and anger,
and apathy unlike any.
Truly revealing itself, tentatively, surely.
Will the valued mates hold?
In the moment it cares nought, trusts in love.
Truly in love, it lets itself go.
It cares not to show nor say, all left
to something never seen nor known.
While the sun rises, it hears chimes of delight,
illuminating only the best feelings.
It is truly itself, like a sonata on strings,
the tender heart, open to be hurt and hurt.
Believing naively, in the magic of love.

I also felt like thanking a few people for a few of the things they have blessed me with,
punch for all the love he gives to everyone around him in a way that only he can. Also for teaching the beauty of writing something for oneself.
uc for making me feel better about myself whenever I am down in the darkest dungeons. Also for understanding me without me having to ever explain myself.
ringo for making me laugh without fail and sharing wonderful music which sometimes is the only thing that makes me feel alive.
manu aka Manohar Reddy for always encouraging me to do whatever I feel like, for understanding, supporting and defending me amidst hostile people.
Devika and Deepika for teaching me so much about life even while they are just little kids to me.
phodu aka Nitin Sen for inspiring me in ways, which I hope to tell the world someday.
budhia aka Shantanu Maheshwari for the simple talks we’ve had and for listening me crib, the only time I remember cribbing since my school days.
uncle for the excitement, which he generously infects everyone around him with.
9 for just being here.
Gayatri akka for showing the power of love, persuasion and persistence by continuing to try to talk to me despite my refusal to talk to her for 5 years.
Pranesh for showing me through example to look beyond what is on the surface and that listening to your heart is not universally applicable.

PS: These are just acknowledging a fraction of the people for a fraction of what they mean to me. I cannot be exhaustive, I am afraid.

iMHO

Steve Jobs is dead, to begin with. (Yes, I re-visited The Christmas Carol, recently.) And, the magnitude of the reaction, from the masses, has been huge. Ok, the Internet-masses, let me re-iterate that to. The last time we saw such an out-pouring reaction was, probably, when Michael Jackson died. Infact, I feel this one’s a bigger wave, considering the fact that it has come from virtually everywhere across the web-wide-world, and from everyone, irrespective of anything that can potentially classify them. Also, the reaction was quite consistent, from all over.

Yes, it might be unfair to judge these greats, or even compare these two different personalities, based on this or, probably, anything else. But I think what we can certainly try to do is – draw parallels between the popularities, of not just theirs, but, may be, of the two different streams they are from, to see if we can spot a trend or two.

I think it would not be wrong to assume that the following for technology has gone up many folds, in general. Or, technology has become mainstream, can we say? For a long while now, it has been commonplace for people to eagerly wait for the release of a new music album, a movie, or such sorts. But, off-late, we are witnessing a lot of hype building up, amongst the masses, before a product/feature release/upgrade, and lot of noise coming across after it. Like it has been with music and movies, people are following the previews and reviews closely. Everyone reads and understands product specifications now, and out of interest. They keep updating themselves with information about various products, not just when they are looking to buy some stuff. That is, people are not just being consumers of information technology, but of technology information too. And, magazines, blogs and other media sources, channelling such information, doing incredibly well, getting their share of popularity, stand testimony. There is a sense of enthusiasm in this following, much like that shown by movie-buffs and music-lovers. At times, there is a sense of religiousness too, for there are fan-boys for products and brands, and fans of rival brands are set up against each other, like how it has been in South India, with the film stars. Over the years, brands have been using film stars to promote their brands. Now, film-makers are looking the tech-industry way for stories. The Social Network movie was hugely watched all over. Sony Pictures, reportedly, is shelling out millions to acquire film-adaptation rights for a Steve Jobs biography. We’ve seen fans being happy if their idol’s movie made record collections in the first week, et al. Recently, I’ve seen people sharing the news, that Apple reached a million orders within 24 hours of throwing the bookings for iPhone 4S open, with happy smileys, over the social-networks.

Overall, can we say that tech-stuff is the new movies and Apple is the new Rajnikanth? Rajnikanth sir, only if you wont…. mind it!

bachpan ki lafootgiri

As I walk around Delhi neighborhood one scenario takes me back to my childhood days: these colony kids, running around here and there, in all sorts of gangs, playing all sorts of games as one likes and shifting among the groups and games. Today while walking backing and seeing these kids loads of memories popped up one after another, here goes some..

My home was far-far-away from school and no one from my class used to live nearby. So I had all new set of friends here who were from all different sections and from all different schools so no scope of worries related to school events, homework, tests or anything. As far as homework was concerned, we used to try to wind them up in school itself. In a free period when teacher is absent and PT/games period cant be negotiated, or if there is none, ask for one from teacher outright, and teachers don’t mind taking some break/breather. Bole to somehow, we used to manage to get evening 4 to 7 free and ..

• Get someones old cycle and learn how to cycle, with various tricks. Once enough mastered, on some days go around on cycle, race, exchange, try stunts and get busted. With age, cycles got replaced with luna(without gears), scooter, bike. Now when I see people taking car driving lessons it feels odd.
• Cricket used to fit in based on availability. Regularly during summer and winter breaks, and if any one-day match had just ended and team India won, people themselves used to step out with high spirits. I remember after watching shohaib fella running like mad and bowling those crazy yorker, I used to try that, run long distance bowl a fulltoss and get whacked for a sixer. Man nothing was more embarrassing, standing on “pitch” breathing like a dog and watching the ball sail above your head and crying out loud “Catch it…….” with one hand held high as if…
• Diwaali season, crackers and activities around them. Take nuts and those iron rings/washers and bolts. Join them(to make a jugaad) put “tickadi” inside and throw on wall/ground, it make crazy sound equivalent to a mehnga wala Pathaka. Get “barood”/powder from crackers and experimenting with them, one friend actually got big time burnt because of one such accident.
• Holi season, try to fix up pranks, put water in empty Colgate pouches, stones in soap wrappers, pebbles in toffee wrappers and more) and keep them on road side waiting for people to pick it up and then shout like mad once you get one fooled.
• For Bikaner the kite flying season was not during makar-sakranti but during “akshy tritiya”. Atleast for a month all the mohalla wallas would be on their roof tops all the evenings. Trying out new “Manjha”, kites, and bets and what not.
• Chor-Sipahi, chumap chupai, pakadam pakdai, maar-dadi(hit each other with ball), football, random prank fights(wwf/action movie style) and if nothing else make up some new game with crazy rules. At one point of time we started playing chupam-chupai after dinner, in night time that too area spanning across the colony.
• On sundays it used to be mostly evening movie on Doordarshan(they used to crunch 3 hrs movie in 2:30 hrs with commercials). Dish used to come from those big big dish antennas not many had access to them so day time movies were “not supposed to be missed”
• If nothing else, sit in the park across the road, around/over the statue of Nehru chacha, goofing, spinning tales, and random BS.

These and so many, so many.. At that time, the worst part used to be, in between the game being called upon and I used to think, “Bade ho jayenge tab dekhta hoon, koi nahin bula sakega”(Once I grow up no one would be bossing me around) but never occurred that, we were never joined by grownups in our games.