Mission Impossible meets James Bond meets Silence of the Lambs

Madness is like gravity. All it needs is a little push.

- The Joker

Dhandha

Back in Baroda, they used to say, 'Sahvaar sahvaar nikli pade che, kai kaam dhando nathi?' which loosely translated into 'Do you not have any business, that you get out to loiter early mornings?'. I get out every morning and I still don't know what my 'dhandha' is. I feel like a whore, my company, a US MNC is my pimp, who pays me at the end of every month. My work involves deceiving a lot of people, making unsubstantiated claims and maverick presentations, fiddling with numbers to derive a result that I want and make tons of money for my company and some senior people alongwith.

The urge to get my hands dirty with some paint, or get some clay underneath my fingernails, or to have my thumb smudged with charcoal, or the floor littered with crayon shavings, or to have my wrists hurt from hammering away at a wooden block for hours into the night. It is getting stronger.

wishful thinking

Sometimes one wishes conversations were one way...and one didn't have to really deal with what is said in response...

of when there are words but no sound...

Don't let your life pass you by
Weep not for the memories

I'm so tired but I can't sleep
Standin' on the edge of something much too deep
It's funny how we feel so much but we cannot say a word
We are screaming inside, but we can't be heard
But I will remember you, will you remember me?

Don't let your life pass you by
Weep not for the memories

- Sarah Maclachlan

11:40 AM - I receive my cellphone bill on my official email ID
11:44 AM - I receive an SMS from Vodafone informing me of my bill being dispatched.
1:10 PM - I receive an SMS from my bank informing me of phone bill received for netbanking payment.
1:30 PM - I receive the hardcopy of the bill in my office.
1:45 PM - I receive a mail from my bank informing me about the bill to be paid by netbanking.
2:10 PM - I receive a call from the Vodafone executive to confirm if I have received the phone bill.

Talk about convergence.

The Scale of Solitude

The interpretation of our reality through patterns not our own, serves only to make us ever more unknown, ever less free, ever more solitary.

- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Nobel Lecture, 1982

Inert, yet an energy.
Tired, but a hope.
Calm, but for the coming storm.
Dull, but anxious.
Taut, but in control.

un-insipid times.

Today, the only man convicted of the Kanishka bombing will be able to walk scot free after being jailed for 15 years. He wanted to avenge Operation Bluestar. Another man, a political leader, has been convicted of instigating communal riots. The sentence - 1 year. Time it took for the conviction - 16 years.

You meet a Gujarati anywhere in the world, at any place and if he's eating something, he will always offer it to you and people sitting nearby.

The canteen for the final 3 years of Architecture School consisted of a few stone and brick parapets that were built in the corner of the campus adjoining a small room that served as the pantry for 'kaka' to make some basic snacks. In the monsoons, the ground was littered with rotting leaves and insects of all kinds. One had to watch out for those large ants (makodas) that would crawl up over legs and reach behind ears and over necks. The smell, that of rotting leaves and fried snacks, of sugar laced tea, was quite intoxicating. Though such breaks were supposed to be small and in between lectures, i can remember times often when one has rested along the exposed brick wall (century old) and dozed off till the sun rose too high for comfort. It was a time of waking up late, attending a few lectures one felt could not be done without doing so and of spending long hours just doing nothing...one could then count the days passing by and realize the seasons changing, assignments completed, wardrobes turned over...college life.

someone says its better to wait out while another urge tells me carpe diem...of how one seconds insanity can alter the life of so many. I think its time for a short but very important conversation. but in all likelihood its not going to take place today. Today, i begin a different life when an innocuous little wire transfer heralds a new coming and this transient time shifts into another era of being a man. The tide goes out and the tide goes in, a whole new circle of life begins...tick tock tick tock...tick...

Today
Im thinking of the slums that I pass on the way to office. How they've expanded. Also, of midnights children and the jallianwala bagh massacre, of school history textbooks, of bdays today and tomorrow. I am thinking of resumes and media and entertainment, of movies, of retail, of visual merchandsing, of aperture and f-points, of black and white and sepia. of Ceejay house and credit suisse and of the sea and of the beach. Change is in the air, friends, job, colleagues, city, perhaps...thinking of blogs and old post, lovely conversations and sweet nothings exchanged over a period of time and how convictions alter and so do life plans...how important things turn inconsequential and random thoughts occupy centerstage...i can fling all that away with one stroke and yet i wont...and the meek shall inherit the earth?