another year

"Are you making any resolutions for the new year ?"

"Yeah, I'm resolving to wing it and see what happens."

"So you're staying the course ?"

"I stick to my strengths."

this soldier

A common foot soldier I am and I wield the pen. I was not always a soldier. I was once a common man, looking in from outside. Looking in onto the plain white, afraid to step in. But this battle is a free for all and so I was given my pen and asked to go forth and conquer words. Lay siege to adjectives, capture verbs and bring down paragraphs, sonnets, verses and prose.

Glory and literary acclaim, supposedly await me. Lines such as the pen is mightier than the sword are concocted to help me along. For inspiration I have a whole range of masters. From mere Knights to veritable Gods. People whose prowess with words, words are insufficient to express. Masters and mistresses of form, wit and dialogue, of satire, of drama and powerful intellect. Weavers of new worlds, builders of kingdoms, spawners of demons and dragons. As a foot soldier I look up and upon them and to their victories, legends that I strive to emulate, as I try to shape these words to my ideas.

Are the words there first or are the ideas ? I do not know. They are both at the same time. Without words, I do not know if I would have ideas and of ideas I do not know of any other kind. And yet, once the idea and the words that make it appear, I am able to discern a difference and make the idea be of other words, better words perhaps. More lucid words. Ah lucidity. Every moment on the battlefield, I strive to make my verbs and nouns and prepositions be where they are meant to be. I try to fashion vehicles for my thoughts and emotions, vehicles which will transport and deliver, without much ado to themselves. I do not often succeed.

Millions fight this war. The war remains the same, though the battle has spread to newer arenas, away from the traditional paper and away from the pen being the only weapon. A universe now exists composed of letters, words and lines uncountable, immeasurable. And in this immensity, a common foot soldier, I plod on. Oblivious to the tumult of humour, satire, poetry and prose around me, I am busy in an attempt to leave behind the only things about me that will remain. My body will perish, memories of me will fade, but my words, they will be about. That I was once. That, borrowing from Whitman, I existed, life went on, and these here were my verses.

Particularly weary, I realize that the sun has set on this days battle. So I clear a space on my desk and lay my pen down.

breaking the law

completely wasted,
i was riding the edge
while it lasted

top down and head up,
the night roared by
as my foot wouldnt let up.

my car screamed down the road
and my mind joined in
a while later

past the trees and the posts
as angels above and demons below
gambled on being my new hosts.

stray

somewhere along the way
i stopped being a stray.

orderliness, discipline and rules -
that is what is needed you fools.
or so we were told,
by those that were more than just old.

somewhere further along the way,
i miss being astray,
of thumbing my nose at the world,
and just having it my way.

of such

of patterns in smoke,
of swirling ideas,
and smirking people.

of whimsical writing,
aimless wanderings,
and ruminations.

of bored jottings.

habit

dinner is done
and i sit here
fiddling.
looking, searching, twitching
for my nightly habit

not finding you,
i pick up a pebble
and let it fly
while my mind
skips over everything
with hardly
any interest

my eyes flick
left and right
as my mind invents
reasons and rationalizations
to get rid of this splinter

poking, prodding
it refuses to abate
till i have you
in my sight

you are a nightly habit
and habits are broken
much harder
than they are made

i come back
each night,
wanting you
to grant me some respite.

blood and glory

my sword alive
walking the field
spilling carnage
and blood

madness in me
human no more
slashing
praying for respite

an axe
an answer
bowing my head
to redemption

my soul alive
walking the fields
of elysium.

blood and folly

my sword alive
i walk the field
spilling carnage
and blood

a madness is in me
human no more
slashing
i pray for respite

i am answered
by an axe
rescuing me
to my elysium

nothing

nothing
fills my head now
i am thirsty and take a sip of water
right at this moment -
i could die
a content man

Dead Poet's Society

McAllister: Show me the heart unfettered by foolish dreams and I'll show you a happy man.
John Keating: But only in their dreams can men be truly free. 'Twas always thus and always thus will be.
McAllister: Tennyson ?
John Keating: No, Keating.

about

i dont believe
that i can say more
i shall remain quiet
and smile to myself
some will call me insane
but who says sanity is all ?

ho hum

Oh to spend all day lying in elysian fields. Staring at the sky. And having millions in the bank.
Its simple really. We realize that passion and romance is all right and fine, but on a full stomach.

comfortable

and somewhere
since the beginning of this conversation
'twas something i said
or something i did
you changed
from being chatty
to being quiet and lost
in yesyerday - silent

i sit by the silence
that has you in a hold
moments i dont want to trample in on

with a warm cup of coffee in hand
watching you watch the outside
my fingers tracing figures on the table
not saying anything
comfortable.

jakeward bound

illusions they are
illusions you have
about your paths and ways
but all those roads
lead to me.

55er

The mallu was at it again. "Read it", he said, "and follow the story". So I did.

They had all laughed at him, the whole class. "Assholes!", he thought, gnashing his teeth. He was wearing a trench coat today, and would end it. Chemistry class was where and when it would happen. He patted his coat pocket, feeling the box containing the stink bombs. Smirking, he proceeded to be one of them.

and it rained

the staccato on the roof top has me in a reverie. its almost a trance this feeling of contentment, punctuated by the regular swish of the wipers and more randomly by the glare of a passing vehicle. my mind and body are in perfect sync. neither is exerting itself, nor are they idle. i feel the rhythm. a slight but steady pressure on the accelerator pedal, hands firm but not tight on the wheel. oncoming headlight - slight tightening of the shoulders - ease the foot off the pedal - vehicle passes. resume stance and dance. my body is on autopilot and my mind is empty. empty but not blank. i am there. just there. zipping past on smooth silky roads, towards a destination no doubt, but in no hurry to get there. this is a good state to be in i realize and must be what zen must feel like, and maybe it does. no reason, rhyme or consequence, just the events.

lady writer

Just the way that her hair fell down around her face
And I recall my fall from grace
Another time another place
Lady writer on the TV

- Dire Straits, Lady Witer

what caused the idiot

maybe its because i am not looking. or maybe i am. it doesnt really matter though. i live for the moments, there was one right here and now. moments,they are what matter. give me another while i go looking again.

the idiot

woooo hoooh ! it makes me go. go up and about, humming to myself, i am all sunshine,smiles and sweet saccharine. the world is indeed a splendid place. i know that this will fade, giving way to a more reasonable state of mind. but who cares ? right now, is a moment. grinning like an idiot, i am lost in savouring it.

Hamster people

That we are mortals. All people are, some (the ones in America, L.A.) more than the others. Every scene depcits racial tension, real life stereotypes, and scared, tightly wound people. The movie is set in L.A. And its disturbing. Even more so, because the movie is well made, with neat performances. Is this the land of oppurtunities ? I dont know. But its a land, as depicted in this movie, full of hamsters. Every soul in America who runs and works hard and cries and just cant seem to leave the circle thingy in the cage that is America. Hamster people.

whim

life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while.

heh. so much for the dantes and the miltons.

spiral

i try to stay away,
to let go,
to fly away.

but i come back,
this sling wont let go,
the string wont snap.
faster, faster
round and round.

i spiral inwards,
the world reeling,
i look away,
and look back,
look in.

and spot a single clarity,
in a universe of blur.
succumbing,i come
spiralling inward,
crashing toward you.

heh, houston's got nothing on this orbit trajectory.

pandora's

here's something you'll dig, i think. if not the music it picks, the idea behind it at the least. its like a radio that knows stuff about the music you like.

http://pandora.com/

here's a snippet, from http://pandora.com/mgp.shtml , of that idea.

~~ snip ~~

the idea of creating the most comprehensive analysis of music ever.

Together we set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level. We ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or "genes" into a very large Music Genome. Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song - everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It's not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records - it's about what each individual song sounds like.

~~ snip ~~

neat huh ? so what you have is a database of over 300000 songs analysed, and all broken up into a genome of sorts. the genetic makeup of songs if you will. so you put in a song that you like and this looks up other songs with similar a musical gene makeup and plays them for you.

i have thus far tried it with a couple of my favourites and the result is suprisingly, um, for the lack of a better word, nice. the music that is played is very definitely interesting, and while the specifics of the song you are listening to will, as always on the first hearing of any song, elude you, you will come out with a ' hey, that was not bad ', and you will go back. heh, you didnt know what just happened in there but it was good.

the things people do. just neat.

inevitable ?

sweat pours out your body ...
later in the evening,
you lie awake in bed.

spoke the day,
and all in it,
its for you,
all for you, we know
whats best for you.

and you run.
run.

365 tomorrows

~~

365 tomorrows is a collaborative project designed to present readers with one new piece of short speculative fiction each day for one year. Utilizing the broad palate of science fiction, our vision of the future creates a diverse pool of stories with something for everyone to enjoy.

365 launched August 1, 2005 and will continue until July 31, 2006

~~

contentment

paratas, greased
onions, pickled
chicken, do-pyaza-ed.
the self,defeated.

burp !

dialogue

plateaus of ordinary existence,
surround me.
O juliet, wherefore went thou ?
O passion, whither ?

passion ?
i am jaded.

why these words ?
passion felt,
doesnt need expression.

a pretender then,
at being a better man.

eternal sunshine

how happy is the blameless vestal's lot
the world forgetting, by the world forgot
eternal sunshine of the spotless mind
each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd
- alexander pope

jim carrey, kate winslet and charlie kaufman. what a mix. splendid.
michel gondry (ze director) deals with an uncommon and a surreal topic - our memories. though the movie does not stick to a sequential time line, it never feels forced, in fact it'd be an effort to rise above whats happening in the movie to apply rational thought. you are swept along into this gloamy world of joel and clementine, but the movie ends in sunshine. kaufman makes a choice to not have the movie end bleakly and rather leaves us feeling all mellow and sunny. the transistion between carrey's memories, carrey reliving them and then reacting to them, is just sweet. it clicks.both carrey and winslet have delivered remarkable performances.
carrey plays joel, who is shy, quiet and understated. it fits carrey so like a glove, that you begin to be glad. carrey is not just somone who can stretch his face to akward proportions. he can act too, and very well at that. winslet is amazing and cute, wrenchingly so. she plays the part of clementine, ( so alive, yet needing assurance and security ) so well that you cant help liking clementine more than you would your regular woman in a movie.

a sunday two odd hours well spent. i was an idiot to have missed this movie for so long. i just got another movie in my favourites list.

A petition.

At the behest of a friend, I am posting this as it appears on his blog. He is trying to get as many people to read this as he can. And I am glad to be able to help him out.

Horrors of War ...
Close your eyes and think of someone very close to you. Now imagine someone:

- Piercing this person's ears with hot rods
- Puncturing this person's eyes, gouging them out
- Inflicting burns on his body using cigarettes
- Breaking his bones and teeth
- And after torturing him in this brutal fashion for over 22 days, shooting him dead.

This is what the Pakistani army did to Lt. Saurabh Kalia of the 4th JAT Regiment of the Indian Army during the Kargil war. Imagine the plight of the old parents of this young man who received his body in such a state, imagine their rage and helplessness.

We talk so much about the power of the blogosphere. What use is that power if we can not help these parents by raising this issue so that it is heard by International Human Rights Organisations? We have seen instances of main stream media in the US championing issues that were raised by bloggers. Why not in India?

I am making this post with a very clear intent. I want all those who read this post to please raise this issue on their blogs. I realize, making a general appeal like that and expecting others to post will not work. Very specifically, I would like you Chandroo and you Sambhar Mafia to raise it on your blog and make two of your friends responsible for publishing it on their blogs. If everyone does that, geometric progression will take care of spreading it to all blogs in the Indian Blogosphere.

If nothing else, just sign the online petition of Lt. Saurabh Kalia's father.

Links:
Online Petition by Lt. Saurabh Kalia's father
Geocities Page on Lt. Saurabh Kalia
Rediff Article on Lt. Saurabh Kalia
Dilip D'Souza's Post

silence ?

words threaten to consume me,
goading, teasing, twisting, snaring.
i sleep dreaming of words,
noise and disquiet.
my mind chattering,
i sink gibbering
and feverish
like a madman
beyond hope or succour,
looking
for some quiet.