Happy Birthday!

Well, here's me, another year older :-)

The highlight of the day? The full Happy Bday song sung to me over the phone by my niece, nephew and aunts :-) Wow, that felt real nice. I guess one is never too old to enjoy the good old Happy Bday being sung to you!!

The second highlight was the absolutely delicious cake.. I have been getting to have a lot of cakes recently.. :-)

Not in too much of a mood to celebrate either, given all that's been happening in the city.

Too much has happened, it could have been worse, but that's no consolation for the ones who have lost their loved ones.

So I can't help thinking about Death on a day like this. None of us can escape it for sure when our time comes. But till then, every moment is a gift. And all that matters is we live our life.

This year has been a real tough time for me. But wonder of wonders! I have made it through.. alive!

And I now have realised one thing... if it's meant to happen, it will, in its own sweet time.

At the same time, it's not destiny to look forward to. It's the moments to look forward to.

And thank you Lord, for all the miracles and coincidences, just when I was least expecting anything. They keep me going...

Dead Poet's Society..

On poetry...

"We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race.

And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.

To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?"

Answer. That you are here - that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play *goes on* and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be."

Of Problems...

Why is it that nothing in life is ever simple? Why is it that there are always problems?
Why is it that something always goes wrong? Why is it that nothing ever goes to a plan?
Why is it that wishes never come true?

And I look around myself and I see problems everywhere. Kashmir's burning to the build being broken. Big or small, something wrong everywhere.

So much we wish to resolve these problems. So much we wish there wouldn't be any more.
But yet, out of nowhere, it shows up again.

The perfect state, no issues and no problems and life's smooth and all are happy and at peace.
Why is this so impossible? Why can't we have a world without problems? 

Maybe, that would be a movie without a villain? Boring?

I find it so fascinating...in the end..for all that they say and for all that they talk and for all that they claim, its adversity that separates the men from the boys, the real from the fake, the strong from the weak.

So then, here's me, up against all my little problems, that my life has wisely chosen to test me with, taking courage in the saying, "For what doesn't kill me, only makes me stronger!"

Life's other name then must be problem.

My Life..

That breathtaking shot. That inspiring scene.

Transported dreams. Poetic awe.

That hard to put down read. That philosophical write

Movie magic. Musical high. 

Lazy weekends. My friends.

Morning sunrise. Nighttime glow. 

Mom's kitchen. Maximum City.

What would my life be, 

without you.

Who Am I?

Just looked at my orkut profile and saw how horribly outdated it is..or have I changed a lot in the last year..I guess we are ever changing...our interests, hobbies, priorities..does it then make sense to define who you are at any given time?

Who am I?
If only that were such a simple answer.
The lessons life throws at me,
how can I not be different each day.
Does it matter then who I am today,
when I will no longer be the same tomorrow?
Or maybe, I will always be the same.
And no one will still know the difference?

The Greatest..

The hardest thing in the world. The Wait.

The greatest gift?  The gift of Inspiration.

The purest thing? Unbridled Enthusiasm.

The best unwind? Friends n Music.

The greatest escape? An engrossing read. A thrilling watch.

The greatest invention in the world?

 The telephone. Never far from the ones we love.

 The aircraft. When the sound of their voices are just not enough.

The most beautiful thing in the world?
 Two people, in love with each other. Their eyes.
 A mother's unconditional love.
 A father's pride.

I Want..

I want a world without fires.
 Would that be a world without heroes?
I want a world without crisis.
 Where will then be the opportunity to rise up to the occasion?
I want a world that's easy. 
 But that would be bore me to the death.

I want a world without pain.
 But then would happiness still mean the same?
I want a world without evil.
 But then what would good triumph over?

I want a world without fights.
 But would anyone then care about anything?
I want a world without problems,
 But then how would I ever grow?

I want a world where I get what I want.
 But then would I prize them as much?

I want a world without work.
 But then would my life mean as much?
I want a world without rules.
 But so would be a world full of chaos.

I want a world that's fair.
 But that's too much to ask for?
 How else can I be wise?

Meeting myself...

It's not daily that you open the door to pickup the morning newspaper and find yourself standing outside.

"Heavens!! What the hell?!"

And it's not daily that you end up with Heaven and Hell in the same breath.

"Am I dreaming? What are you? And what are you doing outside?” I add.

"I am you! Who else!! Can’t you see? Wakeup!"

Well, it's someone who looks very much like me for sure. Well, I'll just let him in and see where this goes...

"Ah, well, then, come on in." I now try and act cool.

"Have a seat. Should I say, consider yourself at home?"

"Well, thank you.

"So, what brings you here then? I wasn't really expecting you, you know?"

"Well, what's life without a little surprise thrown in? Isn't it?"

"Thanks! I am really glad for the surprise."  

"This is a dream, isn't? Please tell me this just another of those dreams". I am pinching myself as I say this.

"Well, you are the one who keeps talking about dreams coming true! But ya, this is no dream."

"Great!” I look around, rub my eyes. But to no avail. Things around me are still the same.And he is still standing there in front of me! This is no dream!! 

But he seemed harmless. I feel I can relax a bit. After all, it's just me am dealing here with!
"So where are you from? And what news do you bring for me?"

Is he from the future? Scenes from Terminator flash through my mind. Nah, I think I would settle for Back To Future instead.

"Yes I am from the future. October 2012."

2012? That's the year all those news channels had been touting as the new "End of the World" date.

"What?!"

"Yes, they are right. They are this time."

"I don't believe this. And if the world did end, what happened to you? How are you here?"

"I am here to help you save the world."

"Me? Save the world?" I am about to faint, as I hear loud laughter.

"Nah, joking! Caught you!!"

"Please, right now am not really in a mood to appreciate your humour, so if you can please?" 

Am beginning to lose my temper.

"Can you please tell me why you are here? You see, I really don't like getting angry, especially with myself."

"Hey have some patience man! I have a question for you."

A question? What's he going to ask?

"Well, I want to know.... why haven't you blogged since long?!"

What?? Did some of my readers send him here?

"Well, you know...change in place...it's a new project..I have more responsibilities now..."

"Crap!"

"Well, I just haven't been able to take out much time to write..!"

"Have you forgotten how much you loved writing?"

"Hmm..I haven’t...but..."

"Hey, you don't use it, you lose it!"

"I don't want to lose what I have."

"Yup. And that takes some work now boy."

"I still love to write. That act of creation. That flow of words. Filling up the blank spaces..."

"Yes..that quiet satisfaction..of having let yourself free..of letting your imagination fly.."

"Of not being happy with your first write and it getting better and better with each draft..."

"Thanks...thanks for coming in here and encouraging me to write again."

"Well! I have defied all the laws of physics to just be here."

"Who are you really? Are you really time traveling or something from the future? Or are you just an illusion?"

"No. I am your spark. The spark of your imagination."

"Ah!"

"And now make me a promise that you will continue writing regularly?"

"I promise :-)"

"It's time for me to go then."

"When will I see you again?"

"I will be back, just when you need me again. :-)"

And with that he vanished into thin air. 

And I retire back to my bed thinking I have to write about this!

Being in the zone...

That sense of wonder. That thrill.
That goes right to the heart.

That wonder of creating something.
Something that's truly yours.
Master of your creation.

Of small little wins. One at a time. Adding up.
Lightning hands. Magic in them.
World stopping still. Time flying fast.
No stopping me. What are obstacles?

That sense of silence. Another world.
Peace. Joy. Happiness. Exhilaration.

To feel elevated. Above the ordinary.
That is to feel heaven.
It's called being in the zone. That moment of absolute bliss when you are God.
And whatever it is that you are doing, you are at your absolute best.

Programming, photography, writing....some of the things that have thrown me into the "zone"....

But nowadays its so much harder...work load, change of place, dont know what..

A Moment of Inspiration

So this one's inspired by all that IPL fever going on..and also an attempt to capture a moment in time...

Out he walked into chaos.
11 pairs of eyes boring down deep into him,
seeming to tell him,
you too will perish, just like the others.
Soon you too will be running back home,
tail between your legs.

He trudges along scared. A situation too alien for him.
Hopes of his team resting on his fragile shoulders, as thoughts race through his mind,
Why me, Lord? Why has it come down to me of all the people?
So many stars, yet it's me who's been asked to do this miracle.

He takes his guard trembling, his partner watches him from the other end.
The speed wagon thrutles down the ground.
He could feel the earth shake even more.
As if a storm was heading straight for him.
A deafening sound.
And in a moment, it has whizzed past him.

He's still alive. But the battle's lost.
The predator has smelt the fear in the eyes of the prey.
Something that will spur him to come back stronger to swoon in for the kill.
He wants this to quickly end. It's hard to take in this pressure.

And he looks at his partner, to see that he has given up hope.
He turns to look at his coach, who can only shake his head in despair.
He suddenly feels very lonely. All alone in this impossible situation.
Left to fend for himself.

And in this moment of loneliness, he remembers his fathers word's.
You are no good, just look at you, you can never be a cricketer.
You will always be a failure in cricket as you are a failure in life now.
And suddenly his face is flush with rage.
He remembers the promise he had made to himself, to prove his father wrong.

And this here, right now, he could hear his father's laughter.
Almost mocking him.

I have to do this. I will prove myself.
All those days and all those nights, has now come down to this moment.
A sudden strength comes over him, possessing him.

The storm comes running down again.
Up goes the bat, swinging down from the height,
the sweet sound
and away goes the ball, a beautiful trajectory,
high, sailing away,
way over the limits,
right into the deafening roar of the crowd.

It's a maximum! It's a miracle!

But he's still standing there. Suddenly the world's a blur.
But he can still see that white,
trace that path up into the sky,
almost as if in a slow motion replay.
Proud that it was him that had put it up there.
Boy, such a beautiful sight,
to see it go flying into the air like that.

He had done it. He had conquered his fears yet again.
He had proved his father wrong.
But the irony wasn't lost on him.
In the end, it was in his father's very words,
that he had found courage,
when he needed it most.

There does exist some kind of magic in this world...

There does! Of late I have been noticing a lot of coincidences in my life..certain things seem to keep happening, when they might as well have not happened! Is there a meaning to all this? There must be..but I cant understand yet...

But it all seems magical..like how I often ask these questions to myself and somehow, through the words of some friend, or sometimes strangers or TV or a random book or movie..I do get the answer...

It's as if the world is actually speaking to me...

I wonder..does this happen to everyone..or is this a sagitarian thing?

After another busy day in office...

Never been motivated to write a fictional piece before...but this is fun! My second piece of romantic fiction, this time it's not a programming language :-)...

Another busy day in office. All those conversations and discussions and getting things done and solving problems and now he was tired. All he wanted now was to be just be home with her. See her smile at him that way she did every time.

The way only she could ever. A smile that even today, after all these years, brought to him a peace he couldn't explain. Every time he saw her, he had felt so much at home, in a way he had never felt before he had met her.

Walking down the stairs from his second floor office, smiling to himself, he suddenly gets a call. It's from her. He picks it up eagerly only to realise at the first hello that something was wrong.This was not the beautiful sound that he could never have enough of.

She had been admitted to a hospital. She was down with a severe attack of diarrhoea and vomiting. It must have been the team outing the day before that she had been to, he thought to himself.

He couldn't help feel a pang of regret. Wish he had been there with her...

But right now the only thing on his mind was catching the first cab to the hospital. He reaches the hospital and rushes into her room.

And there he sees her. Her eyes closed, she is sleeping with all the serenity in the world. He carefully closes the door so as to not wake her up. And he sits down beside her. All he wants to do now is to just keep looking at that beauty that lay before him.

And he couldn't help wonder. All those beautiful women out there. All those pretty faces that fascinated him. All those women who liked him and admired him so much. And yet it was she whom he had fallen for.

She wasn't what one would say, a traditional beauty.Yes, on her day, she could blow away men with her looks. There were days when she would strut in looking stunning. But for him it was never about how she looked. For him, it was about her. Her complete whole. About who she was.

And right now, as he looked down upon her, in that sterile hospital environment, he couldn't escape the reality of how ordinary she looked in her sickness. The sickness had drained the colour from her cheeks. And her long hair was bunched up in a knot behind her.

And yet, even in that ugliness, he couldn't help wonder how someone could still look so beautiful. That beauty lay in the eyes of the beholder was the oldest cliché he had heard.

But here, now, in that moment, as he looked at that face, it hit him with all the certainty in the world, that before him lay one of the most beautiful sights ever. Nothing, nothing at all could be
more beautiful than this.

And then she opens her eyes. As she sees him there, the graveness on her face gives way to a smile, like the tiniest rays of sunlight escaping slowly from behind the dark clouds. That's all that she could manage in her condition.

He picks up her hand and holds it close to him and looks down into those deep black eyes, eyes he could never help being lost in.

And then he just stays that way. He doesn’t utter a word at all.

But in the silence of that moment, she looks into his eyes and hears the most beautiful music ever.

Between Py and Ru..

Gail: "Have you ever been in love?"
Roark: "I still am."
Gail: "And when you walk through that building, what you feel is greater than that?"
Roark: "Much greater, much greater."

What if Ruby and Python were women? Then I would have to say that I am in love with two women. Outrageous? Ridiculous? Crazy? Whatever. Here’s my love story.

Well I met Py first. She was so different from the others. At first I couldn’t understand her and I didn’t like her. But I don’t know why I took the effort to know her. Destiny?

Maybe it was the hope of finding something beautiful. It took me some time to know her and get used to her ways. And soon I couldn’t help but madly fall in love with her. Conversations with her were so simple and effortless. When I was with her, I was no longer the tounge-tied shy guy the others knew me as.

They say love is one exhilarating feeling. And I couldn’t agree more. I could only see her wherever I went. She was the love of my life, I thought.

Until I met Ru. Well I had heard about her before. Knew her a bit. But I guess, I was so much into Py that I had never bothered to know Ru more. Why do I need her when I had Py with me.

But here in ThoughtWorks, I saw the kind of spell she had the guys under. I would see her smiling at me as they exclaimed praises about her. Everyone seemed to be so much in awe of this girl I had known since long but never cared to know well enough.

Curious, I began to make short talk with her. One conversation led to another and soon I started feeling drawn to her. What attracted me most about her, was her way of life, her philosophy.

She had very clear ideas about who she was. And what she wanted to do. I found myself agreeing a lot with the way she saw things as.

Life to her was about making making people happy. Simple. She believed she was in this world to bring joy into the lives of people around her.

Soon she had me laughing and enjoying her company. She’s fun, I thought to myself. Clever, intelligent and really beautiful.

And like Py, she too was a girl of few words. Yet what was so beautiful about her was the way she could express much more with those few words. Considering that I too like to keep my words to myself,I felt absolutely at home with her. It was like we were connected at some level. So few words exchanged, but yet a lot being said and understood.

I was surprised to learn that she was brought up in Japan by her Japanese father. But she considered the world her true home. She had a handsome Dannish boyfriend too. Somebody deeply in love with her. Somebody who she said was very vocal about her and went around telling everyone how she had changed his life forever! Somebody so crazy about her that he believed he could change the world with her by his side!

“Kinda silly of him”, she said,“Thanks to him a lot of people want to know more about me. But people don’t realise that I am much more than his girlfriend!! But yes I love him for what he has done for me.", she said.

Oh, she has a boyfriend, I tried to hide my disappointment. But yes, love does make people do all kind of crazy things and he seemed to be very much in love with her.

Maybe she saw the frown on my face and added, “Ofcourse that doesn’t mean I can’t have friends!". A smile on her face as she said that. Or was it just me beginning to feel smitten.

As days went by, I found myself craving her company more than anything else. There was something so beautiful about her. No, not the kind of beauty that Py had. Ru was beautiful in a totally different sense.

She appealed to the part of me that craved freedom. Freedom is true power. The freedom as in “Free to choose”. 

Free of restrictons. And inhibitions. Not limited by rules set up by disciplinarians who tell you that the restrictions are for your own good. They may have a point. But I guess I can decide for myself what is good for me and what is not.

And soon I found myself falling in love with her.

Now what? I am in love with two women. Who’s the one for me? Who’s side should I take? Who’s the one with whom I should be?

Two sisters. But two different philosophies. And it’s their respective philosophies that intrigue me more.

Py likes things neat and clean. She won’t go with the unruly guy.
And she is very particular about maintaing her space.

Ru lets you have your way. She can be sweet to the nice disciplined guy. And also play along with the bad disorganized guy. She doesn’t discriminate and adapts herself to make everyone feel at home. For she wants all, each and everyone to experience her joy.

Two wonderful people I have a great time with.
If only I could be with both of them....

The Greatest Feeling...

What we feel is what makes us human. So whats the greatest feeling in the world, besides being in love?

For me I have now realised, it's what I feel after I have done something that I have always been afraid of.

Yes the greatest feeling on this earth for me is conquering my fears.
Going out and doing something that's scary. Or rather your mind says that its scary.

You see its in the very act of confronting our fears that we live our lives to the fullest.

Right now, for me, it's like a tap that has been opened. And the water's flowing out real strong. I am no longer afraid. There's no stopping this current.

For I have conquered my fears. I have gone out and done what I thought I could never do. And it has filled me with so much confidence that now I know I can win over my other fears too. I know it wont be easy. But win, I will.

And it's an absolutely heady feeling. I feel like just jumping up and down shouting out loud, Hey! Hey! You know what?! I did it! I did it!! I am no longer afraid!

It's like this exhilarating feeling of extreme happiness where you want to scream your lungs out because you are filled with so much energy that you just have to let it out!

What was the impossible is now history. I have looked fear in the eye, and defeated her.

Now I am the one smiling at her. And she is the one trying to hide away from me, vowing she will come back one day in a new form to haunt me again.

Come again, I don't now care, for you now have lost your power over me. I have defeated you once,I will fight the battle again and victory will be mine to savour again.

Life can be very unpredictable. Life can be very short. All we have then is the now.

And its the greatest injustice in this world, if we let fear prevent us from living our lives to the fullest.

Because more than anything, tomorrow may just never come.

Tonite's the Night...

We are going live with our website tonite....this is what we have been working on since the last 8 months...

Tonite is the night,
that will decide our fate.
All that work
and all that toil,
hope there won't be no spoil.
All that ache
and all that pain,
hope that won't be in vain.

Tonite is the night,
so long has been the wait.
Anxious moments, fingers crossed,
may things go a song, as hoped.

Tonite is the night,
we will win the fight.
Come what may,
we won't sway.
And fight we will,
till it's all still.

Tonite is the night,
the story,it will come to an end.

And the glory will be for ours to claim,
And the happiness will be for ours to savour.