Quote unquote - 2

"If I found a job, a project, an idea or a person I wanted--I'd have to depend on the whole world. Everything has strings leading to everything else. We're all so tied together. We're all in a net, the net is waiting, and we're pushed into it by one single desire. You want a thing and it's precious to you. Do you know who is standing ready to tear it out of your hands? You can't know, it may be so involved and so far away, but someone is ready, and you're afraid of them all. And you cringe and you crawl and you beg and you accept them--just so they'll let you keep it. And look at whom you come to accept."

"Have you seen how your best friends love everything about you--except the things that count? And your most important is nothing to them, nothing, not even a sound they can recognize."

"Every form of happiness is private. Our greatest moments are personal, self-motivated, not to be touched. The things which are sacred or precious to us are the things we withdraw from promiscuous sharing."

"Wheeling his bicycle by his side, the boy took the narrow path down the slope of the hill to the valley and the houses below. Roark looked after him. He had never seen that boy before and he would never see him again. He did not know that he had given someone the courage to face a lifetime."

"Every loneliness is a pinnacle"

"To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That's what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul--would you understand why that's much harder?""

"I often think that he's the only one of us who's achieved immortality. I don't mean in the sense of fame and I don't mean that he won't die some day. But he's living it. I think he is what the conception really means. You know how people long to be eternal. But they die with every day that passes. When you meet them, they're not what you met last. In any given hour, they kill some part of themselves. They change, they deny, they contradict--and they call it growth. At the end there's nothing left, nothing unreversed or unbetrayed; as if there had never been an entity, only a succession of adjectives fading in and out on an unformed mass. How do they expect a permanence which they have never held for a single moment?"

Sing me a song

Ever so often I catch myself staring at my ipod in wonder. How the deuce does it pull up the right song, the PRNG debate notwithstanding. Playing 'Everybody hurts' now.
Either AI is here already or it just knows me too well. 

Dream on

Only once in your life, I truly believe, you find someone who can completely turn your world around. You tell them things that you’ve never shared with another soul and they absorb everything you say and actually want to hear more. You share hopes for the future, dreams that will never come true, goals that were never achieved and the many disappointments life has thrown at you. When something wonderful happens, you can’t wait to tell them about it, knowing they will share in your excitement. They are not embarrassed to cry with you when you are hurting or laugh with you when you make a fool of yourself. Never do they hurt your feelings or make you feel like you are not good enough, but rather they build you up and show you the things about yourself that make you special and even beautiful. There is never any pressure, jealousy or competition but only a quiet calmness when they are around. You can be yourself and not worry about what they will think of you because they love you for who you are. The things that seem insignificant to most people such as a note, song or walk become invaluable treasures kept safe in your heart to cherish forever. Memories of your childhood come back and are so clear and vivid it’s like being young again. Colours seem brighter and more brilliant. Laughter seems part of daily life where before it was infrequent or didn’t exist at all. A phone call or two during the day helps to get you through a long day’s work and always brings a smile to your face. In their presence, there’s no need for continuous conversation, but you find you’re quite content in just having them nearby. Things that never interested you before become fascinating because you know they are important to this person who is so special to you. You think of this person on every occasion and in everything you do. Simple things bring them to mind like a pale blue sky, gentle wind or even a storm cloud on the horizon. You open your heart knowing that there’s a chance it may be broken one day and in opening your heart, you experience a love and joy that you never dreamed possible. You find that being vulnerable is the only way to allow your heart to feel true pleasure that’s so real it scares you. You find strength in knowing you have a true friend and possibly a soul mate who will remain loyal to the end. Life seems completely different, exciting and worthwhile. Your only hope and security is in knowing that they are a part of your life.
 -Bob Marley
 And then reality b(y)tes when a friend calls up and rants about life - some friends. err... did i just lose the last friend i had :-)

Another day in paradise

Recently had a pretty rotten 'Murphy and his laws wreak havoc on me' kind of day. Yes, again! No kidding, convinced i have a stalker on my hands. Mucked up pretty much everything there was to, in the 12 hours I spent in office - sense prevailed and decided to leg it home before I inadvertently did an rm *.* on one of the boxes (that's a recurring dream, wonder what Freud would have to say to that). Rains, no umbrella. Aah well, surprise me. Flag down a rick. The conv goes: Me - Mulund? Rick driver - Andheri. Me - Kanjur? Rick driver - IIT. Me - Chalo. Maybe, I ought to be on hostage negotation calls.

As we near Hiranandani, the rick driver gets a call on his cell. I wait patiently while he enquires after his wife, chotu, bittu, bhaiyaji - Oh all right, better switch to another rick before he runs through the state of affairs of every home in his hamlet. Walk down to Galleria and board another rick. This one reaches the Hiranandani hospital gates and stops dead. "Madam, out of gas".

By now, am tired, got mason drumming away inside my head and am trying my best not to lose my temper at ricks in general and MH03-2403 in particular. Remember reading somewhere that counting from 1 to 10 generally controls the temper bit. Hmmm... well 10 is way too less, so count upto 25, take a deep breath and begin the trudge to the nearest bus stop.

20 mins later and at the count of 410, my bus ambles along. Once in, fish around the bag for change, dig out a 500 rupee note. The conductor grimaces - change please, poore bus ka ticket lena hain kya. Try explaining to him that good ol' Murphy is responsible for emptying my bag of change. He says - Ma'am, yeda samjha kya, I did see change in your purse. I go - my dear chappie, that's uk currency, pounds u see, I have to return the whole lot to the Finance dept. else I get no salary this month. He condescends to dole out the change muttering 'Aajkal ki ladkiyan'. Should I sue him for gender bias. Naah, risky, the odds (and ends) are stacked heavily against me.

Count is at 449…450… this too shall pass. Get a call from x saying he's arranging a call to sort out some issue and could I please attend - tell him it's past my bedtime, he can chair the call and attend it himself, stopped short of telling him that he could go jump off the roof and take his precious interface doc with him for company. Yeah apologies and all that jazz, but connect now didn't figure in my scheme of things at 11.00 IST.

575…576. Home finally, reach for the newspaper - the guy had delivered a Gujarati edition. Why am I not surprised? Skip dinner and decide to settle for a cup of hot coffee to kill the buzz in my head. Admiring the moon slipping in and out of the cloud canopy when I hear a mild sizzling sound. The milk has boiled over, spend the next 10 mins cleaning up. The count is now 650. Sip black coffee and spend the rest of the night wondering how to source horseshoes, maybe peacock feathers, and for good measure, a water fountain and a small bamboo plant - stretching things a bit too far all right, but there's no such thing as excessive good luck - and one of the above mentioned bloody charms better work.

Oh, if you haven't noticed yet, the title has no relevance whatsoever to the article which followed. Just happens to be my anthem for the day.

On Silence

Too many women in too many countries speak the same language, the language of silence - Dasgupta

Silence - Anon
She sits alone amongst the ruins
Ruins of a dream they once nurtured
Vacant eyes stare into the vast emptiness
Eating away at her very soul

The terrifying silence screams
as raw pain washes over her
The evening shadows close in
Enveloping the remains of yesterday

Silence - Anon
Silence is the best speaker
Hear the sound by heart.

Read 'On the Blue Shore of Silence' - Pablo Neruda

To be or not to be

To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: aye, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come...

Mock Turtle

Reading a book where the principal characters are discussing a book titled 'Mock Turtle'. The basic outline of the book is decidedly hilarious - how long before an author comes up with a book based on it.

It is about a swimming instructor at a watering place, who had contracted such an unfortunate anti-nudity complex through watching so many bathing beauties that it completely inhibited all his natural emotions. So he got a job on a whaler and fell in love at first sight with an Eskimo, because she was such a beautiful bundle of garments. So he married her and brought her back to live in a suburb, where she fell in love with a vegetarian nudist. So then the husband went slightly mad and contracted a complex about giant turtles, and spent all his spare time staring into the turtle-tank at the Acquarium, and watching the strange, slow monsters swimming significantly round in their encashing shells.

Altogether, significant.

To dos

bike ride to Leh/Ladakh,
feel snowflakes, build a snowman,
laze on a beach the whole day - Ibiza?
stand on the edge of a cliff and feel the wind on my face - Irish coast,
catch the northern lights,
drive a bike at top speed on the highways of Germany,
travel the length of New Zealand and not meet a living soul (cows don't count :-)) - just nature ,
travel on a Concorde (erm, not possible now),
stay in the Ritz,
catch a show of Mousetrap,
learn to enjoy life,
learn French and Spanish,
visit Paris, go to the Louvre,
have coffee at a roadside cafe and spend 3 hours over the coffee,
lookup all the great paintings,
walk barefoot on grass covered with dew,
try bungee jumping and/or para gliding,
write a book,
play the violin,
attend a concert in Austria,
learn to trust,
take a one month leave and only watch movies and read books,
gorge on Swiss and Belgian chocolates,
have a pet dog and go for long walks,
let my hair down for a day,
try snorkelling,
learn to love myself,
watch a Fed match live on centre court, wimbledon and he better win it,
watch a football match - Man U / Chelsea,
build a new product,
adopt a child,
one life :-)

Why

Saw this piece in the TOI and liked it.

Why don't all Indians have one common prayer?
Why is school admission more painful than child birth?
Why do we find more animals on our roads than in our zoos than in our forests?
Why does a rapist only get 7 years imprisonment and the victim, a life-term?
Why do we take tuitions from the same teacher who teaches us in school?
Why do we see music more than we hear it?
Why can't our rivers be clean enough to swim in?
Why do you have to die to be praised?
Why do we have to be married to live together?
Why isn't there a compulsory politeness course for all Delhiites?
What about downsizing the parliament?
Why don't we ban ragging?
Why are our beautiful outdoors treated as one big giant toilet?
Why can't there be capital punishment for makers of spurious drugs?
Why are massive shopping malls being built with micro parking lots?
Why are we wearing mental corsets?
Why does it take Madonna to make yoga popular?
Why don't politicians have a retirement age?
Why can't we learn how to stand in a queue?
Why are TV promos more exciting than the actual film?
Why are schools allowed to function without a playground?
Why do all government offices look like government offices?
Why do we take ourselves so seriously?
Why are we more concerned about building temples than schools?
Why do we have statues only of politicians?

Truth

Came across this line recently - The notion of the truth as an idea that exists in the singular is being hollowed out. Truth is now very clearly an account delivered from a vantage point. The opposite of the truth is not a lie but another wannabe truth.