Of guitars and paintbrushes....(and a few other things too)

Overdue.

2012-02-14T03:07:00.003+05:30

Dear Blog,

Sometimes, when I write, I don't know who I am talking to. I never questioned my purpose to write when I started writing. It seemed worthless. I guess it was just that there was so much bile and shit and strangled words and almost-cliched thoughts which needed a secret box for safekeeping. If you were a notebook, you would be three and you would be lying between the broken table-lamp and the empty bottle of rum in my cupboard. I guess why I chose you over the notebooks was because I took a certain twisted pride in the fact that you were out in the open for everyone to see and yet, no one did. 'I need people around me to prove that I am a loner'. That I could purge myself of all unsaid, unfinished utterly useless bile and that you could take it, you inanimate object, you.

All said and done, you're just a trash can for me to dump dried remnants of washed up memories. But you're there, and that's a relief.

Thankyou, and belated happy birthday.

Me.

Indeterminate.

2012-01-26T03:23:00.003+05:30

Backspace. Broken, twisted fingers as blood trickles downwards from the left arm and falls down on the already wet floor with a resounding, ominous plop.

Red.

Red has the maximum wavelength in all visible light. Things which we perceive to be red, blood, for example, absorb all other colours in white light and reflect red. Red of blood. Red of the panic button. Red of your full lips which, what with all their priceless little imperfections, I assure you, are still inviting. Red of the big red panic button.

I remember my Grandmother's hands. Long thin aged fingers covered with paper skin. Arms tanned so much that they looked like snakeskin in sunlight. And the small vitiligo patch near her right elbow which looked like a star on a dark horse's forehead. Her hands shook so much when she held a teacup that the rhythmic rattle of the teacup against the saucer echoed in the room. The rough papery warmth as she would hold my face in her hands and how they enveloped my entire universe and how she smelt of parsley and sandalwood and home.

I do not wish to write to be remembered. I have no story to tell. I have no wars to wage. No fight to win. My words do not have strength enough to propagate ideologies. Or overthrow them. My will is not patient enough to defend them. I am not an orphan. I am not a criminal. I have not seen the inside of a prison cell. I have not killed. I have not seen the night sky illuminated with the soft ethereal brilliance of the aurora among the millions of clear radiant stars so that it looks like the last remnants of a million of God's own Roman Candles. I have never experienced that infinite moment in time and space as I fall down from the sky with nothing but the earth below me and watch it accelerate towards me as I scramble for breath just as I scrambled for my first ever breath. I have never looked into a pair of eyes and in them realised my purpose in life. I have not lived enough. Leave me be. Leave me be. I do not wish to write to be remembered. I wish to write, to remember.

Panjim in the rain.

2012-01-11T00:35:00.003+05:30

The last dregs of my coffee cup

and the water in my shoes.

Small change in my wallet

but a pocketful of blues.

What business do you have here?

I wish I could explain.

I guess I'm here, just to look

at Panjim in the rain.

The road is like broken glass

fallen from the sky.

And poetry is nothing but a better way to lie.

The moths drink up the street lights

and I drink all that remains.

Swig by swig, under the stars,

in Panjim in the rain.

The mice and men are in their holes

hiding from the Gods.

The empty street and the empty pier

can't stand an empty glass.

Everybody is a sinner in this town,

searching for a saint.

All they find is alcohol

and Panjim in the rain.

Water water everywhere,

but not a drop to drink.

Laughter laughter everywhere,

but not a thought to think.

My bartender is as nonchalant as they come.

"When it rains, it pours", He says.

Then pour me another one, and let me drink

to Panjim in the rain.

MCQ

2011-12-29T20:11:00.002+05:30

One day, I am going to die in a car crash or a plane crash or cancer or a successful suicide attempt. And you are going to die too. Until then we're going to sit here with our empty glasses and overtold stories and the rest of our lives waiting waiting waiting and dreaming as the cold winter mornings come like a splash of cold water and your teeth chatter and your body shivers trying to generate some warmth. You can literally see the trees wake up and the road is a fucking polar ice cap.

Winter makes everything slow down. The stray dogs wake up and start looking around for a sunlit spot to dig a hole and do God knows what. Same old city. Same old apartments and same old trees neatly lining the same old roads. Same old muffler clad sabjiwaalah comes to the colony porch every morning. Same fucking stray dogs. Your friend's siblings are now your sibling's friends. Evenings are spent in the same old coffee shop repeating stories you'd told last year. When did this town shrink so much? You drive past your old school trying to see if anything has changed. Then back to the coffee shop.

There is a frustrating anticipation in this stillness. A new year is about to begin. Car crash, plane crash, cancer or suicide attempt?

White noise.

2011-09-29T03:31:00.002+05:30

He didn't even remember how you looked like. What your name was. How you took your coffee. Which side of the bed you liked to sleep on. He didn't remember. He didn't remember your favourite song. Your happy place. He tried hard but he couldn't seem to. Don't blame him, but he didn't remember you.

Your beauty was lost to him. Your words forgotten. He saw you on the crowded street today. You passed each other, in fact. You even turned back and apologized when you brushed shoulders. He didn't recognize your voice. A mutual smile was all your give and take. He thought about you for the next nine seconds and controlled the urge to turn back. Afterall, its not everyday that you bump into pretty strangers.

Don't blame him, really. It was a long time ago that you met. You talked about all the things people usually talk about and that was it. You never kissed. It was nice meeting you, have a good night. He thought about the recently deceased conversation for the length of a cigarette and smiled to himself. That was it.

Wait. Do you remember him?

Fuck you too.

2011-09-21T03:03:00.001+05:30

I don't want to be able to think anymore. For some time atleast. Not think about the next sentence. The next note. It has become too tedious a job. I want sleep.

I don't want to be able to think anymore. I want sleep. Sound dreamless sleep. Deathlike sleep.

I don't want to be able to think anymore.

Rough day.

2011-09-09T01:24:00.000+05:30

All those moments will be lost in time. Like tears in the rain.

Time to die.

Bickle fitch.

2011-08-28T06:05:00.002+05:30

I had forgotten how much I had missed this. Staying up all night playing guitar till the sky turned from black to that beautiful hue of purple-blue I love so much. Then sitting down and writing a blogpost on impulse. Delaying sleep as much as possible. Misspelling words. Cringing inwardly at that spell check's wavy red underline. I somehow hate the green lines more. They're idiotic sometimes. Its a bad idea to think about grammar at six in the morning.

I guess this is the time when I am supposed to reminisce. Introspect. Be a bit nostalgic and crib about how I can't write in verse. Eh. All I want is a piece of toast. A large piece of toast. With butter on it. Lots of. I want a hot crispy toast with lots of butter on it. And some scotch.

The sky is a lighter shade now. I liked it better before. This time of the day somehow always reminds me of studying. If I would have to make a list of the most important things in my life right now, I would be stumped. Maybe I am too self conscious to admit to myself my priorities, but I cannot write them down. Something has to be wrong with that.

I miss Panjim. If I could, I wouldn't have come back. The fact that I have feels like a defeat.

Maybe I'll settle for breakfast. Or not.

Night.

Shoestring lullaby.

2011-08-18T03:28:00.000+05:30

Bones of a sunday afternoon.

2011-08-09T02:13:00.002+05:30

Its that time again when I ve seemingly forgotten how to string words together into sentences. Meaningful ones, preferably. Though not necessarily. There was a time when I used to write to tell a story. Then there was a time when I wrote for someone. That bunch of shit would look profound in the first read, but it wasnt. It was just a bunch of shit. Tonight I don't know what to write about. Still, I type on, making a fool of myself on paper.

Eh, its okay.

Sigh. No. Its not.

Casino Carnival.

2011-06-30T00:18:00.005+05:30

I guess its true with every city. You live there for a couple of days, understand how the buses work, remember to keep the exact change in your shirt pocket so that you don't have to fidget with your wallet inside them, find out where the nearest laundry to your home is and spend an afternoon in the fish market. Its like feeling a pulse. Now you feel more comfortable walking alone on these streets with only the curiously beautiful antique street lamps for company at midnight. The stray dogs of Nina Pinto colony know you now. Thats a good thing.

This city has always struck me as very...contemplative. It is slow, and enjoyably so. When it rains it becomes more beautiful than it already is. It sleeps like a baby, early at night. Most of it does, anyway. Then takes another nap in the afternoon. Like a baby. It is as if people decide to be happy when they come here. And God, they try so hard to be. Sometimes a bit too hard, maybe. This city was made to stop and stare. To look around, and for one moment, stop thinking. About the girl, about the job, about the money. Stop thinking. And watch the waves lap up the rocks on the jetty.

I tend to overanalyse. I tend to generalise about life and its meaning for hours while knowing that its the most pointless, and in a way, obscene thing to do. Its good not to think sometimes. Sigh. A lot more than sometimes.

"Time kya hua hai?"

The guy wore dirty white shorts and an ancient faded Goa t shirt they sell on the beaches around here. He squatted beside me looking at the river while I checked the time. Its eight thirty pm, I told him.

"Aap tourist hain?"

Are you a tourist? The guy was either a pimp or an agent. Same difference. He didn't want the time. He wanted to sell me a hotel room. Or a prostitute. Or both I guess. Not a tourist, I said.

"Oh, aap Goa se hain?"

He asked with a you're-of-no-use-to-me-buddy face. I nodded. In the spur of the moment. To avoid more questions, more than anything else.

But after he went away, as I sat looking at the Casino Carnival floating in the still Mandovi waters, I wished, no, I hoped, just for a moment, that it was true.

That. Again.

2011-06-21T03:06:00.000+05:30

I HATE THE WAY I WRITE.

The laughing lamp-post.

2011-06-20T22:44:00.006+05:30

I understand, all right. The hopeless dream of being- not seeming, but being.

Every evening at seven thirty, as the moon rises over the bridge and threatens to shimmer into the river through the dark dark trees, bats fly from one end of the sky to the other. More than a thousand of them.

At every waking moment, alert. The gulf between what you are with others and what you are alone. The vertigo and the constant hunger to be exposed, to be seen through, perhaps even wiped out. Every inflection and every gesture a lie.

Every smile a grimace.

They glide over our craned necks. Threatening to collide. The vast blanket of talons and leather wings. And if you lay down on your back like me, you can feel them swishing past, struggling against that particularly strong gust of wind which threatens to throw them off course. I've always been in love with the shape of a bat's wing. Whats the word? Morbidly curious. They're blind, you know. Bats. Funny little creatures. Sometimes, I feel sorry for the one in the front.

Suicide?

No, too vulgar.

But you can refuse to move, refuse to talk, so that you don't have to lie. You can shut yourself in. Then you needn't play any parts or make wrong gestures.

Or so you thought.*

Or so you thought. Because secretly, we all love to be heard while crying. Because weak and pathetic that we are, we only want to know whether we are thought about. Remembered. Talked about. Because all that remains of a conversation is not about what was spoken. But to whom it was spoken to.

The blind bats always find their way. Everyday.

When I was a kid, there was a lamp-post next to my house. It was a funny lamp-post. Literally. All you had to do was tell the lamp-post a joke, and it would shine nice and bright. And if you had to shut it down, all you had to do was scare it. You could shout as loud as you could, make scary faces or growl. Or you could throw stones at the Ashoka trees nearby to wake the huge colony of bats which lived there and make them fly around. That really scared the poor lamp-post.

But the real test would be to make the lamp-post laugh. If you told the lamp-post a joke and it didn't shine nice and bright, then obviously, your joke was not funny enough. But if it did, then you'd found a real good joke, you know. The lamp-post laughed, afterall.

I miss the laughing lamp-post.

(*Excerpts from the film Persona(1966), written and directed by Ingmar Bergman.)

February.

2011-06-14T22:34:00.002+05:30

It is so easy to say that everything is going to be okay. That I am there for you. Trust me? I don't know how much words mean to you but I ve never gotten over the beauty of them. Or the lack thereof. I have a bad habit of overanalysing. I also have a bad habit of perpetually trying to explain myself. I also always need a listener. For I have never gotten over the beauty of a conversation. I even tried talking to the Hendrix poster. Maybe I should sing to it the next time. Maybe not.

This town is slow and dull and drenched with memories. This town is so beautiful in the rain. I think I am done with memories for a while now. There is a certain limit to reminiscence. I don't want my life to be one rainy night in a coffee cup. Maybe three. I ll think about it. But I need to get out of this place. I think I am too young to stay in one place for too long. Only old wise people deserve to do so. I am still foolish. Like a Chipmunk. Wonder where that came from. Sigh.

Some time ago I had a conversation when I said that the thing I hated the most was disappointing the people I care about. I cannot stand that feeling.

I guess that ship has sailed now. And you have no idea how bad it feels.

2.5 million male Chipmunks die every year because of the following.

2011-06-12T19:51:00.007+05:30

So, there was this Chipmunk who ate one too many nuts one day and started constipating. Chipmunks are greedy creatures. So constipation is not a new thing for them. Something like flu for us. Hence the wise ones generally pace themselves while eating. But sadly, the Chipmunk in this story, as you will infer as it unfolds, was not a very wise Chipmunk. Anyway, so the Chipmunk got constipated.

The Chipmunk started running around from tree to tree trying to find a suitable solution while making some obvious and unmentionable pit stops. Unlike humans, Chipmunks dont have doctors among them, which, in his time of need, our Chipmunk found frustrating. So the poor Chipmunk went around looking for some respite. Any respite. But sadly, it was not to be.

Suddenly, through a clearing, he saw a She-Chipmunk nibbling on a nut. Now, nibbling for Chipmunks is an especially attractive activity. Our Chipmunk, moreover was a big fan. So, forgetting his constipation, the brave but foolish Chipmunk presented himself before the fine young She-Chipmunk.

The fine young She-Chipmunk looked up fro her nibbling and saw our unlikely hero standing in front of her. Like all fine young She-Chipmunks, she batted her Chipmunk eyelashes, waved her Chipmunk tail and twiddled her Chipmunk incisors. Then she broke a piece of the nut she was eating, and offered it to our brave, foolish but incredibly lucky Chipmunk. Incredibly lucky because, among Chipmunks, these gestures mean some serious action. Anyway, back to the story.

Our brave, foolish but incredibly lucky Chipmunk saw the piece of nut and grew elated. He moved ahead to take it. But at that exact moment, his stomach, gave a huge rumble of disagreement. Suddenly, our poor Chipmunk managed to position himself in one of the worst dilemmas possible for the Chipmunk-kind. As the fine young She-Chipmunks incisors twiddled faster, his stomach rumbled harder. Our poor little Chipmunk started sweating.

He looked up and prayed for some miracle.

And suddenly, through all the chaos, the Chipmunk's pulmonary artery imploded and he died. Oh, he had a weak heart.

And then they all live happily ever after.

Moral- There are a very few wise Chipmunks in this world.

Never again.

2011-05-29T02:35:00.002+05:30

I made to to-do list today. Its funny how sometimes out of all that you want to do, there's only a few things you can write down. Even to yourself. You're just kidding yourself sometimes. A friend told me today that hope was a dangerous thing. I laughed aloud. Hope is that closed door which is the only way out. Hope is that monster under your bed. Hope is a reflex.

You reach halfway through a novel and you realise that its just like your life and then all you want to do is open the last page. You're constantly in search of that happy ending. And then a happier one. We resurface from our ignorance with the apparent realisation of what we want in life only to submerge back. We're gluttons. Thats what we are. And all that is good and beautiful in this world is waiting to be devoured. One fine morning we're all going to wake up and realise that life is not a storybook. Life is not a song. Life is just...life.

I just hope to be more coherent.

The morning after.

2011-05-25T22:07:00.001+05:30

But you feel like shit, the morning after.

Pissedofflazyrant.

2011-05-23T00:48:00.005+05:30

I would be a better man if I would wake up earlier than I do now. I would be a better man if I would run five miles and eat right and read a book a week. Or two. Maybe three. I would then feel so much better about myself than I do now so much that I would not try to be a better man anymore.

I would then paint the most beautiful painting in the world and learn how to play the blues on the harmonica in three and a half hours. I would look at everyone and smile, for I'd be a better man. I'd never fall sick and kick ass at white water rafting and do parkour on the streets of Rio de Janiero while simultaneously eating caesar salad with the right fork. I would come home earlier and show my brother all the animated movies I'd gotten for him and get groceries for mom and check whether the mangoes were really good before buying them.

I would be a better man if I would move on. And stop thinking about it. If I would do ten more pushups and not think too much about the two fluorescent green eyeballs I saw under the bed a while ago. With an orange pupil on the left and blue on the right eye. Or was in the other way round. I would hold doors open for strangers and own a black mask and cape in a secret subterranean vault under my room.

I would be a better man if I would get up earlier than I do now.

Thats why I do not want to be a better man.

Ask me again tomorrow.

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2011-05-20T22:58:00.003+05:30

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Better.

Unfinished business.

2011-05-16T08:29:00.003+05:30

A long time has passed.

I cleaned out my closet for the one last time today. Trashed it all. Old

workshop journals, unfinished paintings and pain medications. Trashed it all.

Two and a half foot long pile of garbage accumalated over the last three

years. Old tshirts, old notebooks, old blue jeans and a coconut. Trash.

Then I lay it all on the floor and spread it and sifted through it all looking

for those fragile trinkets with memories attached to them. Designed to fade over time.

Like the old blue jeans.

My closet door is filled with chemistry II formulae I wrote on it in my first year.

I don't even remember when I etched out the lyrics to Breathe on the table with a

compass. Probably during the times I used to carry a compass. A long time has passed.

I found an old notebook in which I had written about the guitar I wanted to own one day.

The make and the pickups and what her name would be. Everything. I looked around at Moonbeam. Exactly as I wrote she would be. Complete with the name.

On the very next page I'd written about the first exact moment when I knew for sure

that I had fallen for someone. More than I had ever.

Well, atleast I got my guitar.

I have unfinished business with this place. I will leave things undone. Unsaid.

I'll sleep on the cold comforting floor tonight. I'll leave a guitar string behind.

I'll trust the memories. They're designed to fade over time.

2011-05-05T06:19:00.001+05:30

"Why must we live?"

"We must live."

A mouse's tail.

2011-04-29T02:29:00.004+05:30

Once upon a time, in a land far far away, there lived a tiny little mouse. He lived in a tiny little mouse hole in a tiny little patch of grass alongside a tiny little river.

But the tiny little mouse was sad.

The tiny little mouse was sad because he was poor and hungry and he had no friends. You see, the riverside is generally dominated by the rat community. And though we generally don't care enough to spot the difference, the mean old rats are very touchy about the company they keep.

So the mean old rats never made friends with our tiny little mouse. And thats why, the tiny little mouse was sad.

Oh. Yes. And he was madly in love one of the mean old rats. Its funny how pretty rats can be so mean sometimes, but she never even gave our mouse a second look, and that broke the tiny little heart of our tiny little mouse.

The tiny little mouse thought and he thought. He racked his tiny little brain. There had to be a solution to his problems. But nothing!

Until one day, suddenly, out of the blue...

A huge ginger tomcat with huge sharp claws gulped our tiny little mouse away!

And then they all lived happily ever after.

Moral: Mice are tastier than rats.

2011-04-25T03:07:00.000+05:30

My pain is mine to give.
And I give it to you.

Because I trust you with it.

Fish curry and rice.

2011-04-08T02:30:00.003+05:30

There is no good fish or bad fish.

There is just

fish.

Unless you want to eat it.

Or it wants to eat you.

The young man and the sea.

2011-03-22T03:45:00.004+05:30

When I die, I want my body to be unceremoniously tossed into the Bogmalo sea. Don't forget to pour in a drink for me. And if you can, play Floyd while doing so. Shine on.., if you think I am worthy of it. Its a noble quest, isn't it? Trying to be worthy of a song. Its like trying to return a favour.

Toss me in the sea at twilight. When the sun and the moon both loom up in the sky as the menial lights of the earth witness the change of guard. And their reflections shimmer across the length of her waters and dissolve into oblivion. That is, the ultimate goal, isn't it?

For this is where and when I have been at peace. Among the jutted purple moss layered rocks with a lost lonely crab trying to scuttle back home. With a drink. A friend. Or both.

And there is a small shrine right beside, a stone crucifix more so. Laden with stale flowers which smell of stale hope. The water laps up at your feet like your favourite dog looking for a caress. The distant lights of your favourite shack shimmer homecoming. And Van Gogh paints everything in front of your eyes.

I will never live again like I have lived in those moments. I will never love again the way I have loved here. Now alienated from everywhere I used to belong, I wonder if I am worthy enough to call this place home.

When I die, toss me unceremoniously into the Bogmalo sea. Then, forget about me,just like you forget about the sad demise of a friendship.

Forget about me.

C'est la vie.

2011-02-15T04:09:00.012+05:30

Life goes on. Like the son of a bitch it is. One moment you re sitting on the library steps with a coffee in your hand waiting. Waiting for something to happen and the next moment you re still there. Overwhelmingly stagnant it is sometimes. Just to piss you off. And the next moment you re breaking glass windows and cutting yourself with a knife and burning stuff up and holding a lighter against your arm just to make..something..happen. Change playlist. Change bedsheets. Change guitar strings. Change sleep schedule and wake up at fucking four in the afternoon to find that everything was just the way you left it last night. No elves came to mend the shoes, my friend.

Just to piss you off.

So you close your eyes again and listen to the Comfortably numb guitar solo and take another drag and wait for something to happen. Some walls to explode. Some unimaginable epiphany. Someone to slap you across your face waking you up from your stupor.

Nothing.

I don't remember the first time I sat in a train. But all I can remember is my hair blowing across my face as I sat next to my father, trying to read aloud the passing railroad signs. as they swept past me one by one, each with a sharp distinctive swishhh, which carried faintly till the next sign approached. My father calmly correcting my mistakes. Telling me stories about his time in each town that passed. And me, craning my neck in vain trying to read the signs that were gone. Or trying to find the meaning of the lone purple scarf tied to that pole as it gently caressed the passing train.

...Slap you across your face waking you up from your stupor, and you realise that the moment just vanished. Like its countless, seemingly worthless brothers, it passed you by. Swishh. And all that is left is dried remnants, to pick up and lock in your box full of memories.

Life, as you knew it, is over.

Going down to the crossroads, fell down on my knees...

2011-02-06T00:51:00.003+05:30

Happy birthday blog. Thankyou for being there. Thankyou for everything. God knows I ve needed you for the past year. I promise to post more paintings okay?

God knows I am gonna need you all the more now.

Kar de possibe.

2011-02-05T03:35:00.002+05:30

At this point in my life, I need all the optimism I can afford. And more.

My guitar's been drinking. Not me.

2011-02-03T03:31:00.003+05:30

Drunken promises to the drunken night.
Drunken ecstasy. Drunken fright.
I haven't had much. Just a little bit.
I only drank my home. I only drank my life.

Afraid for you. Afraid for me.
I drink some for my pain.
And some for the sea.
But you know, this is not who I am, right.

I chug my cowardice.
I gulp my fears.
On the rocks. The way you taught me to.
And deep inside I raise my glass to you. Everytime.
Deep inside it doesn't help. Everytime.

Drunken promises to the drunken night.
Keep talking, will you? Ease the fright.
I am sorry. A drunken mistake.
But tonight. I am sober tonight.

Once upon a time...

2010-12-25T01:22:00.002+05:30

The wrought iron gate creaked unexpectedly loud into the cold afternoon sun as I pushed it open. Shouldn't have been unexpected. Afterall, it had been shut for the past eight

years. The part of the gate where my hands touched suddenly struck a sharp contrast with the rest of the dust ridden metal. This gate used to be my airplane when I was six. I

would hop onto it and swing to faraway lands, in search of adventure. And it never failed to bring me back home.

I crossed the porch. Two padlocks later, I was inside the house. My grandparent's old house. A cloud of dust and cobwebs greeted me. A cursory cough, and I stepped inside. It was

dark. Not your normal dark. It was the kind of dark you get when a place hasn't seen light for a long long time. Its somehow, darker, as if light needs time to get reacquainted

with the place. Furniture lay exactly as I remembered it, draped with cloth that used to be white, a long time ago. A lizard scurried behind the cabinet, evidently astonished by

the sudden breaking and entering. This was where I had spent all my summers as a kid. This was the safest place in the world.

It was happy that I came, the house. It even had a present for me. Somehow, magically, it had preserved and bottled up all of its smells for me. Underneath all the layers of dust and

grime, I sensed familiar scents. I closed my eyes and followed the trail. My Grandfather's betel nuts and elaichis near the mantlepiece. The crisp parchment from the half open drawer.

The distinctive sea smell which the conches and seashells still carried after all these years. Seashells my Grandfather had picked up from the shore; once upon a time, like the

stories. The sandalwood murtis. The huge bed, where I would lie in my Grandmother's arms as she taught me all about stories. Everything had a story behind it, she said. And

everything here did. Every wall had a trapdoor. Every cupboard had a secret compartment. The bookshelf was a top secret weapons base and the wardrobe was a time machine. Oh, and my

Grandfather's walking stick was a katana. Actually, still is.

The garden, once disciplined by my Grandmother, now grew haphazardly all over the place. But still, the scent was the same. The mixture of all the flowers, whose names no one else

knew but her. And the all so familiar guava and neem trees. The swing in the porch where I would spend afternoons playing my first harmonica. Evenings would consist of the ritualistic

watering of her plants. I would trundle alongside her, half buried under the huge pipe, as she spoke to each plant she watered. Each plant had a name. Each plant had a story. I

listened intently. And implored her to tell it again the next day. Ritualistic imploring begetted ritualistic storytelling.

Nights were spent on the terrace, under the moonlit sky. As she taught me about the overhead stars. Here came the real stories. Of Gods and men and wise old creatures. She traced

them in the sky. Pointed them out to me. Somehow, the sky has never looked the same. You might not believe it, but my Grandmother is friends with all the stars.

I went around the all so familiar spots. Felt them one more time. I remembered so many forgotten things. The festivals and the reunions when the house laughed along with us. This house had seen me grow up. And now, two days after my twentieth birthday, it gave me the greatest gift of all. It made me feel small again. Thankyou. I whispered.

What can I say. We re like cats and dogs. We attach ourselves to people. We attach ourselves to places. People die. Places turn into dust. And we? We realise that we are only human.

The wrought iron gate groaned as I grabbed it and swung on to faraway lands, in search of adventure. One last time.

Sigh, December. Always makes me feel nostalgic.

Hello December.

2010-12-06T02:28:00.010+05:30

Tonight is a beautiful night. Dark, drunk and just a little bit tipsy. Beautiful. I am sober. And watchful. For tonight has put a spell on me. As she stumbles, leans to pick out a star off her path, I smell her scent, her wine. She just smiles her secret smile and turns away. Such grace she has, when she lets go. Such beauty. I jump, trying to catch her. I never can. I can just stand and stare in awe.

Someone I once knew, asked me
Why are all sad things beautiful?
Compensation.

December always makes me nostalgic. Its the air, I think. It just makes you look back at what all happened and try, try to find, somehow, somewhere, that place where you went wrong. For you did, didn't you? I know I did. And I can't find where.

A friend of mine once told me to be grateful that I could be nostalgic. He said it was the worst feeling to not be able to. To be numb of that feeling. Alienated. Anesthetized. To accept, once and for all, that we might never again be the way we were. A look in his eyes, he was telling the truth.

I wish I could go back to that hill with that lake where floyd sounded so good. Tonight would have been perfect for it. Or that spot behind the football field from where you can see the bright burning lights of the dockyard in nights like these, and you can lie down on the road and do nothing, just watch stars. And the occasional airplane. Or in Panjim, next to the river, like when I first took a walk there with Moonbeam, and watched the city lights from under a street lamp.

Or the sea, which has become home, a companion. Sometimes, the only listener. But most of the times, the only one I can share my drink with.
...Some for the sea, and some for me.

Tonight is a beautiful night.

Shame its such a waste.

...maybe I was talking to myself.

2010-11-27T05:34:00.008+05:30

Trying to talk to my Hendrix poster is one thing. But ending up spending a whole night having a meaningful conversation with it is a totally different story.

Pathetic, really.

2010-11-18T01:30:00.002+05:30

Can a song change a life?

God I hope so. Sometimes, a song is all you have. A song someone else wrote, for someone else. You intrude. You make it your own. Borrowed words for borrowed feelings. Like using someone else's toothbrush. You fall in love with those words and loop them in your headphones. And me? I pick up my guitar and make believe it was me who wrote them in the first place. Pathetic really. But then, like I said, we are little people, you and I. Aren't we?

We lip sync. Unknowingly; together. We smile at the same parts and we close our eyes and try as hard as we can to push everything else but the music away. For those twenty six minutes and five seconds, it rains novocaine. Then the song gets over. Like a crash landing plane, it all comes back. It all comes back.

I always think that the happiest man on the planet doesn't need music. I always wish my favourite song was silence.

One day, I will write the most beautiful song in the world. And keep it to myself.

Ha.

Heh.

2010-11-11T20:39:00.002+05:30

How cynical can you get?

For I am real cynical right now. As cynical as can be. So much that I am secretly proud of myself about it. I mean, I have achieved the prowess of taking anything from innately mundane to extraordinarily beautiful and twisting it in my mind to make it look like my cousin's pet dog's excreta. Nice no?

Shit man. I can't write for nuts. The funny part is I've known that for so long and I still keep going at it. Thats also the sad part. Most lame ass attempts at poetry in the history of blogging; for that matter, history of literature; of the world; of everything. Another funny thing is that I will keep going at it. And some time later write another angry rant about how I, in general, suck. Write. God, this is so hilarious already. Please let me die of laughter.

No one reads it though. Thats a consolation. There is a very dismal satisfaction in the fact that the world does not see your worst. Not much of it anyway. Why, then, am I not writing all this on a notepad file?

See what I mean? Hilarious.

Poor blog though. What rubbish it has had to digest. My only listener, my so called friend, you moronic piece of pathetic web-shit, I am sorry. So sorry.

The problem with being a lonely cynic is that you have no one else to criticize but you. The problem with living life is that it does not come with a backspace button. The problem with being me is that I cannot get the heck out of this place. This nightmare. The problem, my dear blog, my faithful reader, is yours.

All literature is consolation. Sigh. This is not literature then.

My only listener, my so called friend, is this cynical enough for you?

Afraid for her more than I am afraid for me.

2010-11-10T04:54:00.000+05:30

2010-10-31T01:17:00.002+05:30

Such is life. And its only just begun.
I write blue. Sitting next to the golden purple night.
And the droplets of light which used to be stars, sometime ago.
The lamp posts shining a dull bleak white;
they used to be warm, sometime ago.
Cold black wind blows from across the river.
Brushes against my arms. Taking something away with it.
leaves me cold. Paints me black.
It used to be a friend, sometime ago.
Yesterday, even the guitar string broke.
She's given up on me too. Hadn't. Sometime ago.
As the first little rays of the sun open their eyes
I will walk through yesterday night's frost.
In search of that lost part of the past.
I was nothing, sometime ago.
...still am.

God is...

2010-10-05T03:34:00.003+05:30

All literature is consolation.

2010-10-01T05:21:00.003+05:30

An inevitable sense of impending doom.
As I wait for the seventh wave to strike.

Kill the lights. They re of no use anymore.
Just the firefly, perched on top of my guitar case.
And the rain, gently knocking on my doorstep.
And my life.
Push something white hot into the flesh.
Hold it there.
Now Breathe.
Breathe. For its the least you can do.
Hold it there. Compare.
The reflections. The kohl. The songs. Despair.
For again, like about everything else in my life
I remain clueless.

An inevitable sense of impending doom.
As I wait for the seventh wave to strike.
..For when it does, I will stop writing.

Stalemate

2010-09-12T03:26:00.004+05:30

I sit, crouching on Saturday night's back. Holding on tight. Holding on to the coffee cup, and all that could have been in it. Then the rain comes and goes, an old friend. And deserted, I sit under the deserted flickery yellow street lamp. Three raindrops in the coffee cup. One on my nose.
Me, waiting for my old friend. Me, afraid of silence. Me, straining to hear the night's conversations with the street lamp; the sea's conversations with you. And you, can't you feel your fingertips, too?
Stalemate.
But its worth the wait.
And how could I forget, that burning cigarette among the other eighty seven things waiting for me, across the sea.
....Lets paint yellow outlines to all the shadows in the world.

...burning room.

2010-08-24T23:39:00.002+05:30

Overtly chewed up, stretched to the limit; just not quite.
Am just, tired tonight.
Spasms of mirth, punctuating the blue blue monotonicity of life.
And the relentless chase to bring them back in sight.
Am just tired tonight.
Tired of it all. I feel...incompetent. Bored, more so.
What can I say, classic me.
Bored of hope; that son of a bitch.
And wave after cold wave crashed at my feet.
As I asked, is it still complicated?
And she smiled and she said, it always is.
And she smiled, she smiled when she said that.
So, tonight, I am bored of complicated.
Maybe tomorrow, we ll see.
But tonight...
Am just.. tired tonight.

City don't cry

2010-08-15T13:32:00.003+05:30

I love going to the city. Its a small city. More of a town. Cozy. Like a grandmother.
I love that about it.
Even the road towards the city is beautiful. A prelude.
I ride. With my instincts, more than a sense of direction. And yet, I am so confident.
The front brakes don't work. But who wants to use them anyway?
I ride.
I race against the wind. I race against my pain.
I ride.
I always win. And the city is my reward.
A walk by the river. Fleeting thoughts. Of what should have. Of what could have.
Butterflies and zebras and Moonbeams...
She's known me for a while now, the city. Knows my pain too.
What can she do? She has her own to tend to.
She offers respite. I scramble for it.
But mostly, she just makes me feel at home. I can stand next to her river and watch the sun set for ever. And then stay more. To watch the city lights reflect in the waters.
I think she likes me for that.

And then the time comes to go back. I have to. No, I haven't won her over yet.
I would go back and play away her blues. But I am not good enough.
One day I will call her my mine. No. One day, she will call me her own.

What is our purpose in life?
Our purpose in life is to find a home.

Sigh

2010-08-13T02:03:00.001+05:30

Oh am so cool! I got writer's block!

Can you stand the silence?

2010-08-04T03:31:00.001+05:30

What will we do when there is nothing left to talk about?

No I am not in a mood to actually think of a title.

2010-07-19T21:59:00.006+05:30

Another night. Another hill. This time I am closer to home though. Closer to my people. Its peaceful here.

It wasn't, in the city. With its harsh lights and sounds. The magic potions which would make you forget, atleast for a while. The clinks and thumps and smokes and high pitched uncontrollable laughter. The fake dreams and lost causes. Lost causes.

Even the night was unforgiving. With its tales of unrequitted love and futility of life. Amidst slow blues. Ugly. Sometimes I wish I could never have been able to appreciate the blues. Life would have been easier.

And still I slept with a stupid smile. Was it the blues or was I laughing upon myself?

Lost causes. Was I running behind all the wrong things? I nearly lost my people because of it. I nearly lost my home. I didn't. My people took care that I didn't. Thank God for old friends.
Not long ago my friend had threatened me- You try as hard as you can to hide from us, but rest assured we will find you.

I bank on that threat.

Today I wished that my life would be a bollywood movie. That they would understand. That I would jump onto my superbike and ride into the sunset. That I could make everyone happy.

Turns out it isn't. They let me go, but I end up jumping inside a Rickshaw. And it refuses to take me on. I end up not getting the girl. My playlist ends up queuing all the wrong songs. I end up hurting others and getting hurt in the process. And I end up puking in front of all the wrong people.

I guess we are not the swaggering, strutting heroes afterall. We are little people, you and I. With little dreams and little ambitions and little insecurities which seem colossal to us. And my dream is always bigger than yours. The pangs of unrequited... whatever.
Little people...!

Someday, these blues will end and some others will begin. In the grossly imperfect movie that is my life, all is not well, and never will be. And I have gladly come to terms with that. Thank God I can appreciate the blues.

It might be the blues, or it might be the subconcious me laughing upon myself.

But I guess I will sleep with a stupid smile tonight.

Please tell me you recognised him. Even if you didnt. Just tell me.

2010-07-15T00:26:00.004+05:30

Clapton God. Because I insulted him a few posts ago. Though sucky sketches dont seem to be that good a redemption. Done in about ten minutes each with a 2B, really fast, just to get the tones right, more than anything else.
Because this blog was supposed to be about sketching and painting, more than anything else.

PS- No, one of them is not Chinese. He is singing with his eyes closed. Dimwits.

Bhains.

2010-07-15T00:21:00.001+05:30

....Because its so black and I ve got charcoal.

I am still alive.

2010-07-14T23:23:00.004+05:30

Just to prove that I am still alive. And sketching. These are some who suck the least, which implies that they suck nonetheless. But that is okay. I am used to that. They were done in around fifteen minutes each with a 2B, in response to an extremely dull, stagnant, inwardly shameful and coal dust filled state of mind. Its the Pink Floyd, minus Nick Mason, which is ironic, him being the only one to have seen all their years. But I ll come around to him.
...I take a meagre refuge in the fact that they are just practice.

Top of the world.

2010-06-19T00:16:00.003+05:30

Everything is fine here. On the outside. Perfect, if anything is.

There is a hill here. You can see all the lights in the world from the top of it. And more. Distinct. As if underlining their existance. Their loneliness. Their...darkness.

And a lake. And all the lights multiply in it.

The smoke from the industry chimneys stains the dark dark sky. Floyd sounds even better here. Sometimes I wonder if I am talking to nobody in particular. Just the smoke, maybe. And the smoke doesn't give me answers too.

As if I am alone in this. What is the use of sitting on top of the world if there is no one to look down and wave?

Maybe I am just a nice guy.

When it rains, it smells like home...

Bah.

2010-06-06T13:14:00.004+05:30

Am still here.
Not gone very far. A bit ahead though. Drifted.
Not trying to swim. trying not to sink.
But still here.
Afloat.
But my dream is gone.
And my weight has gone with it.
So I drift. Nowhere in particular.
Still here.

Surviving.

2010-05-05T01:14:00.002+05:30

I read a book. I scribble something on a piece of paper. I find it interesting. Lyrical even. I read it. In my mind. Under my breath. Aloud. When I am alone. Meek pride...

I will crumple it up and throw it away tomorrow.

I believe in God. It doesn't hurt. Formless. Abstract. Omnipotent. All encompassing.

The usual.

I make up witty statements to defend my spirituality. Suit up the words and make them look good. After a certain point of time, everything seems lyrical. Even this. Everyone listens to you then. Everyone but you.

God is....

I don't tell her. I don't intrude. I let it go. The reflections. The Kohl. The songs.

Afraid for her more than I am afraid for me.

Sigh.

I need people around me. I need people around me to prove to them that I am a loner. I sit alone. Apart. I lose in my thoughts. I brood. I sulk. And I glance at them. And I hope that they glance at me. And then I look away.

I blatantly ask for pity. Blatantly. I wallow in pain. I enjoy doing that.

God is pitiful because he looks down upon my inexcusably meager existence and decides to let me survive.

I am, in essence, docile. I am, in essence, an escapist. I am, in essence, only human.

I am, in essence, surviving.

I am.

Coffee and me

2010-04-14T06:43:00.001+05:30

It is 6am in the morning and I am sitting listening to Clapton's Cocaine after a night of leaning my elbows on the SPM textbook watching around five episodes of 30 Rock and a movie called Ninja assassin among other random stuff. Love that song, though I have never had a first hand encounter with its main subject. Call it prudence or yellow bellied cowardice, by my 'addictions' don't go above classic rock and caffeine. Yes, I am a coffee addict. Its not that I wouldn't be able to live without it, but then, that life would just plain suck. I even tried to change cocaine's lyrics into caffeine. Doesn't work. Bastards gave the better sounding word to the weird white stuff.

I come from a family of passionate tea drinkers. Their day's schedule revolves around tea times(plural; Oh there are many. so many). I still remember the whiff of tea leaves spreading around the house at five in the evening. I remember me, a teacup in hand, taking careful baby steps towards my Grandfather's bed. The small chatters and clatters as the cup moved a bit with each step, the hot red liquid threatening to fall in the saucer. And me, walking the tightrope, praying that wouldn't happen. My Grandfather hates tea-spilled saucers. He wouldn't speak until he had the first sip and then his whole face would light up and glow in the orange sun and he would laugh, crinkling his eyes and heartily pat my back before returning to his crossword puzzle. I felt like an adult the first time I had tea, albeit mixed with an ample amount of milk. I gulped it down and beamed at my Mom. How was it, she asked. "Awesome!", I said, though it was all milk. And I got the my-little-boy-is-all-grown-up look they reserve only for special occasions. I was a tea man then. Coffee was for wusses. Coffee was a distant blur.

I think the first time I noticed coffee was while watching Dexter's laboratory. Theres a couple of episodes where Dexter has coffee and he inexplicably becomes a lot more awesome than he already is. They showed coffee to be this dirty brown liquid. They showed tired and sleepy and irritable Dad gulp down coffee with the signature heaving Adam's apple and transform into fresh and shiny Dad. They even showed him sparkle, for God's sakes. And I am like, what the heck is that?( This is how the young generation made gullible. Cartoons. I remember trying to eat raw spinach after watching Popeye. Yucky stuff. And my biceps were bony as ever. Popeye's had frickin Steam boats in 'em). I don't know when I had my first coffee and whether I liked it or not. I am guessing I must have. It was made for me. From then on, tea became associated with old over-conservative English women with a pince-nez and and a Bonnet eying me with a certain balefulness and reproachfulness which I have come to associate exclusively with certain trw teachers with a dangerous reputation, thus making me acutely uncomfortable, and saying something like " And how would you like you tea, good sir?"

Coffee on the other hand became this kinda cool beverage. I read stories of Italians drinking Cappuccinos and eating Paninis on the roadside Cafes. I saw writers sitting with their coffee mugs and typing furiously on their Macbooks, brimming with ideas. And I watched movies with a guy saying to a girl 'Would you like to come up for a coffee or something?' after a date, and the girl doing a bad job feigning shyness before saying yes. Do you think girls would have "come up" for tea? And it was not like the spinach incident. It did taste exceptionally good, that bittersweet son of a bitch. And it went well with most other exceptionally awesome stuff in the world too- mint and cookies and chocolate! Have coffee with a Polo in your mouth. Delight. It even bode well with tea- I don't know if you have had a certain drink which I have only seen sold at the roadside chai tapriwaalas. Its called 'Takkar' and it is a mixture of tea and coffee and it is not bad at all. Coffee became this intellectual stimulant for me. Tea was for slobs. I became a coffee man.

And thus began my coffee addiction. Even today, as I sip on a Mongi double coffee, a Polo under my lip, I remember Dexter's Dad. And I remember him gulping down the dark dirty brown liquid, Adam's apple heaving, which made him sparkle. And I look down on that sublime nectar with a hope that it will make me sparkle too. And then I give myself a mental slap for being so corny and gulp down the rest of it, crunching what is left of the Polo. Delight!

And yeah, about the whole Cocaine situation. They say, two things would suck without Cream- Coffee and Clapton. So in your face, Eric Clapton, you tea drinking English bastard, in your face!!

Who moved my Messiah?

2010-04-14T06:37:00.001+05:30

I am writing a lot these days, or atleast thinking about it, mostly because of the DoJMA blog. Heres an extremely nonsensical story, to be taken in the same spirit. It might lead to some deeply insightful revelation if read carefully. Tell me if you find it-

Not unlike many other stories you might have read before, this one took place in a land far far away. And not unlike them, the land had a weird-ass name. It was so difficult to pronounce that people had given up trying. Apparently, the King who named it, did so when he was on his death bed with a raging tuberculosis and a horrendous throat infection. The tubes running through his nose didn't help either. And as the subjects were hanging on to every grunt and moan of their King, he proceeded to produce varying editions of said grunts and moans when the time came for him to name it. Then, he died.

Now, the citizens of this land gave a colossal importance to the science of pronunciation. Mis-pronunciations were a punishable offence and the usual punishments ranged from severing one's head to trampling it under the feet of the royal elephant Yakuzunna. But in essence, death. After a couple of attempts which led the respective attempters under Yakuzunna's feet, people gave up trying to imitate the King's last words. Since then, no one ever spoke the name of the land. For the sake of the story, we will call it the Land. With a capital L.

Our hero is a young man, born and raised in the Land. He was an orphan. Quite understandably, no one really knew what his name was. Or whether he had a name or not. Infact, no one really cared about his existence, maybe apart from the fact that he created a distortion, albeit a meager and rather inconsequential, in the space-time continuum around him. But for some weird inexplicable reason he became our hero and the job of naming him falls squarely on our shoulders. Lets find a better solution and refer to him in his pronounic form, eg. Him, with a captial H.

As you may have perceived, the residents of Land were not the brightest people in the world. Firstly because after all these years, no one could come up with a simple name for their Kingdom. Secondly, well, they used obsolete execution methods. They were also known to think that the sun was a huge light bulb and they tried to fool the guy who switched in on everyday by calling Sunday Monday, Monday Tuesday and so on. It didn't work, obviously. Everyone knows that theres no guy! Its automatic!! Obviously, the mastermind behind the plan was fed to the royal crocodile.

Now our hero was one of the queer specimens of this race. He was dumber than horse shit. I don't know what He did for a living, but the fact that He was alive said that He did eat sometimes. He lived near the outskirts of the Land, on the edge of the Great Black Forest. Everyone was forbidden to go there. Because it smelt weird and was too damn dark. One night, as always, He was sitting in front of His fire. Suddenly the wind blew harder than ever, and a few logs of firewood rolled down on the forest floor near some weeds. He ran to gather them, but as He reached them, a queer thing happened. The weed had caught fire. He stood right above them, petrified, cause something weird was happening. The fumes rose up to His nose and as if it was divine intervention in his inexcusably lame life, He got transported into another place! He couldn't help but smile. He had all the answers! The smile turned into a grin which graduated into full fledged laughter which for some reason couldn't stop. He suddenly could appreciate the things around him better, for the first time. He took a leaf in his palm and stared at it. The green leaf stared back. He stared at it harder, daring it to respond. The green leaf stared back. This was His limit. He crushed it and threw it away and resumed His laughter.

The people of the Land heard it. A lone laugh coming from the forest. They gathered together and after much debate, decided to send a bunch of expendable people to check what was going on. The sorry bunch departed and reach the place where the laughter was coming from. They saw Him. But they thought He was not His usual self. They thought there was a glow around Him. An aura. He looked so damn happy! He was sitting in a Padmasana wearing nothing but his underpants, right in front of the flickering fire. And he was grinning a wide grin. With a glint in his eyes as if he knew something the others didn't. Then he saw the others coming and thus began his first known words of wisdom-"Gee Geee Gaaaa Gaaaa.", He said,"GEEE GEEE GAAAA GAAAA!!!" raising his arms up in the air and beckoning them to heed.

And everyone was so overwhelmed by that show that they chanted "GEEEE GEEEE GAAAA GAAAA!!!" together as one. His smile widened.

The people of Land who had stayed back heard those chants and they all came running to the site. Heres our saviour, the chanters told them. Heres our messiah. Heres the man with all the answers! Just look at him. Doesn't he look like he has all the answers?!

And soon enough, every man, woman, child of the Land chanted "GEEEE GEEEE GAAA GAAAA!!!" together as one. They bowed to Him and implored Him to answer their questions. They begged Him for solutions to their problems. He in turn, gave one last all knowing grin, and snuggled near His beloved fire and started to snore. The Messiah will sleep on it, they said, and left Him in peace.

Soon enough, the fame of the Saviour grew. The immortal words "GEEEE GEEEE GAAA GAAAA!!!" were carved on buildings and door frames and any damn empty walls. And then those walls would be covered with flowers and incense sticks and coconuts which would go bad and smell in a couple of days. But more kept coming. Some brilliant guy had the idea of putting it as a t shirt slogan and became a millionaire out of it. Then he expanded the line into caps and bumper stickers and keychains and became a billionaire. They tried in vain to find out about His past, but then as I told you earlier, no one even knew his name. All this did was expand the veil of mystery over Him. And thus, He became more popular than ever.

The businessman, as a gesture of gratitude for his good fortune, decided to hold a ceremony in His honour. He was escorted in a royal vehicle into the city. People rejoiced as they saw their God walk on earth. They threw roses at his feet. They made up songs about him and sang them. He sat, taking it all in, with his trademark grin on his face. As He was being taken to the venue, He saw the Royal elephant Yakuzunna in its shed. He suddenly pointed at it and shouted "CHICHI!!!"

It was the God's will. The name of the Royal Elephant was changed to Chichi.

The ceremony began. After the kindergarten kids, school kids, high school kids, their mothers, grandmothers, girls from the local arts college, the top Rock band in the Land and a fire martial artist- clown duo performed their entertainment acts, it was time for Him to speak. It was exactly at this time, when, sadly for Him, our hero came to his senses. And the first thing He saw when He came His senses was tens of thousands of people staring at him, waiting for him to speak. So, he did what everyone who would be in this situation would do. He started screaming his head off. And thus, all the tens of thousands of people started screaming their respective heads off. And He was shocked out of his senses. His all knowing smile was wiped flat off his face. The Lord foresees a disaster, they said, and scampered around like a bunch of sea rats in panic.

And He did foresee disaster. For, at that exact moment, entered a mighty angry Chichi. And he ran through the crowd trampling random people, reached the stage, and with one flick of its trunk, flattened the frail life out of our hero. He was dead before He hit the ground. And so the elephant took its revenge.

As for the people of the Land, they saw the great powerful form of the elephant, mighty and grand. They saw it defeat their God with a simple trunk flick, the easiest of elephant killing techniques. As if to assert its awesome power over Him. They saw its huge form, towering over everybody, daring them to come forward, to retaliate.

And everyone was so overwhelmed by that show that they bowed in front if it, together as one. And they implored it to kill their enemies and destroy their foe. The fact that the elephant create insanely huge distortions in the space-time continuum also impressed them.

...and this is how the people of the Land found a new Messiah.

Gods must be crazy.

2010-04-14T06:30:00.003+05:30

This is a post I wrote yesterday for the BITS DoJMA blog. A couple of inside references you might not figure out, but then, I love private jokes, so, suck it and read-

This blog has become my only source of inspiration to write. And when I think about it, its not a good thing at all. I mean, what will I write after this gets over? Anyways, a post written a couple of days ago caught my attention. It was about atheism. And how atheism was awesome you didn't have to care about lotuses in your stomach and cobras in your spine when you are an atheist( I am sorry man, but too serious writing gives me bad bowel movements. So let me just have my fun, no offence meant, to you and your faith :P .)

There was a time in my childhood, when to sound cool, guys would be like" I am nonveg! I love chicken!!"(read Louuuu!!). It was the time when we thought that either you are a 'veg' or a 'nonveg' and the word 'Dangerous' could be substituted by a much simpler and yet million times more effective 'DANGEEER!!'(pronounced 'dainger'), by getting rid of its clumsy appendage. At that particular time, when a guy proclaimed that yes, he did consume the flesh of a fellow animal, we would all catch our breaths in awe and look at him as if he was Clint Eastwood and/or the coolest guy on the planet. The rest of the discussion would later get into digressions of whether blood is visible in the dish and the correct way to eat a around a chicken bone. When I became a non vegetarian, even I became the awesomest guy on earth to my brother's friends( Who is seven years younger than me.) for around four and a half minutes before he decided I was stealing his thunder and landed his cricket bad squarely on the pinky of my left foot. Coolest guys in the world don't weep like little girls. Anyways, my point is, now that most of us are over the fact that yes, we are animals and we do eat other animals and that is life( Again, so sorry dude. Completely unintentional), the question, 'do you believe in God?' has replaced 'Are you a vegetarian?'. And if you are an atheist, then you are on top of the food chain. Agnostics sound a lot cooler, though.

I believe in God. I believe He has yet to find me, but I do believe in Him. Heres the thing- the question, 'do you believe in God?' is one of the most personal questions you can ever ask an individual. And as in every scientific discussion, you cannot move on unless you define the premise. So the more important question here is what is God. If you say that God is a half naked man with a chiseled body and a flowing white beard, sitting on top of the best tanning-spot-cloud in the sky and sipping a chilled Elixir of Life, then yes, I am an atheist. But then, that is not what I mean when I talk about God. My idea of God is very different than that, and thats what I mean when I say its a personal question. Not very scientific, I know, but works for me.

I believe in God because, from what I have learnt about the vastness and the diversity of the universe through science, I feel it would be utterly arrogant on our part to say that there is no entity which drives it. I believe in energy, cannot be created, nor destroyed. Formless yet omnipresent. Neither good nor bad. And I look at it in awe and reverence and I bow down before it. They say 'ekam sat'- God is one. And they think of unity in diversity. They think of Allah being equivalent to Ganesh and they swoon around about Hindu Muslim unity.They say God is present everywhere and they pick up random boulders and colour them saffron and adorn them with flowers and coconuts and incense sticks. The language of the Vedas has been dilapidated and twisted and murdered. Energy is present wherever matter is. Energy is one. And one only. Ekam sat. And this phenomenon is what I deeply appreciate. So, yes, I believe in God. This one.

The key to the puzzle is religion. Religion, though superficially is all about God, is one of the most social things you can do. It was devised for society. Basically, remember when you were a child and you were told stories about Santa Claus and the Tooth fairies and a certain 'Bagulbua' who would carry a jute sack to kidnap the children who didn't sleep on time. Society is like a naughty child. A dumb naughty child, mind you. It loves Himesh Reshammiya and Britney Spears. It 'roflmaos' on CID jokes( I love 'em!). It reveres Rajnikanth. It screens TV series exclusively about people eating bugs, snakes, shit, rodents, crustaceans, lizards, shit, amphibians and the shit of the aforementioned species among other things. How the heck are you going to explain to them the true meaning of God? Or even take their help in finding it?

Also, the intelligent folk among the people wanted society to be good, crime free and peaceful. So, what they did was, they said there is a man in the sky watching all of us, and if you do anything wrong, he will punish you, for he is God. Now heres the funny thing. The 'intelligent folk' had the liberty to decide what was 'wrong'. So they confided and wrote big fat books about what was right and what was wrong. This is what we call ethics, in philosophy. Which differ from society to society, well because they have different books. Plato has different ethics, Aristotle has different ethics, the Bhagwad Geeta speaks of different ethics. But basically, it was all for the betterment of society. A novel plan. To make it sell, they cooked up stories about these men in the sky. But then, if you look at those stories carefully, you will note one thing. God was the perfect man. Every philosophy describes a perfect man. A man who follows all the ethics laid down in the philosophy. The elephant God was given big ears and a large stomach because it was an allegory for a person who 'Gives every man thy ear, but few thy voice.' The reason behind the presence of the moon on the head of Shankar was to show that the God of destruction is not hot headed. As in, if you have power, you have to be prudent enough to use it. And religion, is man's quest to be the perfect man. To acquire these qualities.

A long time passed and obviously, the 'intelligent people' became greedy. They invented stories for their own good. The beautiful, flawless plan became tainted. They started looking at individual interests rather than greater good. And this is how religion is how it came to be. Biased, partial and seemingly unreasonable. But it has rooted itself so deep into society that there is no way they can be separated. Today people actually believe in the bearded man, the forbidden apple trees, a heaven and a hell just like they believed in the tooth fairies and Bagulbuas in their childhood. They don't eat meat in certain months because they think that their God told them to do so. They take lives of other humans, because their God told them to do so. Eh well, the Gods must be crazy then.

Bottom line- I believe in God, but not in organised religion. And belief is a very funny thing. It can bring hope to one while bringing despair to others. Its beautiful in a weird weird way, you know. And the beauty of it is that people are so sure about things they don't even know exist. Its not very scientific, but then, works for me.

Now the lotus in my stomach is screaming to be fed and watered, so I better take care of it before it grows roots in all the wrong places... :P

Paper

2010-03-21T17:49:00.003+05:30

There is a lot of poetry around me from the past few days. It has its effects. I had previously published four rhyming lines and called it a poem. Here are many not-rhyming lines. I still call it a poem-

The brushstrokes keep falling on the canvas

Harsh, rough, jagged strokes,

like the edge of a broken window pane

Tender like a dew drop rolling down the broken glass

So sure, so confused

waiting for the next epiphany to strike

Epiphany after epiphany

He makes a ladder out of them and climbs it

building each rung as he goes up

The water, the colours mix under his command

A bit more of yellow here, some more water there

Red and blue make purple...

He is the creator and the destroyer

and the preserver of it all

The small paper universe

What shall I create? He thinks

Something eternal, timelessly beautiful, but gruesome too

For is there beauty if there is no ugliness?

A woman? A breathtaking landscape? My own Monalisa?

Brushstrokes keep falling on the canvas

More unsure now. Less confident

He struggles on, struggles to escape from his pitiful insignificant life,

escape into something ethereal he built himself.

Like cocaine.

The more he tries, the harder he falls

Its natural, isn't it?

And like a madman he rushes on the canvas again,

only to spoil it further.

And then, the final epiphany strikes,

Harsh, rough, jagged, but tender at the same time,

'It is only paper'

And the beautiful universe crumbles down, not in front of his eyes

but inside his heart.

....And the brushstrokes cease to fall.

For those about to blog, I salute you!

2010-02-17T02:07:00.003+05:30

Its been past a year since I started blogging and I didn't even realise it. On the fifth of february the last year at around the same time as today, I sat typing my first blogpost. Deja vu!( I have been dying to use this phrase for a long time!).

A big bad year has gone past and a lot of things have changed. My room is messier, if it could possibly be, my hair is longer(way longer), and there has been a steady increase in my typing speed. My cgpa has undergone a very wild roller coaster ride and is at this moment face down puking its ass off in a dumpster. The music in my hard disk drive has increased from the previously boasted 70Gb to a 150Gb. I have become a hell lot better guitarist then I was at that time. I have learnt to play the slide guitar, the harmonica and I can hold a steady drum beat. I can even limp around with a flute. I have met Pt. Hariprasad Chaurasia, Birju Maharaj, APJ Abdul Kalam( seen, not met, technically) among others. I have missed a dinner with Kumarmangalam Birla because I forgot I was invited. I have had Hepatitis A , been in the ICU, and have had acute derision towards food for a certain amount of time. I have had a heartbreak. I have had so many mountain dews, thumsups, coffees, ice creams, chicken cheese rolls, rassomlettes and maggi that you could feed a small country with it. I have digested it all. I have painted a lot, sketched a lot and found that I am so intensely passionate about them that I wouldn't be able to live without them. I have had uncountable unforgettable conversations with my friends

( Bajju- "Who is your favourite Indian actor?" Me-" Well... I guess its Amir Khan." Bajju, fidgets for a bit and then blurts out," He is ok yaar, but what do you think about Mithun??")

I have seen the Taj. I have upholded my traditions of-

1. Always doing a Lord of the Rings movie marathon after every test in college.

2. Always having a pizza on the last night of a college festival.

3. Never going out of my room without a guitar pick on me, among others.

I have seen amazing movies. I have seen disgusting movies, probably because I never knew how they were before watching them. I have gained the best, and I am not just saying that, literally the best friends a guy could ever hope to get in his life. And I have tried hard to gain a little bit of their trust. I have also been a first rate jerk and in some cases an amazingly dimwitted buttmonkey.

And I have blogged. I have typed some of the lamest and weirdest things that have come to my mind. Seriously, I hate to read my previous posts. But, done it all with the immense hope, scratch that, immense guarantee that no one is going to read it anyways! Also as I mentioned before, for increase in typing speed.

Thus, I raise this bottle of tomato ketchup( thats the only thing within reach right now)- ...To the blogs that are never read!

Watercolour

2010-01-31T02:17:00.005+05:30

This is my latest watercolour. A long time since I uploaded a picture. Tell me how it is!

The Taj and other stories.

2010-01-19T23:35:00.002+05:30

After weeks of fidgeting trying to find something to write about, I landed squarely on one topic; and thank God for that. I wonder what writers with deadlines do. The funny thing is, when I started to blog, it was sort of a medium for me to express my thoughts, however insane they would be. No one would mind; it is not like you can force someone to read your blog. Interested weirdos can dig in! But now, I have started to feel guilty if I haven't blogged for a long time. It is something like thinking for hours and hours for something funny that you can put up as your facebook status message. I really envy people who can be brilliant and funny at the same time. I don't mean pjs, I mean real comedy. Good stuff. Some people can say just the right things using just the right amount of words and most importantly at the right time. I can't do that. I have to really sit and think about all the ways I could say something and then try to find which one is the wittiest. For Gods sake, I spend hours building up an sms. So, for the past couple of weeks, as the voice at the back of my head grew louder and louder I started opening the blog and staring at the blank 'new post' page. I read my previous articles for help, and man, do they suck or what! Writing for me is like vomiting. It doesn't come until it is supposed to. ( This was written in desperate want of a better sentence.).

This december, I was in Agra with my family. The whole trip was not bad at all, except for the following conversation I had with my mother-

Me looking at the non veg dishes in the menu card of a restaurant. Mom, eyeing me suspiciously-"Kaushal, can you not eat your chicken-shicken while you are with us? God, the smell is disgusting."

Me, admittedly appalled for she called it 'chicken-shicken' and said that it smelt bad, "Well, if you want me to eat grass and roots and twigs for the rest of the trip, fine by me!"

I thoroughly hoped that I had put enough sarcasm in my voice when I said this, but apparently it was not enough. She took it quite literally and proceeded to order harabhara kababs for all of us. Like, are kababs even supposed to be harabhara? Anyways, that was how I became a temporary vegetarian.( I got rid of it as soon as I came back home. Barbecue chicken. :DD) But being in the home of Murgi and Tandoor and not having it was insanely disconcerting. Also, with due respect to my Punjabi friends and readers, there is nothing much left in Punjabi cuisine if you take away chicken except, maybe paneer. And there is a limit to how much paneer you can eat. I secretly vowed to go back there again just to eat Murgi and Parantha in a Dhaba.

Anyways, being in Agra also meant being in the land of the Taj. The whole city revolves around the monument. I have no idea how they differentiate between places because I have seen so many 'Taj residency' and 'Taj view' hotels that after a certain point of time you start questioning the imagination of the people around there.

After a tiring six hour journey from Jaipur which consisted of a not so fulfilling experience of reading 'The lost symbol', I admit I was not very keen to actually make an effort to go see the Taj on the same day. I was dazed and tired and on an all-paneer diet. I needed my rest. But that was not to be, so I sat swatting flies and stifling yawns in a green rickshaw on the way to the Taj herself. After around ten minutes, the guy stops the Rick and looks at us as with part amusement, part pity." Aa gaya sirjee Taj!"

I get off and look around. There is a narrow street further narrowed down by lines of small-time shops selling marble articles, Kachori houses, laundries, phone booths, travel companies, photo studios, clothes shops and hotels- Most of them 'Taj View's, one 'Taj retreat'. It looks like you could cut off the whole section, scoop it up and keep it in any Indian city, and it would make no difference. Where the heck is the Taj? I look at the rickshaw driver. He is sitting, left palm full of gutkha, mashing it with the right index finger, the idol of indifference. I ask him, where is the Taj? He looks at me with a poker face before pinching up the gutkha in his right hand and depositing it in his underlip. Left hand points up to the lane straight ahead. A bunch of Chinese( or an oriental counterpart; I can't really spot the difference.) tourists seem to be going that way too, so we follow them. We come to this small doorway and buy our tickets in. Now I get a view of the first archway towards the Mahal, but the whole thing is blocking the monument. As I slowly jostle through the crowd, I get pearl white glimpses through the arch; like a teaser, or more so, a Parda- a veil; like the fingers of a beautiful woman peeking through a veil. As I get closer, I get a better view. When I get under the archway, time stands still.

The lady reveals herself. The pearl white skin with a pink tinge shrouded in evening mist, the sheer size of it and the grey-blue skies providing the perfect backdrop for the most beautiful landscape. I stand there taking it all in. For a full minute I don't move. Around me, the incoming race of people has stopped too, all eyes on the Taj. You know, you have seen it so many times on tv, in pictures. Even done a virtual tour on your encarta encyclopedia. The four minarets, the huge dome- the crown- the taj, the glistening white marble and the walkways. You think you know how it is. But, boy, it is way different. Its like the difference between guitar hero joystick and a Fender Strat. That moment I made a vow- I am going to see all the seven wonders of the world. I have six left now...

The rest of the evening passed in standing in a huge queue waiting to get inside the Mahal. We stood outside for two hours to get a thirty second tour of the insides, which were so dark that you couldn't see anything. But I loved the Taj the first moment I saw it.

The only other time I loved it was from the top of the Agra fort the next day. Shahjahan was supposed to be in a house arrest here and he had requested it to be at a place where he could see the Taj. When I saw it from there, I knew it was a perfect place. The yamuna snaked in front of me as I stood there. The evening mist skimmed on its waters. Suddenly someone shouted- " Look, the Taj!"

All heads turned up and people from different nationalities, colour and race held there breaths as one. Up ahead as the river bended out of site, it loomed, peeking out of the mist, the orange rays of the setting sun giving it a halo. Vivid and impressionistic like a Monet, with the mist giving a sfumato. Cameras flashed. The mist grew and as the sun finally dropped out of sight, the fog covered it beyond our gaze. The Taj retired to sleep.

And then all went dark...

When the gig is over....

2009-11-20T10:34:00.000+05:30

A post after a long time, and my first experience of blogging from the college computer centre, which sucks.
Anyways, so many things happened since I last blogged. I had my first hospital experience, which sucked, too. An ICU is a very queer place, and is queer in a very bad way. When you are strapped with about thirteen wires of ECG, respiration measurer, pulse rate, heart rate, blood pressure measuring devices which run around your chest and arms, and you want to scratch your butt, well, that ain't gonna happen. And the continuos beep-beep sound of the machines is all that you hear, in my case, for four days. Your life becomes an ICU. Your life becomes a succession of beeps.
I recovered and after a few days came back to my college. Two things which affect the life of every BITSGian awaited me- Waves and test 2( in the latter case, afflict.). This time Waves was more tiring than fun, you know. Infact I had more fun in the pre-waves week than in Waves itself. Had an amazing time right before Waves though. Painted after a month or so, and that felt real good, courtesy the new improved Kala room with a wifi and an A/C, the easel and the free live music provided by the music club. Had an unforgettable trip to Panjim, which consisted of visiting my two favourite shops in the world- Furtado's music shop and the Art shoppee. I played a mexican handmade acoustic guitar worth 35 grand, which was kickass. And Art shoppee is always a bliss to visit. And I got myself sanguine and bistre( they are colours. Sound so amazing don't they.). And I had food at Daily Bread, courtesy Sammy which, again, was kickass.
I will never forget the running around I did for the inaug performance and nearly everything else. We were so damn stressed that a couple of nights before Waves, 3am, Sammy and I endedup laughing our heads out rolling on the floor for no reason as if we were high.
The actual Waves was hectic. I could not watch any events except a couple. I didn't go to the DJ nite, I never do. KK was good. And I missed Parikrama, because I was so tired on the last day that I ended up sleeping at 9.30. The exhibition we'd organised was a hit though.
And then there was Test2. Though I dont want to write about it. It came and it went away.
I don't know if they actually mean it, but the brochures proclaimed that in Waves, the 'winter was never this hot', and it being an amazing culfest and shit like that. I don't know about any of that. What I know is that Waves was a realisation of responsibility. It was a realisation of reality too, stark reality.
I have this queer way of judging how good a programme was. You know, when you experience something truly good- a mindblowing performance, an awesome concert, your mind goes into a high. You forget the reality. Your life becomes the performance. It happened to me while watching Hariprasad Chaurasia and Birju Maharaj, what the heck, even when I saw the Pink Floyd Pulse concert on my laptop, I got 'the high'. And then when the gig ends, you slowly come back on the ground. You suddenly start remembering your problems. Your crappy CGPA, your personal problems, the underlying lack of direction in your whole life. Now the more time it takes for you to 'come back to ground' the better the gig was.
I am still high on the Waves experience...

From Doodism to Noobism and (as)many things (as can be put) in between!

2009-09-27T15:30:00.006+05:30

So, I am fresh from reading the first three and a half chapters( okay...two.) of Russell's 'History of Western Philosophy',( By the way, Russell is Bertrand Russell. A guy actually asked me if it was Russell Peters.) and I haven't written anything on the blog for a long long time. So long that I am having trouble typing in the dark. Anyways, spurred by the highly intellectual and clever sounding statements in the book and the fact that I am back home and having troubles trying to adjust my body clock so that it matches humans( atleast my parents.), I have decided to let my mind wander a bit and document its proceedings as it, well, wanders.

I had begun blogging a few months ago with a post on the CGPA induced discrimination on campus. There is another kind of apartheid- more on a socio-cultural basis, which flourishes on campus- especially a closed one. When you dump a thousand teenagers from different backgrounds inside a 200 acre space with books, laptops and DC++, you are bound to have differences of opinion which evolve into certain ideologies and lifestyles. Spurred by the innate cultism which is the hallmark of the IIT/BITS system of education and the seemingly never ending enthusiasm of the students, these ideologies thrive in the campus soil. Thus, being a student on campus makes you, voluntarily or involuntarily, and to some or the other extent, an ardent follower of some or the other ideology. If not, then you become a saturaday night philosopher, trying to unravel the mysteries of the vast plethora of a mini civilisation the campus is. A few of of such ideologies studies and documented are Doodism, Dudeism, Godlikeness(This is not much of an ideology because you cannot follow it as such. You either are God or you are not. And it is not for you to decide.) Proism, Cultism, Noobism, Gamerism, Magguism/Ghotuism, Special friend(ism), etc. Let us look at some of them in brief-

DOODISM( and not 'dyoude') -

I have decided to elucidate this ideology first not because it is more important than the others, ( it is not) but because it is one of the more recognised ones. And the reason is quite simple- Doods are seemingly some of the easiest species to spot around the campus. Even a noob(we will come to that later.) anthropologist will be able to spot a dood with his designer slippers, shorts, ipod and sack attire roaming around with the least care for the existance of any fellow mortal in proximity. But then, he is a noob. A real dood is not characterised by what he wears. If that were so, then every lousy son-of-a-bitch would get up everyday, NOT take a bath, wear his sundass slippers and 'Reejok' shorts( greeen with red stripes.) and roam around campus hailing "WazzZZaaa" to every other lousy son-of-a-bitch he met and be called a dood. But, sadly, especially for the wannabe doods, that is not how it works. Imagine a campus where every person would own an 80 Gb ipod filled with Alice in Chains and Nine inch nails and the like and puma slippers and nike jerseys. And when I say everybody, I mean everybody. Then, a dood on that campus could( and this is an arguable hypothesis.) wear burgundy pleated pants with maroon and blue checks shirt and hum 'Teri pant phatri, teri sandal phatri...' or 'Sonava ke pinjde me band bhaaiii...' with the same attitude as in the regular case. This is because a dood is characterised by his attitude( a very very important word for anyone who wants to be a dood.) The 'least care for the existence of any fellow mortal in proximity'. This is precisely why they wear so much deodrant-least care for the existance of any fellow mortal in proximity!! Doods generally have a good fluent english accent and are not afraid to speak out in front of authority. Even if the 'speaking out' consists of heavily drunk and very heavy renditions of ' come crawling (hic) faster! Obey your MMMMASSSTERRR!!!', trying to be in sync with the ipod while the Chief Warden is trying to interrogate you about you being late and drunk outside the college gates.( The matter ends with the dood passing out. Before that he has politely asked the Warden if he(it) is the dog from the Hutch ad, and whether his kids are humans by day and puppies at night and then sung a quite ingeniously derived version of 'Master of Puppies').

Its not hard to find a dood on the omlette pav gaadi saying" Can I have one Mirchi bhaji and a palti to go please?" while the baffled goan guy ( I mean to say that he is originally baffled. God sent him on earth that way.) becomes more baffled.( I have seen this happen guys. The dood was acting as if he was standing in a friggin burger king.)

On the whole, doods are hated on campus. But one has to understand that some part of the hatred is because of jealousy. Many are jealous of the doods. Some who give it the status of hero worship become sidekicks. They are usually made to stay on the side and get kicked. They hang out with the doods( as much as the doods let them.) and laugh at their crappy jokes.

Then there are the wannabe doods or the dudes( pronounced dyoudes. This is because a 'dude' is just another ordinary guy!). You can seldom differentiate a dude and a dood. The trick is to find out who fulfills the dressing characters of a dood more. The one who looks more doodlike is usually the dude.( Have you read the 'idiot's guide' series of books? I keep wondering how come no dude has come up with the idiot's guide to become a dood. Maybe they like to keep it a secret.) Another and a surer way to differentiate is to go and ask the guy something about rock music. Because, I am sure, through personal experience, that some dudes seem to think that Lamb of God and Judas Priest are actually choir groups. They tried to listen to some metal, but they found it made their head woozy. They tried headbanging and it was horrendous. So then they for settled the 'rock' of Linkin Park and Nickelback and Avril Lavagne. So, you know, just start talking about Porcupine Trees and see if the conversation leads to thorns- literally.

Today we studied, albiet briefly, the characteristics of the dood family of ideologies. Next time, when I have insomnia and a few hours to spare, we will look at the other interesting lifestyles on campus. The above observations are completely emperical and done for the purpose of elucidating. Interested insomniacs can gtalk/gmail/ or whatever me to discuss the theories presented above. Thankyou.

charcoal never dies....

2009-07-22T23:32:00.003+05:30

A couple of sketches I did a about a week ago-

This one is of a guitar, eviedently. My guitar. I was just starting off to sketch when I wanted to warm up a bit, and I find that the best way to do it is some rapid sketching. A teacher of mine once taught be about contour sketching- he called it sketching with your eyes. What you do is sketch an object without looking at the paper, but following the lines on the object with your eye and moving your hand on the paper correspondingly. What I observed was that a contour sketch of an object had an amazing feel to it. You never get the proportions right; it takes years to do that. But it looks beautiful in a much more sublte yet energetic way than a regular sketch done by overdrawing and paying attention to detail. Maybe thats what it is- too much attention to detail, which goes wrong. A good artist is not one who paints something exactly as it looks like. If that were true, then the signboard painters who thrive on painting Amitabh Bacchans and Hritik Roshans and Angelina Jolies( occasionally) would be milloinares. I am not saying that what they do is not art; infact, what they do is one of the most difficult things you can ever accomplish, and hats off to them. But art, in its bare sense is a way to express yourselves. And every individual has a different way to do so. It is that original style which an artist has to find, and once he finds it, nurture.

Okay, so we went a bit off track( some call it 'train of thought'. I call it a 'paranoid rambling'.) Anyways, so the sketch. It is not a contour sketch, but it is close enough to it. I was sitting with a charcoal in my hand looking around the room when I saw 'her'. I rushed through the sketch as fast as I could.

The next one I did was supposed to be a study for a painting of a blues guitarist I had in my mind. But halfway through it, I decided to go with the flow than with the plan. Inspired by painting I'd seen before once, on some blog I think, don't quite remember where. But heres how it is-

Again, its charcoal. Anyways, tell me how they are!

The ballad of Curtis Loew.

2009-07-18T11:10:00.008+05:30

After I saw the new reference pic of the Different strokes by different folks challenge, I suddenly remembered this beautiful Lynyrd Skynyrd song- The ballad of Curtis Loew. The song is amazing and one of my Lynyrd Skynyrd Favourites. Its a proper country song, with a beautiful story. Thats the best part about country music- its stories. Music is nothing but an effort made to express yourselves. And when the stern tailcoated classical maestroes composed concertos and symphonies in their ivory towers, it was these freespirited country musicians who 'played the guitar just like ringing a bell' sang their ballads telling stories of the people to the people.

Anyways, heres the reference pic-

The song is about a small boy who loves to listen to the dobro( which is a guitar with a resonator, and has a very beautiful sound to it, by the way.) played by an old black man named Cutris Loew. He collects empty soda bottles and cashes them in the country store to give old Curt some money so that he would play for him all day. This small kid is apparently the only audience which Curtis Loew recieves, his reputation among people being that of a worthless drunkard. But the small boy loves him for his music with a loyalty which is fierce and innocent at the same time so much that he calls him the best bluesman ever.

When I saw this pic, I immedietly pictured Curtis Loew sitting on the chair, the dobro in his hands, while the small boy looks on with awe and wonder. I set out to make it with some basic sketches to study the postures of the boy and the man-

I wasn't quite getting the boy's posture right, so I asked my little brother to model for me( he stood mooning at me first, deeply amused and elated at my voluntary request, but then I made him stand the way I wanted to.)

Once I got that right, I started off with the sketch (I decided to do it in graphite.). Heres the end result. How do you think it is?

I am thinking of doing it again with monochrome watercolours. Hope that turns out good.

Of water and colours!

2009-07-17T13:14:00.007+05:30

Long time since I blogged. I've been working on a few techniques lately. Especially watercolour. I recently went outdoor painting with an artist in Pune. It was a lot of fun and I learnt quite a few things. Outdoor on the spot sketching and painting requires you have a very good eye and a great command over the medium you are using. You need to be swift and loose while sketching, taking in as much of the detail as you can in a sweep, but not trying to make the sketch look very grand or precise. I decided to use watercolours as my medium. I am a complete illlterate( if you can call it that.) when it comes to watercolours, having worked most of the time with charcoals, pastels and pencils. But after seeing some outdoor watercolour studies of some awesome artists, I decided to give it a shot.

I was pathetic. My brushes were wrong, perspectives crappy and when something seemed to turn out fine, one loose brush stroke sent a gust of water on the good part, ruining the effect. One of the reasons watercolour attracts me is because it is such a lightening fast medium. You have to work with the flow, fast, mixing colours on paper. And there was where I was going wrong. Being accustomed to work on detail, I concentrated more on one part of the painting, the result being that some entities on the painting would be reasonably good, while the remaining parts went wrong.

Flared up by the eminent failure in the task, I went on practising. The first thing I did was changed my paper and brushes. I got a handmade watercolour paper which holds water for a longer time. My brushes were old and starting to fall apart, so I got new natural ones. I went on observing other watercolour artists, and concentrated on the technique more than the end result. Here are a few studies-

Landscapes are a beautiful genre and watercolour landscapes are amazing to work upon. And exceedingly difficult. After many attempts, I did this one for the Different strokes from different folks challenge, but didn't post it because the challenge ended before I could do a version which satisfied me. Here it is-

One more landscape which I did yesterday, to study some wash techniques-

These are some of the paintings I did in the last few days. I was too bored to upload them then. But today I decided to do it atlast. I'm having a lot of fun with watercolours nowadays and I can't wait to go back to Pune again and do some more outdoor painting.

Some old paintings.

2009-06-29T14:14:00.003+05:30

A couple of old paintings-

The first one, is of a bird( evidently(hopefully(:P))). It was done while I was sitting in a biology lecture the in september the last year. Its done with a ball pen in about 5-10 minutes. The other painting is done with watercolours again in about five minutes. I tried to give it a hazy feel of a ship caught in a storm. I was a bit alarmed and a lot pissed off when there was an unexpected power cut right when I was in the middle of it, but I did it in the light of the laptop screen- I was too engrossed to go look for a flashlight or a candle; plus I don't think I had a flashlight or a candle....

Anyways, I have been visiting a professional artist and taking some lessons from him over the summer. He has been giving me some nice studies to work on, so, nowadays you can find me on College road and areas around with my sketchbook, headphones and a can of Mountain Dew.

Will post pictures and sketches if something good comes along. Meanwhile, tell me how these paintings are....

H.

2009-06-08T16:20:00.003+05:30

It was night time. Not the have-your-dinner-watch-your-television night time. Well past midnight. The time when staying up is supposed to be obscene. The lights were out and even the late night pubs where the regulars had their regular pints were shut off. Everything lay quiet and content and undisturbed.

At this time, there walked a man from the shadows. One look and you would know that this guy was not used to taking strolls at this time of the night. His every action personified meekness. Dressed in a drab fraying suit with his shirt untucked, he hobbled up the road towards the train station. This, my friends, is the unfortunate and very unlikely hero of our story. He has a name, maybe, but it is of no importance to us. And he would have liked it that way. So let us address him with a common noun with a capital letter in the beginning- In the manner we describe God- Him. He would have liked it that way.

From the time He was young, He showed an extraordinary prowess over everything that required brainwork. A three year old kid solving sudokus in under a minute, now thats not very common, is it? But He did it. He did it when he was two. And He did more important things too. Some really important things which had baffled the leading physicists and mathematicians. They called Him 'gifted'. And He raised His arms for someone to hold Him up and hug Him, but what He got was applause instead. They called Him 'gifted'. The called Him different. His life became a blur of IQ tests and counsellings and numbers. More numbers. He was hailed as a supergenius when He couldn't even tie His own shoelaces. As He grew older, His prowess grew too. People called Him to fix their problems. Huge important people. Physicists, engineers, economists, government officials- Oh they dug on him. They called Him in with their fancy badges on their chests and smirks on their faces- Oh, He cannot possibly crack this one! I've been working on it for the past ten years! And He would come and calmly find a solution and go away. And they would stand there, pulling their hair with a mixture of icredulity, jealousy and relief. He was a whizkid. He was given top protection by the government so that the enemies could not find out about Him. People fought over Him. The scientists demanded Him to fix up some hitches which Einstein had created. The technologists tried to pull Him to build some huge rocketships. And the investigators tried to catch hold of Him to grind His nose for the location of some terrorist. He was put in a top secret government facility. He was their secret weapon.

But he wasn't a weapon, you know. Not atleast in the strict sense of the word. He was a man, an individual. And He began discovering this. Maybe for the first time in his life, He started thinking for himself- for satisfying his own curiosity. And boy He was curious. He leapt into the metaphysical universe and dug deep. He read more and more, He would sit for hours, days at length thinking. One subject especially held his wonder. The idea of God. He read that the buddhist Monks gained the answer of this ultimate question in the universe by not actually thinking. He couldn't believe that one could find a solution by 'not thinking' about it. Maybe it was a cretain amount of overconfidence He placed on His own abilities, I don't know. But He was confused, that is for sure. He knew that He possessed the most powerful brain ever seen by man, and He thought if someone could find an answer, it was Him. A worthy challenge.

Now what happened was, He denied to solve anything but His current predicament. He wanted all His attention on His own problem. He stopped working for the government. They begged and they threatened but He was caught by an obsession. He would'nt eat, He wouldn't sleep and He got fits of paranoeia. They had to let Him go. And in a way, they were happy to see His back. He was relocated in this quiet place with a monthly pension. But He was obssessed. He travelled around the world- to India and China to study the oriental philosophy which, He thought was closest to the answer that any other. Years and years He travelled. He met saints and monks and rabbis, but none could answer His question. They would give a religiously political answer which would be enough to fool anyone, but not Him. He would look right through it. Sensing a fear of failure for the first time in His life, He grew scared. The people who had admired him, deserted him. They called him a wasted genius.

His obsession grew bigger. He decided to try a different path- the path of physics. He had read physicists saying they had experienced God in their quests. The subject proved ideal for His extremely powerful logical brain and He immensely enjoyed it. He delved deeper and deeper, into its boundaries and beyond them. But then again, He was stalled. He felt like He was being eaten by the space around him. He just couldn't find the answer.

He came back to His home a dejected man. Everyone had forgotten His name now. He was not even the wasted genius. He was nobody. He didn't care though. All He cared about was the answer and it drove Him mad. For the first time in His life He was on the verge of failure.

And then one night, sitting in front of His desk, He decided He had led a wasted life. So He got up and went out of the house. He walked, skulking in the shadows, and for the first time in His life, He felt tired. Tired of thinking, tired of living.

He walked up to the railway track just outside the town and calmly waited for the train. He gave a small chuckle, maybe because it occured to Him that this was the first time ever He was waiting for a train; and not going anywhere. As He heard the horn, He walked up, fumbling a bit- not out of fear, but out of habit- you are bound to fumble when you have done nothing in your life but thought. He stood on the track and closed His eyes and waited. For the first time in His life, He did not think.

And a miracle happened. He did not think, yet thoughts came to Him. They say your life flashes in front of you when you are about to die. His life did not flash in front of him. No. But somthing else did. Something that He was least expecting. Not on the verge of death. Not when He had lost hope. Not when He had abandoned His quest. But it did flash. The answer. And a strange smile appeared on his face. More so of relief, by the looks of it, and of gratitude.

Then the train knocked him out. Dead.

Pink Floyd and poems

2009-06-04T00:33:00.002+05:30

A fellow blogger asked me to describe Pink Floyd in ten words. I did not realise how difficult the task was until I actually started thinking about it. stayed up the whole night thinking. And the next two days too. Its so natural to like something. Like a reflex action. But its really difficult to give a reason why you like something. I like Pink Floyd because...well, you just like something. I love the philosophy their songs possess. I love Gilmour's blues inspired riffs, and Wright's jazzy piano, and Water's lyrics. And I love it when all this come together. And the mystery of all of it...

But this is how I would describe them. A lot more than ten words, but I hope thats understandable. This is not at all the best of my attempts. I dont know if this can qualify the barrier for being a poem, too. Its just four lines which rhyme, incidentally, maybe. Here goes-

Songs of wonder, songs of pain

Songs of unsung martyrs insane

Songs untarnished in time remain

They take you down that memory lane....

By the way, this is my first attempt ever to write poetry (if you can call it that; but please do, just for the heck of it. Feels good :P). I thought a lot about their songs- they have some recurring themes. Themes like war, absence, madness, anarchy- most of which have the common feature- the pain. The psychedelic Pink Floyd takes you to a journey full of wonder around the universe with songs like 'astronomy domine', 'interstellar overdrive' and 'let there be more light' ( most credits to Barrett.). And Barrett himself remains the legend who was taken away by insanity, and a recurring theme in their songs. And there is no doubt that they were miles ahead of their time in terms of their musical ideas and experimentation.

This is how I would describe Pink Floyd, well, as concisely that is possible for me, atleast as of now. Whaddaya think?

Stalled.

2009-05-31T19:46:00.004+05:30

I am at my wit's end. All my resolve and determination to do something, well, worth mentioning in this summer is melting like ice in this dreadful heat. ( I call it dreadful, but I am usually the one who calls the guys for a game of cricket at two in the blazing temperature.) Thats one thing which is going well in all the fiasco. For cricket has this amazing ability to make you forget all your insecurities when you are on the ground. The whole world waits and watches the ball that grows bigger and bigger as it falls off the sky striking perfect unsion with your Adam's apple which falls into the pit of your stomach. And after a tiring game comes the time for Goti Soda. Of all the drinks that are drunk in this world, Goti Soda might just be the most worthwhile drink of all. At just five rupees you get the most refreshing glass of fresh soda with a flavour of your choice. It is a bliss. And you can have it again and again because it is so cheap.

Anyways, apart from that and maybe guitaring, nothing is going to well. All I am doing nowadays is stay up online in search of some inspiration and typing cheap profile headers like 'Kaushal is deeply plotting to kill the elusive fly that keeps buzzing on his laptop screen without damaging the display' on my facebook account. After coming here I have done only one painting which I am proud enough to upload online-

This is David Gilmour- Lead guitarist and vocalist of Pink Floyd. The sketch is done in mixed media- oil pastels, watercolours and a bit of pen here and there. I had a lot of fun experimenting with the two main media- oil and water, which behave unusually with each other. This was originally done for the theme which I was talking about in my previous post- writeups on music accompanied with sketches. But the idea is either too difficult to materialise or I am a dim witted mutant monkey. Though I wrote in my previous post that I would start the series with Rock, I later realised while thinking that Blues and maybe Country music would be sensible before Rock because its roots are based there. My notebooks are filled with flowcharts and notes about the subject but what is lacking is that one stroke of inspiration by which I will get some fluidity in my writing. I don't want the writeups to look like Wikipedia articles. The aim of the series is to look at various genres of music through the point of view of a common listener and a hardcore fan. But I don't want them to be like- 'Duhuude! Pink Floyd is just awesome dude! Its just ... awesome!!'. And that balance between light conversational writing and a deep understanding of the subject, its history and overall social impact, is what I seek. Desparately.

So, I'm stalled as of now. And I know why. There are too many things going around. College exams are over but they didn't go quite well, and I am shit scared what I will get in the CGPA card, which, by the way is one its way home throught the post and will reach, well, anytime. And then there are a few other problems- A few personal; a few too personal, if you get my drift. But I am hoping like hell that things will be better in the near future. And they better be. They better be.....

Summer of '09

2009-05-20T14:44:00.003+05:30

In three hours, I am going to board a train which will take me home ( Yieee!!). I have a long vacation of two and a half months, which ( I hope.) will be sufficient for all the retrospection, introspection and self seeking, etc., etc. I am supposed to do in that time( whatever...). Supposedly, I have to take some life changing and awesomely ( am I using this word a lot? like, a LOT?) important descisions during this time ( a bigger whatever. Believe me, a lot bigger). All I can think about right now, is that after about sixteen hours, I am going to be sitting in the kitchen at my home, eating, I don't know what, but definitely something delicious. ( Yeah, this and maybe about the three bedbugs which I can see from the corner of my eye, apparently racing to reach the top of the window sill from the table- thats all there is in my mind right now.)

Ohkay, to be serious. The thing is, I am supposed to do a lot of introspsection, retrospection and all the other things mentioned above in the holidays. It is really really important for me. For my life, my career and just about everything I can think of about me. It is gonna be a long, and hopefully fulfilling summer.

But it is not all going to be so serious though. Its going to be packed with sketches and paintings and guitars and more importantly, friends and family. I'll meet my best friends after a long while, so I think it will be quite a reunion- whiling away the time as we watch the sun set with a chicken cheese roll and iced tea in our hands and swapping stories of what all we did this semester. ( Yeah its gonna be grand.)

They are calling it the ' summer of 'o9 '. I know it is a cliche and all that, but that doesn't make me stop hoping that this summer would do something, well, nice ( I'm not hoping for much.).

By the way, Lord of the Rings is without any doubt the best and the most awesomest book and trilogy of movies I will ever hope to see.

*************************************************************************************

The supremely untrustworthy BITS net failed me once again as I was typing the above post in my empty room ( everything was packed and closeted.) while the others sat outside making jokes about me, who they thought was apparently chatting with 'someone'. (That is like the limit of imagination of us people. I might as well could be programming a droid which looks like Hobbes and which can destroy all life in the radius of the Kuiper belt.....). Anyways, so I couldn't post it that day. But, now that I am in Nashik, and I have overcome the 'jetlagged' feeling which I was having because of the sudden change in my schedule ( no staying up at three at night and cooking maggi.), and I am back in business! Well I did meet my best friend. Infact, in about a couple of hours I am going at his place with my guitar and we'll be doing some nice jamming there. He's a keyboardist, and a very good one too. And I did have the iced tea and the rolls, and it was divine.

I have some nice stuff planned for the summer. And it combines three of my countless passions- music, art and writing. I am thinking of writing about various genres of music and accompanying the posts with a painting or a sketch related to it. And I want to start with a bang, so my first post on that string will most probably be on Rock(!!!!).

And here I state again, for I cannot underline how essentially true and important this statement is-

Lord of the Rings is without any( and by any, I mean any(stressed as much as is humanely possible)) doubt, the best and most awesomest book and trilogy of movies I will ever hope to see in my deepest dreams.

I was just reading the above draft, and I think I have used the word 'and' in an unnaturally large amount in the post, have I?

Sweet home Alabama!

2009-04-27T00:30:00.003+05:30

Long time since I've written anything. The compres( comprehensive exams- highest graded exams in a semester at BITS) are upon us, which has led me to give away my laptop power cord to a friend so that I would'nt waste time messing around on it. But then I got really bored and took it back for a while just so that the blog would'nt be completely lonely. Everything else except studies is on hold. No sketching, painting- though I did a huge charcoal sketch of the campus with Sammy for Kala; it was our gift to the passing out batch- they had their farewell a couple of days ago. I'll put up a pic as soon as I get one. A bit of guitaring here and there, thats about it. I can't wait for the exams to end. And I really want to go home now. Every night, as I cook Maggi or munch on some crappy biscuits, the sheer thought of my mom's food haunts me. I can't stand the sight of the mess plates with their dozens of compartments and weird smell. I dunno how many ideas I've killed in the past few days. Seriously- I had some really awesome( why have I started to think that this is the only adjective today's generation knows?) ideas to write and sketch. But I had to stifle them because I need to study, atlest for the next fifteen twenty days. I hereby take a solemn oath that I will spend my summer holidays doing nothing but sketching, painting, guitaring, writing, playing cricket and most importantly- eating; in short basking in the glory of pure awesomeness and nothing else.

Yeah I miss home. Love that song- sweet home Alabama by Lynrd Skynrd. They're one of my all time favourite bands and this song is one of my all time favourite songs. Nice lyrics- especially the take on Neil Young- another one of my favourite performers, is incredible. Beautiful music; the last time I went home, after the first sem here at BITS, I had this song playing all night in the journey. It touched chords- Its really wonderful when some song, some music, or for that matter any art as such- a painting, a poem, a story brings exact same emotions you are feeling at that time- its like a resonance, and that is the real purpose of art- to emote. To emote as gracefully as possible. A two line poem can say things where a huge book is insufficient. And a photograph has a touching story locked inside it. It is one of the most wonderful feelings to actually experience it all.

Anyways, I think I should get back to studying now. I'm trying to do organic chemistry- E1 and E2 reactions. Won't write for a while now, but when I will, I have some pretty cool ideas to follow up. Exams are right in front- rearing up for an attack. So, good men, see you at the other end- if I survive! ;))

self portrait!

2009-04-08T01:26:00.002+05:30

Thats me! And I'm playing Hotel California. What a song! Especially the Hell freezes over version is like one of the most awsome songs ever made. The slow beat of the bongos, the masterful guitar solos of Don Felder and Joe Walsh( I love that part when he plays the two chords by pulling on all the strings with two fingers!) and the raw, rusty voice of Don Henley on the lead vocals! the song's an absolute masterpiece!

Anyway, I don't want to start off on Hotel C now. I want to write a separate post about it. So. the above sketch is done with charcoal and is a self portrait. Tell me how it is.

I had gone to a trip to a nearby fort today with a few friends. I'd taken my sketchbook with me, but couldn't sketch the view because some of the guys comissioned me to make their portraits instead. So most of my time up there was spent doing portait after portrait with a black pilot pen. It was a nice practice. Can't post the sketches though, cause I gave them to the guys and forgot to take snaps. Sometime later, maybe. Well, I'm completely exhausted today. Had really long and great day( More about that later.) and today might be one of those times when I actually would sleep before three.

Yup, I'm sleepy. I seem to have gotten a temporary typing dyslexia, becuae I am tpying likthis wihtut correctoins! So I'd better nod off.

Of guitars and pencils!!

2009-04-02T00:31:00.002+05:30

This is my latest sketch. Did this at three in the morning yesterday, after watching Shawshank Redemption. What a movie!! What a movie!!! Too good!!! Tim Robbins has done a superb job as this calm, composed guy, someone who makes his own destiny-builds it up, piece by piece with utmost patience. And Morgan Freeman's performance is absolutely breathtaking. Even his voiceover in the complete movie, as he narrates the whole incident is so stirring. Some scenes were absolutely wonderful. Hats off to the director. For example, in a scene where Red( Morgan Freeman) finishes his sentence after about fifty years in Shawshank prison, he starts working in a supermarket. One day, while wrapping groceries in paperbags, he looks up to his manager and says, "Restroom break, boss?" The manager calls him over. Red walks up to him. Even the way he walks- humble, slow, awkward- a servant' walk. His demaneor is so modest that you seriously can't believe that this is the same guy who has played the imposing and commanding Lucius Fox in The Dark Knight. So, the manager says "You don't have to ask me every time you need to go take a piss. Just go, understand?" Freeman gives an awkward nod and shuffles off. The camera lingers for a moment on the amused face of the manager. And then Freeman's deep voice narrates- Forty years I've been asking permission to take a piss. I can't squeeze a drop without saying so.

So, please watch Shawshank redemption. Its a really beautiful movie and I bet you'll thoroughly enjoy it.

Anyways, I went a bit off track here. So, the sketch- As I've told you before, I've got two guitars at my place now, so after watching the movie when I was remotely sleepy, I decided to sketch both of them. I was a bit confused on what medium to use. I was thinking about oil pastel or watercolour or inksketching, maybe. I settled on graphite beecause its been a long time since I've done a pure pencil sketch. I 've got this other idea to do a mixed medium sketch of the same thing, maybe more symbolic. Hopefully I'll put it on paper soon enough. The guitar on top is mine and the other one is Akhil's. Exams are over, which is the reason I am at the liberty to stay up at two at night blogging, watching Friends and listening to an awesome Hendrix song called Little Wing. Its one of my Hendrix favourites. Do listen to it. Thinking of sleeping, I've got workshop pracs at nine( LOL who am I kidding? Won't be able to sleep till four, atleast.) Ah, here comes my favourite riff!

.....When I'm sad, she comes to me,

with a thousand smiles, She gives to me free

Its all right, she says, Its all right

Take anything you want from me, anything!

Fly on little wing.......

VSD March- watercolour version

2009-03-29T00:28:00.002+05:30

This is my watercolour rendition of this month's VSD challenge. I skipped the feeder and concentrated more on the birds. Its was a nice experience to do this in both charcoal and watercolour. Hopefully I didnt miss the deadline. Tell me how it is!

VSD sketch- March

2009-03-27T20:27:00.006+05:30

This is my entry for this month's VSD challenge. This is charcoal on paper sketch on the image supplied by Stacy Rowan. I really wanted to do it in watercolours, but did'nt have time as my college exams are going on. Indeed, even this sketch is done on the eve of my linear algebra paper. But I'm going to do it in colour once the exams are over and will try to finish it before the deadline.

Some old sketches

2009-03-27T19:42:00.003+05:30

A couple of my old sketches. The first one is a sketch of the famous Easter island statues. The medium used for it is quite different and interesting. The medium is called inksketching, in which you use a pilot or ink pen to sketch and then use water to smudge it with a brush. It gives some really cool effects- like the effect of rocks that can be achieved here looks beautiful.

The second sketch is of Lord Ganesh, which is done in black oil pastel and charcoal on paper. Tell me how both the sketches are.

Exams going on and I have my physics paper tomorrow in the morning and prob stats in the afternoon. I have two guitars in my room and my new watercolours are still unused which is completely bumming me out. I'm planning to go to Panjim for a sketching trip after the exams. Its a really beautiful city and I'm craving to sketch it.

Wish me luck for my exams!

Saturday night blues

2009-03-22T03:11:00.004+05:30

The time is foul, my friends. Exams are approaching, leading to the addition of introducion to electrodynamics by Griffiths and introduction to probability and statistics by, who cares( why the hell do they call them introductions?) on the table, along with the new box of watercolours I am itching to try out, and I am listening to the blues! I got the blues, or did the blues get me?Seriously, I've been listening to a lot of blues lately. Ray Charles, with his ultimate 'I got a womaaan!!!' and the beautiful 'For mamma' and the amazing B.B. King with his equally amazing guitar Lucille!( You know, it just feels right when in the middle of a song, he calls out, 'Sing, Lucille!' and goes into a beautiful riff.) and Stevie Ray Vaughn, and Eric Clapton! Thats all I've been listening to, you know. The King said that he played the blues because they helped him pay the dues. And you know what, when you are listening to the blues, as the beat progresses, and it weirdly sounds slow and fast at the same time, and as Lucille gently weeps, you do feel the blues. Imagine after a long hard horrible day, you come home disturbed and depressed, and the person that you love holds you and tells you to let it out, now imagine you are alone, and you don't have a loved one, you pick up your guitar and sit in the dark, you've got the blues.
The music doesn't make you happy. You know, there is some music which changes your mood, makes you happy; no, blues don't do that. The Blues ain't makin you happy. The Blues make you comfortable with your sadness.
Practically every successsful piece of music in the sixties had the blues. They took 'em, churned them around a bit, rocked them, rolled them, jazzed them, sometimes grunged them to a headbanging intensity. But they had the blues.
You know, this is the third post I writing about the blues. Previous two got deleted when the internet suddenly got disconnected (Oh, I was damn pissed off. You write something with your whole heart, trust the blogger autosave and guess what, poof! it all vanishes into thin air. And thats not all; you do that twice.). I was very dissatisfied with the first one, more so with the second one, and I can't believe that I am going to publish this in the end. But I need to wrap it up before I can't resist giving it proper justice. There will be more posts on the blues, but now as I said, the time is foul. Anyway, Divesh got this fine idea of starting a kala blog. Kala is the fine arts club of BITS Goa. We are a group dedicated towards encouragement of fine arts on campus. We have amongst us some very talented artists, cartoonists, origamists( I hope this is a word.), photoshop artists, and most importantly a very dedicated bunch of people. So please check out the blog(http://bits-kala.blogspot.com) for updates of events we organise and works of all members.
Now, I have the whole night ahead of me with joint distribution of random (discrete and continuous) density variables, an empty stomach and joint distribution of random(discrete and continuous) density variables. No wonder I've got the blues.....

2009-03-16T01:11:00.002+05:30

So, so you think you can tell,
Heaven from hell
Blue skies from pain
Can you tell a green field
From a cold steel rail
A smile from a veil
Do you think you can tell?

And did they get you to trade
Your heroes for ghosts
Hot ashes for trees
Hot air for the cool breeze
Cold comfort for change
And did you exchange
A walk on part in the war
For a lead role in a cage

How I wish, how I wish you were here
We're just two lost souls swimmin in a fish bowl
Year after year
Runnin over the same old ground
What have we found?
The same old fear
Wish you were here
Wish you were here
- The Pink Floyd

2009-03-01T04:43:00.002+05:30

This is the idea I was talking about- only its materialised. This is charcoal and oil on paper. The red and green on charcoal look beautiful and make a statement( hopefully). The photo was taken and retouched by Rash, as was the photo of the VSD sketch. That guy is a genius with photoshop and has a great sense of editing and retouching. I hope that I have gotten the shadow right so that it also looks like a dove. Tell me how you find it to be.

The day I chased my idea....

2009-02-28T02:12:00.005+05:30

Pink Floyd rocks! seriously. Its 2.13 am in the morning and I am listening to 'shine on you crazy diamond', and I don't know why, but suddenly I've got this urge to write. But the funny thing is I can't figure out what to write about. Well, actually its kinda sensible, you know. Its like being hungry and not knowing what to eat. You see, sometimes you get this idea and you start writing and writing and writing till you are completely satisfied. Its like eating something just for the taste of it. I don't know if you have experienced this, but sometimes, you are just walking on the road when suddenly you have this chicken cheese roll taste in your mouth. Whats more, it lingers until you start paying attention to it, but when you do, it threatens to melt away. It feels like if you don't have a roll as soon as possible, you will completely forget what it tastes like. Now you don't want that to happen, do you? So you run off to have some chicken cheese roll. Its the same with ideas. They peep into your head at the most unexpected moments. And as you slowly begin to recognise the uniqueness, or shall we say, beauty of a certain idea, it starts seeping away(Well, that is what usually happens ot me in the exams. Ideas seep away. And slip away!). I had this great idea of a sketch today. I was sitting in a math lecture trying as hard as possible to feint attention at the prof as he rambled of in his heavily accented english about linear transformations of matrices and stuff. And like a flash, I get this idea- you see, a hand holding a bloody knife, and its shadow on the wall looks like a dove. It was so oxymoronish, and if the idea would actually materialise on paper, I knew it would look awesome. The complete picture with charcoal, black and white, except the red blood with which the knife is spattered and the green clover leaf in the beak of the shadow- dove. I could actually see it in front of my eyes! And then, ofcourse, the picture turned hazy and started dissolving into thin air. I knew what was going on- my idea was slipping away! And I couldn't let that happen! I checked the watch- 20 more minutes. This was going to be excruciating. I opened my notebook and started to sketch the picture....until, as they say, if you want something real bad, the whole universe conspires against you or something like that....(It actually is the opposite, I guess, but surely not in my world!)So this Prof makes the guy sitting beside me(the one who is drooling. Not the one who looks like he is dead and his corpse is about to snore. I think even the Prof admits that he is completely out.) and asks him a question. Now the only thing that can be as bad as a Prof asking you a question is you asking him one and expecting a straight answer( trust me, that is true.). Also, a Prof never aims a question at one guy as such. Nor does he expect the guy to answer it. The question is for the whole group around the guy to whom it is asked. It is a sort of wake up call, more of a death knell. It is a signal to the students that they have been caught not paying attention( or not feinting it) and they better do so if they don't want to face a full fledge public embarrassment. The guy next to me fumbles( as expected. Afterall, he has spent the lecture making his saliva bungee jump across his chin!). The prof shuts him up quite well, and after a sharp sweep of an eye at the other two of us musketeers, continues. The bungee jumper takes a notebook and starts scribbling down everything the Prof has ever written on the blackboard. The corpse man has come to life. He now adopts an open mouthed,disoriented posture which makes him look like one of the 'use me' dustbins with a really bright flowery shirt. And he has got a physique for it too! I straighten up, then lay low again, trying to look concentrated on the notebook I have which carries the notes of the previous class I attended about two weeks ago. Now what was I thinking? I try to remember. Some idea. What idea? this time I really concentrate, though not on the lecture( still a little bit of credit must be given to me for concentrating in the lecture theatre.). But I can't remember a thing. Nothing at all. I try to pull at the dying strands of memory I have of the idea. something about a knife. A knife? Wow! I am thinking about knives in my math lecture. And I remeber blood. Its coming back! Its coming back! The lecture gets over. And the grumpy Prof sets across the classroom towards the door where he is met by a speeding streak of light. It zooms out of the room, leaving the door to flap on the Prof's now red face. But the streak doesn't care. It glides out; swishes out of the lecture theatre, flies up the staircase, sprints through the B dome, scampers on the road, and never slows down until it reaches its destination. Its destination is my room, and as the bright folk out of the readers might have correctly inferred, 'it' is me( if you haven't inferred that, then take it from me- I'm sorry, but you are not one of the bright folk!).While my feet are running at full speed, my mind is running at fuller( wrong expression, right effect!). I skid to a stop near my table, grab a sheet of paper and some charcoal and don't look up until I've finished what I had in mind( the math prof would be in tears to watch me so focussed) And you know what, It felt just like it feels when you have a chicken cheese roll when you really want it. The same anticipation waiting with bated breath to explode! It feels great. Wait one second- this is what I was talking about! See, this is one kind of a streak- you know what you want to eat. You have an idea to work with. But, as I was saying, what if you are really just hungry. Anything will do. What do you do then? What if you have a real urge to write, but don't know what to write about. What do you do? Well, you eat anything that comes in front of you first, right. So I do the same thing here. I write the first thing that pops in my mind! And see, this works! I'm done with the post!

VSD sketch

2009-02-26T01:50:00.005+05:30

This is the sketch I made for Virtual Sketch Date. Its done with a black pilot pen on paper, with a bit of charcoal as a highlight in the end. Most of the sketch( except the parts with trees and bushes) has been done with straight lines. Had a lot of fun while making it. I'm sketching a lot these days, not just because I love to, but also because the cultural festival of my college-BITS Pilani Goa Campus, called WAVES Summer '09 is round the corner. The fine arts club of the campus, Kala is getting ready to give a beautiful performance. And we all are working really hard for it. So, nowadays, a typical day( and night) for me consists of nothing but sketching, painting and guitaring. And you know what, I love this life! Check out the other paintings, which, by the way, are awesome, and the original photograph by Debbie Later at http://virtualsketchdate.blogspot.com.

2009-02-20T01:05:00.001+05:30

This is the photograph of the legendary guitar recital I described in the last blog.

This old guitar

2009-02-20T00:41:00.002+05:30

Finally.... Test 1 is over and after staying up for five nights straight, trying to figure out how to find whether a vector space is homogenous or not and mugging up theorems whose names I can barely pronounce and don't know how to spell,(you can imagine how I did in my exams with that!) I finally am sitting in front of my laptop with a plan to stay up for the sixth night in a row and watch a couple of animation movies. I don't know if you have the capacity to imagine the happiness and relief that spread inside me as I submitted my answer paper today morning. I ran up to my room after that and opened my guitar case as soon as I reached there. Not that Iwas'nt playing while the exams were going on, but you know, there's this feeling, which swells up inside you, when you know that there is nothing, absolutely nothing which is going to come in between you and your guitar now. And this feeling is precious. I always play my guitar whenever I come back from some exam. I don't know how, but it makes me feel better. I play it whenever I am depressed or tired, and it heals me. Chinmay knows this, so whenever I am in a bad mood or something, he's like "Go play some guitar dude!" and I do that. And I feel okay! Its been about a year since I started learning the guitar. And I got my own after I came to campus. I still remember how much I roamed about in Goa to get my guitar. Now the closest town from campus is Vasco. It takes about 45 mins to reach Vasco via the local buses. Now this is not as easy as it sounds. The buses here are a sight. I never have had to wait for more than....let me see...about seven seconds on the bus stop before a bus came up the road. You see them, rumbling on the road swirling dust as if it were mist about the roads which just about wide enough for the bus to move. With its murky brown body which you strongly suspect was actually green, once upon a time, and patches of paan stains and indecipherable graffiti(sometimes graphical), both which are byproducts of the passtime of generations of Goans, you start having thoughts about reconsidering your descision to board this thing. This feeling doubles when the bus comes close enough so that you can actually hear the quality and quantity of sound this machine can produce. Every movable part vibrates. every immovable part is engaged in a fierce srtuggle for freedom from its binds. And so, somehow, all the parts of the bus reach some sort of a resonance so that the whole bus vibrates with the same frequency. Its weird, more so if you are sitting inside it. Now, you can seldom sit inside the bus. You never get a seat. And let me tell you, its a relief, because the seat is not at all compatible for a 6 foot 1 inch guy like me. Its total space management. Find out the maximum number of seats you can fit in a given space. Find a way to add in a couple more, and you make an interior of the bus. That is not all, because the top is so low that you have buckle your knees all the time and every bump on the road gives a bump on your head. people are filled in like grains in a sack, and are made to stand in the aisle, each facing the opposite side, holding the bars of the overhead(?) luggage compartment somewhat like the way convicts are made to, in America. The conductor glides through the mess of people, handbags, wicker baskets, infants and an occasional rucksack of some bemused tourist like a seasoned swimmer in the rough sea. And you look at the sign on the saying '11 standing' and wonder why its there. I personally had stopped counting after 21. The point is, its a rough ride. Somehow, I reached my destination. Now it was time to find a guitar shop. I walked and I walked; in two hours I covered nearly every road in Vasco; taking instructions from people just to end up right in front of them in five minutes until I found out that there was no guitar shop in Vasco. So I rode another bus to Margao, which is a much bigger city. this time I was sure there was guitar shop here. I even knew its name- 'Fertado's'. So I scoured the roads of Margao asking for Fertado's. Now this is quite a common surname in Goa. So, in an hour, I found myself in front of a Fertado's book store, a Fertado's gift shop, and somewhat awkardly, a Dr. Fertado's gynaecology clinic. Finally, I found the shop on the second floor of an ancient dingy building, and all the frustration I had evaporated. There's this thing about a guitar shop- the scent of the wood, maybe. But it feels great. The only other shop in which I have been equally fascinated is the Art Shoppee in Panjim, but more about that later. So, I got my Hobner spanish acoustic- the most beautiful thing I ever own. Its black, with a whitish green design on the soundbox. And I loved it on the first sight. It has been with me since then. I play it day and night. Sometimes Eagle's Hotel California or Clapton's Layla or Pink Floyd's Wish you were here, sometimes chord sequences or sometimes just musical gibberish.... I play for hours and hours, until the skin of my fingers tears out and they start bleeding, then I put on a bandaid and play on. Let me tell you the story of my first public guitar recital. There was some programme in college and I called to play there. I had learned this guitar instrumental called Slash by Acoustic Alchemy, and I planned to play it. So, the day arrives and I am called upon stage. I plug the pickup wire to the guitar port and strum some chords. No one hears a thing. I check the connection on the guitar port, the amp port. everything seems just fine. But its not at all being amplified. the crowd is getting impatient. I figure out that there must be some problem with the pickup wire itself. Great! My first solo recital and I can't play because of some silly wire. The guy onstage gives me a mic which I place on my lap near the soundbox. Its awkward, but its ok. so I say this is it, and I close my eyes, and I start the damn song. Slowly, I get into the rythm and I forget that I am in front of a crowd. I smile a silly smile with my eyes closed and let my fingers do the job. The exhilaration reaches the peak as I near the end of my performance. I end with a really fast riff and slowly open my eyes, ready for the applause. There is none. I look around, and people are talking, laughing, doing everything but looking at me. And I am like, what the hell, people? Then I do something really demeaning. I shout ' I'm done!' That catches some attention. People look around, as if they just remembered there was a stage in front of them. Some of them clap. Some of them are completely clueless about whats going on. Some don't even care. And I am sitting onstage with my guitar and the mic perched precariously on my lap trying to figure out what went wrong. And then, the guy onstage comes, picks up the mic, looks at me and says, " Its supposed to be turned on, you fool!" I don't remember anything after that. There's this one song by Neil Young which I really love. Its about a guitar. It goes something like this-
This old guitar ain't mine to keep, just taking care of it now Its been around for years and years, just waiting in its old case Its been up and down the country roads, its brought a tear and a smile Its seen its share of dreams and hopes, and never went out of style The more I play it, the better it sounds, It cries when I leave it alone Silently it waits for me, or someone else I suppose!
And this old guitar of mine has been with me in some of the most defining moments I've ever had in my life. It has laughed when I have laughed, and it has wept with me. It is fascinating that something inanimate can be such an important part of your life. Sometimes even more important than some people. And then one day I will get a new guitar, maybe because it will be better, or because this one will be too old to be played, when the strings and the knobs will start rusting and there will be dents on the soundbox and it will start taking ages to tune, and it will just be cast aside.... But it knows this, maybe all the guitars do. And it understands. It won't get too attached to me even though I may. You know why? Because- This old guitar ain't mine to keep, just taking care of it now........

5 point SOMEone

2009-02-05T03:15:00.005+05:30

Could I have had a better topic to start off my blogging or what?! Here I am, listening to 'Get over it' by the Eagles at two in the morning( couldn't have found a more fitting song) and writing the first blog I have ever written. And the only thing that is comes in my mind right now, is me being a five pointer! I study(or, do I?) in BITS Pilani Goa Campus, one of the most prestigious colleges in India. And from what the grading system says about me, I clearly suck! Its an echelon, you know, a system of levels. It is headed by people called ten pointers. So now that I don't have anything to do and I am remotely sleepy, let me explain to you how it goes-
So, as I said, the echelon is topped by a species called the ten pointers. The ten pointers are the A graders. The creme de la creme. The top guys. They are the reason why colleges are made. The whole idea is to make ranks and ranks of ten pointers and convocate them into the society, so that they work in IT companies from 7 am to 12 midnight and raise kids who become obsessive IIT aspirants. Guys like us don't usually hang out with ten pointers. And vice versa. Its difficult to decide which ones hate the other ones more. Nearly impossible. The tenps look down upon the fivers from their ivory towers and smile unpleasant smiles. And the five pointers look up and return them with equal loathing. But that is how the system works. Each of us are in their own places, happy to be hanging in there, the two extremes. The ten pointers happy that there is no upper limit than this, while the fivers thinking I can't possibly fall down below this! And life goes on. You can recognise ten pointers as easily as you can recognise five pointers. Short hair, coconut oiled(that is a must) obese, specs, and they go ambling around alone. You can guaruntee that all the places they know on the campus are the classrooms, library, their own rooms and hopefully, the mess atleast. My God these guys actually go to the professor's chambers and ask them doubts! But then, there is an unspoken mutual pact between the fivers and the tenners. We never come in each others ways, each thinking that is way below dignity. The real problem are the nine pointers.
Now these are the wannabe ten pointers. But they can never be tenners, cause you need to be perfect for that to happen, not a whisker away from it. But these guys never miss the opportunities to round off their CGPA's. Let me tell you how a nine pointer is- Take in all the qualities of a ten pointer, reduce the coconut oil a bit(maybe that is the secret ingredient of being the tenners)and give the guy a ultra proud look with an extra long nose. Viola! you have your very own nine pointer. Now the difference between a ten p and a nine p is of a guy who takes computer science because he actually loves it and a guy who takes up computer science after looking at the placements list. And what's bad is that they actually get in our way. They nose around, complain when we make noise while playing corridor football(what else is a guy supposed to do in a hostel?) whine if they don't get front seats in a lecture, ask questions, silly ones, just to impress the profs, hang out with ten pointers, borrow their notes and loose them, never lend anyone else their own ones, not even a day before the exam! Oh, I might finish this whole page writing this but I have to stop. Moral, nine ps are not very pleasant people to live with.
8 pointers are great. they have it all settled out, you know. How much time to work, how much time to play. If you ever want to be something in life but don't know what to be, get some advice from me- be 8 pointers. And you will lead a life worth living. These guys life is so balanced. They watch movies, fool around, hang out playing guitars and singing songs with us guys. They go to all the lectures. Take notes, but they don't mind if the guy next to them is playing snake 2 on his phone. A ten pointer would have freaked out and a nine pointer would have brought this thing to the professor's notice if they were in such a situation. Maybe thats why these guys never mix and mingle in classes. But the 8ps are so cool! And they let you photocopy their notes too!
The seven and the six pointers are just happy enough to be hanging around where they are. Yeah, they don't have to be in the league of those shameless 5ps with their guitars and long hair. But you know what, they envy us. Secretly. They envy us because of the fun we have. And they envy the 8, 9 and (ofcourse)the 10ps too. Because of their grades. These guys are totally clueless about what to do. Do they chuck their futures and enjoy as much as they ever can or do they grind their noses on Organic chemistry by Solomon and Fryhle until they are raw? They just don't know! And so they think about vector spaces when they are on the cricket pitch with us and play Sweet home Alabama in their heads in maths ll lectures. The difference between the 8 pointers and the 6-7 pointers is that, although each of them give the same time to work and play, the 8ps, work when they work and play when they play. These guys work when they play and play when they work. Told you, they are just so confused.
Now comes the part for which I had to write the whole crap above this- The five pointers. Now believe it or not, but we are the backbones of this system. We make ten pointers what they are. Because its all relative(I wish old Al was here to see this moment). We are the five pointers, and we are kicked around from classroom to classroom and our grades tumble down like a slinky on the stairs. But we are satisfied. We have faithful friends and we hang out with them. We learn so many new things. Like climbing up on the Roof of Students Activity Centre from the outside, guitaring for like five hours straight, sketching prof's portraits from the last bench. Now that requires skill. More stealth skill them art skill I must say. And in this world of grades and placements, we hold our heads high and stand tall and face trouble as it comes. we seize the day. We sieze the night! We are the wheels which run the system. We are the wheels which have to carry the load. We are the wheels who get smothered by the dirt.
But you know what, we don't complain. we have the time of our lives in the college. And we use our brains too! For good things, constructive things. But the only reason we are the way we are is that we do what our heart tells us to do. Now it may be wrong, it may be foolish and it may be taking us completely on the wrong track, but then, atleast we get to drive our own car!
Now for the important thing- and this is for all of us- the 10ps and the fivers- notice the capital SOME in the title. Now that is not a typo. Its probably the most important thing in this coffee fuelled maiden blog. Forget everything I said, no offence meant, about your CGPA's and listen to this carefully. Of all the things in the whole wide world, the one that is really important is that you have to be SOMEone. A five point someone or a ten point someone, it doesn't matter. But you have to be someone. You have to make your mark. There is a place for everyone in the college. The muggers, the wannabes, the cool guys, the slackers, the ten pointers, the five pointers. All you have to do is come forward and take your places. Not happy with the place you have now? No big deal. Strive hard to change it. But please, be somebody. Be someone. You gotta be someone. The college takes in everyone. Life takes in everyone. Its like one big college, isn't it? And then you are expelled from college if you mess things up big time, but this is no time for us to talk about that. Its time to stop writing and publish the first blog ever written by me!!!!!!!!!!!