Life: Cricket alike.

Now that somebody's flying down in few days (or months) & something really big is due to happen in much lesser time, fingers are crossed.

I am just trying to make it a habit to write daily. Remembering a friendly challenge that happened between my and my friend on one of those week days' mid day drinking episodes at club 8, I put down my 4th consecutive cricket book. Two more ordered & are probably on their to press my calling bell in another 2 days.

There's something remarkable about people. They way they were, the way they transform, & the way they become who they are. This metamorphosis happens in a great stadium called Life where all the acquaintances of a person will be seated to watch the action in live. That's so much Cricket alike. Its so collectively endearing & individually discrete at the same time.

In the meanwhile, there is art to entertain spectators during recesses amidst performances. The art is something that makes the whole play tolerable for people who cannot stand the pandemonium involved in live action in the stadium.

The performances happen continuously, merely the performers change. Game's always played; with periodic (sometimes not) change in teams, individuals.

Art plays a cheer girl; that person becomes the batsman & situations constitute the fielding side. Each one bowling at one time (in cricket its one bowler at a time, but its not the case with life even. Life can be ruthless at times, you see). Its all in the hands of the batsman to make the spectators clap or curse. But something's so certain. He lets the spectators have a wholesome entertainment all through the while he's out there in the middle (all his life) before he departs (to his death bed).

Life's so much like Cricket. And yeah, its a batsman's game unfortunately! 

Sizing Up

The film is finally out. I am glad it is. Could finish something which had been in the pipeline for a really long time. Now that the film's over & people are back with their own affairs, the quest to do something again began.

As a matter of time, I was trying to figure out how things changed. They did. Very drastically. From being a jobless soul to somebody who has a week planned waiting ahead. From a dreamy, careless person to somebody who think twice before saying something & thinks 10 times before actually doing something. From an easily irritated guy to a patient person. From a guy who had parents totally dubious about their son's career to the one whose parents aren't shy to disclose their son's identity among their peers. Dramatic changes, aren't they?

All can be owed to sizing up the situations and reacting accordingly. Heard furious jokes bombed on me, suspicious friendships & ruffled relationships.

Where does this all take me to? Probably to a shore of being an informed person with tonnes of solitude, silence and faint smiles around my neck? May be.

I hardly have any peers now. Hardly. There were times when she complained about me not devoting sufficient time for her & her companionship and my friends were all blame for that. Now she's the one who asks me to make new friendships & cherish the old ones. This too changed, didn't it?

I hardly get angry now. Probably silence taught me this. Confronting something dreadful with the corners of lips almost touching my ears has become a usual thing.

To the memory of good old times & hope for better coming times, this piece stands as a silent witness ending with a strong full stop.

This and That.

How magically we fall into the nets of people, though how convincing we might sound to ourselves that being rational and unperturbed works at all times!

The enormous power and patience needed to keep the urge to blast off down to ashes is something fascinating to notice from a distance but it ain't easy to adapt and implement. Times have grown gloomy, dull and bleak. A pathetic situation of looking forward to meet someone for days together is here. Every one conveniently walks past me, ignoring my presence so elegantly that I often feel dubious about the presence of my very own presence. They do that in style, leaving me behind fragile.

Not one month passes by in ease. Every month peeps in with a whole new set of ordeals in its bag. They are thrown at me, to play with me, to leave me exhausted & retire to bed on each day of the month mulling over the never ending testing times.

Sirish is a great listener, I must admit. He lends his ears in such a comely manner which compels you to drain out all the built-in agony which gets piled up in stacks for days.

There is this mad man, sitting relaxed, some 5 hours away from where I am right now. May be he isn't mad. He may be just any second 50 year old in the country with a couple of daughters off his nuptial life. With irritating levels of orthodoxness and alarming heights of stubbornness and stupidity. He might stand as an obstacle between me and my purpose. The confrontation day isn't that far. No wonder he'll soon creep into my dream and converts them into bloody nightmares.

All these constitute my future. All I have in my hands is to live through it; as calmly as possible. My anger has always been a disaster!

The festival is here!

10 days of tumult and pandemonium is here. Ganesh Chaturthi. Celebrated gloriously at a cost of environment. Bored because of an off day amidst week days, I was truly jobless & spent all day stuck to bed.

With continuous prompting of my mom, I went out in the evening to breath in some fresh air as well as some smoke. The city is now well decorated, flashing with glittering lights and plaster finished idols, standing majestically as the epitomes of Hinduism & its popularity in the country.

I was wondering how much would it cost to erect thousands of such idols, so much of gala for 10 whole days and finally immerse the 10 days of celebrated investment in waters. I even wondered how many reforms or ideas can be efficiently implemented with that amount. A lot of 'em right? How many home(pe)less can be fed with clothing, food and shelter?

Not any of these thoughts come into our minds as we keep ourselves super busy & engaged decorating the idols with countless, grand garlands in the name of devotion.

A sweet offering to God is usually auctioned at the end of the gala & it gets sold off for whooping prices, say INR 300,000, if not 600,000. Where does this archaic behaviour take us? To a pretentious state of satisfaction? To a fake shore of accomplishment?

If He exists, He must exist in hearts, thoughts and actions. Not necessarily in idols & celebrations.


Serving mankind is serving God.

Open

It's been quite a while I posted anything but about me. The site has been showing only my updates from 3 months or so but not about any faintest take on worldly affairs. The reason was I haven't been active enough. Being occupied with bundles of work at office, learning to drench down in the internal affairs of corporate; all these took me about 4 months of time.

Well, it's about time & I finally grabbed myself a book to look into. usually, I stay away from autobiographies, as they leave us uncertain about the authenticity of the point documented in them. But this one some how got me intrigued. Thanks to the foreword.

Open - by Andre Agassi.

The honest portrayal of his flaws, weaknesses & their admissions right at the beginning of the book opened a door for the most honest work I've ever come across. The way Agassi poured his heart out, blue coloured, onto 380 odd pieces of paper was hot flame burning sort of.

I always hailed Agassi as a flamboyant, easy riding tennis man the sport has ever witnessed. But there's something raw, bruised and scarred fist size being behind that stylish Nike tee he sports. 29 years of untiring hatred towards the sport he dominated. The helplessness of not knowing anything other than tennis. That helplessness, transformed into rage which had beaten Becker sort of legends. There's some ultimate empty feeling after winning everything possible in the sport, conquering every title & mounting the top, he says. True, it seemed.

14 trials all through his reign; when the costliest rackets were just given away; trophies on the racks were shattered into pieces, tiniest pieces; that bachelor pad where everything is pitch black in colour including the toilet pot in the wash room, resembling his dark phase. 14 trials to just let the sport go off his veins. 14 trials to give up abruptly and vanish like a genie. Yet, that one last title in 2006 again Bagdhatis. That one last serve of his life, serving for the championship & that's when the finish line calls him; yells at him to just drop the racket & to get onto his knees and shout that he can't do that any more. Ultimate perseverance; Super human endurance out there in the match box sized court.

Never a single second did Agassi let me loose off his clutches all through the book. I was drenched down in those furious sprinkles of honesty; just like he does under hot water for 22 minutes before that last match of his.

Yes. He raced fast cars, dated much faster models.; exploited by media, humiliated all through his life in the hands of his father. Turned into a style icon. Went bald. All these were ephemeral. These just constituted an ethereal world, which people built around him upon the pillars called anticipations.

But deep inside, a man lies, furious, honest, poke-me-you-get-that-back-in-your-face.

Any body has to let their hands down, when it's Agassi whom they are facing.

Those thought filled days.

Days of introspection are finally here. I guess I am using them to the fullest. Revisiting very virtue and quality of mine, trying to make necessary changes, so that I emerge out as a sensible being; far better than the one I have been.

Knowing about some intellectual brains, reading some really good stuff, trying to use the granted time to the benefit of the self. I hope she blossoms with a smile at the end of the trial that I really evolved in the way I expected to be.

That's what this is being all about. Really utilizing the time to figure out who the real one are; and who the fake. I am glad that already an outline has formed and it is being filled by discrete parts to make life gain a fuller picture & develop into a meaningful collage. I wonder how I allowed myself that to happen, but eventually I now understand that it happened for good.

She said she is being relaxed or rather composed. Neither sad nor happy; but relaxed. Really felt good. What more could be of good thing to really let some one be relaxed? Priceless, you see.

Even I am out of that self imposed misery & seems like I am really putting in efforts to make it a meaningful day to call off at work. Life seems pretty sensible now.

I just can't wait to talk about those little personal things again with her. She has been the everlasting contentment of my life. I silently wink and smile reckoning even she knows that.

Its just like working on a small contribution to a robust project. You realize what you've been working on only when the project's out on screens to public. But that some how makes it intriguing.

To me, this is like that long wait, clear in the eyes of a soldier who waits for the war to be finished to go back home & fall in the arms of his loved one. But yeah, War certainly teaches him many things.

This is teaching me! 

Death : The Mighty.

This apparently is the first time I am going to talk about death. This surfaced from the grief of losing a good old friend to the Aussie soil & it got extended into a philosophical channel in a span of overnight. Nostalgia was at peaks when I was walking down the lane close to my work place to fetch cigarettes for myself. The same lane, where till yesterday, we shared chai-companionship; smoke-silliness.

This is just temporary or perhaps I'd like to believe it that way. It'd be too coarse to digest if it turns out to be intimidatingly permanent. 

My thoughts zeroed down to Death on parallel with the cigarette I was killing. He is just a good friends, he just migrated to another country in the name of good, which itself is proving out to be unbearable for me. Everything seems conspired against me these days. Letting Go two most important people of my life in one day. What do you say? Wouldn't that be too harsh on you? Inevitably, I have only one choice; To Live Through It. So, I am living through it.

So coming back to death, How Death is mighty? I'd rather adopt a simplistic view here. Death is the most obnoxiously scary thing as well as the ultimate freedom on the other hand. Its just the way we look at it; I tend to go with the latter.

We, the humans are bestowed with the burden of living through, until it occurs to us to carry us along with it to the unseen worlds. I totally eradicate the prospect of fading away in between. Either to stay back silently among the ashes or to rise like a phoenix; the only two choices.

I've made up a theory yielding a benefit from death. Every other reluctance, apprehension, inertia fade way palpably in front of the mighty death. We prepare ourselves for the death, all the aforementioned appear miraculously stupid & tiny. That, obviously leads to the most important leap- Initiative.

So be prepared to experience the ultimate freedom - You'll live through in Style.