A Performance

This Airtel Street Dancer 3G  advertisement doing the rounds, there is something very attractive about the adv.

Probably many things. i like the location, because i like cities which are pedestrian friendly and have a lot of pedestrian traffic. the styling of the people looks like a place where the street fashion quotient is very high, say, Paris, Milan or NYC. and this adv has primarily winter fashion. i LOVE that, probably because it hides the flaws in my body ;)

Then i like cities which are friendly to street-performers, as this dancer is. there is such abundance of talent in these street performers, it is amazing. they perform with such a sense of abandon, perhaps one in a hundred passerby will stop and really notice them, there are no tickets to be bought for the performance, and no fixed income from their daily gig, people are allowed to pay as they please.

I like the way the guy acknowledges the appreciating glance of the girl. he doesn't stop to thank, nor does he ignore it. he just touches the tip of his hat, as a part of his gig. subtle.

Then, the finishing touch of the adv, where he looks for her in the crowd, follows her, she extends her hand, he touches it and continues his dance. i cannot put my finger on why i like this part so much. just that i like it.

yadoon ke zakhm par,

zindagi marham....

- Kaise Kahen Alvida...

...And God Listened !

Dear God, thank you for answering my prayer, every bit of it. thank you, thank you, thank you.

For Me and People Like Me...

We'll always be judgmental. We always have been. But not to the point of letting that get in the way of making good friends.

But certainly that extra distance needed to make great friends, that will not happen again. Because we'll be careful and judgmental.

There was a time when i was innocent and naive. i was always opinionated as hell. but i believed in relationships lasting forever. be it with friends, or family. i met some amazing people and they became my good friends. of course the friendship didn't come without its share of arguments, fights and the ensuing madness. but i (or rather we both) could move past it and we would still be the same friends as if the event never occurred. i was not resigned to the fact that people will always move on and move away. that gave me the ability to form some extra-ordinary friendships with vastly different people. i could let people be. in fact when i think of it, those people were the ones hardly liked by the masses. some among the masses were openly amazed how i got along so well with such people.

These few people have really stuck by me now. these relationships have remained intact till date along with its share of tremendous ups and downs. they have stood the test of time, faith and strength. perhaps there will be further duress, more ups and downs, but these relationships have a fighting chance of survival.

With a great friend, you would have had the biggest, ugliest and longest fights and differences. but you still come back to each other because you both realize that the friendship is much bigger than the fight, clash of egos and differences in opinions. you might have hurt the friend, but not with any intention. saying sorry  doesn't feel like a blow at self-respect, a heartfelt apology will not be taken with any caveat. you would fight tooth and nail to have them in your life. it is these criterion that make the friendship last.


I had promised myself that i will not get nostalgic, but.oh...well, i can handle the trough much better. so i find myself yearning for those innocent days. i have obviously come a long way in realizing that world isn't just black and white, but more grey. that people deserve second chances and you have to accept people for who they are. so in that way, there isn't really much of a difference in what i was and what i am now. but i have also learnt to let it go and let it be, easily. THAT probably is the deal-breaker. so i feel the time to form new great friendships is probably over. notice that i use the word "time" and not "age". that time might come for some people at the age of 20, 30, 60 or if they are lucky, never. but for me, it is probably gone. i can definitely get over disappointments way more quickly, have very less expectations and can be days and weeks together without talking to some people. but the extra distance that makes all the difference between a good and a great friend, i am not so sure if that extra effort will come from me. even if it does, it will come with a sidebar: this can disappear next moment, so do not invest too much. you cannot form great friendships if you remain passive and have a sense of doom. there has to be, almost, a need, a passion, vitality and vigor to pursue a good person. or else you will always have good friends. not great friends.

Strength is not the absence of weakness as courage is not the absence of fear. our (chosen) path in life can have a lot many consequences. some are disastrous and some are expected. and yet, some are surprisingly different.

The only morality that one needs to adhere to, is not to hurt anyone, intentionally. sometimes you face  situations which are so out of your control. so much so that you hurt the people you love the most. i have done that. i have done that and much more. and i am not proud of it and neither do i ever justify it. which is exactly why i call them my mistakes. morality sometimes kicks-in only when you get caught in the act. perhaps i can take some cold comfort in the fact that it was my own decision to come-out clean to the people i chose to. in the ensuing process, i have lost almost all my friends. my family has stopped trusting me. some have chosen the ambiguity of  silence, some have plainly made it clear that they would not like to keep in touch with me ever again. yet, there have been precious few who have chosen to at least try to look past it. only time will tell what happens to the last few of those relationships.

To those who have chosen to remain silent or weed me out of their lives, you have full right to see this as you feel like. i have destroyed the faith you had placed me and i have abused your trust and respect. you may say that i have done something that even an enemy would not do. i have lost the right to expect a fair treatment from you.  but for one second, can you not see me past that ?  have i not admitted that they were my mistakes ? did i ever try to justify my actions ?

Or perhaps, i can again take a small comfort in thinking that our good relationship lastly while things were good and dandy. perhaps the strength of the relationship was only so much and i subjected it to way more duress than it could handle. i only wish most of my relationships were stronger than what i had assumed them to be.

Sometimes the adjectives - nice, sweet, and cute are used as euphemisms for being plain.

Or else we would be committing a conversation faux pas every time.

Questions - Part Un

* When is the last time you did something for the first time ? - (Courtesy an Emirates adv.)

* What is the song of your life ?

* Is there a difference in your answer to the questions "What do you do ?" and "What do you do for a living ?"

* Do you like your childhood or do you like it now ?

I Say A Li'l Prayer...

Dear God, all I need is a good conversation to lift my sagging spirits. Surely that is not too much to ask for ? See, I am not being materialistic or anything, no ?

Okay, a small condition: just some conversation where someone will not judge me.

Waking up at 5am and braving the sweltering heat at 6m and a one hour rickety bus ride, having breakfast at a narrow old part of the town where "hygiene conditions" are so non-existent that someone who works in a government hospital wanted to throw-up, still bravely hogging the delicious warm dumplings and soup, then going straight to a pharmacy and downing de-worming, acidity and enzyme tablets.

Someone would ask why go all this length to upset your system and some others would say that we are perfect target customers for American advertisements: eat and then take meds to reverse the effects of eating (which include screwing with your digestive system and putting on pounds of unwanted weight).

We do funny things for the things we love. and food figures right up that list. Such is life, and what is life without its share of madness ? :)

It is a wonderful feeling when I see your labor (of love) and (literal) back-breaking hark work bringing you success. You are finally home.

Congratulations. Wish I still had the right to tell you so.

:(

Why is it that people seem to almost run against time to pass a judgement ? especially the ones who have been living on this planet for a good fifty years or more, those who have done a fair amount of traveling, meeting people from various walks of life and have dealt with extreme situations in life. they, of all people, should realize that life is not black and white. it is too easy to put things as right and wrong.

*****

i met a friend today, who said, "i do not understand how people get up everyday and live. i am only living because i am too scared to take my own life. i am on an autopilot."

my friend, i wish i could do something for you. i know you are too proud to ask for help. your self-deprecating sense of humor made you turn this statement into a mere joke when you saw my (badly masked) shocked reaction. i know it is useless and cliched to say that life is bigger than what you have and all you need to live is a smallest reason or tiniest hope. sometimes our own problems seem so overwhelming and all-consuming that we are unable to see anything beyond that. i do not claim to be a proponent of hope and happiness. but all i want to say is, we just get one shot at life. no one knows about afterlife and whether it really exists and how it works. so instead, why not try to make the best of this life ?

does it make sense ? i wish so, desperately.

:)

I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, It's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, And that enables you to laugh at life's realities.

- Dr.Seuss

At some point, it (pain) becomes bearable. It turns into something that you can crawl out from under and... carry around like a brick in your pocket. And you... you even forget it, for a while. But then you reach in for whatever reason and there it is." - Nat, Rabbit Hole.

Irony requires a certain amount of self-confidence. You have to have built enough of an identity to turn around and reject it, or to laugh at it. I think that's something that takes time. - A NYT correspondent.

The Beauty of Urdu

Lessons were in conversation rather than a lecture. Text was enhanced by context. Alam introduced my grandfather to the nuances of Urdu. "As the prophet said, wit is to speech as salt is to food."...."You cannot understand or speak Urdu without wit. Not laughter, wit. A belly laugh is too coarse for our language. Wit is the smile of an equal. Even repartees must never be unkind, for rancor is foreign to the spirit of Urdu. You may pierce your opponent's defenses, but you cannot wound him; it is a duel with blunted rapiers.".... When my grandfather heard he was going to get lessons in guttural, palatal, dental and labial enunciations, he decided he had had enough.

Excerpt from M.J.Akbar's Blood Brothers.

In memory of a doting son and a loving partner.

There is no universal language of grief. You cannot judge a person by their way of grieving.

A mother grieving over the death of her only son. the grief compounded by her recent knowledge of his life that he had kept away from her. his wonderful, fulfilling life with his lover, a man. the anger she feels at her dead son for hiding away his world from her, for being a homosexual and for leaving so many things unfinished and for dying so suddenly in a freak accident. the pain and grief for the young life that was cut short so brutally. she cannot say anything to her dead son. so she directs her angst, ire, irritation and frustration at her son's boyfriend.

The boyfriend, who silently grieves the loss of his beloved. in a world that looks down on same sex love, he has labored though his sexuality and when he found love with someone, it was taken away in a matter of seconds. the life they had envisaged together lies shattered. all he has left are the unfulfilled desires and promises. he would like to grieve for his beloved, just as any normal person does. his pain and anguish isnt any less because of the "unusual nature" of his relationship.

Then the world of the grieving mother and the grieving lover clashes. whose grief is more real ? the mother's loss of her son or the lover's loss of a beloved ? Or, as someone rightly put it, is there such a thing as a hierarchy of grief ?  is the lover's grief any less because of the nature or span of their relationship ? doesnt he deserve as much memories of his dead beloved as a mother deserves of her dead son ?

They say that grief creates unusual bridge between people. the mother and lover realize that each have special memories of the person which are equally precious and important. nothing can be achieved by anger and accusations being hurled by one to another. instead the tussle for memories slowly changes to a sharing of memories. they start bonding over their loss. each of them treasure fractured memories of the dead person. and by sharing them with one another, they are able to create the memory of a complete person. a doting son, a loving partner.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=te8LQ0WTjVE&feature=relmfu