4/29/1988 - 2010

Well to start off.. the title may just be confounding as this usually related to an obituary column. but thank God, it isn't!
This was to be the lifespan of the old me who was eternally awaiting that mystic transmogrification to land upon, which apparently isn't around the corner yet and hence in all probability the RHS should continue to ..2011..12..13 and so on ..
School
Birthdays were fun till say early teens and with completion of schooling, the fun completely died out! Luckily as I was a good enough student while at school, at around 4/29 every year, teachers would distribute report cards and I at the same time chocolates!! Thankfully, it served both purposes..majorly as part of my birthday celebrations and secondly as a reminder that I did well that year! ;) .. Well the topper was invariably this gal!
With quite celebrations at home.. relatives esp my fav aunt dropping in huge gifts.. the end was always sweet! and one to look forward to...

That was it about birthdays!! ... That paradoxically was the obituary of my birthday ;)

Plus 2
Totally shunned celebrations!!!
Reason??- could no more take those, so called invaluable career guidance classes from every Tom Dick and Harry ...
Well... dont get me wrong.it has nothing to do with my penile egos!..I am generally open to any advice!.. Well its a different story whether I follow it diligently or not. Now imagine this sorta person totally lambast those well wishers.. Hell yes u got it ! I was totally saturated to the brim! The weekend tests and the accompanying low scores ...the tailgated marks sheets.piling syllabus... plus the intro to PC games, thanks to Rahu(l)...punny u c.. (excuse me for not counting Road Rash as an intro to gaming!) was already too much to handle :)
Grad
Welcome Home Sanitarium .. yes this was an asylum...a jungle ! you'd totally get lost in the wilderness..yet it had that magnetic quality that was irresistible ..
Bashing bumps, rapid fires .. deodorant fires.. followed by water bath.. given a chance mud bath ...all in action at one place... yep.. you are at a D day.. err.. a B day party!
College days dubbed Happy days would make this post hugely protracted and hence censored out!
The passing mention here about this is because ..4/29 is generally the time when senti-ness is in the air ....the last lab... the last grub... the last write up ..transgress ephemera and are etched onto our memories for a life time ... (Thanks to all the status updates from juniors!..)
Work
If people really longed to take a day off from work, it has been ingrained in our memes that it should be a death of a grandparent...But to my surprise a birthday literally gave you the same privileges..and a few extra points, like you could watch your colleagues toil while you babbled on phone all day long, simply because it wasn't counterfeit after all!
A gentle cake cutting session.... and way lesser work made my day!!...

On Closing remarks.. I'd like to thank my now dead cell phone!.. Well w/o you, I would not have known how many people really waited to call me up!! ... Routine wishes are the ones that you would get every year! On account of me not being reachable .. this time around, wishes had been raised to the echelons of special ones simply 'cos they carried loads of profanities and blasphemes that simply spiced up the whole birthday!
All those school frns.... dear college buddies... bros sis...cousins.. own loan..... watevr ....
Thanks a Ton!!

Muhahaha....Birthday is again a thing to look forward to !! ... :-)) .... Thanks again !!! Luv ya Loads!! ...xoxo

Lost ....

When the punchline in evey mail I sent out reads that I should not egret doing things....
how could I let this one stay in the drafts??? Not that Its one miraculous post proposing a watershed theory... but this at least reflects the state of my mind as on 12/5/09 !! :) feels good that blogger had this option available ;-)) 


I was lost. .. I was desperate ....with lappy formatted ... bookmarks lost ! .. I was deserted .. I had to find my way back afterall ! ...read through those pages stored on my mind... to find those good blogs that I sincerely follow... ..

What did Coelho say in the Alchemist ? .. ring any bells ??-"treasure lies where your heart belongs" ...

I found the link to the site in my own past blog post !! .. Huh ! . .Relieved ! 
this rerouted to Amit's blog ... 
I'm back to normalcy post scanning through  my fav reads after a long time !! :D :D

Adrift ...

1100 Endgame
Ripped off from my fav blog . Totally loved it cos share almost the same feelings. Everytime mom calls up and reminds me that I have not called up home in the current week, I go through the pain of deliberating on how did I ever manage to let the whole week pass by and not even once call up home ?
How did I manage to not call up my friend who reminds me everytime that first sip of alcohol enters my bloodstream?
What everyday chores or divine operations complete my day ?? ...
Where am I heading to ?? into an unsocial cocoon?? ..

"A house is never big enough. Gourmet food is not available in enough palettes. Vacations always seem like one hurried compressed project plan. Conversations are so out of fashion. “Transactions” is what define living. “Friends and relatives” invariably refers to your office colleagues. The next car is always planned and constantly being budgeted for. The race is to make your kid “successful”, rather than a better human being. Your mother is never more than a phone call away, but you don’t ever have time to talk more than 60 seconds. Your sister is “another clutch” living in another town. We all have mobiles, facebook, email – yet we know so little about our siblings day to day lives. Maids, washing machines, cooks – all create “time” (as in free up your time) – but these never seem to trickle down to the call you wanted to place to your love. Crying is passé. Smiling and laughing are further passé. Holding hands is now being “soft in the head”. Hugging is being sentimental. To want to be with someone is considered “mushy” and old worldish.
Does this tale sound eerily familiar?"

A fan... w8 4 it....atic!!

There must be something ... some fragile ... gossamer line that demarcates a fan from a fanatic!
Did these two just become synonymous?? Whoever thought so .. kindly revisit your dictionaries!
An ardent follower of smth/sm1 is a fan. That is the end to it. It ends with a full stop. All the added atrocities that the so called privileged..god sent messiahs try to do is total BS and in no right sense justifies the clan that they represent.
Hooliganism should not be entertained and never be practiced even when provoked! No. .these are not words ripped out of a handbook for Life after 60!! ..
Hope you get the drift! ...'cos the vexation that I went through in the MI Vs CSK IPL-3 final could not have been put in better words! (blame my vocab.. if u wish to..)
Okay.. accepted that Tendulkar is the best player in the world! ... C'mon ....even a 3 year old kid knows that for God's sake !!! You don't have to reiterate that fact by cheering for him every time he is on screen!..Well..die hard ones could be excused to this...But well.. if you ask me . I draw the line HERE..
Booing is not only superfluous but totally ruins what a game stands for...To speak contextually ..it just vandalises the basic cricketing ethos....'cos cricket was always known as the gentleman's game!
When MSD walked out to bat with CSK's fate hanging in balance..though slightly tilted in MI's favour ..I was totally apalled at NOT the obvious lack of respect for the Indian Captain but at the total mayhem created by booing and hissing that wanted every piece of the player!
Is this what any sane lover/observer/fan would do ? No .. no arguments please .. on the pretext of Passion ... Cricket being our religion ... nor ... Retaliation could answer for this ! ..
On the D day ...it was all forced oscillation for me as far as my support was concerned ... I wanted Sachin himself to mop things up ..prior to the Toss..
Post all the hissing for Dhoni... I wanted CSK to thwart MI.....well Sachin though has to remain unbeaten in that case..
Lets be sportive..in a way that retains the original flavor of the word and not more like its recent insipid cousin...

To take pride in such crass activities proves gullibility and not infallibility...
I was hurt by reactions of a few DC fans to Semis loss ... Well if you constantly keep revising your targets ... trust me ..you'll make an ass of youself...
From Title Winners to Finalists to semifinalists ....!! . Well accept it ... and wish better luck for next time ...Don't bank on Match Fixing to save you!
Please... to all those fans out there in Inorbit Mall, Malad ...watching the big screen ..b/w 8-11pm.. kindly enlighten yourselves so that you can
" Live and Let the game Live ..." ... Take pride in being a fan not a fanatic....

My Name Is ...

This of course will take me back to the Eminem song ... but the driving force behind this post isn't admiration for anything but in simple disgust I chose to pen this down and vent my feelings. I have been a Shah Rukh fan for something like .. 12 years now .. and there have been quite few movies that have pissed me off quite like MNIK.. Billu Barber might just race ahead  but I still can't figure out a 3rd movie befitting the Worst of SRK list.
When the backbone of the film tries to "capture" the  world's most talked about event and tries to "enlighten" us on the adversities faced, as did a million other flicks prior to this, you can guess the trivial output. Frankly this movie should not bother you at all. This rightly only did invoke Shiv Sena and a few others with "strong" opinions who "dared" the Sena attack and watched the movie as a mark of protest. I had taken a conscious decision to not watch this until all the hype wears down and so I did today.
Sorry SRK, this is as crass as Billu could get ... as bland as a Rakesh Roshan movie ...and as senseless as any other KJ movie in recent times !! .. Its a different story that KKHH remains one of my favs.

Conclusions:
Kajol- Please stop acting. Your on screen chemistry is extinct! So, please do not come back to haunt us again!
KJ is the most overrated director in Bollywood.
SRK, you certainly need to spruce up your list of directors to work with.
I sign off with great vexation watching this heavily cliche based.. one more disease oriented slick flick... prolly having a punchline like ... Hum Honge Kaamyaab !!!  ...

Been there .. done that !!

It just feels so surrealistic .. the very thought of Saeed Anwar's highest score ever being surpassed!! The Mt. Everest being conquered !! Only one man could do it ... should have done it and so very rightly ... He has DONE it !
Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar aka SRT has finally done it, while he had almost been there in several earlier occasions. This was the Magnum Opus that everyone was waiting for from the God !
The deft flicks, the hefty heaves.. the inside outs ..cut loosing at will... you name it and He played it..
A chance-less innings which I'm trying to make a note of only because this is one day I'l treasure for a really long time to come!
I had been there while the Little Master reached the double hundred!!
I have seen him Live on T.V. when he actually reached the 200 mark !!
I was being the truant kid in skipping my team meeting to be there !
This should be rated along with the best of my cricketing memories ... the very nostalgic .. just before the Class X, CBSE Social Studies Special Onslaught against Pakistan at Centurion (think so..)!
It was .. to say the least.. though a bit harsh ... irritating to see Dhoni take singles off the last ball of every over for the 45-50 over period. May be it was Sachin who requested this .. or otherwise, a billion other people wanted The Superman on strike !
Thank you Sachin !! for all those innings which kept coming and been refreshing our memories ..

PS - You can watch the teasers to quench your thirst for this innings @ SRT on 198!  and Over # 50!

What's the unsaid ??

Did I read somewhere that most of the communication is non verbal ?? Then why is it that we still cling to every bit of verbal communication? and are upset when we do not get the required cues in verbal form. Is the tenuity of it playing a part? Doesn't too much explicitness take away the legitimacy of the whole expression in itself? Why doesn't an overdose of it sound like fawning?
Why is it that people still sway at the very instance of a said expression that is clearly over the top? Everyone wants to be loved for sure! They only crave for it more and more.
When has Love transmogrified into a lame spell bee competition??? You say it and only then you WIN it! Did your parents ever tell you how much they love you day in day out ? Did you not take things for granted with them ? Did your siblings come up to you and thank you profusely for a birthday gift? Did you realise that they loved you/vice versa only after such tete a tete instances? If yes, pity you!!
Care/Love doesn't stem from a "Good Morning Darling" or an "I love you".....
A "Thank You" I opine should not be considered in the same league since you generally thank people with whom you are more formal and feel a general obligation to appreciate his/her help. A Taxi Driver/Bearer/Usher.. or someone you help cross a busy road ... all these illustrate an unsaid obligation which you are trying to acknowledge with a "thanks".

... Though still a part of me wants to yell out as many verbal expressions to all those I've loved, I still find it lame on my/their part to do/expect so. DO NOT dismiss this off as mere callousness. I just find it unnecessary.. or do I ?? .. If all the people in the world were like me, then definitely HELL YES !! ..
Alas! .. it isn't the case. I still have to try my best to convince them that I still love/value them. Silence is no more golden..its just a pale yellow hue....

Please read this from Harold Pinter
"There are two silences. One when no word is spoken. The other when perhaps a torrent of language is being employed. This speech is speaking of a language locked beneath it. That is its continual reference. The speech we hear is an indication of that which we don't hear. It is a necessary avoidance, a violent, sly, anguished or mocking smoke screen which keeps the other in its place. When true silence falls we are still left with echo but are nearer nakedness. One way of looking at speech is to say that it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness.

We have heard many times that tired, grimy phrase: 'failure of communication' … and this phrase has been fixed to my work quite consistently. I believe the contrary. I think that we communicate only too well, in our silence, in what is unsaid, and that what takes place is a continual evasion, desperate rearguard attempts to keep ourselves to ourselves. Communication is too alarming. To enter into someone else's life is too frightening. To disclose to others the poverty within us is too fearsome a possibility.

I am not suggesting that no character in a play can never say what he in fact means. Not at all. I have found that there invariably does come a moment when this happens, when he says something, perhaps, which he has never said before. And where this happens, what he says is irrevocable, and can never be taken back"

P.S. When is it that eyes will be considered as windows to the soul.. not in some form of literature biting dust.... but shall transform into a trite means of expression. I shall wait for that day to let myself speak of my Love for someone/something..
PPS- Amit's post real caught me off guard