Social stuff: Part 1

Socially, problem with marks of people’s achievements is that you can’t talk back to an artist through the product of his art work. Even though initially the whole idea of creating art is to communicate. You can’t pause your video player at your favourite shot, to take some time out to call the production team involved in the project to say, “Damm! You guys just made me cry (for real)”. Socially, you’re just a fan. Mentally you might be a little more or less but the whole point is- society is about delivering- what you don’t deliver, doesn’t even exist.

Significance is a big deal. You did some good while hiding- brings joy to yourself. But ‘social joy’ is a different thing. Sometimes we own nothing joyful or praiseworthy (on a very individual level) still some people get to serve the food better than they can cook. Another chef cries at home thinking why he didn’t take that “extra social” shot to not only get some money, but a whole big lot of credits in the areas of joy (personal and social!), happiness and the areas of general (pointless but great!) celebrations of life.

Stiffness to do right all life long and grow white hair for a cause is one thing. Courage to do small wrongs knowingly to bring yourself That Extra Piece of Joy is another. Life is a cycle, no doubts. I say it’s a ****in Not So Steady Sine Wave!

Emptiness is caused by lack of or excess of deliverance. “OMG I am not known.” “OMG I can’t get lost.” “OMG am I changing with or without someone.” “OMG am I too off the line or too straight on the line?” Confusion barely needs an excuse. “OMG am I saying OMG?” Depression is seeded in us excessively. To sterilize a certain thoughts or parts of mind is an art. Art is to communicate. Artwork that makes one known with a blast makes regular great people harder to communicate back. Life is a cycle. A loop of small uncertain things occurring in different colours and shapes.

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One of those days

Days on which we do real things, for example the day you broke yourself into rushing tears in a friend's company is quite easy to (specifically!) remember, are permanent in memory, and in the most significant terms. Those days signify themselves because of the content in them. But what I want to talk about are the other days, the days that help you say, "It was one of those days, when I used to _ _ _ _ _ ". Days that help us form a "family" of days with similar magical, extraordinary, or say, high intensity moments.

Sometimes it's hard to remember one particular day of one of those days. Because the individuality of just one single day among that category of days brings fear to one's mind- fear of not remembering it as One Single Day Worth Remembering. What we do grab from them are the traces that collectively form a common trace. A common trace from many special days-

I used to feel magical when I was a kid...

We used to walk through the park in late evening hours...

What if you want to live in one particular day for many usual days of swimming in a big pool of thoughts? What if you don't want it to be just One Of Those Days? What if you fear the ongoing loss of That Special Time of That Special Day?

[At around 6:50 PM today I had such a fear]

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A moment is..

Time lapses like hell. Days ultimately come out to be nothing more than tiny numbers in a calender. Time is a joke. Sometimes a clock in a cell phone runs just too slow, sitting in a park, talking, listening, going back and forth in time. It's like ten minutes let us play with ten years of our lives. You can have a lifetime of speed in five seconds. Lifetime- is beyond measurements if you really live. Five second lifetime is enough then. Satisfaction, fractions of moments, reactions we manage like kids in a hurry, blurry vision of the past and the future, first things and last things, beginnings, ends, prayers, layers of knowing- everything formulates time and happiness. That's when you live. Because otherwise years are as worthless as bored seconds of a dead day. Emotions are like drugs I guess. Being low is as tasteful as being high. Talking to everyone, self talking, listening to everyone, ultimately listening to only self- are mere tries to cheat with time. We're all kids. We're all cheaters. If you're not, better try being one today and tell me later if the day goes any longer.

You brake somewhere and ask somebody, "What's the time?" You don't have a phone or a watch or a clock or even the digital thing in the dead dashboard of your car. Why do you need to know what time is it if the time is ready to escape you anyways? Reach there on time, come home on time, leave a friend on time so you guys don't get in trouble, eat on time, sleep on time because the world gets going at 10, take things from someone on time, tell somebody something on time, plan things in time, think about time in time. Clocks never escape us. Neither can we evade measurements. Numbers are everywhere. But drama- is timeless! A quick rough dead metaphor.

Moments and seconds are different. Seconds can't measure moments. A real moment can't be measured at all. A moment is-

when nothing else matters.

"No past, no future, no problems.. Just the moment"

...

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Life

..

take my life and throw it away..
throw a party for all your friends..
if you can spend it somewhere..

take my heart and go away..
somewhere for yourself again..
if you still think its unfair..

that we never had a testing time..
when you were testing my..
everything I found blinding..

life! give me a December..
'cuz my November was spent..
looking for reasons..

life! give me a June again..
'cuz when we're through again..
we 'll need warm seasons..

..

fake my life seems and..
I'll be divided..
if I repair it my way..

make my day and fly away..
somewhere for us someday..
if you think it will work that way..

I know we never had rest in life..
when you were testing my..
everything that I had..
speeding against you and me..

life! give me a December..
'cuz my November was spent..
looking for reasons..

life! give me a June again..
'cuz when we're through again..
we 'll need warm seasons..

...

Dec, '08

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'Garma garmee ki chhuttiyan'

There’s no doubt that August has started and not only it has started, it’s the 3rd day already (by the time I am actually posting it, its 4th actually). I am still in July. After my semester 4 exams till the last week of May, I have been on vacations. But these vacations were more or less not vacations. Here is a list of what all I had to do in these holidays of about a week more than two months: -


1. Spending some real early holidays in hope to get ideas to spend the rest of them and enjoying the beginning of the vacation with no tensions about the so called “summer project” or whatsoever of my so called college.

2. Not going out of station or anywhere except going to watch a couple of movies and trying to help out my sister with her new (right now critical) modular kitchen business by being an extra man.

3. Hoping to learn the business but coming back again and again to being an extra man.

4. Realizing that it actually is the best I can actually do in an alien field. I have spent my working years in and around media so I simply don’t follow handling middle aged ladies, demonstrating our termite proof, water proof and this is where my instant creativity delivers well, “fire proof” solid wood shutters and rustproof hinges and representing a product I am not much aware and sure of or even passionate about.

5. Spending most of the month driving here and there, picking and dropping hardware, tools, shutters, baskets, glasses, wrongly cut glasses, corrected glasses, water bottles, my sister’s partner because he cant drive, my sister because she shouldn’t drive because of her back pain, plywood, metal sheets, plywood covered with metal sheets, fittings, fitters etc. When it comes to choosing the basic work in a family celebration or something, driving is the best I can do. I, more or less, just celebrated working at my sister’s place.

6. Thinking about the rest half of July and trying to think of some final executable chill out plans. Still going to movies, still driving, still feeling weird about joining back college in August.

7. Senselessly fighting and arguing with friends out of my frustration and the mismatch by being rude when they’re actually feeling bad about something already. Basically wasting most of the first half of July in doing the most worthless things if we talk about friends and possibilities of setting up good times and feeling further hopeless by being even more angry on self for rapidly executing the friend pushing process.

8. Chatting online with a friend and making us both feel miserable on the mid day of 16th July. Feeling angry about her ignoring my then ongoing bad feeling about random stuff and feeling angrier on self again for making things that way myself and complaining about everybody who doesn’t listen when I am the one who doesn’t speak. Creating confusions. Understanding the actual stuff. Being pissed off totally and seeking time till night.

9. Finishing my dinner on the 16th night, hearing the popping sound followed by screams, feet rushing outside and voices of our tenants yelling for a fire brigade, climbing upstairs with instantly helping servants from around, yelling to stop them from rushing back outside on hearing rapid bottle breaking and thinking that somebody’s stuck inside, passing them buckets on the top of the front wall and having a bucket full of water poured liberally as it just slipped and got wrongly aimed at me instead of the fire upstairs, going out in the street and meeting two hundred faces in a single second, showing way to the very first policemen on a bike, ringing door bells of neighbours to get their cars moved for the big fire vehicles on their way, rapidly questioning people watching from balconies about unknown cars, coming back in front of the house, seeing big flames coming out of the burnt windows, realizing the whole thing being a big deal, going back in to check on Brownie (our dog) locked in one of the inner rooms of the house, finding it quite uncomfortable to walk around in the house with absolutely no light and water in the main passage, taking Brownie to the rear veranda and convincing him by pushing to stay there, being able to push open only 6 inches of corridor because of the fat water pipe all over the stairs, climbing up from the other way with a malfunctioning emergency light in a hand and rapidly slapping it with the other, standing breathless in the smoke, sitting with fire fighters, knowing that the head fireman turned off the dinner warming stove in a burning kitchen with a gas cylinder right in the middle with no mask or helmet on, crouch walking all over the ashes, glass and broken things, further cooling of the living room by splashing water on the remains of the living room with a mug, losing the mug in the second round and doing the same with just the bucket, sweating and suffocating at the same time, going downstairs again to get the birds out, going outside again to further meet people, listening to neighbours and their quick situational solutions to things and being partially convinced, seeing everything, meeting everyone, explaining things, hearing reasons…

10. Climbing upstairs the next morning, seeing things, in fact, the unrecognizable things in the living room, calculating the damage, looking at things like looking into a fresh newsreel, hearing the strange sounds of footsteps all over the house upstairs, further calculating the damage, trying to find the blades of the ceiling fans and finding them nowhere, analyzing the remaining 3 inches of the living room door made of soft coal still standing in closed position, finding only springs of the sofa set, checking out the strangeness of a burnt floor, analyzing the bent grills of the front windows and the iron rods of the ceiling and walls well naked at places, further calculating the damage, checking out other rooms, finding all the initially pure white ceilings deep black, walking around, celebrating in silence, touching the walls and finding them still hot…

11. Seeing firemen and police a few times with my brother in law. Hearing stuff. Feeling tactful in a pathetic way.

12. Listening to suggestions from everywhere who visited the house after that. The process still continues. You tell them again and again what happened. You tell them about your family’s fear of having the tenants to flee without paying for the damage. Thinking about the worst cases. All kinds of dramatic solutions run through your mind when you sit down at night, still sensing the unavoidable smell of a burnt house, like writing a journal about the whole thing and waiting till someone makes a movie out of it as the trend is kind of popular these days and then finally hoping to sell a few copies of your wrecked work and ultimately getting some money to fight the case if it turns into one because anyways cases don’t pack up in just a couple of years here.This is our sweet city! (I love Delhi for this in fact!)

13. Being sick in the last week of vacations and considerably losing some serious weight. Recovering one day and again having a dramatic day with the tenants, loading of a truck with their stuff, senseless arguments, police, neighbours, talks, discussions, further arguments and so called (pat of) settlement the police tries to console you with.

14. Meeting friends and trying to have the best time by the tail of these two months or so.

15. Making a water park outing plan in the last day of the vacation and going somewhere else instead.

16. Wishing friends on the Friendship Day. Doing nothing.


Besides that it isn’t that I didn’t do much for fun in this time (though I just had a lot of it, especially as compared to the time I could actually put into fun; Had some of the best time of Summer '09 officially). I watched a couple of movies. Driving around with friends at 2am on the night when the first metro accident happened at the LSR college site. I still haven’t seen Harry Potter which I wanted to accompany a friend to.


Feels quite strange when I think what did I do in these two months or if we just vaguely talk about any lapse of time in my life so far. Nothing. There are still a lot of times in my bucket which I don’t have photographs of but yes, they are all good times. Strangely, even if you don’t talk about the right man’s curriculum vitae or anything that official or academic, still there are a lot of things that a living person just randomly gets gifted with. Drama would always be there. Sometimes less or sometimes too much. Sometimes you’re thrilled, sometimes scared or sometimes you are just simply entertained.


Today was the first day at college. First day of my fifth semester. I didn’t go. I am just assimilating my vacation activities for now and will go tomorrow if my will builds up well!

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Urge to let go

Honestly, I am fed up of going to college. I am more than cracked by the idea of having education to build a career, a life and a future. I am torn by thinking about the former two things when I think of what I really do and who I really meet or who I learn from or who I sit collinear with. I don't hate my college. But I just hate the fact that I can't get myself safely out of somewhere I can't stand at all.

It's been two years and in August I 'll be in third year. Positive thinking is a good thing but people say, by their experience which comes from what they have learnt for themselves and what they have been through, that Bachelor of Computer Applications is 'one of the most difficult courses that most people commonly pass in four years'. One extra year. Let's be straight and honest, think real and forget about miracles or magic, I am no exception- in my life so far I know the best about how average I have been. Two years still left.

We avoid talking about things till the last seconds. By 'we', I mean people of my category- the last minute ones. But let's consider the facts now 'cause I am really tired of virtually getting rid of things. I am tired of escaping too at the same time. And the misery is, I am still ready to launch myself away in a second at any moment. It's like I am already sitting on a rocket with the final switch connected to my sub conscious.

Chris sings, "Running in circles, chasing our tales, coming back as we are". I think that's what's happening to me. I know well things should be taken care of. But that only applies till a limit. I am spoiled to get back into seats with classmates. Work spoiled me. Just a little money spoiled me. The more I get deeper into things, the more it gets harder to breathe. And this is not exaggerating. Only my personal God knows how I hold on to something that pushes me away like repelling gravity.

I hope to gain control again. But my God again knows how much I feel like escaping from, not knowing where to though. This is a depression. A craft, flying to an alternate world- not really mine- which I am expected not to eject from. I hope to pass this time like passing a year underwater. I don't want to break this time lapse into pieces of rapid stress.

I know what people ask, "Why now? Why not before?". Sometimes you do get deeper into finding a way to ultimately realize that you must try from somewhere else. If you do turn out to be headstrong through the same puddle, even then it changes your colour in some way or the other. I am changed. And I will be changed. No matter how hard I think of being someone good, by the middle of the day, I end up being only good willed- nothing more.

What is this career thing people sing about anyway? Life is organic to start with. One day we'll be pulp or smoke or just cold skin, till then I guess you just need to follow your will more than following a CV.

People say, "let go of things" and they are perfectly right. Just speak out what you feel, just go ahead and publish your inside to others. But I am trapped. If I really free myself and let go, one of the first things will be relieving myself out of places I feel smothered in. No more answering. No more talks of my career. All I want is a talk of my life and to me, life and career are two separate things. People often live thinking both are parts of the same wheel, perhaps they are right for themselves and maybe it works for them. But people are people. People live in planning, people live in love they fail to understand later, people go door to door with briefcases in hands and in clothes they don't understand, people terrify other people, people find God in things, people rescue others. More or less- I am not people.

I am selfishly my father's son- a simple person with simple wishes inside.

I feel misplaced over and over again. Like I am from somewhere else- not of somewhere either inferior or superior- that is not really the case. It's simply like again and again, second after second I get deeper into The Subconscious Rocket Theory. And 'I realize now, outsider or insider, it doesn't really matter'. 'All that matters is knowing what you really want, AND GOING AFTER IT'.

And don't worry people this isn't a suicide letter or an escapist's will. But a bomb is a bomb right, you just never know! ;)

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One way glass

Cleaning the numbers of white telephone..
Sorry didn’t tell I was imagining you home..
Was ready to never make a sound all way through..
Slipped out of me I was thinking about you..
So is the pressure of being a good guy..
But what does a good man ever acquire..
So is the light that’s just driving me mad..
All I wish still is still all I ever had..
So are you having a slow time fast?
I ‘ll stay watching you through one way glass..

Speaking out everything just not my voice..
Feeling the fear will you forever rejoice..
Hanging upside down by a free will ladder..
If you just go ahead you ‘ll surely feel better..
So is the tension seeing the sun so alone..
Radiating signals for a child who left home..
So is the blanket suit I feel wrapped into..
Through rain or fire I ‘ll stay listening to you..
Am I still winning in hiding till tricky time lasts..
I wish I was on the wrong side of one way glass..

I don't have a poetry blog anymore because I think I was wasting a few KBs of the web. But you don't get over your bad habits so easily, right?! Even if it looks misplaced, I don't care, I don't have anywhere else to put it. So just

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Star Trek speed

Last Friday I went to PVR Saket to watch Star Trek with a friend. When my this friend, Pammi, and I go to watch a movie on his second hand Pulsar 150, we always get the last night show. Usually, he rides the way up and I bring us back! So basically, I get the "feel ride"! I, selfishly and proudly, get to speed in those few minutes of a mind stimulated by a movie.

And if a movie bursts up thoughts of space, stars, black holes and time travel- you get to ride the extremes of mind stimulation!

To begin with, I am a person who has never seen any single episode of any of the Star Trek seasons. I haven't even watched the Star Trek cartoons ever. So, it took me a few minutes to grasp the theme of Star Trek. When I was at the ticket counter, my only imagination about the movie was a movie with something to do with space ships and explosions and typically saving our good old lonely planet earth in the end, maybe "yet again"!

But Star Trek turned out to be much much more than a kid's space ship craze! Its a complete story, promising complete characters. To me, the only Star Trek thing I have watched (the movie) beautifully captures the concept of "alternate reality", that too in a comic like storyline, so you basically don't feel like blinking at all throughout the movie. You dont want to miss a thing!

Same night when I rode Pammi's bike, I felt it again- the calmness of high speed. No matter how scared is a thought of being unable to take control of a sudden speeding threat when you're speeding your best at that maximum point of energy that the engine under your command can offer, there's no fear, no too much taken mind, no thoughts of falling off and tearing off with friction, not even eyes trying too much to grasp road details swiftly.

Anyway, drama aside. Maybe speed is just comparative!

Its like when you're at zero speed, you initialise your mind throttle with a track like I Will Be Heard by Hatedbreed but at the other end of speed (of your private engine, of course) all you hear is something as meditative as "Confidence in you, is confidence in me, is confidence in high speed"! [Figure out than song yourself! :P]

We reached my place. From there, Pammi alone "travels further" to his place. When I stopped, I figured my legs absorbed the breath of a small engine, radiating out mathematics of all the speed!

Star Trek was awesomatic!
Speed was calm and peaceful!

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2006 recognises still

Saurabh Arya- That's the person I met when I was in Aravis (A Haryana based NGO). I was the one and only sound recordist/sound editor of the NGO. I and my anchor friend Saurabh were under Prof. TK Thomas' vision to make Chetna. Seems a bit serious this way when you say that we "produced" a "program" that was "broadcast" on "AIR" Rohtak. We had a fifteen minute slot, so each program was about 14:30 minute long.

But was it so serious of a deal really?! We laughed. We wrote. Our voices echoed more of jokes than reverb free recordings. We wrote some more. We tore off A4 sheets. We improvised each others' Hindi. Especially Thomas Sir's quick recipes of Ka Ke Ki mixup!

We worked. We celebrated small things of our Chetna scenario with Samosa parties. Thomas Sir trained many batches of the marginalized children to speak on the radio; for the radio. We assisted him. We spoke to the "kids". The kids of our age. We connected with them each time Thomas Sir ignited the "radio connection".

We talked sound. We wrote sound. We saw sound. More than just I, as a recordist, recorded them, we all recorded ourselves! We all were audience of our own voices. We improvised. We became better.

Saurabh met me first in such a group of radio students only. At first, I didn't know he had already done a couple of programs before. He had done Gandhiji Ki Laathi in which he voice played The Laathi. Gandhiji Ki Laathi was one of the hottest phrases that we used everyday in our Chetna age.

Chetna hadnt started then. Thomas Sir and I patiently and sometimes impatiently waited for about a year for Chetna to start finally. After a few weeks of having a female voice to anchor the program, Thomas Sir got Saurabh to do the job. That was when Saurabh Arya became the official Saurabh Arya!

I, in my two years at Aravis, painted a lot of tunes, a whole bunch of loops electronically. Chetna's signature tune was initially one of my ultra personal (but still sharable with Prof. Thomas) electronic instrumentals. In no time, we made a signature tune out of it when Vinay Koshy (Prof. TK Thomas' son) sang a couple of instant variations of Chetna vocals over a compact evening!

We built Chetna. Thomas Sir helped us in the beginning to get our grips on something we had never had our ears upon ever before. But then, when we got the flow in us, we became addicted to the process.

Each episode was a topic, a quick discussion (over no-particular-reason tea cups!), a write up, finalising of a script full of criss cross patterns all over, a smooth recording session, a quick but clean editing session, recording of the master CD, printing and cutting of labels, packing of the CD in a bubble pack, pasting of labels, mailing the CD, pinning the courier slip in a file!

Chetna became a routine. Honestly, I never heard Chetna in Haryana, on a real rural radio and in a real broadcast. I could never manage that even though I wanted to.

This process I am talking about, wasn't messy at all. But still we enjoyed to act like we were messed up. For our teacher, Thomas Sir, it wasn't a big deal ever, as he was too experienced always to get messed. It was only us, not messed up ever, just playing like kids in a bath tub!

Chetna was our that life!

--
Sometimes I think I have cut out a time. In fact, most of the times I think that, if I think about time at all.. But I met my friend again on 7th June, 09- a Sunday! A Sunday, maybe to connect weeks and months and years.

We talked nonsense again, like we used to do. We talked about Oda and Rossi, the bikers we always bullied in MotoGP 3: Ultimate Racing Technology. We finished our scripts wisely and got on playing videogames. I always took the first turn! :)

In fact, Saurabh always gave me the first turn. Maybe because he was, after all, Gandhiji's Laathi! ;)

We haven't changed. Not at least in the ways we're still filled with the potential to kill time. Not at all about how we think about Chetna, if we think of it, when we think of it. But I know I have changed. I know how I have changed, in my heart.

And its not a bad news in any way as I am still spotted by my people from a couple of years back! ;)

It was a life, a moment, a season, a kind of dream that you always remember. Even though we joked about it all, we were into it! [Yeah! That deeper kind of shittiness]. We marked something way bigger than lines and dates in our CVs.

It was a life. A complete packet. A packet to remember life long!

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Time Flies

How would I describe a usual day before an exam? I have all I need but I sleep, quite comfortably. That’s how I have become. And when I want to try the most, sometimes, things get totally locked for me. Like today, I had an old copy of Herbert Schildt’s Java 2- The Complete Reference which I had to return today, so I exchanged it for a newer looking copy. On a common exam day I come back home and sleep for about 7 hours flat. Today, when I woke up, I realized the copy I had got didn’t have specifically the chapters I needed. Hoorah!

I don’t believe in misfortune or any such theory that gives you a chance to give reasons to cover up your stupidity or carelessness or any kind of weakness that you are ashamed of. But sometimes when I am totally keen to fix things and be a better person in any possible way, things get locked up. Its just like what I do to people sometimes comes straight back to me in the same manner. Like I give people a fair chance to talk when I am in a battle with them, and when that chance is gone, I never (sometimes, I am trying to fix this already) make the chance feel like an open option again.

Its like God gives me a fair chance which I waste. And then when I want to fix things, and when I want to put all my efforts, I simply cant.

About three weeks ago, I had a reappear exam of mathematics. I had far thoughts of clearing maths this time, and I was working on it. In case of reappear exams there is nothing official or nicely displayed in our college, so all the information you get is from some student who is told by some teacher. Its all talk to talk. And guess what, one of my good acquaintances in my class forgets to tell me. So when I ask, “When is the exam?”, with full innocence, I am told that it “was two days ago”.

What do you do when you want to but you cant control things?
What happens in that instance?
What is wrong when what you are willing to separates from what lies in your hands?

I have no idea about any all time remedy about this but all I am doing right now is listening to Time Flies by Puddle of Mudd.

Time does fly and sometimes you have to just let it fly! ;)

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