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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Something raging

This is it. Right now. Something I feel once a while, sometimes it lasts for seconds and sometimes for weeks and months. This anger. Reason? Simple? One? Many? Someone? Everyone? I don't know. It's like a cycle. Blood pressure pumping anger or anger fueling blood pressure- both are simply high. And this isn't one of those feelings that I do know and do understand, when everything just feels as worthless as usual and strangely without a reason at all. This is something else. More or less? Good or bad? Controlled or leaking? I don't know. It's like a drink, acting somehow even when you're awake and well trying to feed the senses. Something that just simply kills all the wishes to share or speak out. Or if I do speak out, turns me off for discussing it. In a moment, everything feels just so delicate. Doors, walls, distemper chipping off in one of those sign giving corners, CDs, hinges, floor, plastic, metal, food, people, gadgets, screens, packing, fitting, bolts, plugs, vases, pipes, wires, buttons, current, perfumes, handles, surfaces, contacts, brochures, business cards, adhesives, polythene bags, tube lights, ICs, internet- everything I see or hear or smell or feel or touch or mere think about- intentionally or accidentally.

This is what it is. One of the moods. One of the seasons. One of the moments. One of the hours. Anytime. Evergreen. Never ending. Life consuming. Destructive. Self destructive. Critical. Unmanageable yet bearable. Observable yet immeasurable. Suppressible but not erasable.
--
I don't want comments on this one but if you want to say anything at all about anything, email me, or just say here- I READ IT. :) :( :-\

Cheers! [I did one of the least things about recording it]
Thanks!

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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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Moods vs. Seasons vs. Moody seasons!

Worst is anger inside and burning sun outside. You pass all the people in a bus to get to the front door of it but the engine too, is too burning that you can feel it radiating heat through you. Your forehead already is tough and you feel the urge of rushing through things with a blow even more. A beautiful combination that I went through today was tasting just a bit of stress because of someone known (just a bit though, of course) wasn’t feeling perfectly balanced in head from a couple of days.

“Hey.. Don’t mind me asking but are you stressed about something from a couple of days? Please don’t relate my asking with anything you can guess this is about. And you don’t have to tell; if there is something, just say yes..”

“Hmm.. There is something.. :)”
--

All of a sudden as you cross a long straight road sitting in a bus again, and you realize that its overcast outside already!

And what to say about the 5PM sun when you are traveling alone and so is a friend of yours, and all you do is send text messages to each other and say hi to the sun; through the sun.

Or when you need to talk or hear yourself, a self you’re sick of, a self that doesn’t speak at all ever and the night becomes even more silent; trying to help you in a way maybe.

A season is a season. Inside or out. With a warning or without. All you need to do is just try not to mess everything up because of too much of changes at once. Because the worst thing about reality, I guess, is that it just likes steadiness.

What’s your season right now? Sunny, overcast or rainy??! ;)

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