I wonder why at times I act the way I don’t really want to. Actually in most such situations, I don’t act – I react. React to people, situations, perceptions, prejudices. But it’s always a reaction. There ain’t any justification for the reaction but I just feel forced to behave in a certain way, which on any other day in any other situation I would definitely not choose as my preferred course of action.

Sometimes people irritate me and I just want to be mean.
Sometimes situations frustrate me and I just want to bulldoze my way through them
Sometimes I am taken prisoner by my own perceptions and prejudices and then I do as they want me to do.

It’s not that am washing my hands off my behaviour, it’s not that I act like that in some fit, rather my reaction in such cases seems the best response to me in those moments. But once those moments pass, I realize that I could have actually done better than that.

But may be once those moments pass, their intensity gets lost somewhere and so is my view on appropriate response.

May be, may be not.

Guess, reactions by definition are instant natural response to a moment and that’s what I should let them be, till they change for better themselves or I change for worse…

Nice one by Shekhar Gupta on “presumed” crisis in in Indian Politics

http://www.indianexpress.com/sunday/story/211291.html

With just a year to go for UPA government, you need not be an Einstein to figure out why Congress would rather play the hardball with Left this time. They know that if someone gonna start this race at the pole position, it would be them. But then elections in India are a tricky lot.

Following Indian politics and elections has been a favourite with me since the time of Prannoy Roy and Vinod Dua till Rajdeep Sardesai and Barkha Dutt. I still remember my mom wondering why am I so glued to election analysis long after everyone knows who is going to make the government. I just love those debates and analysis. And I love checking predictions against results. If my memory is not failing me, first ever exit poll on Indian elections was hosted by Nalini Singh and I jotted down their predictions to check it against the actual results just to see how they measure up.

I remember during last general election, with everyone almost resigned to BJP sweeping the elections, when I predicted that Congress has as good a chance of making the government as BJP, everybody was like “what are you talking”, I backed it up with detailed state wide analysis of possible election results and that analysis was not out of blue, when you are watching almost every exit poll, opinion poll and following election news quite closely then if you just absorb the data and make your conclusion then sometimes you get it right. And I actually did. (though my numbers suggested that NDA would be the largest party but Congress + Left would make the government, election result were far more straight forward. )

So, when I read this article by Shekhar Gupta, I suddenly got alerted to possibility of another Indian elections round the corner. And gosh since I would be in Singapore, I gonna miss all those debates, analyses, claims, counterclaims ;-) Build up to Indian general elections has a funny way about it. Though when you get into the character details of all those candidates, it’s no more funny. But would save that outburst for another day.

Anyways, however little I have read about standoff between Left and congress on N-deal, I would go with Shekhar in suggesting that an early poll is inevitable though I disagree that Congress will have it all easy. With Indian elections, you should just wait a wee bit longer before you pick the right horse because I guess that’s what most of the Indian voters do as well.

So right now, let’s just wait and watch and for greater good let’s pray - May the least bad win!!!

At the stroke of midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to completion of 60 years of unfulfilled promises, unrealized potential and shattered dreams. In few hours we would celebrate our 60th Independence Day, which by definition should be a celebration of our nationhood but in reality seems nothing more than an annual holiday.

Pandit Nehru in his famous “Tryst with destiny” speech has said:

“Freedom and power bring responsibility. The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity. The ambition of the greatest man of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but as long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over.”


60 years have passed since then and today…

We have more poor than we had then.
We have still not eradicated polio.
We still look towards quotas to provide equal opportunity.
And worst of all, most of us seem to be ignorant about all this.

We are ignorant because glitzy malls that have come up everywhere have hidden the acres of slums.
We are ignorant because bollywood fund raisers for AIDS have made us forget that even today more people in India die of typoid and malaria.
We are ignorant because our media screams out that India has most number of billionaires in Asia but hundreds of people dying of hunger and cold are dismissed as too repetitive a news.
We are ignorant because Raisina Hill has a woman president and so we no more remember how frequently women get raped in capital of Republic of India
We are ignorant because what brings us out in streets is debacle of Indian cricket team in world cup and not our government’s lousy decisions.

And in this ignorance , what we are celebrating today is …

Fact that even after 60 years of independence, our country’s politics is still dictated by casteism, regionalism, communism and appeasement.
Fact that every year with alarming regularity we read about deaths due to floods, cold winters and hot summers but we have done nothing about it.
Fact that we have still not eliminated dowry deaths, female infanticide and polygamy.
Fact that our laws still read as Hindu undivided family act and muslim personal law instead of Uniform civil code
Fact that Biharis are beaten out from Mumbai and Tamils are mobbed in Bangalore
Fact that in one form or another we are facing civil unrest in Kashmir, Assam, Nagaland, Chhatisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand and Mizoram.
Fact that we are biggest democracy but we have more criminals in parliament than anywhere else in the world.

Frankly speaking, people who would be celebrating tomorrow will only be the ones who can’t look beyond BPOs , Sensex, IT czars, Retails Malls, Multiplexes, Private engineering colleges, IIM salaries and Sania Mirza .

And somehow I believe there is more to India than just that.

And so tonight, 60 years after Britishers left us to chart our own destiny, we shouldn’t have been celebrating our freedom from foreign rule but instead we should have been celebrating fulfillment of the dream of a modern, just and vibrant India that inspired our forefathers to lay their lives for the freedom of this country.

Alas, in all these years we seem to have forgotten that what those thousands of “unknown volunteers and soldiers of freedom” fought for was not just independence but everything that can be gained from independence.

And so I believe that tomorrow is not a day to celebrate, but it’s a day to renew a pledge that Pandit Nehru read out on 14th August 1947.

“The future beckons to us. Whither do we go and what shall be our endeavour? To bring freedom and opportunity to the common man, to the peasants and workers of India; to fight and end poverty and ignorance and disease; to build up a prosperous, democratic and progressive nation, and to create social, economic and political institutions which will ensure justice and fullness of life to every man and woman.
We have hard work ahead. There is no resting for any one of us till we redeem our pledge in full, till we make all the people of India what destiny intended them to be. We are citizens of a great country on the verge of bold advance, and we have to live up to that high standard”.

.

And so if we want to celebrate our INDEPENDENCE DAY in its true spirit, let's go and get what independence should have brought and let's promise ourselves that we would do more than just cribbing to make India how we want her to be.

Jai Hind

I usually believe by the time you have finished half a book, you must have fair idea of which way would it go. No, I don’t mean how it would flow or how it would end. All am saying is, we must be through with the introductions, building the preface, setting the stage and story should have had hit the expressway, which means signs must be telling me that I am 150km from A or 70 km from B. Now there is this book which am currently reading and am already half way through it but still, I won’t bet a buck on where is it going – and forget me - am sure till this point even author didn't know which way he wanted to take the book.

It’s just not about books, there are so many things in and around that you would prefer to see follow some rule, some pattern. These rules usually are a mix of experience and expectations. Get a clean bowl, put some experience then add expectations as per taste, stir well and you get your rules/patterns. Romantics prefer these rules to taste of expectations, Pragmatists prefer these patterns to taste of experience and then there are anarchists who would give a damn but I don’t really care much about them. I never had.

Now, generally, whenever something fits into the patterns created by you, you like it or enjoy it. And if it doesn’t, you wouldn’t. And that’s plain simple common sense. But then there are times, when even if something doesn’t fit in your pattern, you still don't dislike it, just like this book am reading. I didn’t say you like it – I said you just ‘don’t dislike’ it. It’s only in mathematics that two negatives make a positive, almost in everything else in the world they never do. But anyways, so there are definitely times when things won’t fit in your patterns but you would still like them – these are new experiences and you would add them to mix of patterns next time you make one. But am talking of times, when you know – this is not how it should have been – but some voice is telling you –don’t jump to the conclusions, you never know it may just come around. So while I will read on this book that am reading, it’s not because I am hoping for a new experience but because am still hoping for it to fit into my pattern, albeit a little late.

And that’s interesting because come to think of it, how often we just let things be. How often do we genuinely don’t give a damn how things would turn out. We swing usually between ‘hoping for the best’ and ‘fearing for the worst’, between ‘experiences’ and ‘expectations’, between ‘how things had turned out earlier’ and ‘how I always wanted them to turn out’. We always have a view. A view of how it’s gonna shape up. Krishna might have said in Gita that do your karma and don’t worry about the ‘results’ but unless there is something that makes us shudder and look the other way, can we really keep ourselves from thinking about the results. So whenever we pretend to be nonchalant and wait for things to unravel themselves in due course, it’s usually just a hope that it would turn out good and not a genuine pursuit of unknown.

So let’s just hope my book turns out good, it has been a long while since I really loved something I read.

Someone asked me a day or two back, why my posts have an undercurrent of pathos. Someone else sometime back had asked me why should my posts always be so philosophical and another person few months back asked me to write ‘happy’ posts.

All these are fair questions. But then, there are people, who ask a totally different set of questions after reading few of my posts, questions like, “So what’s wrong ?”, “You don’t seem too happy ?”, “Is everything fine?”

Now, I don’t really know why people end up getting such impressions. But I find it a little far-fetched to draw conclusions about one’s life merely by his blog posts. At least, not if blog posts are your most reliable source of conclusions.

For me writing is liberating. So often, when you come back home weary from work or you are spending a really lazy afternoon, you want to do something that can unshackle you, free you, let you and your imagination soar into sky. For me writing is that liberation. I am not writing any autobiography here, most of the times it is just a random thought that become a fertile ground for an entire story or some other times it’s a train of thought that may lead you to write your next post. You just pick up a thought flying past you and tell yourself let’s see what treasure it holds. It’s not like I get back home and then write about events of the day or my psychological state. I agree experiences do have a major role to play in what you think or what you write, but trust me it’s not always recent experiences and they don’t always play a lead role. There are times when what I write mirror my mindset at that point of time, but there are equal number of times when it doesn’t.

So...

If I write about fear, it doesn’t mean that I am scared tonight
If I write about loss, it’s not that I have just lost something precious
If I write about distress, it need not imply that I had a bad day
If I write about yearning, it doesn’t mean that I am missing something in life.

Can’t I take a creative license and write things, create characters and weave stories that are no more than just my brainchild. Why my stories need to be put under microscope to find out where am I in them? Why can’t I just be seen as a creator and spared the hardship of being a protagonist?

Also, I admit am no versatile writer – am just a plain amateur blogger afterall, I can’t write in each and every style. So if my writings border on abstract then may be that’s my style, if my writings are always searching for answers then that’s how I like to shape them, if my stories are about yearning and loss, may be that’s the mood I prefer to write about.

But why am I giving explanations at all?

When I write here, I write because I want to and not because someone is going to come and read it up. I write because I like writing and not because I like to be read. I wondered for a while if I should take away the link to my blog from orkut and gtalk but then I didn’t want to be dictated.

So nothing gonna change here, mood, style and content would remain just as it always was and if someone thinks I am going through troubled times, humour yourself – but for God’s sake don’t ask me for confirmations ;-))

Birches
by Robert Frost

When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay
As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust--
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows--
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.



This is one of my favourite pieces of poetry.

And lines which particularly fascinate me are:

It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return.

I get a similar feeling during times when I am ambling aimlessly, or in times when I feel weighed down by circumstances beyond my control, or when I get frustrated in face of endless contradictions. In such times, there are moments when I wish I could take a break – a break from all the tensions – a break in which I can travel back to times when life was simple and innocent and so was I. And, don’t mistake this to be escapism, because it’s not running away but just a simple wish for a breather– a short little break from which I want to come back with renewed vigour and a clean slate so that I can start afresh.

But then I guess only games have breaks, battles just go on and on and on…..and life I believe resembles a battle far more than a game. Though had it been a game, it might just have been much more fun … but then would we have taken it this seriously ?

And that's why I always come around saying, it's good the way it is :)

He called out for her but she won’t come, she likes playing hide and seek with him once in a while. He didn’t even know where to look for her, he switched on the table lamp and picked up a book which he hasn’t read for a while, he couldn’t read it still. His mind was elsewhere, words can’t just be read by eyes. His closed the book, switched on some music and switched off the lamp. He tried again and failed again. She was playing hard to get. Now it was no more a game, he wanted to tell her aloud, “Ok you’ve won…now come over”. If he was sure, she could listen to him, he might have just said it. There was a nice breeze blowing inside the room from the open window, he thought for a minute about going out and taking a walk, but then he discarded the thought, he didn’t want to give in to her as yet. He tried to think hard, how he has found her earlier, he couldn’t think of anything he has not already tried. Today nothing seems to have any effect on her.

But he would keep trying….

So, he called out for sleep again, hoping this time she would come over.

Words are not man’s best friend; they just don’t know how to keep secrets. Even most discrete of the words chosen with great care have a habit of giving it away. If not entirely by themselves then between themselves they always blurt it out. You try and confide in them and they go out and conspire against you telling the world what you wanted to hide deep down.

It’s better to be an artist, colours speak but they still leave a lot to imagination. A stroke of grey can mean lot more than just a sad mood, a bright yellow may not always give away your secret joys, a red may not always be window to one’s fears, a blue need not just be a hope taking shape. They can be all this and they can be so much more and that’s enough to keep your cover.

But alas, I am no artist and words are all I have…

-siddhartha

Song recommendation of the day:

If I ever get to sit and compile a list of my favourite songs, this beautiful song written by Gulzar and sung by Kishore and Lata would always find a place, what better day to recommend it then Kishore Da’s birthday ( for me, it’s still night of 4th August). I especially love the last two lines.

हज़ार राहें मुड के देखी, कहीं से कोई सदा ना आयी
बड़ी वफ़ा से निभायी तुमने , हमारी थोड़ी सी बेवफ़ाई

जहाँ से तुम मोड़, मुड़ गए थे, ये मोड़ अब भी वहीँ पडे हैं
हम अपने पैरों मे जाने कितने, भँवर लपेटे हुये खड़े हैं

कहीं किसी रोज़ यूं भी होता, हमारी हालत तुम्हारी होती
जो रात हमने गुज़ारी मर के, वो रात तुमने गुज़ारी होती

तुम्हें ये ज़िद थी कि हम बुलाते, हमे ये उम्मीद वो पुकारे
हैं नाम होंठों पर अब भी लेकिन, आवाज़ मे पड़ गयी दरारे

My peak TV watching season usually coincides with EPL and depends on how many Chelsea games are on air. Apart from that, catching up on movie trailers on weekends and an occasional movie once in a blue moon is best I can come up with if I have to justify paying my Cable TV bill. But of late I have hooked on to something new – Indian Idol.

In Singapore, we only get three Hindi channels – Star Plus, Zee and Sony. And 24 hour obsession of first two with some “how could someone see them” serials mean that whenever I tune in a Hindi channel, it is always Sony. So, it all started with those guys carpet bombing their channel with Indian Idol. Rather Indian Idol and Boogie Woogie, coz I remember there was a time when I would have bet all my savings on the fact that when I will switch on the TV and whatever be the time, one of these two shows would be on. And trust me I would have won that bet 10 out of 10 times. Anyways, so I still maintain that I started watching Indian Idol because stars conspired to make me watch it, though I would admit that listening to Hindi songs and Javed Akhtar played some part also.

But the reason why I stay tuned and didn’t surf away was different and it was the reality TV factor. Now I know lot of people believe that reality TV is all sham and mere playing to the camera and I would agree to that to a large extent. But what’s not sham is the joy and disappointment on the face of winners and losers when what is at stake is not money but dreams. And when dreams are at stake, emotions are real and contagious. I remember how often I found myself smiling looking at a beaming face of someone who was told he is selected and how I sympathized with someone who was trying hard to keep a straight face upon rejection.

Frankly, while for us it’s mere entertainment, for channel – just TRP and more ads and for celebrity judges it may just be some extra bucks on the side. But for all those guys and girls who aspire to be singers, this and rather such programmes mean much more than that. I guess it may not be any different for them as it is for so many appearing in JEE or CAT. It’s a test for them to give wings to their ambitions, prove themselves to their own selves, to their families, to their friends and may be to the whole world. And you can see how much success in Indian Idol means for them, while their tears when one of their competitors get thrown out may be meant for camera but when they themselves get selected or rejected, emotions that come out then – they are not for anyone, they are just so real. And these genuine emotions are what I watch Indian Idol for. I agree the producers of this show sometime really try to add ridiculous stuff and unnecessary drama, and I really wonder why they do that. Because there is no bigger drama than a constant effort to pull oneself through, no bigger drama than working through the pressure to live another day, no bigger drama than watching one’s dreams getting shattered. And I just wonder why producers insist on changing this drama into melodrama – there is no need, I wish they knew.

Overall, it’s interesting to note how an anxious face in a moment can turn into a rainbow of joy, what different shades people take up in face of rejection and how people gather their shattered dreams as they walk away from what was supposed to be their flight to fame. And if someone is not in mood for all this – trust me these guys and girls sing pretty well too :-)