'Post' Mortem Report

I feared the sight of a Pale Moon, glowering at me from unveiled shrouds....
I was welcomed instead by the Sun, gleaming through myriad painted clouds...

As I write this post, it is sunset time in a city bustling with the excitement of the freedom and joys that the impending weekend promises to bring. It has been a complicated week; a story in managing a balancing act between work, home, family and N. Don't worry, that's not what this post is about.

By the second glance, if not in the first, any person would figure out that my blog seems to average at less than a post-a-month. To be precise the actual figure would be somewhere between 0 and 0.5. While my lethargy has already been established as the prime reason for any inactivity in these pages, the usual pains of my humdrum existence don't seem to make my task of filling this blog with all the promised content any easier. In fact, the added baggage of having failed to write so many good posts often leaves me with the usual thought of "Oh, now that I have missed so many, what's the point in even trying again?". Such grim self-discouragement has deprived my loyal readers, numbering in the single digits, many a charming insight into the life and times of a to-be-famous Mumbaikar. Not anymore.

As the first step towards righting the wrongs aforementioned, I have solemnly decided to let people know of some of the most luminary ideas and moments that had triggered in me the desire to put up posts over the past few months. Issues that had me in the throes of firing away at my keyboard, only to be thwarted by my insurmountable laziness. I sincerely hope, my euphoric excellence does not escape you:

1. Waiting at Delhi airport, with a sandwich in one hand and a coffee in the other, reflecting on the weekend spent with N
2. An ode to the real "Joker" who, in his swansong as The Dark Knight's arch nemesis, left us with a portrayal of villainy never before seen on the silver screen
3. A short critique on "The Watchmen" series graphic novel. A delectably dark yet meaningful work by Alan Moore that probably stumbles upon the ultimate frailty of all humankind
4. Questioning the logic of all my education till date in the context of the junctures of life that I often find myself at
5. Raving about "Rock On!" - a movie that explores the Hollywoodesque subject of a bunch of guys taking a second crack at making it big as rock stars amidst a swarm of early mid-life crises - a film that was both touching and significant in the landscape of 'Hindi' films
6. Taking my shot at the "Flab Four", who did all but shame themselves with their ineptitude at wielding a bat whose past mastery has earned them so many undeserved glories
7. The mesmerising power of a country's pride and strength that was Beijing 2008
8. Getting my very first 'Project' - building fancy jargonized assets for a bunch of fancier asses
9. Rafa vs Fedex - my Point of View
10. Places of Worship and the role of Religion in the life of today's Average Joe (14/09/2008)
11. Dear Faceless Terrorist... (14/09/2008)

and the list continues......

Well the above list is not exhaustive. In fact I shall use this as a tracker for topics I need to have written about by the time this calendar year is done. I shall be adding new topics as they dawn upon me and it would be interesting to see how many will yet remain untouched by the time the planet turns a year older.

P.S: If anyone has managed to decipher the article to which the link has been provided in the above post, please to be sharing your deep insights :)

Ganapati Bappa Moriya!! - Part II

Major apologies. I completely forgot to mention in the last post why the whole Ganesha angle. Well I did give all the "new beginning" mumbo-jumbo, but there was something more than that which got my rusty thought processes running again.

It's quite obvious looking at the date of this post, that today was basically one day after Ganesh Chaturthi of circa 2008. So here I was sitting at home, catching some classic Tim Burton "Batman Returns" on Zee Studio, when the faint sounds of drums beating wafted into my ears. While that immediately didn't prompt me to divert too much of my attention from the movie that I was engrossed in, in the next few minutes I couldn't help being moved by the thunderous impressiveness of the sound. As I made my way to my window to get a glimpse of the source of the noise, I saw a motley crew of people from one of the building societies nearby taking their Ganesha immersion procession towards its watery destination. After much encouragement from my mother, I went downstairs to get a more direct look at the fantastic show that was on.

The scene can be so described - a typical procession in honour of an Indian deity, adorned by groups of people walking/dancing/jumping in various states of pomp and revelry to the raucous but extremely catchy beats of a bunch of drummers. Yes the drummers, the ones meant to provide the background for a bunch of girls & boys to flaunt their dancing skills, they are the ones who caught my eye.

The music that they were producing could put any world famous rock band's best composition or its live rendition to shame. While the main driver of the mesmerising performance was its spontaneity, the talent of the individuals belting out the beats was unquestionably phenomenal. And in this resounding cacophony of the most pleasant kind I managed to find a few ounces of inspiration. That's what I like about the festive season, even in all the gloom that may surround your life you can still feel like there is something yet to be happy about.

Fear not that which saddens you to tears...
Fear only that you don't lose the space within you to find happiness....

Ganapati Bappa Moriya!! Let's get started again

In the turning tides of waters deep, a solemn sound was heard....
And in this chaos, my heart found peace; awash with the joys of the world at large...

Om Shree Ganesh :)>

I'm not one to begin anything, let alone a blog post, with the name of god. But certain times and certain occasions in life demand that when making an attempt to begin something afresh, it is most prudent to remember the benign lord who graces us with the myriad gifts of life.

I'm in the mood today. A mood to pen some thoughts, vent some ires, regurgitate in prose or poetry the million fears and angry feelings that stay uncomfortably perched in the farther reaches of my psyche. But all of this can come in good time.

Most importantly, I am a man on a mission right now. The mission to register a few decent posts before the middle of September is upon me. In as certain terms as I can put it, this post and a lot of its unborn predecessors should have seen the likes of these blog pages a long time ago. But as fate and my incompetence would have it, I let a number of good issues pass me by one after the other, inventing fitting responses to them and leaving them to rot as disjointed and uncollected musings on the surface of my mind. But true to my procrastinating nature, I have woken to the fact that soon my blog will have its first and most prized reader ever return to its fold. With the content that my blog currently sports, I fear that it shall be a very damp & dull experience for her. Hence my renewed vigour in populating this blog with readable nonsense.

So to prevent the possibility that later on questions will be raised about the quality of what I am about to write over the next ten odd days, I spell out the disclaimer that creativity will be the first to be sacrificed in my pursuit of adding numerical weight to this blog and I should be pardoned; at least until my mission is done. I better end this one here in haste as the count couldn't start any sooner ;)

Happy Birthday :) :(

Hey Mads!

Where do I begin? I can't say have a great year ahead and other such hollow greetings, so I'm going to skip it. I'm going to make sure this post has as little bullshit as possible. Consider this an attempt on my part to do a bit of introspection and explore a corner of my heart that has gathered a bit of dust.

I know saying sorry won't mean a thing, but I wish I could apologise and you could forgive me and life would be all hunky dory. I'm guilty of having wronged you in many ways, while we were together and even after you have gone, but my latest and lowest so far in the list has been forgetting your birthday. The sad bit is that if not for N, I don't know if I would have remembered in time at all. Even if for a second I completely overlook the fact that someone who never knew you and probably shouldn't bother was actually far more thoughtful than me, I just can't get over the fact that time - the proverbial healer - has played its part well enough to cure my wounds a little too much. So much so that I cant reach in and feel any real sense of the kind of grief and pain I felt when I lost you, except for maybe a forced memory of it. I know I am an adaptable person, and I pride upon it at times, but my ability to change with time is so ingrained that I feel I have lost touch with a part of my past that defined who I was - there could be nothing more pitiful and ironic. I don't know for what reason god has helped me find so much love in the form of N, if the way I have preserved your essence in my life is anything to go by, I certainly don't deserve it. But I still know that wherever you are, you still love me and forgive me as if nothing has changed, and I hate myself for that knowledge.

Turning this post into an excuse to beat up my self image, is certainly not the right way to commemorate this day. Even though I know I haven't been as good as I should have, every day of my life is still livable because of the kind of love and prayers you still shower me with, from whatever corner of the spiritual universe you now reside in. I would just request you to keep some faith in me, so I can at least do the right kind of justice with my love for N. Please, always live inside of me and don't let your love extinguish, I wouldn't know how to go on without it.

Yours,
In this life and beyond,
A

Salaam Bombay

As I reel under the effects of just having resuscitated life into my blog, I realize its been 356 days since my first post. So shocking was the process of revival, that when I looked at the date of the last post (9th July) I nearly went into a maddening tizzy of comprehending the space-time continuum ... of course that lasted only till I eventually saw the "7" that followed "200" in the year part of the date and understood that what I was confronting was not a breakthrough in dimensional Physics but simply another prime example of my lethargy to follow up on good work. What's even more interesting is that the blog bug has re-bit me now when my three months of 24*7 joblessness is coming to an end. Good irony is never lost out on my life.

Anyways, enough digression, lets get to what this post is really about. The Bangalore bred Bengali (kinda catchy nah?!), yours truly, is reporting live from Mumbai. The role of being a fresh grad out of an IIM, brings with it the onerous burden of taking up a job which usually comes with the hassles of leaving the comfort of cities like Bangalore to relocate to places like Bombay where the "action" is (from a professional point of view). So I landed here yesterday, and thanks to a SuperDad (who btw has taken care of pretty much everything in my life thus far), I'd already got a place and am settling in rather neatly. Its a cozy flat this, 2BHK and all that jazz with beautiful views of national parks and such. I begin work tomorrow and with it I will be well on my journey to brave it out in the city of dreams (and nightmares!). Lets hope I can see my fledgling self through this next exciting phase of my life and come out with at least some ounces of character if not the proverbial flying colours.

Dear Diary

Hey you are not my diary and i don't intend you to be one either. But the least I can do is treat you with a little compassion if not a whole lot of respect. You see, you are going to be a melting pot of my abhorring thoughts and self-deprecating attempts at shallow humour. Most of what I will express on this corner-of-web-space excuse for a journal, will not have any real relevance or significance to any one's life, least of all mine. At best, I can commit to make an effort to be more or less honest with what I have to say. I promise I will burden you only with as much information as would be needed to represent me as the average next-door-stud to the single-digit followers of this blog - the kind of guy who has got it all together with only invisible chinks in his pretentious armour. So much for our terms of employment, ... err terms of endearment if you like. I know we cant shake on this but a simple rearrangement of your data packets as a nod of acknowledgement should do.

Taking a step back, let me get my manners right and introduce myself to you. I know you don't have a choice or say in being written into by me but I owe it to you to give you at least a few personal details in case you should develop powers to contact God asking him to strike me down with lightning or something for the torture that I will be putting you through.

Well, how should I start... I'm human and I guess that's a good place to begin. I was born without deformities and any that I have picked up in the last 24 years are all in my head. I am a Bengali born and brought up in Bangalore (as stupid or cliched as this sounds that's how I have always begun my description and received plenty of comic jibes for it). While that doesn't narrow me down to an identifiable entity, I like the comfort of hiding in numbers. I am a fairly sociable being although I love to be left alone most of the time. It would suffice here to say that I am an electronics engineer with an MBA from an IIM, although apart from degree certificates there isn't much I can do or say to prove that I deserve to hold either of the above two credentials. The problem with identity, at least in my case, is that I can associate it with only what I have done of late; so as far as I am concerned its a work in progress. I'm not in a mood right now to volunteer facts that one typically writes in the "About Me" section as is common on Facebook or Orkut, I guess no one ever really reads it or cares two hoots about the books you read and the music that inspires you. So for now, lets keep it at this and see if I can't reveal more about myself in the posts to come.

P.S: This entire blog is dedicated to the love of my life, a sweet little girl from Delhi whom I shall henceforth refer to as N. Much of what I write and how this blog will pan out is heavily inspired by her. She unwittingly stumbled upon this blog a year back without knowing I owned it, gave me my first comment and then forgot the url. Now she has to wait 50 posts before I'll reveal that detail to her. So godspeed to me.

Stranger Than Fiction....

Funny I should start my blog with the title of a Will Farell movie. What is funnier, is that I am blogging in the first place. I have always maintained I dont believe in the concept (partly because I am against any fad that turns into mass hysteria). But then again I have never been known to stick to my stance for too long. So here I am penning down empty thoughts at 1 AM on a Tuesday morning.

So, coming back to the movie which has inspired the title of this post, as is common with most inspired people, i strangely felt inclined to react to this specific movie by encouraging myself to write. Mind you - not about anything in particular (you see I am not a big fan of conventions) - just write. Part of the exercise is to not make any apparent sense. Hints to an overarching theme is just the effect of a bit of jugglery with not-so-carefully chosen words.

Pardon me, but if I am not wrong, I havent made a single point yet. But those of you, who have had the stomach to read till this point - congratulations and a boulful of oxygen to you (why i chose this concoction as a reward for your psychological gumption may or may not be revealed in the lines to follow).

Now that I have your completely divided attention, let me try and get to the interesting part of this post. What began as a movie review at the conceptual stage, has turned into half-witted musings of an unstable mind. But I assure you, future posts, should you choose to read them, shall be a trifle more enlightening if not a whole lot more entertaining. You see in some ways, like the author "Karen Eiffel" in the movie, I too am in a writer's block, one that I have been in all my life. To pull myself out of this quagmire of self consuming yet totally unproductive verbal nightmare that my educated life has become, I have forced myself to take to the keyboard to try and come up with unique ways to show everyone exactly how abnormal I am.

I guess by now most of you would have drawn conclusions regarding my personality (not that I actually claim to possess one). For those of you who wonder if I can make sense wait for my next post.

P.S: The above passage is my humble dedication to the movement that is Arbit ;)