Waiting for Tomorrow.

Years ago, in the junior section, when we were introduced to the concept of having "bests", it was an extremely faishionable trend to have a best of everything. best colour, best food, best toy, best book, obviously best friend and extremely faishionably,best actor.It almost rivalled having a senior as your friend.And so, One fine day,extremely thrilled and exhilarated after having watched Baazigar, I pronounced my favourite actor to a selected group of friends, whose parents I knew did not allow them to watch anything apart from a couple of hours of cartoon aired on doordarshan in the early evenings.
"Shahrukh khan."
And to prove that I had even brought along a 50paise postcard with his picture on it, which , because of some jealous elements in my class was duly reported and confiscated.

This was of course, way, way before he started writing his name as Shah Rukh Khan.And also way way before our english was good enough for us to understand a movie in english.

Then that summer turned into winter and some more besides. My best actor changed into my favourite actor, but he was still the same.I hardly saw his movies, but obviously that should not be a factor when you are talking favourites.

Then along came another trend: Hollywood.This was something I did not understand, and the fact that we didn't have cable in our home did not help. The photographs I saw in the newspapers all looked the same.So,even risking appearing dumb, my favourite actor refused to change.Now,movies were classified good and bad instead of just liked or disliked, I became aware of the fact that movies had to be directed and produced and that a Shahrukh khan movie did not mean that Shahrukh got together with kajol to make a Kuch Kuch Hota Hai happen.

The leaves continued their yellowing, falling and growing freshly green,and the good lord knocked some sense into most of us. Thus crept in pseudo-intellectualism.Wierd movies were in the vogue. Critics awards were talked about instead of popular ones. I stubbornly refused to accept that Mr and Mrs Iyer was better than Mohobbatein.(and even looking back now,I think you had to be pretty precocius to have grasped that movie at that age.)

And then it started.

The superior smiles and condescending looks everytime I mentioned something I was habituated to stating. And people scorning the wonderful, wonderful songs that breathe the life of a nation.Because that is what it is: An entire nation defined by the movies they make blockbusters.It was then that I realised the symbolism of what I had held as a favourite for nearly a decade now.

Its the pulse of a nation that wants to believe in the beauty of dreams. Its the heartbeat of a nation that, covered in sweat and grime while returning home in a bus, wants to believe that a sangh-e-marmar ka farsh is achievable.Just like a boy from Delhi found his sangh-e-marmar. And more than anything else, It is also a nation who wants to believe in the innocence of romance among sarson ke khet. Perhaps foolishly so, but what does it matter to me?

I will wait for tomorrow, when on a perfect spring day I will witness the story of a painfully ordinary man undertaking an extraordinary journey for love, and a  magic will be re-kindled.

Nothing Crushes Us.

Dear Leslie,

It's spring again and more beautiful than ever. More beautiful than it had ever been in twenty years. More beautiful than anyplace I've seen in twenty years. Last night I saw the moon fairy again. She shone down our tree-top home, a moon-beam double bright. And I longed to speak to the squirrels again, but it was night and they were asleep. In the quiet I heard the stream gurgling, over the stones and festered lilies.

I've been love-sick and torn. My wounds unfaded, fresh and raw. Early morning today I saw again.You in your corduroys and converses, refusing to grow up and telling me stories. Of kingdoms whose kings were cowards.And new lands discovered. Monsters fought and defeated.Gentle giants won with love. I felt again. Your warm breath as you outran me to our lair.

Today afternoon, years later, I played again. Hide and seek with the brambles.And the bluebirds that return only after winter fades. It was the same bluebird, I think.

Its strange that Today, when I ran back twenty years, I felt only the fluttering in my heart as I looked, once more, at a Queen's land.  I would never exchange that brief summer in an enchanted land for all the sparkling diamonds in the world. I wouldn't trade for all the magic in the world.

But I wouldn't trade the pain too. The pain and the senselessness.

This Twilight, as I sat nested beneath our tree and you beside me, I saw you speaking to the golden squirrel.

You smiled.

You hadn't ever left him.

And then, as the purple faded from the sky, I fashioned myself a crown again. A few wings. Light enough to fly me to another universe.

The king will return from exile.

Ready his palace.

Love,
Jesse.

A Calcutta Bus.

I'm in love with Calcutta Buses.

"That's smart" my alter-ego argues.
"Smart?"
"Yeh. Smart to like something that in any case you are condemned to. Like the subjects you research on.""Or a hurricane-destroyed home."
"Whatever."

So there's this thing about buses, you get a lot of insight into people. Mostly it centers around how principled some are of not patronising deodorants.Though sometimes you might also get a glimpse of an intense belief that Dada is just about to return to cricket. But even beyond that, if you care to look hard enough, travelling in buses is also about sensing just that faint betrayal of wanting more. More than having to travel miles and miles in crowds with place barely enough to stand.

Today, returning home late from Salt Lake, I was stuck in jam at the Bypass.Usual journeys from Salt Lake smooth enough. But then, this was an unusual one. So, stuck beside the Hyatt Regency,I chanced to look up from my cell. There was a dinner in full swing at its lawns. And staring at the splendour, an entire bus of people.

Sometimes, just very, very rarely, Dreams find a way out of hearts and into the chilly air.

This was written yesterday, 11:45pm and left unpublished because blogger decided to play truant.

When Illness is a Mercy.

There comes a time in the lives of all mediocre people when they are dragged down into their own abysses for no reason in particular. Daily, everyday chores weigh heavy. Tiresome, cumbersome jobs needed to be dispensed with replace what is usually a joy.

In straighter words, you are stuck in a rut.

What do you do to pull yourself out of it?

You find yourself an inspiration. Even if you are talking about dreary, dead places and desert sands of dead habit. Remember. In another time you would not have believed that this was impossible. You would have laughed at the unwillingness of another to make an effort to pull himself out of habit. It wasn't an effort for you. Your spirit jumped into a new adventure everyday. How fast we scorn. You should have measured the amplitude of courage required.

You brush the dust off from old dreams. You convince yourself that they still remain and are not something that was foolishly wanted.

But most importantly, you tell yourself to wipe out that cynical smile that is playing on your lips as you type. Even forcefully if you must. You also remind yourself to stifle the half of your mind from whence originates all cynicism. That is the half on whose sword lingers blood of a mangled quarter of the other half, and Massada should not fall this time.

An illness, a body racked with aches and a fever has a strange way of recalling old determination.

The Notebook.

I have been coming across many good movies, all one after the other and I wonder why. This Isn't quite like how things happen to me.

Watched 'The Notebook' , a conventional romance in every way except that its so much more beautiful. At the end of the movie I wanted to stand up and award Robert Fraisse with the Oscar for best cinematography except that he probably wouldn't attach too much importance to it even if I e-mailed him one. There aren't any layers to this, and watch it simply for a visual treat, or maybe when you are down and out and low and lonely.( So in hindsight I probably watched it at a wrong time)

What is it with the Romances? Hindi or English, they are all the same and yet they never fail to bring a spring in my step. And oh, did I mention that it's set in the early 1940's? and again, what's with me and the past? Period Dramas or Historical plays I lap it all up.

I remember S suggesting I see '13 Going on 30', but the future and their projected sciences merely intrigue me, they don't captivate me, enthrall me, make me wonder at what once was.
There is certainty and comfort in the past, the future brings mere doubt.

It rivals 'A Walk To Remember' and that, my friends, is saying something.

Watch it, and discover what it is like to long to visit distant lands and want to see beautiful places, hold them in still pictures and yellowed albums.

A Quest.

I want to be able to write. Beautifully. I want my words to move you, inspire you and make you want to lift up a pen too. But I'm no good at it. Thoughts rush into my mind every time I sit at this page, a whirlwind after the other, and I can never grasp them and fit them into my chubby fists, just like I could never quite catch the colourful bubbles at the entrance of New Market, then with chubbier fists. I do not cherish a dream of being published. Yet I feel like an author every time I hit the publish button. I want to mould my words into perfectly ordered paragraphs but again I fail.

I fail repeatedly and yet I persist. Even at the cost of scorn and laughter I carry on. Because, someday I'll want to be able to produce words effortlessly. I'll want like what I've written. Now I don't. I think that whatever I write is either too mushy, or too drab. Sometimes I feel, they are too contrived and sometimes , too spontaneous.I'll want to read that something in perfect balance, perfect harmony, written by me.


But for all my quest of perfection, I think my half-baked efforts are worth chronicling. And worth displaying. Because failure is beautiful. Its beautiful in its inherent humanity. Its beautiful in its ordinariness that shows me as an unremarkable human. It is the last, ultimate proof of my mediocrity. And that is why, much as I want to, I do not take off so many of my trashy posts, mostly written in my earlier days of blogging. And I continue to write more of it.It is, for me, a harsh lesson in reality.

And that is why so many unfinished drafts still lie, littering my dashboard. I deem them too ugly to show them light.

This blog was always meant to be personal, never private. But now I find lines blurring. And I realise that I need to pull in my reins once again. Perhaps I'm afraid that the more I enter into the private,the more deplorable its content shall be. Putting something into black and white makes it a final, irreversible reality. And then I wouldn't be able to shut my eyes and ignore things, believing that if I ignore them for long enough they shall go away.

Would it be possible for me to write about the deformed and ugly that is me without cringing while re-reading it?

Till the day I can't, I must continue heeding the lines I drew a long time back and watch my life chronicled through detached eyes.


(words did find their way through my fingertips, and I re-wrote this post on 7.06.09 ; 11.55 pm)

dreams.....

"jaage hain der tak hame,

kuch der sone do....

thodi si raat aur hai,

subah toh hone do."

"adhure hue jo khwab hain,

pure na ho sake.....

ek baar phir se neend mein,

woh khwab bone do..."

PROFOUND. MAGICAL. TRANSCEDENTAL.

A MIRAGE.

Thre's a mirage constantly beckoning me............pulling me towards its vanishing facade........and i dunno myself wat exactly it is..... just a feeling of urgency ..... a feeling at the back of my mind that's telling me to act before its too late.........is it a wrong turning ive taken ???????

sumtyme sits not enough to be doing what u like.........maybe, just maybe, the satisfaction lies in doing wat u ought to.......or does it????

Dreams r worth following. Are mirages too???
As i said..........Maybe. Just maybe.