Day and Night

like a blade of grass, you don't cease to thrill ...


I haven’t been where your eyes have seen me often,
I stray elsewhere.
Like the honey-laden primrose swayed by the weight of the dewdrops on it,
I am, but happy to lose my way in the wilderness of your imagination.
Swooning, still as awake, that they make me,
These whiffs of yours play with my senses, day and night.
As if aware when they find you, my eyes browse
Through the pleasantness of this spring air, anticipating your admission….
The night sky throws the most brilliant shades of black, on thee,
Often, leaving behind reflections on the walls of desperation.

Haven’t I told you about this madness?
About these earthly sentiments that sell me to the merchant
That comes for my soul on a night so cold…
And all I know for good is I’m sold, I’m sold ….

The One without an Ending ...

We walk and we run…
We trip and we fall,
and sometimes we get up and keep running again ….


Sometimes I’ve very liberally taken things for granted. And God knows I’ve paid for my assumed liberty. Sometimes I’ve brought a relationship to the rocks and at times I’ve had to make do with a knife in a gun fight. But every time I screw things up, things have been kind enough to un-screw themselves back almost as if in a System-Restore kind of a way. So, I keep taking things for granted all the more. I’m a champion at that.


So, here is how it works. I screw up something, somewhere, somehow. Sometimes I do it over coffee and sometimes all it takes is a little unintentional planning. Then, I wait around for some time. The effects and their side-effects start showing themselves pretty soon most of the times but sometimes they act a little smart and adopt a shock and awe approach even when you are on the watch. The point is, they never fail to startle you, sometimes by their snowballing tricks and sometimes you are done in by their relentless timing to show up. I call the later the loud-ping-of-a-pop-up-during-an-important-lecture-in-class. Now, after the initial hullabaloo the dust should settle down on the area leaving behind a topographical view of problems like the ones you are likely to see on a database schema.


So there you are, restricted to a remote corner of your own small room with the possibility of finally having to change more than a few tablecloths and clean the front desk of your present, for good.

The Benjamin Button Case - Solved ...

if, Benjamin Button had aged the other way ...



Right around the edges of his pleasant disposition you could see the marks left by numerous voluntary chains of spontaneous thoughts. Among the countless secrets that lay hidden in those fine creases and folds that defined each of his facial expressions, he was aware of the ones that weren’t evident enough to the untrained eye. Like the cyclicality of the days, months and years in his life, he had perhaps had experiences that were integral and inevitable to his existence, and often threatened to impede and restrict his thoughts from straying away to a place where they would find her, staring right back.


As he finally got up from his chair, his glasses fell down. He bent over and reached for them….


In those final few seconds he managed to see the world through those eyes again, he could see a face amongst the many equipments in the ambulance. It was hers. She was smiling at him. Her hazel eyes had the same twinkle that he had once grown so fond of. He managed to reach out his hand to caress her, to move a few strands of hair that dangled off her face, lovingly, for one last time. But, instead of finding her face, it was gently moved back to his side by someone in the van. He could hear muted voices all around him.


As she faded away the little tweets on the small monitor grew on him, and his breathing got shallower. And then suddenly, it was all over.


A few years had passed and it was another lovely morning. As she passed underneath the iron gates she felt the calmness of the place engulf her. She was there to see her. Her mother meant a lot to her, and she had promised to come visit her often. “You look beautiful today”, she said to her as she placed the flowers she had brought for her at her feet. A tear rolled down her cheeks.


Of all the things that a cemetery teaches you, it teaches you to be patient.


A couple of blocks away a light breeze moved a few leaves from a white stone slab. Inscribed underneath, it read – In loving memory of …

Theories of the Recent Present

Anomalous Expansion:

Life has been a little slower since the semester papers ran us over. I mean, there were 12 different subjects that you were juggling with, just the other month, and then here you are with a project that would make a snail look formula-one technology enabled. Seems like just the other day you felt like you could do with a few extra hours in your day, and now suddenly you realize there are just too many already. So, I tried waking up late, went to office, worked-out, slept for two hours, watched a soap, talked to a friend on the phone, saw 11 back to back episodes of HIMYM, surfed for an hour and then realized that I’d practically run out of things to do till I could finally doze off at 4 in the morning.


Reverse Psychology:

I quit cigarettes sometime in the summer of 2007, after a near two year stint. I thought I’d never smoke again, and I held on to that promise for quite some time. Things changed thereafter. Life has been a sine curve since college ended. I relocated to Pune and before I knew it I was smoking again. I thought I’d quit once I’d moved down to Pune, but it’s a long distance call from here and doesn’t come cheap, and it’s not just monetary. Classic example of “Smoking kills. Either ways”


Advanced Social-Networker’s Disorder:

I post something on one of my blogs and I want fifty people to check it out in the next ten minutes. Not just check it out, but also comment on it, appreciate it, post something similar on their own blogs, and become a fan. But when nothing happens even in the next half an hour, it starts feeling weird. Then there are times when a poor soul does make a comment. If I happen to be online, I read it, dislike it most of the times, and then I either delete it on his face or just shoot back saying “back off !@#$%” … and then if no one turns up to pay a little attention to this poor soul, I crib and go on to have the most miserable day.


Musical Cyclicality:

Do you have a friend who has set his Winamp on Repeat mode? Strange being, really! Why the hell does someone need to listen to one track more than once at a time?? But no, there will be these people who just won’t care to either stop or practice variation. They’d be there, in the room, on lights-out mode, lying drunk on the bed, staring at the ceiling and listening to the same song not twice or thrice but for hours at a stretch. God help his roomies if he has a dysfunctional pair of headphones.

Yeah, there are times when I take I’ll fix you a little too seriously. My advice is to just let that guy be.

The way your Smile makes me feel

A Cliché:


Of all the things that you give me, I like your smile the best... the warmth of which tells me that you could make the hazy shades of winter change into blossoming lavenders... it is as fresh as the sparkling water found on the distant mountain tops that I can only imagine... it lights up the darkest corners in the emptiness of my eyes … it shows how you feel inside... I can see how happy I want to make you… you smile like a child... your eyes twinkle when you smile… it gives a sense of belonging even to the sage who has loved and lost and is now broke... it makes me want to fall asleep then and there and never wake up… but most of all, it makes me want to love you more… your smile… it inspires me to be a better person…

The world is your Poultry, but the Chicks are Mine !!!

How do you make a Hot Chick check You out:


Okay, this one, I just love. I usually use the tube to commute. The Kolkata Metro is a hotspot for the better looking girls in the city. The best looking ones would ditch any kind of surface transport for obvious reasons. But, here’s how it’s done. First you need to locate one of them while on the platform. Slightly loiter around without arousing much suspicion. Just let her know that you have noticed her presence. Now, when the train arrives get in the same compartment. Usually girls don’t have to stand through the journey, unlike us, the darker sex. So, take advantage of the situation and place yourself 4-5 arms-lengths away from where the beauty is seated. Now all you need to do is to NOT look at her while you are standing there. Look at what the advertisement on the wall says, look at the shoes that the people are wearing, look at your watch, look at whatever but just don’t look at her. Do this for the next 10 minutes consistently and your job is done. Now that the next station is yours, move towards the door. As the doors slide open and you are just about to exit the train, give her a quick look, and Voila! She’s looking at you.


A word of Caution: Don’t go on bragging about it though, people usually don’t like be around Losers.