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.

status quo ante

Ah! The year ends in style!!

Now all I need to do is go back home, sleep for a day, go check out the new office and spend the rest of the summer - working during the days and sweating by the nights. Now, that qualifies me to raise doubts over my I’m in love with this life perception of things.

Nah! You know that I won’t. I mean, I won’t stop turning stones just as yet. I’m too boring to even reach out for that bottle of water on the table and crush the ant on the floor in the process. The ant lives! I can drink the water when I’m finally forced to brush my teeth come tomorrow morning as per my body clock, whenever that is.

I mean- look at me! I always find out the hard way. The last time I took a swig from a beer can which I found in the wardrobe, I had to conclude that spirit-marinated roaches can be pretty repelling. If this wasn’t enough I followed it up with smoking a gold flake king size with a piece of chocolate sticking to the upper jaw - with a paper due in 4 hours I fell asleep on the floor. I mean, what was I thinking?


I know what my problem is… I weigh too less for a girl of decent sanity to fall for me. Of course I wouldn’t die a poor purely-unhitched-soul, but then as they say – but, why take a chance? Okay, simple solution to this one- I need to bulk up, dude! Okay, 3 hour work-outs every day during the summers- checked!

But wait, why the fuck does the gym need to close down, NOW!!

Quick alternate solution to the problem - Protein Supplements!

Now, these are sure to erode the already receding hairline even further, but what about the trade-off? Eat all that nasty powder and bulk-up and get a girl who’ll then run away after the hair-falling side effect kicks in or should I continue with the mirror-cracking profile description on Orkut which in anyway is not getting me anywhere?

Add to that- my favourite movie for the week seems to be Ghost Town, which I have viewed, reviewed, watched, re-watched, eaten, slept with and drunk at least three times full. Okay, now I know what went in behind the proper screw-up in the Finance Paper.


You know, this MBA thing is killing me as a poet. No, seriously!! Previously I used to write more of this stuff … but yeah, in the end, if they pay me well, I might as well spare them all, and stop writing ... you know…


Well, status quo ante …

No !

Right! This is where I stand. See me? No? Okay, how about now? No?... Fine, I’ll wait here.

For the first time in my life, I was in a restaurant with a girl. But, I wasn’t ready to look her in the eyes. It made me uneasy. Fidgeting with the ketchup bottle, I saw how red it was from inside.The reflection in the small mirror on the wall confirmed a similar state of affairs on my face. She was anxious. She didn’t give away any reason though. For, carefully planned, I had imagined those beautiful few would be moments over and over, all of last night; actually, every night since the last few nights, to be honest.

But when it came to telling you all I did was blurt it out like it was some kind of an ultra auto-reflex muscle contraction, that had squeezed it out of me. I saw her eyes tremble. Her eyes trembled. Her lips broke into a shaky curl ; almost reminding me of how beautiful i thought her smile was. She spoke. “My turn to listen.”
When she spoke, I wasn’t there. I couldn’t feel my senses. I smiled.


Here, I stood. My first brush with a feeling I called Love. Were you there? No?... Fine, I’ll wait here.


Today, as I stand here, I can see everything. I can see how hazy you had made me. You were wearing your hair in a bun and I had my heart on my sleeves. Reckless! But, you wanted to hear exactly what I wanted to say, that day. I thank thee, for you showed me that it was “okay”.
I don’t know why I tried calling you 4 years hence. Had I said sorry, you would have asked “but, why?”


And, I don’t want to lie any more…..
Are you there, yet? No?... Fine, wake me up and I’ll happily move.

Empty Rooms

Distant thoughts float around like clouds in my empty room … they are cold, and when they condense they will wet the cheeks.. Hope is warmer, still. Like the raindrops that wet your skin, my words comfort me, myself, one at a time, or so I presume. I remember the summer breeze flowing in from the North, and the winter afternoons.. the happiest hours. None of which were wasted, none at all. My eyes see what they see and my heart has felt what it has felt…

Loved you a lot less, then ....

Your eyes inspired a lot of dreams …
In them, I sometimes could find reality …
But I couldn’t let these eyes see more of you then….
My eyes hurt – because I wanted you to be far away, then …


Tonight the moon has come out beautifully …
Like the other nights- like the night I lay awake under the stars …
The faces and their light … the things that never followed …
You can close you eyes at will and yet be far away from sleep, then….


When you walk down the valley, you’ll remember all the walks…
Nature has its course and so has a river, you can only hope you cross one....
Masters of destiny are not kind to outlaws, and its justified…
Only because you saw me smiling, you saw someone far away form me, then….


Someday I’ll sit by my bedside…
Or maybe I won’t….. The question is, do I want death this bad…..
I am still not clear in my head if I loved you or not …
Maybe that’s because I loved you, but I loved you a lot less, then……


this is a translation of one of my favourite songs in bangla......

ode to the brown eyed girl ....

this blog is what i often referred to as my brown eyed girl.:) but now its time to move on ..



this blog is a part of my life. i've grown with it over the years. i still remember how a pastime became a necessity. i've written about love and i've written about the plans and dreams that i'd never see come through. the first song i tried to write :D and the first post that made a little sense. except for the post on the sunscreen i've tried to be more or less honest with myself and always tried to maintain decorum. a lot of good memories and tough times later i've decided that its only too apt that i should close this chapter. for, this has been one of those things that have bound me up to life. change is necessary.


they say "sometimes you have to let go , to hold onto " ....

thanks to all the numerous fans :P who have crowded this little space , but i assure you my sanity whwn i say "i leave at will... unforced"..

thanks for your patience.... :)

mandatory disclosure:

and oh, i must apologize to a few of you who i've rubbed the wrong way .. none of the posts were intended to hurt you :)i mean come on do i look like i could hurt you ?? ... so garry n a few others -no hard feelings ;) and yeah, whatever personal jokes (wot i called PJs) that i've shared here, are copyright protected... so u better leave them alone , plus all the quotes that i invented as under - "they say ... " are highly sensitive and personal... besides it could make you look like a fool if you used them without expertise - so dont use them elsewhere.. and the ones to have complained about the font size - i'll be glad to send u chocolates (digitally of course)....


this blog is now closed !!!

hope...

Prologue:
They say, never argue with idiots, because they’ll first bring you down to their level of intellect and then defeat you with sheer experience!!! You lose!



The day had been tiring, to say the least. In the last 6 hours I had already developed a err..a rather intimate relationship with the toilet. It was similar to the one that the loose motion had developed with my sphincter muscles. It was when the count of the number of tiles on the bathroom walls tallied with that of the previous visit, that I finally insisted on staying back while the rest of my folks took a tour of the northern fringes of one of the most beautifully exotic places that there can be, Goa.
The rest of the morning was busy but boring. By half past four I had had a bland lunch, completed the local bulletin, watched a documentary, taken a nap and more importantly the now-so-important muscles had started holding again. So I WAS prepared to spend the evening sitting inside watching television, in a place such as Goa…..

By the time I had put on some clothes, popped in another pill, called my folks and vacated the apartment it was quarter to five!!!


Luckily the apartment that housed us was only half a km from the nearest beach, Miramar. In another ten minutes I had left the pavement and entered the beach premises. About a km of soft sand now separated me from the waters. The first thing that struck me that night was the fact that there were a lot more people around than I had seen on my previous visits. I continued walking in my lazy stupor; killing the distance one step at a time….

Every beach looks its best at dusk…. And Miramar didn't disappoint.

The light breeze got stronger with ever step and the light thinned by a fraction every second second. Unlike the other overtly overcrowded beaches in Goa, the perennially near-empty Miramar somehow always held its own to me. This is one of the reasons why I rate it my all time favourite. Finally, I chose my spot some five or six meters from the water and settled down.

The beach calms me down, every time…..it sooths the frayed nerves and always gives me some new ideas to ponder over and take back home... every one of them……I had to take out the ice-cream before it melted on its own, before I was gone too far to remember. I felt like a spoilt child …..


A lone trawler (perhaps returning after the day’s work) was all that looked solid in the never ending stretch ahead.

Just ahead of me were a young couple trying to break the ice between their child and the sea. By the look of it I could judge that neither had met the other before. There was fear on the child’s face but the little waves remained patient and enduring. As the little man struggled to keep dry even as the father tried to immerse its little legs in the little waves, one such little wave touched my feet …..as if to wake me up from the trance. The waters had advanced while I had been lost.

When the trawler finally cut the setting Sun’s path I could feel goose bumps intercepting my insanity. Unadulterated emotions are exceptionally evanescent!



By the time my gaze strayed back to the nuclear unit, the child was on his own now. It now stood like a Colossus, proudly resting the little hands on the little waist, the little waves flowing peacefully under the little legs as the proud parents stood at an arms length, beaming. The ice-cream stick was now completely dry; I buried it in the sand.




I found myself staring at nothing in the distant nothingness….. this was the second time it happened today …. Whenever this happens, it’s a signal that the job is done and my time is up…. time to go.
I got back on my feet; my trousers were now wet at the back, the sand would remain adhered to it for a while. The walk back would be longer.


When I turned my head to look back, one last time, I couldn’t locate the trawler. It was gone, so were most of the people on the beach.



Epilogue:
“Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies. I’d be hoping that …….” ( The Shawshank Redemption )

baz lurhmann - sunscreen

Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of 99
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it.
The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proven by
scientists whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable
than my own meandering experiences…
I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth;
oh! nevermind;
you will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded.
But trust me, in 20 years you’ll look back at photos of yourself and
recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before
you and how fabulous you really looked….
You’re not as fat as you imagine.
Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as
effective as trying to solve an algebra equation while chewing bubblegum.
The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that
never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm
on some idle Tuesday.
Do one thing everyday that scares you..
Sing! Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts, don’t put up with
people who are reckless with yours.
Floss! Don’t waste your time on jealousy; sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes
you’re behind…the race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself.
Remember the compliments you receive, forget the insults;
if you succeed in doing this, tell me how.
Keep your old love letters, throw away your old bank statements.
Stretch Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your
life…the most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they
wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year
olds I know still don’t. Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees, you’ll miss them when they’re gone. Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll have children, maybe
you won’t, maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary…
Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either – your
choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s. Enjoy your body,
use it every way you can…don’t be afraid of it, or what other people
think of it, it’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever
own.. Dance…even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room. Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them. Do NOT read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly.
Get to know your parents, you never know when they’ll be gone for good...
Be nice to your siblings; they are the best link to your past and the
people most likely to stick with you in the future. Understand that friends come and go, but for the precious few you
should hold on.
Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and
lifestyle because the older you get, the more you need the people you
knew when you were young.
Visit another country once, but leave before it makes you hard;
Live in Kolkata once, but leave before it makes you soft.
Travel. Accept certain inalienable truths:-
prices will rise, politicians will
philander, you too will get old, and when you do you’ll fantasize
that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were
noble and children respected their elders.
Respect your elders. Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund,
maybe you have a wealthy spouse; but you never know when either one
might run out.
Don’t mess too much with your hair, or by the time you're 40, it will
look 85.
Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who
supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of
fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the
ugly parts and recycling it for more than
it’s worth.


But trust me on the sunscreen…

NOT a MOT - not a matter of taste

Sunday, 11:45 AM, the fellow has just managed to drag himself out of bed: “If u asked me, I would say a Sunday is best left un-meddled with…. At Symbi, this is the part of the week which is meant for better things… to sleep , to laze around, answering mails, checking out the toiletries ( may be do an ABC analysis ) and wash your clothes…"

P.S. " the point being, Sundays are meant for better things.”


Monday, 8:00 AM sharp: As soon as the alarm begins with its earnest quest of waking up a dead body, a limb crawls out of the sheet and stifles it’s plead. In another five minutes a zombie will be walking around cursing the poor phone-alarm’s incompetence before groping around for the glasses. Then it would be “Time to brush!”, but he’d definitely not find the toothpaste on the first go …. “Where did I keep it? Was it the drawer… maybe the shelf?”…

P.S. More commotion follows when the zombie is stopped at the lavatory door due to the antics of an untimely occupant.

lWednesday, quarter to 9:00 AM: “The worst part of the deal is the breakfast. The ones working in the mess would insist that this opinion of mine doesn’t count, simply because I hardly ever have breakfast. But let me assure you that this has nothing to do with quality of the food or the lack of it. I, so ensure that I don’t have a bad-hair day that I have to sacrifice the food, almost every day. But then, I always end up having one , and with amazing frequency too. How? That’s a "trade" secret you can live without.”

P.S, " Before Investing , do read Opportunity Cost!"

Friday, 5:16 PM: “At least people have been able to avert those caught-blissfully-dozing-right-under-the-teacher’s-nose tragedies in this last month. That’s an improvement, to start with. Then there are the chalk-throwing-back-to-school-moments that “bachhe” have had to do away with. Sometimes life at Symbi IS tough. What say?”

P.S. "Yes! May be.. Who Knows. "

30 days of SYMBI .....

Classes are over for today … this, is the one hour , in-between the drowsy last few minutes of the Sales & Distribution lecture and the Circus to follow , where the future managers will sit over a presentation due tomorrow….. The cafeteria will be filled up with bright sparks gelling and bouncing off each other in about as much time as it takes the elevator to descend the 6 floors….The library comes before anything else but the coffee gets my preference… the Wi-Fi is amazing … but anyways the rubbish I always end up downloading , is rarely worth a second double-click…. Even as I miss my sweet-corn with hot coffee, I can feel my grey cells readjusting to the AMR assignment modifications suggested last Wednesday…. and something keeps me from thinking - MJ’s demise was premature…. I am afraid that I’ve started noticing changes in just about everything that I would have termed as “Normal” even a month ago … even the figures that used to hover around nicely inside my tiny little head have started giving way to the numeric sort… I must have Hi-Five’ed and Hello’ed 30 guys since morning without remembering their names … it rained today but no sign of the beautiful “Dhurba” … Kolkata is on the other side of the map …..
Wait!! There’s more to this day …. It’s finally been a month since our orientation programme, which formally inducted us into the Symbi family, ended with an applause …. Every morning, I wake up, somehow … and the bleary eyes remind me “oye!!! Life has never been so alive…..” ….. Break-fasts skipped and classes missed are a different story that I’ll tell you the day I explain why “Symbi Rocks!!!” ... cheers ;)

fish for the CAT ...

as i see this dream, finally cross this road (which u and i can collectively agree, was a rough one) , i cant help but be sorry that it has to end (and like this too) ....

its almost the same feeling when u finally get rid of that devilish little piece of fish-bone lodged inside a remote corner of your upper gum .... i mean its sort of a mixed feeling ( that we usually tend to deny) ... Happy, that its finally done giving you all the pain ... Sorry, that it had to happen ... and Confused, as to whats next .....

perhaps the only good thing about not having a "sweet" dream is the fact that when this dream has ended, u know the next one can only be better ..... its like waking up to find everything that went bad in the dream, has actually not changed in the real life .... just a vague memory should linger after you've slept some more .....

you don't dream when you are awake ... but a dream is made of the things that happen to you only when you are awake ..... so, the next time you curse the dream (gone bad) and sigh that it was not for real, do take into account, the ones you made or broke while you were but asleep in another's dream .....

they say - " when its a chocolate that you want, ask for a chocolate... not fish .... "

ayways, a fish lives in the seas , appears shiny but smells indecently .....

work in progress..

these are some of the posts i'm still struggling with .... hopefully i'll have them pinned here as soon as your average next-time ....

10 things to remember while "home alone"

the long and short of it

october sky

the "super" of it....

giving life a fighting chance ...


"SUPERMAN is a SUPERhero..... but CLARK KENT is a superMAN ......"





it took me sometime to come up with this one .... but i guess it pretty much sums up the answers i arrived at, while trying to solve a couple of of old questions ....

sum space in a crowded place ...

For the last month or so i had been struggling to weave my words and thoughts into a strong knit to cover my ego ... but every time I took to it, it somehow never allowed me my right to expression ... but then today something happened ... I found exactly what I was looking for, but in the remotest corners of the literature I possess... even though I know nothing of this author, I couldn't help but relate to his amazing frankness.... I hope this is more or less what i would have done to this topic.....


We are the subjects of an experiment which is not a little interesting to me. Can we not do without the society of our gossips a little while under these circumstances -- have our own thoughts to cheer us?
Confucius says truly, “Virtue does not remain as an abandoned orphan; it must of necessity have neighbours.”

With thinking we may be beside ourselves in a sane sense. By a conscious effort of the mind, we can stand aloof from the actions and their consequences; and all things, good or bad, go by us like a torrent. We are not wholly involved in Nature in nature, I may be affected by a theatrical exhibition; on the other hand, I may not be affected by an actual event which appears to concern me much more. I only know myself because as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, of thoughts and affections: and am sensible of certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However intense my experience , I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me , but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than that is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned. This doubleness may easily make us poor neighbours and good friends sometimes.

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the company that was so companionable as solitude. A man thinking or working is always alone; let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent student in one of the overcrowded hives of Cambridge College, is as a solitary as a dervish in the desert. The farmer can work alone in the woods all day, hoeing or chopping, and not feel lonesome, because he is employed; but when he comes at night he cannot sit down in a room alone, at the mercy of his thoughts, but must be where he can “see the folks,” and recreate, and, as he thinks, remunerate himself for the day’s solitude.

Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We have had to agree on a certain set rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this frequent meeting tolerable and that we need not come to open war. We meet at the post-office, and at the sociable, and about the fireside every night; we live thick and are in each other’s way, and stumble over one another, and I think that we thus lose some respect for one another. Certainly less frequency would suffice for all important and hearty communications. It would be better if there were but one inhabitant to a square mile, as where I live. The value of a man is not in his skin, that we should touch him.

I have a great deal of company in my house; especially in the morning, when nobody calls. Let me suggest a few comparisons, that some one may convey an idea of my situation. What company has that lonely lake, I pray? And yet it has not the blue devils, but the blue angels in it, in the azure tint of its waters. The sun is alone, except in thick weather, when there sometimes appears to be two, but one is a mock sun. God is alone – but the devil, he is far from being alone; he sees a great deal of company; he is legion. I am no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a pasture, or a bean leaf, or a sorrel, or a horse-fly, or a bumblebee. I am no more lonely that the Mill Brook, or a weathercock, or the North Star, or the south wind, or an April shower, or a January thaw, or the first spider in a new house.


The indescribable innocence and beneficence of Nature – of sun and wind and rain, of summer and winter – such health, such cheer they afford forever! And such sympathy they ever with our race, that Nature would be affected: What is the pill which will keep us well, serene, contended? Not my or thy grandfather’s , but our great-grandmother Nature’s universal , vegetable, botanic medicines, by which she has kept herself young always , outlived so many old Parrs in her day. For my panacea, instead of one of those quick vials of a mixture dipped from Acheron and the Dead Sea, let me have a draught of undiluted morning air. Morning air! If men will not drink of this at the fountainhead of the day, then, we must even bottle up some and sell it I the shops!





This is not an original creation. It has been taken from a RC exercise Test Booklet (T.I.M.E).

abstract

“I think, therefore I write” … or whatever was said….



Dirty shoes blissfully squelched the puddles, like they belonged to the wayward shchoolboy.
The fibre’s misty translucency sometimes blocked the sepia hue of the street lamps, but the eyes weren’t bothered.
the Rain drenched me, one drop at a time. Sweet they were, Sweet they felt.
What had started off as a rusty day had turned ugly and was now turning beautiful, finally.
The 3 lane street was deserted, but not empty, flooded every now and then by the halogen lamps of retiring motor vehicles.
The RJ had invited a local musician who covered an acoustic version of the Garry Moore classic to perfection, to my contentment.
When I looked up the rain drops seemed like darts, harmless though, it felt out of the world… and to think of it that I had never looked up when it was raining….
A metamorphosis was now complete; the ugly caterpillar had successfully changed into a brilliant butterfly.
A cancelled seminar and a stolen 100 bucks now seemed too trivial to mark it as a rather ordinary day.
I keep telling people, a walk in the rains is “good”.
I reinstate, “it’s awe-inspiring! “.






p.s. for the apprehensive lot – before u wet yourself, keep a few paracetamol tabs and an extra pair of ear-phones handy and you shall be just fine. If not, then watch the Gene Kelly musical, it’s almost the same feeling.




For the rest of the story, untold, i leave it to the reader to try my favourite word .... "imagine".