Musings

don't think twice, it's alright

2012-01-22T22:04:00.000+05:30

duskchasers

2012-01-21T08:04:00.003+05:30

chasing the dusk with the scimitars of night

this heady medley of fight or flight

or the limpid calm before the storm

cool eyes, bright lies and an alabaster form

balm to soulscorches in a fading light

amid a handful of cheers and a thousand jeers

rag-tag cloak of long-lost hopes and fears

half-remembered some childhood tune

lucent in the shade of a lycan moon

scuffed-foot walks with those might-have-beens

measuring out their worth with a tablespoon

i have scribbled my soul onto the mossy wall

of these narrow by-lanes of anywhere

to ensure that whenever i hail or call

the ship has already sailed the port

'tis left only to wave and smile -

have no doubt, it's a jolly good sport!

rambling still

2012-01-20T23:25:00.003+05:30

Gorging like post-famine peasants at KFC. The 12 piece bucket. Three people.

Then the impersonal labyrinth of Salt Lake. A nod at my old pilgrimage routes. Dark silhouettes in shady nooks, away from the sullen glower of amber street-lights. After so many things had happened around a place (relatively speaking of course. No more than a flyspecked footnote in the true scale of things) one would expect a bit more than the everlasting sobriety of evening in a residential area.

Ogden Nash in my head. Some random meme must've put it in my head. And some other smattering of the evening spread out against the sky.

If we were to meet in this city, my old friend, after say 5...6 years. Odds are that we would still be walking down these unnamed roads or rambling down Park Street, speaking of much the same things as today. Half-heard confidences to the ghosts of yesteryear. A silent homage to distant summers that none now recall, to silent walks in the swift eventide of winter: little flecks of soulblood, congealed now, that tumbled away into oblivion as people went ahead with their lives.

Those tales never end. And remain the same. Only the folk in them change at times. Sometimes unnoticed, often unheard.

My pet peeve for the day remains the steady drain on equally jobless folk to take care of my rants during my higher moments.

voices shall not share

2012-01-14T09:53:00.005+05:30

Yesterday was memorable. Be it wearing the old school blazer, the Xaverian mein still intact after four years of battering by plebes (:P). That dazzle of floodlights, the upturned faces. And of course "My worthy opponents .... "

Some glad known faces - juniors - right in the hustle and bustle of organising things. It was a familiar place, thanks to the times when wanderlusting away from the humdrum brings me to the welcoming highness of JU.

And after it got over, the lights doused and the curtains fallen. With the hosts (as always) staying back for that last hurrah, that final adjusting of the chairs. A last look at the stage.

Thank you people for letting me relive debating, a schoolboy passion that was almost stifled in a mire of collegiate machinations.

So another ramble through that uni with a hitched hyperactive schoolgirl (even though in 3rd year), orange-glow limned silhouettes with ghosts from the past, present wisecracks and future maudlin-despair.

The comings and goings, hook-ups and ditchings, meet-ups and leg-pulling.

Life's as good as it gets. Me? Bleh.

Nothing works

2011-12-03T22:06:00.003+05:30

Nothing works.

No, that's a lie. Let's rephrase - everything (apparently) works other than what I'm interested in.

Which is ... wait for it ... finding the medial-axis of an image at a single pass from the inverted Canny edgemap by computing the local maxima of its distance transform.

Head. Meet wall.

I usually never refer to work - except as an euphemism for disaster - on this blog. This diversion may be mostly fueled by some random hope that ranting about it here might help. Somehow.

Aarrgh.

A greyish November morning

2011-11-15T08:11:00.002+05:30

Reliving this blog on such a (barely) winter morning - an ancient tradition that has gone on for ages. From the time of scribbled notes (the non-Facebook back-of-school-book sort) and hasty rhetoric. The familiarity with its sense of continuum is comforting, especially in these times of change (a mark that years truly have passed - the previous line would invariably have been "the times they are a' changin" ... about 4 years ago).

The fact that I'm counting days in years instead of hours is another mark that mildly irritates me.

There is a clink of cup on saucer - a nod to my morning cuppa.

The sparrows and crows are continuing their morning symphony. The pariah kites put in a shrill rejoinder, swooping barely within sight at the garbage dump near the far-off rail tracks.

There is no music playing. Anywhere. Other than the eternal choir of a city soundscape. The rattle of the morning garbage-man with the whistle - the same notes since a forgotten childhood. Eternal rumble of vehicles laboring up the No. 4 bridge and thence along the oft-mentioned EM Bypass. Which now boasts leviathan hulks of yet another semi-constructed flyover. Passing them on the way to college always puts me in the mind of Darth Maulish saberfights.

This is a morning for aimless rambles, a jog in the park or a jaunt down park street with a drop by at Flurys (the old one, with rounded armchairs and a shadowy gravy brown interior). However end-sems and guilt-ridden dreams of a postgrad have almost driven such bats out of the belfry.

Realworld's catching up without any pills (red or blue) to provide a shortcut out. What put me into blogpost mode was an sms last morning - "happy children's day to the child within you" or words to the selfsame effect thereof [YES i like this language]. Here's to more such unexpected and unintended triggers.

Many whys to while away the time

2011-11-05T07:26:00.003+05:30

Pre-exams low and boredom high. This the winter of our discontent. Haven't read Steinbeck in ages. Or the Bard for that matter. Why?

In this place east of my eden, carefully squelching every little ripened grape of wrath, living the lives of both mice and men - why this sudden retrograde musing on a high-school literary fascination?

On a whim (and because one can do only so much of Java threads in the morning) I try to trace back the reasons.

A few days ago the long-neglected VCD-player caught my notice. Put On the Waterfront with all that "could've had class." That started off the Brando bandwagon - no stopping Streetcar after that. Purposely didn't go into the later movies.

Guessing that these two b/w films put the whole vintage era somewhere at the back of the mind. Dylan for company on the long travels with charlie (always on the dark side of the road) might just have played some role in that.

When the Steinbeck bug bit I'd be carrying around this paperback of The Grapes of Wrath everywhere. A friend once looked at the cover and remarked: "That's the tambourine man." How did this instinctive identification with the book and Dylan (the first song of his that I heard) come about?

Still caught up in a time warp.

caterwauling

2011-10-29T08:13:00.002+05:30

Woken up by two feline duelists facing off mano-e-mano (erm... cato-e-cato) in the shrubbery below my window.

Context-free grammars and virtual memory schemes still buzzing around my head from last night's desperate attempts to salvage a retarded GPA.

Then a gamcha-pora parar lok came and chased them away, cursing about a broken slumber or something.

A slight nip early in the morning. Its autumn here, never Fall.

2011-10-24T08:06:00.001+05:30

There is a familiar coolness in the air in my city, a gentle nudge that this year too is drawing to its end.
I had often mulled over shutting this blog down altogether, what with the sporadic posts, the endless repetition of things already said and realworld pressures in general. Haven't really written properly for ages.
Still this place won't be shut down anytime in the near future: it is the only place that contains a large chunk of me. From the early days of 2004 (!), of teenage, angst, existential drivel and ideals. Of epic-fantasy, sci-fi, my many (failed) muses and Bergman. The only place that records the heartfelt outbursts of those heady days.
'Twas another lifetime... as Dylan would've said, which he often did on this pile of html. Of no smartphones, or facebook or twitter. Where the people we met were fellow wayfarers in the New World of the blogosphere. Those days.

A sense of closure somehow permeates this time. There were a lot of things that this blogger had beat his head against over time. And some of them actually worked out. I hoped (but, self-treacherously never believed) to contribute something to computer science that was meaningful, to have that idea aided by mentors and finally published. That was a seriously hoo-yah moment. :)
The continuing work takes a toll on the random haphazard creative urges, but with passing childhood comes the realization that some compromises are in order. About a year back we managed to stage a play with friends - it was fun and crazy in a perfect mix; and it made for musing meetups every now and then on the JU campus. There are loads more to do but a semblance of focus is finally there.

The imminent winter made me think of a lot of people around me that would be moving off too in no great time. Maybe there could've been a few more chitchats over coffee and ribbing about old time craziness. Then again, one had best subscribe to the Bard on exits and entrances to the stage.

So here's a heartfelt "THANK YOU" to this blog and all those that stumbled 'pon it. It holds a lot of me that is now lost, like everyone's passing yesterdays.

let it all add up

2011-10-18T23:10:00.002+05:30

Let this all add up. Somewhere. Somehow.

A simple shaky prayer. With no pretense at subtlety.
Like a tinned sardine in public buses, hanging half outside ferraric autos (yet eyeing the passing Audis) - the sweat slicked jam-packed mass that is no more human than the jumbled tumble of ants in their colony. Then.

Like a tramp in Frosty mudtime, passing sedans laying their splashy tribute at scuffled feet, whizzing over potholed roads. Like trenches in the War. Vowing. Then.

In the starkness of a lab, or the nerve-sapping drudgery of routine. Then.

In the fumbling for tips after leaving restaurants, or the laser traced nights to chase off routine with routine. At blazing shop-fronts, at a life that is a sum-total of all the meagre bills. Unpaid. Half-paid. Vowing. Then.

In the sway of the Metro, the guileless strip-lights and walks down broad promenades where other lives make merry. Then.

In the solitude of friends, the warm rush of chatter to submerge and dream. Of face-smile-form-eye-lashes-breath carven in like friezes I've never seen. In the lusty gusts of sudden storms that ruffle thoughts to soar unbound. Then!

In those oh-so-frequent rambles down memory lanes, where all personae blur and merge. In the incessant fight to stay more than afloat. Of hopes that quests may still be there for faltering knights in rusty armor. Then.

Let this all add up. Somewhere. Somehow.

Goodbye and back to work

2011-10-07T08:24:00.002+05:30

This was an interesting time every year for a Bengali in Calcutta - the immersion of the Durga idol to much fanfare and "asche bochor abar hobe" - "so long til the next year".

Also, a brief farewell to the man who inspired countless technology enthusiasts. Basu's blogpost put it succinctly -

I was hoping to meet him in person one day. But now I’m going to get back to work. Life is short.

That is definitely the best legacy a person could leave behind.
Back to work for the rest of us too.

things have changed

2011-08-31T23:57:00.001+05:30

And how. A year back, if the not-much-younger me was offered to play this imprisoned member of the French resistance (with hands manacled throughout, no less!) with an experienced crew and... heck its a Sartre script for crying out loud! Yes, yes that chap would've said an unequivocal yes, done (or at least attempted) a few cartwheels out of sheer joy and gone into that old routine of whole-night rehearsals, slipping dog-tired into another soul's skin and tongue and eyes. Being in a rag-tag group of earnest madmen, half-drunk on creative spasms and shoe-string budgets. That heady feeling of power when there's just you, the stage .... the hush, the spotlight and the holy shadows beyond!
A year back.

It feels slightly nauseous, like kicking aside the carcass of some animal killed on a highway. Like a back-stabber, mouthing that litany of "sorry old chap, the part was awesome, but got this crypto project, can't give the time, better I let you guys know now than pulling out later...."
Sickening.

Maybe its a mark that I'm not as much a kid as I always wished to be, honestly. That pause. That considering of where priorities lay. The realisation that doing several things that requires all my mind and soul and energy is not possible. This recognition that man after all is not born with wings was necessary, but brought with it the bitter aftertaste of another realization.
That those cherished flights of fantasy: of quests and knights-errant and long evenings of walks, talks and mumbled philosophies and jumbled mumbo-jumbo were a thing of the past. That there are limits to what one may do, or even strive to achieve.
The choice was made a long time back, shunning the creative for the analytic.

Looking back at this year so far, I've done some things I had only half-hoped to do. Getting published, writing some meaningful code and in a small, humble way take the first baby-step (more a shuffle) to leave behind the computer as something more than when I was first led up to it. It never came easy, probably because it was never meant to.

It meant an unfinished canvas (was beginning to look rather crappy anyways, if truth be told), that play and a myriad other things that would've made college-life more happy, but less the way I want the rest of it to be.

And yet

2011-05-15T22:52:00.000+05:30

And yet wanderlusting still the twisted turns

That weave the magic of this city and life

Beseeching the dank walls of dingy lanes

And greasy plates after dinner parties

In the grey half-light of a friendly dawn -

Still seeking the remains of half-smiles

And silent screams never laughed out loud

Or piled like logs on dreary evenings. alone.

With that sparkling yet faraway look about dark eyes

that makes you think of oceans and swift-falling dusks

and poems by TS Eliot or Dylan at his most melancholy.

"Coffee chhara shunyo laage."

now more than ever

2011-04-28T20:31:00.002+05:30

Now more than ever I have stopped hoping, but started walking towards dreams.
There was a time not too long ago when I tried a dozen things and hoped they would work out. Rather, nowadays I do half -a-dozen and know that they are working out. The metamorphosis from a lot of hot air and high-brow rhetoric to the present state of buckling down and getting things done did not happen in a day, nor was it painless.
Every person I believe needs one Ayn Randish "yes." What I mean by that is at least one achievement that is fruitful and recognized. That one indication that you are treading the right path, even if that is the less trodden, that one vindication of your efforts when you are at the fag end of your fortitude.
Yes.
And after that one confirmation the road doesn't become less difficult, nor the study-hours less, nor the desire to hang out with dear friends any more nerve-sapping in the stark solitude of a lab, nor banging your head against a seemingly-thankless project any less frustrating.
But you get to know that there was a light in the tunnel. That there is a Promised Land, an Uttermost West (yes yes Tolkien to the end) or whatever: feel free to choose your favorite metaphor for the sum total of all aspirations.
It makes all the difference.
So here's a big YES to each and every person trying to forge a path out of the mire of mediocrity, chasing dreams and persevering alone for the sake of a life less ordinary.

Unfinished xP

2011-03-02T22:27:00.000+05:30

Comings and goings

2011-02-16T19:34:00.000+05:30

A lot of things during the last two months.
The long awaited meet with my friends studying overseas. It was a pleasure as always. How much things have changed, yet the ones that matter have not. Reassuring old madness and all that jazz.
An almost-completed project in image processing at the Statistical Institute. That was an eye opener for sure and my first research-based project into one of my core subjects.

Now the willy-nilly rushing about of college, fests and the like. The Dinner Party is having another show at the NUJS - a guest performance. I'll be a delighted part of the audience (for a change).

I'm working now with a shot in the arm - the dream isn't that distant anymore. Armed with Kaplan sword and Barron armour. :P

hasty snatches

2010-10-30T09:26:00.000+05:30

Time, tide and deadlines wait for none. And I don't particularly want to do a Canute here.
   Where have all the bloggers gone? The neurotic, manic-depressive and oh-so-reassuring (magnificently fueling the 'if you're in shit hey look, there's someone shittier!' complex) ones.
   They became whole once more, existential angst were outgrown along with teenage braces and half-formed ideals and pakami. Leading whole lives in the fullness of time, with no reason to whine. Tradition be damned!
   What remains is a handful of brittle leaves of yesteryears. Thake shudhu ondhokar, mukhomukhi boshibaar...

   Read a few good books after a long time. Kerouac's On the road. And all the jazz associated with why i wanted to read it in the first place. Then Lust for life on van Gogh. And yes, my ears are still intact though it prodded me into picking up palette and paint - resulting in a brilliantly horrendous canvas. Skimmed through Arthur Haley's Hotel. After the uncompromising reality of Irving Stone it didn't quite cut the mark.
Now back to Eliot's evenings spread out against the sky. Early in the morning too!
Finally classified myself into an obsessive-compulsive nostalgic. The whole looking back and 'how green was my valley' thing. Every time. Oh no, never vocal. College spurts on like paste from a tube and I remain ensconced in my Dylan and Cohen and the sudden Beethoven.
We are nostalgics to the hilt - taru, myself and a few others. It has always been the Beatles and Dylan, Sinatra and
  This blog has withstood many a fevered tirade against nothing in particular.

interlude

2010-10-30T09:24:00.000+05:30

There was a time when this place was all about swift dusks, solitary evenings and half-known pangs of longing. Of evenings that become nights with always the damn it's already dark. Long walks, longer talks with dark eyes.
The one that begins from park circus (near the church, where the tram stops and I check out others), past Zeeshan's aroma of kebabs (gentle ribbing at my apetite for mughlai. I retort: "tui toh na kheyeo ekta mutki!") onwards down the gentle curve of the divider, thinking of all that could've been and talking of queen jane. approximately. and at Gariahat it ends, too soon as always.
There was a time when I would have cabbed from there all the way, dropping you off safely outside the gate and then sit back savoring the cab's now-empty interiors. Like a knight-errant after some completed quest.

Not so now. Too much water flowing under too rickety a bridge. This bill's not mine to pay anymore.

Wishing for winter

2010-10-30T09:06:00.000+05:30

Never really went for the winters in this city. There too little of the chill, a tame breeze while the mind is borne on gusty gales. Whatever. Yes that remains my second favourite word. Right after the f word. My my, how like a sodding choir boy, all doe-eyed innocence. Blah!
It's still warm, the breathe doesn't rise in clouds yet. I'm waiting for the bite in the morning breeze. There's plans for a trip to Spiti and beyond during the summer breaks. With my brother-in-law who works with snow leopards. That distant thought -along with others- is sustaining me now. The mountains again!

Tried to make a film. Did not work. On the same note: college canceled the film show. Is this a message of sorts? Like ... stick to your subjects dude, write some half-decent code for a change and leave the more rigorous creative pursuits to the mandarins who smoke up outside arts departments of renowned universities (unlike my own).

Exams round the corner. Work work. Played warcraft after ages - Insane undead and all that.

tobu likhi

2010-09-16T18:47:00.000+05:30

And yet i scrawl and scribble my rants in here.

Someday I will stop blogging. It will mark the end of a morbid part of existence devoid of direction.
Someday. Hoping still.

emptiness and coffee

2010-08-09T07:39:00.001+05:30

"Ekhon kebol coffee ar shunyota..." now there is only coffee and emptiness.
"Tahole tui kichu ekta likhe phel, eto eta niye hung-up hoye royechish"
"Gautam toh likhe gechei. Ami ki ar.."
"Fresh view."

Everything's passing in a daze currently. What usually happens during these to-soon tatas. Bugger it all. Class in an hour.
This is just the promise of a blog post. On the mentioned topic. Probably will remain thus for time to come: a promise of a promise that was never made.
Is it too much to ask why? and the bigger why not? And then expect the impersonal stars to twinkle a morse-coded answer?

As usual there's this sensation of dreaming my way through the important phases - important according to so-called established norms, not at all my cup of tea/coffee (!). The lingering after-images of a summer that (as usual) was brimming with too much fun and too little time.

Looking ever so often at the chequered past, a certain day comes to mind. It was this time o'th' year and a very young blogger had just passed out of high school. Xaverianism intact. Summer breaks ended back then too, along with the sunshine and clear sparkling laughter. And I was sad.

M never really was one for these oh-so-very-profound reflections. Which is why after two and a half years the words still ring true.

"Don't be sad because summer's ending. You'll have your college too and not so much time to spare anymore. The really sad thing would be if none of us had something to do or somewhere to go after summer ends."

2010-08-03T22:41:00.001+05:30

watched inception. then enjoyed some time with friends.
seems very precious.

play, soccer and a trip with friends

2010-07-13T08:40:00.000+05:30

and lots of other things.
the play was ok. claps and boos evenly distributed. most importantly a wonderful bonding thread connecting all of us (virtual strangers before) that looks like it will endure a year or so. 'forever' is a term i have learnt not to misuse.
back home now, carrying a slice of my land's past with me. joyful images of a rain-sodden soccer match with the local kids. getting high with school buddies on things best left unsaid. off-key chorus of farewell Angelina, 'biday porichita', Oh Susanna and suddenly Annie's Song. and the stars were brighter than i have seen for ages in my light-infested city.

wondering how far i've gotten, and how much further there is before things plateau off into that dreary mix of everydays.
we're meeting up again, our bohemian group of would-be thespians. who get off on neruda, dylan, leonard cohen and bergman. at my old house, that has antlers hanging from the drawing-room wall. and ancient texts on the transmission of power. and my eyes look ever into suns forever (yes) setting.
when, dammit, when?

Phew!

2010-06-09T18:29:00.000+05:30

Ok, one down, 5 more to go. Exams i mean. meh.
after that the actual fun begins: mugging up a script in 1 day, learning to act in 6. after that the summer training from july onwards. will try to punch in a language crash course within that span. probably French, because it'll be faster going than German. Though i love the german 'ch' a month is hardly enough to have me read Kafka or Goethe originals.
Russian and German are two languages that seem somehow lost in translation. The Kafkaesque is still effective - the verb endings to sentences so uncommon in the english language lending that peculiar air of unpredictability. The bleakness. But Goethe really crops it. Kindred by Choice's english edition had me banging my head against the walls.
Russian's another - at times the threads flow into limpid pools of understanding. At others they sound stilted. Then again maybe that aids the whole thing: the prosaic statements, shorn of all cloying ornaments. The difference between sketching out a rider at full gallop with a few bold strokes of the charcoal or a painstaking troimpe l'oeil in minute detail.
Ivan Danisovitch's one day is all the more memorable because of the starkness, the unmitigated bleakness. Or the sheer volume of a Dostoevsky or Tolstoy. The same perception of a foreign language in Gorky as well.
Sholokhov's Don flowed quietly through - all four volumes of it - with a surprising fluidity, almost lyrical. A truly beautiful translation.

of mum, mud and men

2010-06-07T07:55:00.001+05:30

My usual litany of woes in pre-exam time. The feeling of wanting to be a bungee-jumper, Everester, P=NP solver, the next Steve Jobs, the next Joyce or Sartre or Bunuel or Bergman all rolled into one. Just when I can't go about any of those aforementioned things.
Haven't really grown up. Still hate exam time with a passion. Being one of those duffers who plod dully through the entire coursework over the sem, the last minute turbo-charged nitro-boost isn't happening here either - no juice left.
Had a few great chats with a few old pals: reconnecting was never so effortless (other than the phone bill i guess xP). Got over a major feud with AT. Chatted about our continued love of Arnold Schwarzenegger movies with Kaz. Ran out of nicknames for P, a point which she promptly noted. Really, I must be mellowing in my old age.
And TLD was the same as ever - ~~the bro i never had~~.

Mar Vanwa Tyalieva carries on - the cottage of lost Play which I may only enter after the 21st. Til then, adieu.

A day in the life of . . .

2010-05-25T20:01:00.001+05:30

Went to a school buddy's birthday about a week back - quite a bunch of the old crowd actually managed to make it. Niceness, friends (weird nicknames still intact), talk of old times and new chicks.... chicken, mutton, Rumali roti, pantharas, bel er pana, compounded with the feel of old North Calcutta and eating as unabashedly as kids in 8th grade.
Awesome evening with Bachha, Biri, Chandu, Dhon Das, Canto, Bossuck, Buchu, Daju (who'd been photographing Russian models: his Nikon promptly became public property) and the rest ... Taru was sorely missed.
Ran pell-mell to catch the last metro to our respective homes. Promises of meet-ups as soon as possible while guys still remained in this city.

My calendar seems (strangely) filled. The end-sems end (ha) on June the 21st. That long awaited play (festering for a year now) on the 29th of June. Hall booked and stuff so no kidding around this time!
There's a project-based summer training I'm really looking forward to: at the CSI on web applications using .NET. College stuff gives a strong theoretical groundwork but applications are never fully learned without a serious project being completed.

I'm reading the Silmarillion when I should be doing differential equations. Listening to Bob Dylan again, many happy returns and what not. Checking out people's legs on facebook, shamelessly. And the muezzins are wailing from the nearby mosques.
Thinking of winter.

Lost voyages

2010-05-17T13:36:00.001+05:30

It seemed that salt sprays from the gulf of Lune to Belfalas had weathered my limbs as I tarried by the havens at Mithlond. Leaning upon the broken edifices I squinted across these brazen waves.
There were no gulls any more.

Inside the tavern the fiddler is a blur of elbows and tapping feet, the sound of thumping tankards and slosh of ale. The warm of humanity pervades me like the familiar glow from a hearth. Running my hand over the rough-grained wood of tables polished by the grease of countless meals.
Someone hollers for another round - burdens made light as light fails outside.

Who shall refill the cup for me?

Drifting to my favoured shadowy nook, out of the way. Watching the merry folk traipsing by. The deep-throated chuckle of hefty men back from the hard fields, the swing of a shire-wench's skirts, the quiet enjoyment of a crew resting from a voyage. Whither?
The South they say, beyond Harad and Khand and East thence.

I turn away. They speak of what I have seen.

Outside again, and the hearth-fires twinkle from the dusk-cloaked hillsides eastwards. Like portholes of some mighty argosy to take me hence forthwith. To the white shores that call me unceasingly, beyond the setting Sun and sickle Moon, hope and despair. Driving me to unheeded rapture when the wind tears at my wayward thoughts, when the sun blazes it's ascetic's incal upon my bared forehead in a last gesture of commiseration.
Baring my teeth in a mirthless grin. My motley crew seems happy here, a whiff of peace from the snarling waves or the deathly stillness of a sea becalmed.
Striding down the wooden jetty, thinking of the graceful harbour that I once knew. Hearing snatches from conversations ages ago, with those that had now passed beyond my ken. Swift glimmers of that free laughter (so free, so free!) sparkling like wine under a youthful sun. Living my days out on echoes from the past. While the voices of the living fade to oblivion.

I am about to cast off the moorings when my ship's mate intones softly, gazing like me into the West.
"Arwen vanimelda, namarie."
There's a gentle query at the end that is not missed by either.
My Arwen passed into the West years ago.
And all Eowyns thereafter were pale shades of what was, and never will be.

I can now feel the swell beneath the plunging prow as we head out West, one last time. Bows pointed straight into the gloaming, to forgotten paths east of the Sun, West of the Moon. The voyage for the sake of itself, what lies there forgotten in the thrill of the salt, wind and waves.

rains and other thoughts

2010-05-03T07:22:00.003+05:30

It rained yesterday and I was glad.
As the end-sems draw closer, keeping with tradition, the gusts of wind, the scudding clouds and flights of fancies become way more important than Laplace transforms et al.
We are thinking of rebooting that old play, trying to make it sound less a Woody Allen rip-off.
"Mon ta jader ghore maathe-ghaate . . . " So much for exam preps.

It was Satyajit Ray's birthday yesterday - still looming over the bengali's film consciousness. To think of the days this blog waxed effusive over 2nd May.

Spoke with an old, old blast from the past - talking of how we fought over Tolkien/Shakespeare in our schooldays, and how refreshing Thomas Hardy's pessimism seemed after endless tea-parties of the Bronte ilk. Giving up on ever 'finishing' Joyce. Spirited renditions of "Molly Malone" after the Dublin exchange program.

In Dublin fair city, where the girls are so pretty .....

And so in the quiet anonymity of this blog let me make sense of things. Should I take up the uphill task of somehow finding my way to the pearl-strewn shores of Eldamar. The Eldamar I had always cherished, longed for beyond hope, where still I dream (falsely) that someone waits silently.
Or the staid, everyday life under fading trees in this my Middle-earth. Infinitely safer, easier and expected.
I am no Earendel.

Cab rides and broken souvenirs

2010-04-04T23:25:00.003+05:30

Stephen Court was already burnt, but the landmarks of my schooldays thankfully unscathed: Flurys (shifted to the Street), MusicWorld and the rest. We looked up at the charred hulk of gutted upper storeys. Silently I recalled the day when flames had still been flickering, hoses spraying, politician screeched. The crowds. The bodies of those that jumped. The inherent voyeurism of the average Kolkatan when witnessing tragedy. It had been her birthday and I had other things on my mind.
So we find ourselves on another Saturday evening, post-beefsteak (no beer). What was in her mind as we stood below the white blaze of KFC, gazing up? The trajectory traced by burning souls? Not my place to wonder anymore, I admonish myself. We had parted though never having truly met.
This was just a catching-up for three old friends, a stolen gasp between relationships (hers), midsems and projects.

As I drop her home we chat freely again - of cabbages, kings, ex-s weeping over phonecalls (bogus I say!), the current older guy and pensive thoughts on a Brahmo marriage. Wondering how truly easy it was to slip into old shoes. I searched in vain for a trace of bitterness or even a glimmer of want. Just felt tired at the end of the day. And more glad than ever to have a friend near again.

"Damn, we haven't done this in a long time. Missed all this."
Put forth my toothy grin, past the enthu to read something more into polite banalities.
She left without looking back and I did not call after her. As I had often done in headier times.
Settled down as dark lanes whizzed past. There was no more turmoil, no more yearning and sudden spurts of despair-fueled attempts to own. Only a sense of disappointment - that even with more things in common than I dared hope, it always had been a fool's chance.
Tiredness once again.

random and lovin' it!

2010-03-23T06:55:00.000+05:30

There and back again, a blogger's holiday. Hah!
We had a power-cut the other day, after ages. No inverter back-up either. Alone, momentarily blinded from the clutter of everyday. Escaping the stifling confines to the terrace, the far byepass-connector lights (inspiration for so many a blogpost!) glimmering like isles amidst a sea of noisome black.
Tried calling an old, old friend. Thinking shamefacedly whether I'd be able to pay for an international call. No reply. A shameful relief smuggled itself into the general disappointment. And then my phone rang again. And we talked like in the old days of lives, loves, cabbages and kings. Maxims and credos strewn across like pearls on the beaches of Eldamar.
The slumbering Tolkienian stirs within me, buried deep under landrover bot designs, programming assignments and bloody Carnot engines.
"From the ashes a fire shall be woken . . . "

evening. alone.

2010-03-16T20:27:00.005+05:30

Sipping from a coffee mug at the end of the day,
Thinking of that oft' trodden way to say
That nothing much matters in this clamor and clatter,
And nothing great is handed to you on a platter.

The steps are too many for these fumbling feet -
I'd rather stumble to this my age-worn seat
And as my day wanes with the swiftest sigh
I'll sit and watch the burning ones pass me by.

wandering back

2010-03-16T20:06:00.001+05:30

So yet again I'm musing at random. With no thought but the scraps of others' sayings. A few staves of ImmorTall's sound track. The part where the poor blob is finally covered in snowflakes. How each member of the family leaves ... one at a time. Never looking back. Also, never coming back to comfort the one's still remaining by the fallen alien.

For once i'm not writing to an imagined or hoped/longed-for audience. Not attempting to put in some oh-so-perceptive maxim about life, the universe or the lives of others. The cravings are still there - for fresh smiles, old school friends, chocolate and a life less ordinary. Blogs aren't like memories or old albums, they don't even fade away.
It is like warming my back against the glow of embers - this blog will echo on long after the voice is stilled. The surging aspirations of post-adolescence, teenage agnst, unvoiced longings, the sheltered know-it-all of high school, the glimmering of adulthood where suddenly there's no cushion to shield your rump from a fall. And now the empty corridors where none tread, the sudden wild rush through college. This blog has seen (and more often been) it all.

Kolkata is already sweltering. Amidst cheering on KKR and the reflective commuting to college i wonder how little i've really written, how few lives have i known and touched, how small were the horizons i yearned to cross.

A poignant walk.

Credits to Kazarelth for referring me some truly manic-depressive games. Superb taste there. xP

Win7

2009-12-04T18:07:00.000+05:30

Yes it's been quite a while. Thanks to an MSDNAA account it is now possible to download a genuine and registrable image of Windows 7. I've been stuck with XP for too long.

Contended

2009-11-14T12:23:00.003+05:30

Hardly the Winter of our discontent. As dusk falls ever faster I feeling more at ease with myself and the paths I tread. The other day we chatted under the pale stars to My Immortal. BJ-park, Salt Lake. Walking as usual with the shades of yesterday. Enjoying the present bonhomie as well.
Things are looking up. They had reached a minima some time back.

Another brief interlude

2009-10-14T17:03:00.000+05:30

Time mismanagement is an art-form which I have readily mastered. Currently I have EC191 reports to finish (forget about FETs for the time being), somehow pass the internal assessment starting from the 21st, start off on electromagnetic theory. Oh yeah, and Euler's theorem isn't really helping matters.
Then there is the usual obligatory 'catching-up' on old friends (not a chore at all, but leaching into my time pool nonetheless), fits of insomnia where I do not manage to get started on any work before 1 a.m. and those phone conversations that spiral into a no-man's-land.

Got drenched coming back home. With my graphics sheets at that. Bugger! Trying to unfocus on the anxieties. Spring Sonata should help. I'll enqueue it with Kreutzer.

phone call

2009-10-11T20:52:00.000+05:30

A very old friend called after a very long time. From very far away too.
Feeling an odd mix of elation, nostalgia and a sense of standing up straighter than before. Spoke of so many of the things we used to unload on each other on those interminable phone calls, the ever-present PNPC, talking of the littles loves and large lunacies (your harem of post-menopausal hourees e.g.) , mimicking random people - the more eminent the better and deciding that you are from China after all. The sound of your sister's slippers colliding with your posterior. And other such gems. :P

The thing is . . . I had tasted a lot of the best things in life way before their proper times. And now most things I see today are in the light of yesterdays - jaded, laced with nostalgia and never being able to measure up to those I had known in the past. That precious camaraderie that never needed words, the silences that were never uncomfortable.
Ah well. I hope next winter will find me less a mess. Talk of being far-sighted. But till then my mind still veers to a darkened Xavier's auditorium and the magic of that horribly hard piano tamed under your blasted talons. And the sustaining pedal always pressed! Uff! Lol.

my anarchy

2009-10-08T21:26:00.000+05:30

Opened my eyes to the morning light
Beheld your form standing, sublime . . .

You are a gust of anarchy
The splash of red on my cobbled streets
An azure window in lowering skies
A gem glimmering on the shingled shores . . .

I will scratch my silent screams into
the flaking walls of dingy lanes
Into the smell of the westering sun
on deserted courtyards . . .
And the redemption of your darkling eyes,
In dreams and the lilting song of dusk -
My fleeting muse for ever!

To you

2009-10-07T19:42:00.003+05:30

To you my fleeting salvation.

The eyes of a goddess
Limpid pools of laughter...
Fire-fettered they flirt with the wind
Darting dark eyes of thine -
At times calm, like moonlight on snow,
Balm to scorched souls like mine . . .

"Aren't you attending a lecture? Don't let your mind wander..."

Wanderlusting through the meandering
bylanes of Anywhere
A mire of blogs, bile and bitterness;
Bereft of your elusive grace
Crushed petals, withered, brittle.
Borne on wings of amber wan
To fall like dying birds upon the meres.

The road is my own to stumble through
My highest reverence - just smile.
That I may someday learn to breathe
Than gasp and yearn for false dawns.

For now just the road before me
With pale streaks daubed in the sky above
And dark eyes in the gloaming of my mind.

Footnote: you were correct my infernal friend, should you ever read this. Nothing like being unrequited to blow on the old embers of forgottten lines. Like the old times . . .

Walk in the rain

2009-10-03T20:27:00.002+05:30

Walking back home through Mayfair. Alone. Quiet snootiness of upscale residential buildings and goverment estates. Merc swerves past. Kompressor though. Autumn rain. Strains of Annie's Song in my head. Straining over it and the drizzle's fucked up whisper to focus on the cell. The ending of yet another folly. My miserable little travesties.
Again. Again.

play rights

2009-07-20T18:01:00.001+05:30

The best things do not happen out of design.
So I had gone to hang out with a few friends at the JU campus. Turns out they were practising for some play, and I wasn't exactly unwelcome to join. Being part of a proper stage production was .. one of those things that flit by in more pensive moments. Really glad about it.
For now rehearsals are going at the usual Bengali pace (an hour late; with much prodding) at my old place. It's pretty run-down but there's plenty of room to practice. And I managed to bag in one of my old school buddies.
The thing's scheduled for the end of August. Gyan Manch, Pretoria Street. Fingers firmly crossed.

I'm enjoying myself in fruitful activity after quite a while. We discuss Ray and Antonioni in between parts, Agni holds forth on Ghatak's flaws, Prerna 'man'handles Adhi making them perfect as the hen-pecked hubby+wife,the director and I think of adapting Sophoclean choruses and eigenfunctions.
There are countless theatrical productions staged in my city. I wonder if this'll get off at all. But for now . . . I'm reasonably happy.

snatch 190

2009-07-16T18:06:00.000+05:30

writing in brief snatches. stolen moments from past splendors.
i'm tired. as usual. for now i'm just content to be adrift. the peaks are still there, high and remote. i see them, admire their loftiness. the urge to climb is gone. leaving behind an infinitely peaceful man.
yes, i have dealt with my inner demons. i let them discard me for greener pastures.

let this be an over-hurried epitaph to most of the things that resonated in this blog. the sound and fury . . . the meaningless rhetoric and senseless delusions. the time is now for the little streams and pot-holed roads.
i am done.

counting the dusks

2009-06-16T20:03:00.020+05:30

" I've heard newborn babies wailin' like a mournin' dove
And old men with broken teeth stranded without love.
Do I understand your question, man, is it hopeless and forlorn? "

And suddenly it all made sense - the senselessness of clinging to cocoons of familiarity, the coterie of compatriots and yearning after my lost grails.
       I'm loving the city more than ever, the ever-present symphony of honking cars and rumbling trucks. the curve of the bye-pass lights like a golden necklace that had fallen on the dark ground. torn from some ivory neck ...
     i want to read all books, listen to my infernal friend's poetry, eat at Mocambo and the dessert at Flurys (like the old days, remember?). talking glibly of guevara, Gabriel's Room and guernica. i'm remembering the two of you more than ever - in every scuffled tread, every dusty turn of the road and the pangs of solitude raked across the bared breast of a lucent evening sky. and others too...
the heady laughter that seemed to last forever, the thoughts that soared with the swelling tenors. the firm belief that i had only to spread my arms before the lusty wind to streak into the azure vistas. and of course lemon-tea had in the Messala-BenHur style.

this is all about me now. as it well should be. i felt that by gathering the scraps of countless broken lives i would have a whole one to live for myself. As if the shards of a vase can hold a bouquet of faded lilacs wilting in this heat. i forgot - we don't get lilacs here so often.
    i have tried to live solely on the gasps of forgotten evenings and rare gusts of glory that passed away as swiftly as a high-school summer.
    i have aimed for the sky and now must contend with the treetops. Correction: i had aimed for all the skies in every world whose gloamings had warmed me.

maybe it was worth it.

   but even today . . . i cannot but feel a better man taking a detour through Middleton Row. a senseless homage to the ghosts of lost yesterdays.

"Suddenly I turned around and she was standin' there
With silver bracelets on her wrists and flowers in her hair.
She walked up to me so gracefully and took my crown of thorns.
Come in, she said, an'
I'll give ya shelter from the storm. "

temples

2009-05-11T05:25:00.001+05:30

she had made me cold coffee. while about the three of us fell the swift dusk of wintertime.
it had been excellent. the coffee.
now almost three years ago.

Flights of thought

2009-05-07T17:20:00.003+05:30

There are many reasons to write.

At times the soul bleeds itself into the words; a catharsis of sorts. In the pangs of a sudden dusk and the scrape of the wind over a deserted hearth. A time for the failed poets and stricken painters. Yes, I remember having written of them.
And then you have those heady days when you're drunk on the rich red blood of youth. When the fires of life flare up at the myriad -isms (rationalism, humanism, socialism, secularism...) and ideologies. The old words mouthed by young lips.You look into the depths of an uncaring Providence and shout out the "I am here!" of Mankind. The fire of a thousand stars about to kindle the voids. Or so one thinks in the heyday of all those new dawns and glorious beginnings.
The majesty of a sunset - as if a burning ship was carrying some mighty saga into the immortality of the blazing western sky.
That strikes the flint in the mind and heart - to 'seek, to strive and not to yield!'
There are the flashes of sunshine and the swift succor of raindrops. The true joy of relishing wild strawberries with fresh cream in the company of friends.

I remember having written on all these and more. In the numbness of solitude - the shambling walk down oh-so-familiar streets, talking in my mind to the ghosts of the past . . . living backwards to the best days that have passed us by. Through the world-weary pessimism of teenage ("pessimism is realism" and other such maxims, lol.), the biting sarcasm and humor of maturity . . . Musings has seen it all. From Dylan, Cohen, Dostoevsky to Pratchett, Gibran and Khayyam and to de Sica, Bergman, Ray and Kurosawa . . . the ideals that turned out to be childhood idols.

Today ... today I write for the sake of writing. For the only sake that really matters - mine. To earn the respect that matters the most. Mine again. A mind wrestling with amendments, laplace transforms, blue eyes, fish eyes and the other beautiful names that have had me kneel at their altars.
Everyone who walks on two legs dreams once of flying. I've fallen once, but I cannot resign myself to walk. Fly I will, for fly I must.
Soli bene gloria.

Summers that last forever

2009-04-26T12:53:00.000+05:30

The early morning is about the only time I can brave the terrace in summertime. Got up at 5 a.m. Presumably to get some work done but ended up playing Jedi Academy til Marka Ragnos' duel. So much for resolutions.

On a whim I unearthed an ancient music cd from the high-school days. "Best of the best" written with permanent marker in a schoolboy's scrawl.
The thoughts and images were always there at the back of the head; a sorta L2 cache.
Absentmindedly humming 'Seasons in the sun'. The tune, the cd and an undefinable something melting away the years.
Xavier's Class 10 . God! An eternity and then some more.
   Shuffling through the songlist. The then familiar obsession with Dylan. A hard rain's a gonna fall. Following the Tambourine man through the smoke rings of my mind. The joy of a first six-string and of those summers that never seemed to end, of those that waited forever on Mama's porch.

Westlife was a Xaverian favourite for graduation farewells. Since time immemorial. I wished our junior batch hadn't tried to be the exception. I can remember even now how we smirked and nudged in class 7 at "pretty girls are everywhere..." and thought pointedly of Middleton Row.:P

The CD itself (like most things in life) has a story behind it. My fiery friend AT (&T) was wooing lady Silver with serenades (yes it came even to that). Problem: she didn't have mp3 playback on her cd player. AT had already burned the mp3. At his behest I made a couple of audio CDs out of the mp3 and kept the latter for my own.
And it seemed then like we'd solved Schroedinger's equation or something.
   I'm smirking now. Sarcastically. Because that's the only safe emotion to let myself feel when thinking of the ghosts of summers past.
   And with the old songs bringing back old thougths, time it was for a long-neglected blog post.

Note to self

2009-04-11T14:43:00.000+05:30

This scrap of no consequence is for happier days and longer hours at the keyboard. Of random thoughts, petty quibbles, imitating crows and other actions of daily life. Generally tend to forget some of the more brilliant (*hem, hem* :P) schemes I manage to come up with and postpone for times of lesser workload.

A random Terry Pratchett Quote generator for blogs. I have a basic idea at the back of my head (using SQL) but obviously the actual coding will throw up a lot of bugs. Getting around them is half the fun of coding. There's a small voice telling me to do it in Python but I'm nowhere proficient in that. MySQL is easy and the first thing is the project and it's essential requirements.
Finish til BST from Data Structures and Algorithms in C.
Do most of the exercises from Dive into Python.
Buy the later Pratchetts after Nightwatch - The Truth, Making Money.
Play Jedi Academy.

We missed the play, and other thoughts

2009-03-22T08:47:00.002+05:30

Evening over this city. The lights in Citizen's Park seen from across Cathedral Road, like the port-holes of some ship ready to set off into the memories of last summer.
I walked and talked from the Academy's gates. We'd intended to catch Ruddhasangeet - a play about the stifled song of a repressed artist. House-full. Bugger.
A nod to the towering spires of St. Paul's glowing luminous in the suffused half-light of a metropolitan six thirty. Last summer another set of 'we' had taken a few pictures there. If I remember correctly; as correctly as my exaggeratedly accurate punctuations. It was always a pet peeve for the other 'us'.
On past swerving sedans before the Planetarium - all dome, fountains and underlights. Right turn.
Along pavements as shadowy as our thoughts. Of college, high-school, hopes - some lost, some still dreamt of, the little loves and huge redemptions, of recessions and affairs. Our lost Grails of summers past. Fish eyes, blues eyes and other beautiful names.
I've noticed that when old friends talk the ghosts of those absent are always close by. Silences more eloquent than words. I expressed my gladness at his having finally got a viable significant other. The others were . . . disastrous in any practical sense. Purely out of reciprocal goodwill (I guess) he continued to try and set me up with some Princeton hottie over cold coffee. Lord preserve my scant sanity!

And then suddenly it's the Exide crossing, Haldiram's blazing front, roaring traffic. Me daring them bloody cars to mow us down.
"Shaala, cigarette kheye kheye dom shesh. Uff!"

Along AJC, left at Camac, back along the beloved road. Almost like Dumas' musketeers - "alone now and alone forever on the road to Paris."
"There's this sense of belonging... the vibes. That'll forever make Park Street my home."
Ah well!
Back to work. Maybe I'll get a decent home-run there.

Angsty Angrenost

2009-03-15T08:26:00.000+05:30

Angrenost, the Quenya for the beloved Isengard, was the name of my first blog . . . way back in 2004. I'd toyed several times with the idea of restarting it but those were mostly the eyes-half-closed still-determined-to-get-back-to-sleep sort of idle musings you get in the pale caresses of the dawn breeze. Angrenost was a chalice! A chalice to pour out to the dregs the passions and emotions of a kid steeped in the traditions of the Force, ever-wrapped in the cloak of Gandalf, to whom namarie came as naturally as a "C'ya later", whose computer still ran on Win '95, discussed Asimov with nearby spiders, devoured children's Space Atlases while eve kiddier, designed hyperdrives on chartpaper, et cetera.
The Domain of Alarond I had named it. Hence the name to which some refer to even on this blog. :) *nostalgic sigh*.
It was a time when I thought the Multiverse was all about battles and kings. Five years down the line I've come to believe that it should be about not having those battles and being able to without kings. Five years of being hammered on the anvil of Real Life. Like the rest of us people.

But why such thoughts today? Stumbling into the derelict place where I was raised .... I realised that this was my Angrenost - the centenarian crumbling bricks, mortar, termites and cat scat. Something of myself in the rough age-worn walls bloated with damp and abandoned history.
Someday, someday soon Alarond, Lord Greywrath (yes, I allowed myself those vanities then. Hard to stop now. *sheepish grin*) WILL take up the -uh- family seat (Corleone rasp) at "Angrenost" in this world.
And then we shall begin on the parallel Angrenost again in the blogosphere.

So, back to Darthin' in the free galaxy. Stardate: forever. Transmission out.

Revolutionary Road

2009-03-07T14:49:00.000+05:30

It's a road I've traveled often, criticised oftener. 7 kms off Diamond Harbour Road, past trees, eutrophied ponds, more trees, green fields. Oh yes, and cows. Cattel [sic] as some would say.

And then came the 2nd of March. Currently I'm in a Guevarish mood with all the ragtag reminisces of a veteran revolutionary.
It began - cuz these things always have to begin with an "it began" - with Arko da punching the Princi. And then the kicks, punches, broken glass. Ripping apart the administrative block. Faculty and management locked inside from 11a.m. till 8 p.m. More broken glass. Battered shutters, riven locks.
Fan-blades in Picassoic positions. Police vans, INSAS rifles (I was fascinated by the transparent magazines), media and everything. A speck of colour (red or otherwise) in the drabness I've been bemoaning to all and sundry.

This was another tale to which many are woven and many more will spring. My part ends here - student's forum formed, advocate arranged (Arko's dad of all ppl! bwahahahaha) , the omnibus FIR against 480 students dropped, unanimous decision to stick to non-violence henceforth and stick by the 90 accused of vandalism.
Last look at Blue Eyes whose eyes are actually brown - the deep brown of burnt almond-skin.

Adieu. My future does not lie here. Played my part, now for the path that goes on ahead. And doesn't wait.

2009-02-21T20:48:00.000+05:30

"Aamar bhai-er rokte rangano ekushey February

Aami ki bhulte paari?"

Drenched in the blood of my brethren,
The 21st of February -
Carven forever in my memory.

International Mother Language Day, as adopted by the UNESCO in 1999.

1952, Bangladesh. Protesting the right to express oneself in the mother tongue. And the police firing.
As always, I'm having one of my 'proud to be Bangalee' surges.

bright eyed

2009-02-03T20:46:00.000+05:30

Bright eyes too bright for gazing too long
Into too many false dawns of Hope.
A wind in the grass, a lilt in the Skysong
Soaring thoughts to a different strain!

Eyes ever waiting, long past petty baubles
Like reality, life and eternity.
Ever so faint over a lifetime's rubbles
Come the words, clear as a sunbeam -
"Sur la pont, d'Avignon
L'on y dance, l'on y dance . . . "

Awaiting the lord's return from his crusades,
Blind to the chatter of banal charades.

I have wagered a thousand worlds and will again
Lest a tear from eyes so clear e'er falls in pain.

Adrift and other abodes

2009-02-01T20:14:00.014+05:30

"I would rather drift here and there without leaving traces. There are so many people in this big wide world and so many places to visit but there is nowhere for me to put down roots, to have a small refuge, to live a simple life. I always encounter the same sort of neighbors, say the same sort of things, good morning or hello and once again am embroiled in endless daily trivia. Even before this becomes solidly entrenched, I will already have tired of it all. I know there is no cure for me."
-Soul Mountain, Gao Xingjian.

I've got Photoshop CS2, Dreamweaver and the holy of holies - Adobe Premier Pro.
This spring promises to be... promising. Drifitng from one adobe to the other it is quite the life. :D

Behind blue eyes . . .

2009-01-26T22:36:00.003+05:30

I solemnly confess to being more shaken than I care to recall. You see, I've always had a fascination for Order, the Jedi over the Sith, Light over Dark and that whole thingy. Yes, the occaisional forays into Vader-worship and Hannibal Lecter-idolising were . . . the exceptions that prove the rule. Lawful (occasionally chaotic)-good at the end of the day.

Case in point:
   Today, 12:30. Weather suddenly too warm. Gariahat Pantaloons.
Blue Eyes comes up, brainless head lifting up with a smile as I emerge from shadows (hah). Well, what can I say? The quest for my lost Grail continues - the ever-despairing search to unite the beautiful mind and the beautiful smile. Always seeking for the once-attained perfection that has been swept away into the West. Leaving the greys, the lonesome dusks and smoldering embers that vainly recalled what once was, and never more will be.
      The current specimen is . . . an urge I have indulged in. A passing similarity to the Temple's name, a simple soul and a smile that dredges up forgotten memories. Flashes of tucking in the blanket and fluffing pillows before a quiet 'goodnight', of wistful glances, photo-sessions and brimming mirth. As my Infernal friend observed, "You are hopeless."

Anyway, the reason why I am shaken today to the core of my being: continued.
Blue Eyes clad in sky-blue T (no surprises there) and three quarters,
We retire gratefully to the coolness of pantaloons. Sits curled up with her legs folded to one side. Then comes my Fall into the Dark Side. On the paleness of the calf there was an oval patch - a faded scar. I glanced and glanced again. Unable to tear my eyes away from the light-brown Medusa. Gripped by an insane desire to grasp it, to clutch, to caress. Madness!
    I have never enjoyed S-n-M and other such morbid manifestations of the human psyche. Then why the obsessive desire to see how that wound was made, to be the one to make it, to be the one to nurture it's gash on the smooth curve...
No, the monster stirring in me has to be held in check. Somehow managed the proper responses to the usual banal banter - lecturer-bashing, how reunions with school buddies are about the greatest thing ever, who the hell is Manasi Scott, hope you enjoy Beyond barriers; you're not coming? No sorry - family stuff.
   Blue Eyes' eyes are a rich dark brown, like burnt almond-skin. With black streaks. She had come straight from sleep. I noticed that some of the sand was clinging to the left eye's corner. Strangely fascinated by what would generally repel me instantly.

Kaz calls. Godsend, I think. Only chap with some . . . erm, firsthand experience. Bugger eggs me on! Damn, like I need any encouragement!

   Feel the path diverging at my feet, past constrictions falling away in this terrifyingly new maelstrom of sensations and intentions. Blue Eyes . . . the Temple . . . and all my other lost Grails are tumbling together now. I can't hope to sort it out now - the usual attempts at logical analysis are leaving me more turmoiled than ever before. The temple's doing psychology . . . but this is too drastic a thing to reveal. The rant blog must be my sounding board.
Tomorrow I plan to read this and glean some insight into what triggered this, and the way to cease this thing.
Goodnight!

All for 150

2009-01-23T08:28:00.001+05:30

Yes, yes. I'm still high on the post-150-years-of-Xavier's euphoria.
   After some maneouvering I managed to secure an alumnus seat with the rest of my batch. Trust xaverians to think up something - in any large gathering visibility of the stage is always an issue, as is the visibility of any large screen that projects the events. The people arranged for a number of medium-sized LCDs along the sides of the enclosure.
   The music was ... enthralling.
    Then of course we slipped back into schoolboys mode - mimicking the hapless guests as they spoke. There was a point when the words of wisdom were "aand we hab industrialisation... more jobs.... forward economy.... more industries.... factories...." I knew that Agni's gaze was mirroring my own exasperation and despair at things in general. An educational institution's 150th year celebration for crying out loud!
The State Assembly speaker spoke wistfully about how before the college was co-ed he had to sneak out to meet the Loreto girls.Now that was something we all could enjoy....

Later on the hulabaloo of informal reunions - Bachha, Buchu, Chandu, Arka, Biri, Ranjan, Sumon, Bhaduri Nata (who actually responded to Kaz's hello. Nota bene: for once the shirt wasn't torn under the arms.) and the rest.

   Let's get to the highlights. Other than the usual bonhomie, back-slaps, back-stabs, cheesy smiles and guttural guffaws and a juvenile mystery solved.

1) I heard the best euphemism for liqour at the Alsoc event at 6. Mr Singh Roy compering: " And ladies and gentlemen to my left we have... well, I really don't want to say the words.... let's just say those seeking spiritual assistance may head there."

2)True to our tradition I smuggled in a former classmate through the police checkpoint as he had never picked up the pass for the evening's event.

3) We inadvertently forgot that despite being sexagenarians, the dignified gentlemen had nonetheless passed out of the same 'portals so dear'. When the snacks were brought out . . . let's just say it put our tiffin-time orgies to shame.

4)Teachers boozing. No one passes up free liqour.

5) Gave the SXC people a snooty glare - 'we were here - walked the walk, talked the talk - aeons before you lowly creatures...' Caught in the act by Rai and her scathing tongue ("blazer ta boss to portei hobey na - nahole school-er xaveriana ta dekhabey ki korey?").

6) When the cries of "Three cheers for Xavier's" were taken up Kaz joined in while still on his mobile. I can only surmise the reaction to the blood-curdling yell on the other end. :P

7) No free food. Our dirty dozen took the shadowy walk to Middleton Row. I sang along with Agni (Rudolf the red-nosed reindeer - completely random, but that was hardly the point) as we passed St. Thomas' Church and took the turn past LH to chase my phantoms away. Had our fill of food and khisti at Golden Spoon. Dylanish whine as we started off on "My weariness amazes me, I'm branded on my feet...I"

Home. Exhaustion and elation. Watched Bunuel's Unchien Andalou.
   Nihil Ultra. Nothing beyond. A sword we have tried to live with and would die by. And be worth more than my meagre words can express.
I knew then, more clearly than ever before, that if I were to ever reconcile my lost Grail then my life will be infinitely poorer. For me there is nothing beyond the Temple . . . and I will finish my quest.

Ever seeking

2009-01-20T15:37:00.000+05:30

There are times when one is wrapped in greys and maybes. And then there are those times when pure thought illumines the path to be trod. Whenever I have contemplated desolation for too long, there is but one poem to which I return: hopelessly idealistic and unashamedly epic in proportion in these days when half-sentences and jagged metaphors strew modern 'meaningful' poetry.
Tennyson's words were sounding in my ears ever since last evening. After a prolonged tête-à-tête with former school buddies, mutton tikka rolls, chanachur et al. College, girls, breakups . . . progressing steadily to the capitals - Life, The Future, Idiotic Buggers, She's et cetera.

"I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life!"

Wish that every day before drifting into dreamland everyone could say "I have drunk life to the lees...."
After a life of compromise it never amazes me that a person can still think such thoughts and aspire to such heights. There is a Roark in everyman.

Tystnaden and pools of sunlight

2009-01-10T08:47:00.002+05:30

It's streaming through my windows, and brushing aside the curtain's feeble attempt at keeping the sun out.
The neighbors are thankfully quiet at this hour of the morning, else the beats of Linkin' Park, the wails of some devotional hymn and the concerted orchestral tutti of cawing (the crows hereabout dive-bomb even the pariah kites) makes quite the symphonic experience for the early riser.
Faint, ever so faintly one can discern the few true birdcalls to enliven the heart of the city.
The sky outside is one solid sheet of fire. My rooms face the east and I can still see the green-and-blue afterimages of the sun's gathering strength. Winter is passing.

The sparrow are chirping! Trucks rumbling up the bridge, engines revving. I want this to last forever: me, the sounds, this room and the pools of winter sun on my bedroom floor. At times solitude is bliss and this is one of those times. Making the ivory tower worth the desolation.

On an impulse I decided to retain the stubble that's now tending to grizzle.
I'm remembering inane things. A rather diminutive friend once stood stock still at the Ballygunge phari - nearly causing us to be run over by enthusiastic drivers. Turns. "Your eyes will haunt me." I tried to come up with some wacky retort. Unfortunately, evading being run over, all I managed was "You are shorter than a pygmy." Ah, the ignominy of missed opportunities to be scathing . . .
There, Mr. Arora's Enfield's coughing its guttural 'good morning'. Hey, alliterations too - this morning must be charmed or something!

I must soon murder the magic with my clawed hands for the rest of the day must be charaded through. Deliver stuff to Salt Lake (now that place haunts me - where every turn bears some memory), smirk and nod dolefully as required and contemplate pizzas on the drive back.
Forgot to chronicle: the blogmeet with my old enemy went well. Reassuring to find that craziness can always be indulged in.
A rare conversation yesterday. I'm still under the spell of wistful eyes and carefree laughter that flirts with the wind. 'Typical' as indeed so many say.
But today I am glad of my worst friends and best enemies, of soup, cheese and pale sunlight. St. Xavier's deserves a visit, then I'll be off to my tryst with DA-block. And the evening chat with my lost Grail.
*Dons the helm.*
:D

Thinking ahead

2009-01-01T20:48:00.001+05:30

Another year. Another slew of to-dos. First things first - Happy New Year my dear visitor!
Right now I'm bent on focusing my generally myopic view on academics. Other than that I have mulled over a few plans/intentions.

Take up Assembler from where I left it. I'm one of those people who get an innate joy in pushing bits around registers. :P I'll be using NASM for the dissassembler and DJGPP on WinXP initially. After PCasm is done, I intend to move over to linux assembly using nasm or gasm on Ubuntu. The language may not have any intrinsic value as many opine, but it will definitely help anyone who wants to know the 'why?' after the 'how?'.
We'll be having Introduction to programming using C this semester. Which is pretty much a cakewalk. I'll be honing up on gcc on linux while doing the college assignments. There are a few syntactical differences which I have to get used to on linux when migrating from Borland's IDE. Moreover, this'll force me to let go of IDE dependance.
Re-install Bloodshed DevC++ on Windows. At times an IDE helps. ;)

Who am I kidding? The list of hum-drum to-dos to fill the void of actions that have a meaning. Beyond skill-sets, grades and assignments. The little titters and daily masquerades that etiquette demands. The thing that chills me to the core is the unsettling fact that this new year's day was so much like the one before, which was like the one before it, which was . . .
Think beyond the new calendar, the sliding stocks, the daily litany of horror on the headlines. Those that have been there forever.
The sense of transition is that of a smooth cruise in a sedan. Not the hurtling sensation of motion of a gallop, or the reckless rush of a train viewed hanging half-out of the compartment.
I'm craving for a cataclysmic change like an opiate. Yet in my heart of hearts afraid of what it will entail. Every desire attained presents its bill somewhere along the way. And sometimes the interest accrued is . . . substantially devastating.

One of the few things I look forward to is receiving Neverwinter Nights - Diamond Edition. :D Over this last year I have seen the gifts passing through my clenched grasp like so much water. The words no longer come to my fingers as my mind grapples with the profundity of everydays, baked beans and christmas cake. But I can no longer make the glass glitter like diamond, parade sleights as skill and somnolence for wisdom. The last sky I painted was a flaming sunset, but my ride into it has fallen into the sere, the yellow leaf (hah! How vilely doth this muser qoute!).

The ivory tower of mine, once-vaunted, is now reeking of solitude. Not the splendid isolation of sages, but the miserable bile-in-your-throat nerve-sapping unsatiated yearning of the dark ones that lurk in shadowy nooks for ever, hating the darkness that clothes their frailty.

My eyes are dimming again, the macular degeneration accelerating blithely. But my mind sees frozen lakes, black denuded trees and snow-swept ridges which I should have stood atop. I feel the Keating creeping up, in stiff competition with the Toohey while a remnant of Roark struggles with blueprints. With no D. Francon in sight. Or maybe this is the last vestige of Wynand: "...to the spirit that is yours and could have been mine."
Funny, I had liked none of them unconditionally. It was Galt, always Galt.

christmas and after

2008-12-28T22:52:00.001+05:30

"Adeste Fideles" in full swing on the speakers, then a series of "Ave Marias" on the swelling tenor of Bocelli. Yes, the Winter of mine is without (major) discontent. Without Crachits, cousin, insufferable angliophiles and fleeting trills of thrills.
I danced under the mistletoe with Eleanor Rigby this evening. I think. Or was it dizzy Miss Lizzy? All in a tizzy. Phantoms, hot kati rolls and snarling at innocent strangers on the streets. Hah!

There was a picnic on the Eve. Like a mini-package of a picnic-spot, with neatly demarcated spaces for the groups. The knowing leers and backslaps of the old crowd (and the awed wonder of the tetchy li'l kids) made it worthwhile I suppose. An ex-teacher in jeans and top: I swear I could not recognise her. A fact which I imparted unto her when she tried the old emotional blackmail tactic - "Ah, you didn't even look at me at first..."
Was it ever mentioned on this blog that older women are . . . nice? If not, let this be a resonating statement of above fact. :P

adrift

2008-12-10T21:48:00.003+05:30

Quo vadis?

Building upon fragments of yesterday?
Or watching it fade to dust today?

At least now December is being properly wintry! This sem of college ends tomorrow. I guess I'll head over to SXC and meet some of the old crowd on the 20th - AK's got his violin recital at the concert that day. Hopefully Taru and Co. can make it. :)

Vanderlust

2008-12-03T18:01:00.011+05:30

Wanderlusting through the meandering bylanes of Anywhere
The lights, the sights and screeching sedans -
A bromide to the masses and this opiate's pilgrimage.

I remember, I remember in this far land across the seas
Beneath the noble stones of crumbling mansions
Those streets of ours . . . forever.
Along Park Street, then the left at Camac -
I've walked this path in countless lives -
Past the flaming shop-fronts, the walled villas
Into Middleton Row.

There's a KFC now near the end and I emerge
From memory lane and into the lane
Of a murderous Merc - we both swear.
One silently mouthing behind a tinted life
And I rending the crisp night air;
I hate these streets where every photon
Has a nu of the light of yesterdays . . .

I try to like the smell of everyday in the morning:
A timestamp of the stampless, markless, faceless
The trudgers - peons and wisps of nothingness.
A mud of blogs, bile and bitterness;
Where once sunlight on swords did gleam
And minds like stars did echoing sing!

But now there are no more balrogs to slay,
No Sith Lords nor Nazgul to hold at bay;
The steel and fire and the Dark Side's ire
I would've faced and fought - for you - any day.
The fire by now is mostly ashes, no more
An excuse of teenage angst, as that too is passing away.
This foe is the crowding Everydays - the cloying mist
That never asks a 'Why?' or shouts an 'I'.
A small life - like spittle on a roadside puddle

Well then, there's enough for a last Ride remaining
Lost blades' laughter in a final unsheathing!
Out of the shadows to a new day breaking -
Sans lay-offs, sans burnt toast, sans serif (!) and yesterdays
To a today and tomorrow that never, ever fades.

On musings, mumbai and self-descriptors

2008-11-28T18:34:00.000+05:30

Okay, I'd have to be in another dimension (which is true, occasionally) not to acknowledge the happenings at Mumbai. I'd seen the headlines and that'd been it yesterday morning. Then, of all things, a friend in Indiana started asking me about that. I was like, yeah, so... did they give a small news byte about this?
Reply: lol, no. Full coverage on CNN as well as CNN IBN which we get along with the main bouquet.
Amidst the carnage let there be the following words from the One Master to whom I owe allegiance:
"...when the Sun shines out, it'll shine out the clearer . . . "
and...
"End? Oh no, the journey doesn't end here. The grey rain-curtain of this World turns all to silver glass and is rolled back. And then - you see it!"
"What Gandalf? See what?"
"White shores. And a far green country under a swift sunrise . . . "

That's got the necessary morbidity done and over with. If being talked about earned you brownie points to celestial bliss, I'd be lunching with the saints by now. Here are a few of my favourites used to describe yours truly. Imho the greatest gems of the language have bloomed and blossomed around my not quite noteworthy persona.

"a person who by his words and actions will take you to the edge of your patience and then kick ur a*se to heaven." courtesy my dear cousin bro. may he rest in p*ss.
"In a rendezvous spannin wat seems a lyftym,ARC and his H-factor,his inherent strength n weakness,has been d subject 2much er..speculation..yet to the frustration of many, and amusement of many more,he has remained wat he was:Spirited, Sarcatic,Humourous,Erudite,Culture-Vulture,and above al,H.. 2da core.... An H.. for all seasons, . . . " This a school buddy, master agnidipto tarafder a.k.a. Inferno:Ablaze. I guess he was talking of the various evil spirits hovering about me. H- here can be loosely translated to have the same emotional potential as 'Ya barstud!!'
"You're a big b*stard you know." Sasky (Swarnava Ghosh).
"The Force is strong in him." Rohit Roy
"The best of enemies and the worst of friends . . . eh, old friendah?". Valion, Lord Stormcrow.
"You're crazy Aruni. Nothing else. Face it." Kaz.
"Master Naru you're a 22-carat the goru*. You-you-you . . . you're just a little thing!" Master Lala Tanmoy Das, ATCL.
"I have a cousin in Xavier's. He's a bit weird. Mad about Tolkien." Another cousin, this one female. About five years ago the aforementioned IM was sent to a dearly hated foe.
"Aruni? Who's that? Oh, you. I thought your name was Naru only." Durgondha (Sulagna).
"You're a legend. But still a goru." M

*Cow.

We killed a Huorn the other day

2008-11-16T08:54:00.003+05:30

There's now a multistory on the east side - there was a garbage dump before.
What was almost scary was the fact that things had remained so . . . same! Unnervingly the same. The walled-up garage with half-bricks grinning like a leering drunkard. The iron beam still buckled over the colliery store on the south side, resolutely unrepaired as ever. Paused at the battered door as circa 144 years of wizened masonry gave me a snooty glare. Trademark, I snarled. Fifteen years have passed, you effing pile of brick. Those frowning arches don't scare me no more!
My childhood home cum prison. An incarceration that almost killed me with it's gloom, it's damp, it's way of looking only into what had been before and the shadows that spread into you like a spider's web: you never notice the strands until one day there's this contended arachnid with a parlor stuffed with flies (or any other insect of choice).

The long passage with the rooms on either side and stairs leading up to locked upper rooms. The walls bulging with the damp and bloated on the desolation. Clumsy armchairs lurking about just to make sure you shattered your shins trying to navigate around them. Locked bookshelves whose keys are now lost forever in the mists of Time.

I have entered the mausoleum of my childhood - the empty rooms I had filled with hobbits, Jedi Knights, mages and ghouls. Smells of mildew, staleness and neglect. And not at all like teen spirit.
We are making two rooms habitable for humans. It's a tough battle against the termites, sheltering ghosts and scuttling spiders. Sorting through my father's old books, cast up in a corner like driftwood on forgotten shores. "Transmission and distr...", "Lythall Switchgear...", "A.C. Mac...", "6502 architec...", Alec Guiness staring owlishly at me from Smiley's People, Solzhenitsyn, Hardy, "The turn of the...", "IBM main...", Peter Drucker . . . barely registering the covers as I toss them into shleves.

The garden. Or what remains of it, left to it's own devices. There was a Blood Oleander here once, my grandmother used to tend it. The white lilies are still there though. And the tree wherein lived five ghosts. A cat sunning itself proprietorily on a crumbling wall.

A Huorn I tell you 'twas, that had been wrenching apart the north wall. The workmen lopped off the branches and poured acid. I mentally gave a wretched 'hoom' as it fell. The Huorn should have torn apart the whole conceited structure, fed only by it's own ego and rootless pride. And in the rubble I could have buried the morbid past. Marked my forehead with the ascetic's incal traced in ashes. With no song in my head but the road ahead, no fanes to kneel at nor chase unrequited after my Temple, forever beyond my questing grasp.

All that jazz

2008-11-06T07:33:00.001+05:30

A sudden return to good old-timer's music.
Woke up today in the morning, read something about Nat King Cole and Ella Fitzgeral in the papers. The usual post-US-election name-dropping.'Blue Moon', 'Mona Lisa'. Sigh.

Off we went on a listening spree: the Paragon Rag, Take Five , Take the 'A' train, Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, I got Rhythm, Someone to watch over me. Veering off again, the unforgettable Salut d'Amor . . .

It's 8:12 a.m. as I begin type this. Strange, my letters seems to have gone qwerty, the thoughts trailing into a Mobius strip of convolutions. It's a bright day, crisp wintry sun (but never as cold as I would like it in this boiling city), the distant eternal life-buzz of the city - office-goers, loafers, students and listless footsores. Yet I find nothing to pontificate on, pass the once-usual Olympian judgments. No poems, stories or essays. Maybe the so-called 'bad habits' are gone at last.

I'm beginning to understand the film-critic now. And the art-critic, and book reviewer and the teacher . . . those who base their work on the work of others. There's a comforting sense of being unworried - this mooching of the works of others: listening to the music of others', reading the words drawn from the wells of other loftier minds, walking along the trail other's have blazed.
It's comforting. An instant bromide for the sleepless dreams, the clenched fists and restless hands of those who once tried to create. To trudge along the crowded road, somehow. Anyhow. There's so many others like us, right?

    I was sorting through some of the bric-a-brac that accumulate magically at the backs of shelves. Mostly my old work at the Academy of Fine Arts. Couldn't resist the narcisstic urge to go through them - the first stick figures (truly dreadful, I solemnly swear), the lopsided the still-lifes, the usual leit-motifs of dreary structured teaching everywhere.
There was a distinct break - when I became a member of the British Coucil Library. The skies were different, the tones subdued. I remember those 'arty' pseudo-intellectual years - juggling Academy and the buddies in school. Remember having made a concious decision to shun the path trodden by well-nigh every budding anybody with a paint-brush: abstractions, cubism, distorted nudes, emaciated beggars, starving workers . . .
    I did landscapes mainly. Quietly. For my own satisfaction.
    Found my first oils.

Why do I not start again? 'No time' is an excuse (an age ago, I called them reasons) I have devised for myself. The truth: I do not know if I can anymore. And I have no wish to find out. The last of my vanities better be in the past. To be brought out and whimpered over when the mediocrities of real life smother me as always. I was too young to know if I ever had any talent in art. Or was it merely skill. And I never want to find out. Better to go on with a weary grin "Yeah, well, maybe it could've amounted to something. But you know, now it's too late...." Gives just the right aura of bygone splendor. An excuse for the present detritus.

There, now I have truly joined the ranks of the world's citizenry of excuses. Creators, pray pardon.

The music? I listen, as always.

Snatches from an outing

2008-10-18T13:31:00.007+05:30

Nothing to do at home now. So here I am digging through ancient archives.
I still remember the scorching sun, the flies and sweaty heat. And the obstinate decision to still go on that photo session. Of the city's best places.
Used the memory card of the cam rather than the cassette so it's kinda grainy. Don't have an IEEE port unfortunately.

Here are two of my personal favorites, both in Victoria Memorial:

Thronging the gates

On the 'waterfront'

Sighs in sepia

2008-10-18T10:11:00.007+05:30

Classes have started again and the breather is over. The journeys home re-booted. The swift nightfall and the swifter silence in a rattling college bus. Hiccuping over the truck-shattered tarmac. Bouncing rear-wheels, FM radio and senseless laughter that vainly scrabbles against the wall of silence. Batting at bloody mosquitoes!
Cheap lights on shop-fronts and cheaper passers-by. Where people say 'yes' for lacking the courage to say the deserved 'no'.
Glass glitters more than diamond at times. It has more to prove you see.

Ever since I can recall I have craved for that primal, visceral yes. When you stand before a tower of glass and steel rearing proudly over the earth, the straight lines of a giant canal, a flaming sunset on the canvas sky, words blazing on a book's page - it draws that 'yes' from within, of approval. The lofty within oneself answering the loftiness of what is beheld. Ayn Rand never put it better.
The last skies I gave that yes to was two months ago, speeding down with the wind in my hair.

I'm taking a ... what I call a self-imposed sabbatical from the institution, i.e. bunking college today.
The 6502 instruction set emulator is coming along fine - using Python to code the files then Tkinter to design the GUI frontend. It's put on hold as of now - can't manage that an the exams in December. Looking forward to resuming that: a yes to my own self.

Of last evening: just had to talk to a few people ... and Hallelujah! There they were on the net. The veteran teddy - Master Basu. And old Lala in the flesh (erm...web...whatever...). Talked of new plans and the roads ahead. Seriously, chatting with guys several continents (and an ocean too I believe) away gives me a comfortable sense of 'being in touch' with the buddies. :)

My morning started today in sepia. And that drew a yes from me.

My quest for more such 'yes's continues in the world about me. I'm finding it less and less. In what others speak and write, in what I write (terribly conceited as it may sound, in some posts I felt that 'yes' for my own self!) and in what is envisaged.
Self-delusions of glory? Or maybe the unreached goals that were within all these people, but stifled out of fear of failure and the cloying greys of beholding only the desperate glitter of glass all around?
The quest keeps me alive, dear reader (if any). That, and the sepia lives.

Auguries in autumn

2008-10-09T12:00:00.004+05:30

And so another Durga Pujo draws to a close - the kaash, the frenzied drumming of dhaks, whirling dances like fevered dervishes, bowing before the Goddess. The triumph of Light over Darkness. The city in the usual festive madness, pumped up on the life-force.
An excuse for endless shopping, ceaseless gorging, late-nights and adda at Maddox Square with pals all over.
They were all there, nicknames as intact as their idosyncracies - Bachha, Hati, Buchu, Potty (yes, there was reason for calling him that), Dhon das. Then Rohit, Agni, Anagh . . . All over north-Calcutta, eyeing the earthly likenesses of the Goddess ( :P ) even as we bowed in front of her huge idols. Some things never change . . .
Then the South where friends, lovers and the barely-known are thrown into a heady cocktail. Neon-flashes. Band-performances. Milling crowds that slurp you up into its mad self. Entwined couples, quadruples even! Old embers and new flames. Admixture of the traditional dress with the funky Metallica tee'd GenY. Hah, I love this city!
I decline a fag (politely, for once) and make my way to Park Street - where the occidentophiles are the same as ever, where drum-beats of Pujo are a distant sussuration at the edge of my conciousness. The same, always the same. Shop-fronts lighted, night-clubs and discs and the best restaurants. My own memory lane, forever. The walk took a lifetime, or less. I do not know, having walked that road so many times with so many others. After a time all personae blur.

Today is Dashami, the Tenth Day of Pujo. All over the city the lavishly built sanctums along with the idols are beings hauled down. Down in roaring processions to the water's edge where the Ganga ceaseless flows. There amidst the cries of a thousand lungs is the goddess immersed - the Slayer of demons - clay and paint and cloth-of-gold dissolving in the silent rush of waters.

On journeys home

2008-09-07T06:44:00.005+05:30

There's a homecoming (not necessarily of Beorhtnoth) for me every working day. Kicking open the door that insists on getting stuck. Fumbling (and cursing on autopilot) for the lights. I can almost feel the nothingness sucking out the Me from within me - the unwelcoming mustiness of empty rooms. Litany of gobbling, unpacking and searching for the right questions to the wrong answers. And the thronging ghosts of neverending phone-calls.

A month left, yet Gariahat is chock-full of the Puja multitude. Lights flashing by, then slowing inevitably at the ever-present signals. I'm thinking of the zillion other drives back home. Speeding down the Bypass. A time of innocence when 'forever' meant a month and 'never' - two. Looking back through a glass darkly. Cannot help but smirk at myself - it really takes time for the absolutes used so flippantly throughout life to regain their true proportions. Many homecomings later.

That's life, Life and college. On Sundays too, for pity's sake!

Over to memory lane again. Visited the alma mater on Wednesday. Now that was a Homecoming. The teachers ("How are you? You never mail Ooruni. My add is ranbhatt. Y'know, I ran and then..." "Ma'am, then you bhatted?" I ask helpfully) and the old buddies. It was gratifying in a small, vain little way.

Time to get off the bus. UC is using her eye-liner - some nice guy at her computer course. GK is terrifying as usual. Alim sniggers: there's little he and S don't do in the back seats. Someone asks something inane and I counter with a dreadful banality.
Life's like elastic really. Only the homecomings jar me out of the muddy rut. And know that there is a highway for me to reach.

Musing on my Immortals

2008-08-21T12:14:00.004+05:30

As always there's music playing somewhere. This time not just in my mind.

There's just too much that time cannot erase......

My thoughts soar, surf and crash with Amy Lee's voice. A fitting 'first song' to play on the newly installed linux OS. I'm left with science, ghosts and my much vaunted love of solitude.

There was a time (my crest has long since crashed) when I believed in being swept away on the peaks of ideals, shout with rapture, dance like a dervish, be delirious with sheer joy. That was when summer's never ended, only became spring - the acorn for the next summertime.

Now I know what is autumn - the wind over russet leaves, the grey clouds sculling across a scumbled sky.
To have completed the journey without a Fall would be meaningless. The passion, obsession . . . who knows when lightning may strike? But one has to try. For not having tried wouldn't have been living a life at all.
Teenage had it's joys - and the perk of not facing all the consequences. things change as always.
And my father made it a point to forget to wish me on the 18th. guess i should've been used to it after all these years.

Sweeping up the pieces

2008-08-12T20:01:00.004+05:30

The party's over and Silence reclaims it's land. Sweeping up the leftovers, pushing back the chairs, straightening the tables. Switch off the lights and then closing the door. Softly! Ever so softly - the barest of clicks to end an epoch.
This is a new world and I'm learning of many things. Like letting things flow past and for once, not try to mould all things to my will. Forcing the smile, the nod and the banalities. I so detest the inane idiots that throng these times. Yet trying to pick up the grain from the chaff. As always.
Things are looking up, getting a semblance of motion. I'm getting used to small fields and little streams - no more of the beckoning mountains that I yearned for on the distant horizons. The times they have a'changed. For the better in more ways than one.
A time to live so that other times may come.

And so, onwards!

Comings and goings

2008-08-01T06:20:00.007+05:30

"There's nothing to be sad about people going to different colleges outside. The summer is over and if you didn't have anything to do - that'd be the really sad thing."

The Maruti sped across the Bypass, each commuter wrapped in his/her thoughts as usual. I glanced outside and was glad I had. Brooding clouds covered the darkening sky like a pall of smoke. Deep amid the tattered shroud there were a few streaks of red - like the dull embers of all-but-concealed grief, fading into the West.
I took a snapshot of the sky and set it as my cell's wallpaper. Wondered at the futility of the gesture - how many snapshots can I possibly take, how much can I capture of the fleeting moments in my life?

That's when I began on that dangerous pastime: reminiscing. And regrets that inevitably hitch a ride on memory lane.

College begins today. A new beginning to cover the dregs of yesterday.
There is no sadness anymore. Just another reason to go on.

Tomes Today

2008-07-23T08:31:00.004+05:30

Not really today. Yesterday.

My dear second cousin (one of the wide menagerie the family's managed to amass - this particular specimen on the paternal side at that.) came bearing gifts. Namely:

One pine board. Huge. For drawing thinguses I'll never need beyond first yr.
One wooden T-square, of the variety now extinct. Huge. Paint splattered. My dad passed it on to the chap - the instrument bearing the invisible stamp of JU engg.
One plastic T-square which my cousin wisely used instead of the prehistoric relic. Ditto for me too. ;)
One Jute-bag filled with notes
One more Jute-bag filled with notes
Five books
List of more books that I 'should' buy.

Quite a haul. Even before my first day in college.

Confession: this post has been written mainly to bring the no. of posts closer to 150. To lather an otherwise insignificant number with a swathe of distinction.

Of chinese buffet and Schrodinger's Equation

2008-07-18T09:46:00.003+05:30

There is a special charm to some, I'm sure, to watch Hancock while listening to a blow-by-blow account of solving Schrodinger's eqn. in polar co-ordinates. To an audience of people who haven't yet progressed to Ostragovsky's Theorem or any of those curly effings.

A not-so-rotund panda with legendary smile (of beatific serenity) intact (CS from some uni. in New Jersey), a now-skinny med student (off to Indiana [Jones!!!!!!!] - soon to be rid of the chap!), the Chemical Ali (polar co-ord.s nerd; Chem. from BITS-Pilani), a goatee'd CS engg. guy from the city outskirts and of course: the reverend sylph with the violence-quotient of a sledgehammer and the stilettos of terror (psych. from Ohio).

Aye, ickle me be in luminous company {;-D

Between ogling sideways (i confess, i confess...), staring at screen and snarling at the continued solving of aforementioned eqn. . . . well, life passes with a semblance of tolerance.
And that is something to be thankful for.

A time to walk and a time to talk

2008-07-11T11:51:00.002+05:30

I chanced upon a truly memorable picture - alas it's not on the net yet. no matter, I'll be scanning it in after I (or my mother) buy the book.
There was Marlon Brando ... the Brando a la Streetcar named Desire, On the Waterfront and the beginnings of the Vito yet to be acted o'oer. And towering nearby was this six-four fellow in short-sleeves - Satyajit Ray - French legion of honour, Palm d'Or, to receive the Oscar on his deathbed. Arguably two of my favourite guys ever to have handled celluloid. Or been portrayed on it. In the same frame!!

Anyhow, that's got my sudden surges of idolising out of the way.

We walked the walk, talked the talk. About life and death and Life and Death and the future of others and ours and those we knew or didn't or would get to know, cared about or didn't, loved or lost, wounded or bolstered . . . and all the other bric-a-brac that peppers the conversation of people when their thoughts run far ahead of mere words. And they see suddenly a tangible end to the rituals of long association.

Found myself talking online to a person I had last seen over three years ago. Both unsure whether the years and several continents have rusted the well-oiled wheels of our chit-chats of yore. Talks that rambled on endlessly and intimately - oh, so long ago.
The carriage of conversation trundles on still - what if one wheel squeaks now and then?
She has changed her plans - not sure of medicine anymore in England. I wonder how much my plans would chnage in a new country and in three years time.

Thoughts veer back to the present. I guess some things remain the same. I'll still snort in self-disgust when I see taller women (especially the teutonic valkyrian sort that towers over my not-quite-six feet), still mimic (horribly) his bloody Angliophilic accent and mannerisms, still insist his elder sister is a Chinese pygmy (I feel so relieved when women are shorter!) and insist equally forcefully that No! I bloody well don't still have a crush on her!!!!Whaddya take me for, a blushing schoolkid? "Hey M-. I..erm..mmblemmblegrmmp...blrrp...er..hi! It's um...me...ummm...er...right.Whatever."

Oh, and how could I forget! The new nom de guerre - American mamoni!!! Bwahahaha!

Er...right. Things may not change much. At least, not the ones that really matter.

Ze Sabreduelischt

2008-06-30T19:07:00.006+05:30

7:24 PM OOkaye, so here followse ane accounte ofe ye infamousse sabreduele betwixt twaine Force-adeptsesesesesesesesesesesesesesesesssseseseeeesssesessfrgregvtrbs yiugnb ifgiudtrnghbjmh09.
Thiffe followeth ye duelelelele fromme ye pointe offe viewe offe Alarond, Lord Greywrath as he essayeth forth (*essayeth, mind you!) against Prince Kazarelth Feantur. (check out Kaz's version of the thingy please!)

Oh, and how downright silly of me - forgot to set the scene.
Alright then. Tall pillars rising high up until the top arches are lost in the gloom. Rough-hewn flagstones over which the chill gusts blow zephyrs of dust. In most places, there is no ceiling or wall - and the angry boiling mass of thunderclouds can be seen looming grim and grey and ominous.

Well...you get the general idea of aggressive geography. No need for alarums, the site is alarming enough.
Sorry, forgot to mention - there be snow-capped peaks in the distant horizon, liked the serrated edge of the Scythe of Death.

There are light footsteps echoing through the cavernous desolation. Not steps trying to conceal the sound, but that of beings soft-footed by the very nature of their existence.
Two figures emerge and face each other, like in the Westerns y'know. Only, they aren't blooming bow-legged or clattering about in spurs.
Hooded, cloaked, arms hidden within the folds of darkly flowing robes billowing in the wind.
The slightly taller and bulkier one's tunic is trimmed in teal and there is a gleam of glinting eyes from within the cowl.
The other is thin, almost emaciated with darkling eyes that tended to smoulder.
What!?! You don't expect them to be joined by some other people and start playing contract bridge or something, do you?

me: the FOrce is with this one. ;)

Haryon: Which one? :P

me: thyself

Haryon:

en garde!

me: en riposte!

7:25 PM Haryon: Counter riposte!

Add-on riposte! :P

me: _wrist flick, twirl!!!!!_)

Haryon: <*Force Usage*> Lightning

7:26 PM me: <*yoda style reflect back*> <*yee-haw!!*>

Haryon: So it works both ways.

Conservation of energy when energy collides :P
<*Force Choke*>

7:27 PM me: <*blocks*>

btw, we shud publish this chat on BLogger

Haryon: <*More Chokery*>

{Yes!}

7:28 PM me: <*becomes impassive, lifts up left hand as if spastic, says in constipated tones, "Stop" a la Neo*>

7:29 PM Haryon:<*Does not stop since he lives beyond the Matrix*>Behold Jedi ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssscummmmmmmmmmmmm<*Does a little corkscrew turning thingee like Sidious daddy and puts the saber through a pillar*>

7:31 PM
me: <*withdraws into hooded robe like nazgul, then white light stabs out at the Palpy-emulator*> Alarond lives beyond matrix too. but not JRR T.

7:32 PM <*back flips*>

7:32 PM

Haryon: <*Mystically transforms the white shaft into a many-coloured rainbow and goes in search of the treasure at the end of it and discovers a fairy instead and has sex with her*>

7:33 PM Yeah, bitches. Kidstuff erotica xD

7:34 PM me: <*records it and threatens blackmail. Sex, Lies and duct-tape -I mean, videotape!*>

Haryon: Blackmail _who_, exactly? :P

me: the fairy, yer nut

Haryon: /me has nothing to fear muhuahuahaahuahahaha

me: you're too much a philistine to fear i gather.

Haryon: Oh. She must be a horny 'un :P

7:35 PM me: indeed. and despo to allow you

Haryon: Hey. You were the one who mentioned something like "Fealdamar has a mistress eh" or something.

me: ;)

well, has she?

i mean, Fealdamar

Haryon: Well... not really.

7:36 PM BUT. I need to know where exactly you got that info from

me: if 'well...not really' then why the counter-query?

7:37 PM Haryon: Because, redolently, you must have heard something.

Or seen.

Or both.

me: Or neither

Haryon: Or neither.

How _nice_. :[

me: Just a catcher in the rye

Haryon: I was thinking of some nice debate and going against the rumourmerchant

And then shaking my fist at him or something.

7:38 PM Really... it was just your guess? :(

Man. This sucks.

me: Might be. Or then again, i may be protecting my shourshes (shirr Seam)

*sean

Haryon: Good point.

The whole point being, I wouldn't go after your sources

7:39 PM But I'd protect my fictional gf from them

me: hahaha

Haryon: Which is beyond the point really.

{I'd rather protect meself :P}

me: well then, make the fictional a reality. then u might get a chance to do some of the more swashbuckling saber moves in a damsel's honor

7:40 PM Haryon: Yes.

There seem to be no opportunities for that.

IN MY WOULD-BE COLLEGE THOUGH! :P

It sucks that beauty is inversely proportional to brains mostly.

7:41 PM me: Insooth yes.

Haryon: :[

7:42 PM me: we are publishing this on respective blogs, ain't we?

i'd like to cross-link ours

Haryon: Haha yes xD

7:43 PM {In some time, plis. I need a day more of my writing to stay}

{I'll publish tomorrow at 4 PM. What say?}

me: Agreed! Ah, Our episods. For public review at last

7:44 PM .....

Haryon: Yes!

Only, our episods are pretty 18+ :P

me: Ha! That's the point entirely. HOpefully the more conservative ladies wouldn't be scandalised!

7:45 PM I mean as this one for a preview

Haryon: Yes...

Like moonlight on snow

2008-06-08T19:51:00.004+05:30

I had pounded down the sloping sidewalk. Past the flaring headlights and blaring horns. The rush and speed of a life that always finds me lagging.
Yes, there was laughter. And words. And silences that didn't deafen. Not any more.

It takes a while to find that bread and butter doesn't come with a complementary jug of honey. Even if it does, it's not always meant for the nearest grabber.
Or maybe it is.

Stop! That way lies madness.

The stars wheel overhead, the computer hums and lights twinkle from the night like a seaport. Guiding my wayward vessel back home. The sea-longing never sated, but merely slumbering. My highest reverence!
Yes, I'd have the half-smile than a void. A nod than a nothing. Absolutes are for the gods and the insane. I am neither. Yet.

Wanderlusting through the meandering bylanes of Anywhere. Dark wraith in shadowy nooks. I make people uneasy, I know. Dutiful smiles, back-slaps and back-stabs. The salt in my veins runs deep, one feels. Like the roots of the mountains whose far peaks I had descried from atop a paternal shoulder. Long time ago, in a reality far, far away.
A sign, a call! In the first breath of sunrise, the frolick of moonlight on snow. Or the shimmer of heat over countless rooftops. Thoughts soar like unbounded limits. I shall answer.

Somehow, though summers always end, something I feel will stay with me. Friends in need, they say, are friends indeed. With that worn and dog-eared adage, I take my leave. To dreams untroubled of angst after many a pillow-pounding night.
Farewell!

So hard to define...Dylan speaks for me

2008-06-08T19:25:00.002+05:30

I laid on a dune, I looked at the sky,
When the children were babies and played on the beach.
You came up behind me, I saw you go by,
You were always so close and still within reach.

Sara, Sara,
Whatever made you want to change your mind?
Sara, Sara,
So easy to look at, so hard to define.

I can still see them playin' with their pails in the sand,
They run to the water their buckets to fill.
I can still see the shells fallin' out of their hands
As they follow each other back up the hill.

Sara, Sara,
Sweet virgin angel, sweet love of my life,
Sara, Sara,
Radiant jewel, mystical wife.

Sleepin' in the woods by a fire in the night,
Drinkin' white rum in a Portugal bar,
Them playin' leapfrog and hearin' about Snow White,
You in the marketplace in Savanna-la-Mar.

Sara, Sara,
It's all so clear, I could never forget,
Sara, Sara,
Lovin' you is the one thing I'll never regret.

I can still hear the sounds of those Methodist bells,
I'd taken the cure and had just gotten through,
Stayin' up for days in the Chelsea Hotel,
Writin' "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" for you.

Sara, Sara,
Wherever we travel we're never apart.
Sara, oh Sara,
Beautiful lady, so dear to my heart.

How did I meet you? I don't know.
A messenger sent me in a tropical storm.
You were there in the winter, moonlight on the snow
And on Lily Pond Lane when the weather was warm.

Sara, oh Sara,
Scorpio Sphinx in a calico dress,
Sara, Sara,
You must forgive me my unworthiness.

Now the beach is deserted except for some kelp
And a piece of an old ship that lies on the shore.
You always responded when I needed your help,
You gimme a map and a key to your door.

Sara, oh Sara,
Glamorous nymph with an arrow and bow,
Sara, oh Sara,
Don't ever leave me, don't ever go.

Well, he has said it all. Left now is to blow out the candle. Softly, softly! And smile like there is no tomorrow.

Addicted to laziness

2008-06-02T15:41:00.003+05:30

I've been mulling over the usual things - get going on finishing ol' Joyce's contribution to standard Gibberish (Ulysses), burn my Bergman collection onto a CD, get a hold on Python instead of toying with the darn code and get the whining fan on my chassis fixed.

The mulling has been on for a week or so.
I'm basically gorging, dragging myslf out with friends, then flopping back on bed. Managed to read The twentieth wife (no, not for ideas; rather nice really: about Mehr-un-nisa and Jehangir), Giovanni's Room (skimmed over the really gay parts...eeeks!!! I'm homophobic, can't be helped.), watched Antonioni's The perfect woman.
Hopelessly browsing through colleges to apply to.

Braved the heat to pop into Xavier's. La pater a la dacshund received me most imperiously. Retaliated by raising my left eyebrow by a fraction. Some people have achieved more with raising it a millimeter, than most with raising their voices. Empty corridors stretching down the eastern wing. Desolate. And the closed doors seem to forever exclude me now from the school. Thankfully.

Summer Upstaged

2008-05-17T16:58:00.003+05:30

Every time I walk onstage,
Matchstick figure taking an age
To go up, somewhere 1812 Overture
Is playing - whisper at first,
Then rising, soaring...like
An unbounded limit.
That's what I hear - alone.

The darkened dias and familiar ghosts
Flitting by the gloomy pillars.

"Presenting the phantom of the Opera himself!"
Sanyal booms and Fr. Boris, SJ grins
And grimaces himself onto the stage.

"It was the San Souci theatre before.'"
A once-portly friend never tires of proclaming;
I did a stentorian Bushism there once -
"The university of Tagore's works!"
Universality. Damn! Didn't really have to
Kick myself: there are always many
To return that sorta favour.

Basu and Kanti('Panty'!) in the spotlight - bantering away,
Tonks and I a year later, the very same way;
And of course old Agni's brainchild - the play.

Bunked classes to hear the piano, like
Devotees in some darkened fane
Arcane and ancient among empty seats:
Sometimes avoiding a terrible row
(Sometimes a comely teacher in tow).

"Aruni Roy Chowdhury, please come blackstage!"
I was right behind the silly bugger;
Chap's in the Defence Academy,
Silly bugger fore'er he'll be!

I'm beginning to admire the Bard (yeah, again),
Rolling my tongue aroung the apostrophes,
Still having trouble working things out
Especially the part about 'exits' and 'stage'.

When the party's over (really, so fast?), the job's all done,
And you're hanging back maybe for last "well done";
But the backslaps and bearhugs are done for the day,
All you're doing is being in the way.
It's time to put back the chairs and put out the lights
And close that door with the softest of clicks.

Lost (and found) in translation

2008-05-14T08:21:00.003+05:30

"And the twain shall ever meet...."

I have spent a happy weekend translating Macbeth's soliloquoy into Quenya. The pointlessness of the venture inspired me all the more.

Entore, entore ar entore
Oiosintane pitya rangasse
Areltonnar aurelto,
Ana telda quetta onotima yaresse;
Ar ilya vanwe vanwa cale alnola
I malennar qualmasto . . .
Metta, metta! Nauca calma,
Cuile na nan vantalomin,
Larquen tyaro ya orme lumerya
Or i paca, ar sanvanwa.
Nyarna avaquetima i faica!
Quanta in lama, ar aha,
Tancole lusta . . .

(The accents/diareses/et cetera are quite beyond my patience to insert)

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

-- Macbeth (V.v.19)

The darling buds of May

2008-05-11T10:40:00.003+05:30

The month first puts me in the mood of May it be... Unlike my friend Tonks, no, I don't use it to fall asleep. It use it as an accessory for transcendental stimulation of the subconcious. It just looks like I'm dozing off, for pete's sake!

May Day of course is entwined with memories, both hilarous and sad. It was on a blazing, sweaty May Day that I found myself ascending the shadowy stairs to the spooky abode of Mr. Samuel Framroze Engineer for the first and second-last time in my life. The only FTCL (Piano) in India. He had a large dalmatian (Zeus) which had a curious affinity for Tonks' posterior as Engineer took his piano lessons.
I never asked him to play something for me. Never asked him anything much really.
He'd gone off Upstairs quite some time back. May Day brought it back to me. A fleeting touch in my life, not of any intrinsic importance. But his playing, his playing . . .

The second of the month was my maternal grandfather's birthday. Surely he's stinking of nicotine with the Upstairs-man, chain smoker that he was. It was also the birthday of film-maker Satyajit Ray. They shared quite a few laughs too, my mother tells me, these men that shared their birthdays. Whatever. That past is lesser than a ghost.
And on it goes, the fourth,the fifth, the minor chord, the major sixth....
The eighth. Rabindra Jayanti. I have spent one-third of my life every year in the programme on Tagore's birthday. Voiceover to the play, emcee to the programme. Cannot remember the time when I sat in the audience to see the performances in the college auditorium. This year: nothing.

I can see myself partially reflected in the window panes. Half-light and the rest the view outside. The mind can concieve of everything, everywhere and everywhen. The monoliths of the past, through the smoke-rings of my mind. Argosies of achievements (magnitude is relative to the scale of the observer, remember pray) floating down the uncharted seas of eternity. And the future a multiverse of possibility - to grasp and forge one's own path.
Yet, yet in the grand solitude of the gifted, it does not do to not value the present. The here and the now. The distant birdcalls, cars, scattered books. The taste of burgers standing the test of time.

Then take me disappearin' through the smoke rings of my mind,
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves,
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach,
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow.
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free,
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands,
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves,
Let me forget about today until tomorrow.

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.

Gusts of glory

2008-05-03T18:31:00.002+05:30

Sudden. Abrupt.

Hurried to the terrace, hauled by the violent winds, dust forming zephyrs, flinging around rubbish I hadn't noticed before.

And then, before I could savor it fully, it was gone. The lightning bared it's teeth a bit, and the wind was still a bit high. Is all.

Compliments. Rare.

2008-05-03T09:18:00.001+05:30

I am highly judgmental. And perennially talking behind peoples' backs.
But guess what, I make sure I'm the first one to tell 'em all about it.
The source of the credo? A part of Asimov's Second Foundation. The First Speaker's words to a neophyte:

"It is possible to glean the true feelings behind even the most skilfully constructed mental shield. No, rather keep your mind open and visible to all, and learn to discipline your own thoughts before trying to obfuscate the vision of others . . . "

Words behind my back are so ... audible to me.
One speaketh: "Aruni's so - so frank about everything. Right on your face he'll say everything."
Another answereth: "So, isn't that something to learn?"

Made my day, that. *sheepish grin*
It is easy to confuse forthrightness with the bluntness of a cudgel. Through many buffets, I've finally managed to make the fine distinction. It pays to be a man for all seasons. As long as you want to.
There are many lives that I've touched that remind me of Dante's Trimmers. The one's that had 'trimmed' their sails to suit and follow every wind and tide that came their way. Ne'er held firm the rudder to steer their own course, forge their own destiny rather than ride on others' coattails (infinitely easier though it is).
They are the ones who are forever marooned, neither here not there.

No leave required

2008-05-02T17:19:00.001+05:30

What does one say to a teacher who was widely reviled for her strict discipline and nagging behaviour, and as widely respected for her encyclopedic knowledge of her subject and an unwaveringly principled character? What does one say, especially if the recipient has passed beyond the reach of mortal voices?

Universally 'Maggie', Mrs. Mridula Goswami was a first class first in physical chemistry from Calcutta University, and teaching at Xavier's for ... ages. We were her last batch of 12s before retirement and definitely one of the worst mannered. This post is as much an obituary (unneeded) as a cathartic purgatory for the havoc we wreaked upon the poor lady's nerves.
Still, I remember the satisfaction at having gotten the second highest in chem. despite her notorious marking scheme.
She was battling cancer and passed away last week. Here's a toast (in test-tubes, mind) to her in wherever the teachers' Valhalla is located. Serenaded by rate constants and served by Avogadro!
Mrs. Goswami loved (to the point of swooning) Tanmoy's piano. I'm sure he would oblige for a last Traumarie in her memory.

on the waterfront (er...side)

2008-05-01T07:19:00.001+05:30

A short break from the monotony of usual days. A much needed lunch out at the behest of a friend.
Waterside cafe almost put me back in my old mood - merrily mimicking fellow diners, among whom hags predominated (alas!). Not to mention pseudo-Victorian tourists.
I hate it when women are taller than me. Call me a chauvinist if you would.

Nota Bene: Tanmoy, have a care when you comment!

An old intention

2008-04-27T07:04:00.001+05:30

Ever since Vader's Memoirs on blogger, I had it in mind to create a tribute to some other popular scion of the Dark Side.

I have. Voldemort. Not that I'm a die-hard Potter fan (eeek). But readership, alas, is an issue. An Sauron is not at all empathising material while keeping a straight face.

Translation still goes on at Macbeth's soliloquy. Quenya has an amazing flow. Oh, and I've my AIEEE today. Heh.

On the beautiful 'whatevers'

2008-04-25T08:36:00.002+05:30

The IIT-JEE didn't go too well, actually. So the doors of the premier technical institute in this country has shut its doors on my face with a rather resounding clang. Ah, well! Whatever.

There is hope in the other exams. Let us see. Dropping a year for another crack at IIT is not my cup of tea. Cannot afford to lose a year really - speed is of the essence if I am to steer myself along the course I've charted out tentatively.

Things in India are veering back into the bad old days. In colonial times, most of the landed gentry of Bengal (and elsewhere certainly, but I wouldn't have first-hand accounts of those) sent their scions to England to study. Out of the country at any rate.
A throwback of that in modern times. Those who can are already in USA after the SATs - out of these squalid things. The cutthroat competition (for even not-so-highly-prized qualifications), the favoritism rampant everywhere, the ominously exponential growth of a non-core industry, if there's a boom that's booming for too long people, there gonna be a crunch that'll be the Big Crunch . . . hard times in other words.
Not that's its Utopia there, I know. But hey! When you're in a uni where, say, the LCD was patented (KSU), or the first IC chip created . . . Like the difference in laid-back Kolkata and the relatively supersonic rush in Mumbai for example. Yeah, economy falling and everything - but it's still got a long way to go.

Me? Nope, all this is mainly other ppl' s rantings I have compiled. :P
When my dad floated the tender of SAT to me, it was way too late. Less than 6 months to prepare. Again, I'd rather do the grad from here (finger to competition!) and then search for greener pastures. Better to leave a green pasture for greener ones, not a barren desert I'm fleeing like a refugee.

Now back to some maths.....

On lengths and breadths

2008-04-23T08:08:00.001+05:30

For sure, I generally ~~do not help out unless coerced by some external Force~~ am always there to lend a helping hand.
It feels rather great, like a mental pat on the back for my do-good tendencies (whose extent is quite rudimentary).

Hey, look, I ain't all that bad after all. Butch Cassidy the lot of 'em! Raindrops keep fallin' on my head, they keep bloody fallin' on my head. Which is not too bad in this ruddy furnace.
(yes, I might require a psychiatrist with a pitchfork)

No, a pair of delectably long legs did not catalyse my actions!

Them evenings

2008-04-18T09:43:00.004+05:30
Sometimes, I do believe I have to compile a magnum opus on Evening.

Took a break from Maths. These days the winds blow in lusty gusts out of the darkened East. Flirting with the fire-fettered steeds of dusk, fraught with the fiery gaze of the Eye sinking into the West. Eyes burn lucent in the shade and everything seems to be more quintessentially itself. A lamp is more a lamp, a tree more a tree. Perhaps because the darkened shadows outline it in prominence. Minds too soar with sudden limpid clarity, borne upon the untamed gusts.

The sheer magnitude of the winds seem to make everything so . . . trifling.

And then again, gnawing at my very being - that nameless, undefined longing. A yearning for something forever just beyond my questing grasp. Maybe to soar into the Untrammeled with the lawless gusts, traversing aeons, light-years and lifetimes in a flicker of thought. Beyond the wicket-fences of safe homes, the golden necklaces of over-bridge lights, name, fame and the meaningless trappings that encumber our precious lives. 'Cept for the sky, there are no fences facin'.
To paint again as I did (oh, so very long ago!) with my flying form as brush and the cosmos for my canvas. To bring forth the music in my mind upon the strings of the Deep.

A conch-shell is blowing in some devout household. The lamps of the Eventide are lit, little flickers of human faith.
My rooms are dark.

I find myself staring vacantly into the space where the sun was. How swiftly the shroud falls upon the dying day. How do I explain something that loses it's profundity in explanation?
Sometime ago, I must've started quoting aloud, for I hear the words whispered in my suddenly hoarse voice,

Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud . . .

Controlled and malcontrolled by ME,that should be enough. Things associated with me include distilled boredom, gargantuan grunts, epitome of taciturness, among others,not to mention the smell of wonderfully putrifying erm...better not define it. Aruni "Alarond" Roy Chowdhury

On charity

2008-04-16T08:44:00.001+05:30

To me it's just earning brownie points on the stairway to heaven. Period.

You give some loose change to a beggar - isn't there a sense of satisfaction at having done something for your unfortunate fellow creature, a feeling that 'yes! I am a good human being.' So is the deed done for the fellow creature, or also for the main course of boosting morality?
Outside a temple you see bhokti-godo-godo (brimming over with piety) people scattering money like crumbs. The look of pure gratitude on the recipients' faces, the respectful whispers of "See the young so-and-so....the scion of such-and-such family....such a kind soul, so generous, so magnanimous..."
Surely that's a visa to Seventh Heaven, Cloud 9 right?

Every time there is any interaction with a class-C employee/menial workers . . . goodness, such politeness. Such effete etiquette. For what joy? - that little voice applauding the deeds that leads to the unalloyed joy the man/lady may feel at being 'treated as an equal'. A balloon of self-righteous joy at doing the 'right thing'.

Ludicrous. Either we do it for the sake of the recipient, or not at all. True, in all effect there is no difference but there is. If receiving the gratitude is somewhere in out thoughts then Lord! I refuse to believe that however generous a deed will mean a thing.
Controlled and malcontrolled by ME,that should be enough. Things associated with me include distilled boredom, gargantuan grunts, epitome of taciturness, among others,not to mention the smell of wonderfully putrifying erm...better not define it. Aruni "Alarond" Roy Chowdhury

On my doorstep

2008-04-11T08:24:00.001+05:30

The problem is continuity. It is easy to begin (yeah, awesome discovery, that) and ego-boostingly satisfying to end. The middle part is where the problem lies. Between the "Let's do this, people!" and the "This is it! We did it!"

Especially difficult it is to prepare thoroughly if my copy of Ubuntu 7.10 appears on my doorstep. Aargh, how'll I ever restrain myself? Oh, bebother it all! I'm off to some OS installation ppl. IIT is old enough to fend for itself, for Eru's sake.

Controlled and malcontrolled by ME,that should be enough. Things associated with me include distilled boredom, gargantuan grunts, epitome of taciturness, among others,not to mention the smell of wonderfully putrifying erm...better not define it. Aruni "Alarond" Roy Chowdhury

RIP Judah Ben-Hur

2008-04-07T08:16:00.002+05:30

He was a beloved icon for generations of movie-goers, references to his most memorable performance are everywhere.

I remember Agni and myself making Ben-Hur+Messala faces and quaffing our water-bottles like they showed with goblets in the film. Ah well! ARC's school days. L'Finis. Heh.

Battling Alzheimer's, Judah's chariot race is over, Moses vanishing into a dramatic skyline. Recalling some of his not-so-well-known performances - as Michelangelo in Agony and Ecstasy, Major Dundee and the unforgettable Khartoum. Embodied the typical style of that era - the larger-than-life extravaganza of a Cecil B. de Mille epic blockbuster, the over-the-top personae and eminently quotable one-liners.

My memory's on overdrive it seems! Long ago in Std. 6. Wren and Martin's Grammar. The teacher calls out a sentence: "And the entire Sinai trembled dash the voice of God."
A skinny bespectacled boy let out a spontaneous rumble of what he thought God to be - a mighty booming + loads of yellow light coming out of a cave. To my joy that same divine echo was taken up by another boy, a few seats away.

The Rameses of the class banished us forthwith for our bass disruptions. However, that triggered my long and eventful association with one Aparajit Basu - known by many names: Darth Basu, The Imperial One, Lord Valion, Celethor Stormcrow Valalinde, .... et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Here's to Charlton Heston in all his avatars which defined my (and many others') psychotic childhood persona.

Sneh! I'm reminiscing at the drop of a pin these days. Maybe it's the aftermath of graduating.

"Looking back on childhood years,
Even unhappiness acquires a certain glow..."

Controlled and malcontrolled by ME,that should be enough. Things associated with me include distilled boredom, gargantuan grunts, epitome of taciturness, among others,not to mention the smell of wonderfully putrifying erm...better not define it. Aruni "Alarond" Roy Chowdhury

Doting on dotards

2008-04-05T17:29:00.001+05:30

Did I ever mention my distaste for using collective nouns with respect to humans. There's a most disagreeable aftertaste after conforming to the norms expected of one in any such conglomerations - graced by such terms as meeting, party, soirée, pow-wow and what have you!

The food was passable. I didn't manage to have a jalebi before the alumni meeting started. It was memorable due to the following factors redeeming it's exquisite engendering of boredom:
The fact that some people can approach the approximate dimensions of a well-fed walrus. With a paunch even at the back of the neck for goodness' sake...
That Jesuits have truly commendable ways of dozing off, even if they are sitting on the podium. The heads loll backwards.
It is a sign of propah upbringing to pronounce one's mother tongue with immense effort, akin to constipation.
Sometimes, just sometimes people spoke sense. And it made sense to help out less fortunate folks (in the process showing off your unparalleled magnanimity - but that's like a tax-benefit I guess)
Controlled and malcontrolled by ME,that should be enough. Things associated with me include distilled boredom, gargantuan grunts, epitome of taciturness, among others,not to mention the smell of wonderfully putrifying erm...better not define it. Aruni "Alarond" Roy Chowdhury

And she returns

2008-04-04T08:39:00.002+05:30

Lashing out over the multi-storied building as if with a vengeance. The whip-strokes of an enraged mistress who returns to find her castle in flames. She lashes in a frenzy, and I can no longer see the Science City domes or Sunny Towers from my window. The stokes are like a blurred watercolor - not individual shafts. I hear hear the deep-throated rumblings of her wrath.
But the City is a willing self-sadist, embracing the outpouring wrath with open arms and bared flesh. The ecstasy when the pleasure is so keen that it borders on agony. Dousing the smoldering residue of summer heat.
On my secluded balcony I couldn't resist getting drenched to the skin. I'm dry now, and huddled before the console. Hair standing up like antennae. The streets will be awash with unspeakable dirt, I know. Somewhere, people's homes (the luxury of a single tarpaulin on the pavement) are being washed away.

But it is raining, and raining. Cats and dogs and elephants and whales. And I am ecstatic. That is all that matters. Oh yes, the fact that I'm blogging too!
Controlled and malcontrolled by ME,that should be enough. Things associated with me include distilled boredom, gargantuan grunts, epitome of taciturness, among others,not to mention the smell of wonderfully putrifying erm...better not define it. Aruni "Alarond" Roy Chowdhury

2008-03-28T13:36:00.005+05:30
Like a bird on the wire,
like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free.
Like a worm on a hook,
Like a knight from some old fashioned book...
-Leonard Cohen
(yup, a new fascination)

I've always felt that primal longing for something of elusive grace, flitting just beyond definition, flirting with my consciousness. If I could ever grasp it (or so it was felt) . . . well, no idea as to what, but a deep sense of fulfillment. So easy to reach, so hard to define (hats off to Dylan).
You too have heard it - in the descent of dusk over the cityscape, woven into the filigree of window-lights, whispering with the rampant gusts, the shadowy shades in the corners of one's mind. A voice just out of my ken, a thought never formed. And the sense of lingering loss, of vain attempts to capture the beauty of that perfect moment. But the attempt confounds the intent.

Every path that is now to be tread, every summit attained seems to matter so little, never to assuage this unknown, untold loss. I do not even know of what.
Controlled and malcontrolled by ME,that should be enough. Things associated with me include distilled boredom, gargantuan grunts, epitome of taciturness, among others,not to mention the smell of wonderfully putrifying erm...better not define it. Aruni "Alarond" Roy Chowdhury

A moment please

2008-03-24T08:30:00.003+05:30

Had been going ga-ga over this picture a talented friend of mine took. In a Memphis cemetery. Now, I wouldn't expect anything less from Meenakshi Das of course! Memories of projectile slippers still haunt me during the grey hours of pre-dawn.
Then again Present fears are less than horrible imaginings...
Controlled and malcontrolled by ME,that should be enough. Things associated with me include distilled boredom, gargantuan grunts, epitome of taciturness, among others,not to mention the smell of wonderfully putrifying erm...better not define it. Aruni "Alarond" Roy Chowdhury

Summer, family and pet peeves

2008-03-22T15:15:00.002+05:30
I hate summer. And Vivaldi is not making things any better. When in the world are we going to have a personalized climate regulator? Custom-made, slightly smaller than a blackberry.
There's something enervating about this heat. Give me sub-zero any day.

The Sun's scorching with a vengeance and even the crows are making only half-hearted attempts at disturbance. A madman stays at the house next-door. The violent sort: his dad keeps him on daily sedatives (and pays for the cars he trashes). The heat's got to him as well. Someone's hammering a piece of metal at the garage. The clang marking time for the rhythmic ebb and flow of the heat waves.

Spring's too short. Either it's the cold of Winter or this mundane nerve-sapping monstrosity. Like...like how most of the time you're too young for some things. And then you are too old for them. Within these two walls what thin sliver of sunlight illumines the 'perfect time'?

I visited family, taking advantage of the hiatus between the exams. A cousin - officially labeled the Chief Shit Collector. Pursuing her doc. at the Inst. of Science on wildlife. Right after the usual 'how art thou? -i'm fine and u are still insane...' I was given a crash-course on the various forms of animal droppings (the fine distinction between spoor and scat) which I tolerated for politeness' sake. Banter, banter. Talk of old times. And how things have shaped our paths. Just because we can't see it doesn't mean the path isn't laid out before our feet.
Controlled and malcontrolled by ME,that should be enough. Things associated with me include distilled boredom, gargantuan grunts, epitome of taciturness, among others,not to mention the smell of wonderfully putrifying erm...better not define it. Aruni "Alarond" Roy Chowdhury

The Fountain of Paradise - stopped

2008-03-20T05:40:00.002+05:30
Arthur C. Clarke, that well-beloved of sci-fi authors, has passed away. The bringer forth of classic sci-fi like the Garden of Rama, Fountains of Paradise not to mention the one and only 2001:A Space Odessey - maybe somewhere in the infinite depths of his beloved interstellar space Clarke wheels through the void in a monolith. Maybe.

*sniff*

Well, I'm listening to Richard Strauss' "Thus Spake Zarathustra" as a meager tribute. Somehow, I've identified Clarke/Kubrick/HAL/movie+the book thru those strident opening notes.

C-----C----G----- ---G-B---
Controlled and malcontrolled by ME,that should be enough. Things associated with me include distilled boredom, gargantuan grunts, epitome of taciturness, among others,not to mention the smell of wonderfully putrifying erm...better not define it. Aruni "Alarond" Roy Chowdhury

Never afeard

2008-03-03T18:03:00.003+05:30
The mind I sway by, and the heart I bear
Shall never sag with doubt nor shake with fear.

I have slain the abyssal beasts
Torn apart their cosmic feast...

But the price - my scarred mind:
Soul-scorches and fading yesterdays,
And something...something just beyond my grasp,
Tip of my tongue but ne'er quite there
Lost in the depths of the starless void....
The end of all silent songs...

High, oh high, the glisten through the sky oh!
Bright, how bright, the twin moons of mine dreams -
Xanadu the lost, the seat of pleasure.
Of the senses, body, mind and soul...
-Soul? Should there be one?
I do not know, nor can e'er.

And borne on wings of the Desolate
My mind flies through space and time:
Countless li's of both...

On a twilight mount
Alone in the cloud
The eagle paused
And the wind shrieked
In it's stead.

And the mist of the cloud
Formed the eagle's shroud
Wings battered and torn.

Shadowless it fell
Into a sunless sea
Black waves on chalk-cliffs
And I so alone for e'er,
Alone amidst the endless lis
Of sand and grit and solitude.

I smiled then, at peace at last
And sat down to cry . . .

For a wistful smile I had wagered worlds
Cheerfully, and the lank wet hair
Dark beside the ivory face,
My ears dull to the sound of the surf...

Fire-fettered she flirts with the
Spray-fraught wind.

I hear still the silent laugh -
The end of all unspoken dreams,
Balm to scarred souls (yes, souls!),
Calm, limpid pools.

My living mind torn apart:
The Fear Machines, Styron IV,
The last stand on Manhome.

Yea, I bled for things, not people.

And you? -were always but a dream.
That I may ride where there are no tracks,
Walk where I had shuddered before,
Fair will-'o-the wisp, my highest
Reverence, I never bled for thee.

The sands are never tired
Of briny waters . . .

Note: li is a Chinese measure, about half a kilometer. My cousin learned mandarin, and I was always picking up snippets. There are other reasons too, that those who know not need not know.

I had just written a long essay on 'Kubla Khan', hence the poem. If it can be called one. I had to write, and publish it you see. This is a sorry sight ...

Any resemblance to people alive and kicking is entirely unintentional. Believe me.
Controlled and malcontrolled by ME,that should be enough. Things associated with me include distilled boredom, gargantuan grunts, epitome of taciturness, among others,not to mention the smell of wonderfully putrifying erm...better not define it. Aruni "Alarond" Roy Chowdhury

One down, several to go

2008-02-29T17:24:00.003+05:30
Okay. So the best way to unwind after the first theory paper happens, I mean just happens to be blogging. Mainly because watching The Constant Gardener with my father a while back doesn't count. Both of us expressed out dissatisfaction with our uniquely distinguishable snorts. Having read le Carre's book before, we already knew the story (anyway, it's an old release in any case).

Oh, and I wrote this essay on 'ambition' Overlaid with generous dollops of Ayn Rand-ish ego, Ulyssesian (not that incomprehensible monument of our dear Dubliner) thunder, garnished all over with liberal amounts of convoluted phrasings and half-misunderstood truisms. To which you may add if you wish the seasonings of siestaic somnolence and the general torpid stupor which clogs the recalcitrant essayist during a board exam.
To which may be added the short-bread of laziness as slovenliness slops onto the saucer of apathy.
And now the monument of my 'ego' is in for repairs.

May I now include an extract from a fellow blogger . . . .

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

School life : The End

Here's a little something that I wrote for school :

Now the cold of winter comes,
Starless night shall cover day.
Nirvana eludes us still
And all hope fades like light
From far Triangulum beyond the stars.
Noradrenaline floods our blodd,
Our minds are dulled to a faint throb.
We walk a crowded road,
We know not why we go.
Transhumanist ideal and xenophobic fear
Mix and meld in one foul broth.
We rush now to the event horizon of our destiny.
What lies before us now?
Some hellish canine to tear our hopes?
Some Ibola plague to burst our veins with despair?
Yet we flinch not!

There can be victory without sacrifice,
No triumph without loss, no interregnum before the end.
Fell deeds await; fire and slaughter!
Spear shall be shaken, shield shall be splintered,
A sore-day, a red day, ere the sun rises!
Out of doubt, out of dark to the day's rising
We come singing in the sun, swords unsheathing!
To hope's end we ride and to heart's breaking!
See now the wormhole of hope,
Forth now, there's a last march remaining!
March beyond hope, beyond despair, beyond life, beyond death,
March now to our glory beyond the ending of the world!
Controlled and malcontrolled by ME,that should be enough. Things associated with me include distilled boredom, gargantuan grunts, epitome of taciturness, among others,not to mention the smell of wonderfully putrifying erm...better not define it. Aruni "Alarond" Roy Chowdhury

In the glorious expectation of nothing very much

2008-02-27T16:41:00.005+05:30

There's this thing that old photographs, silverware and memories share.

They all get a patina over them with time. And trying to get it off ruins the whole thing. I keep on staring at the faces, unlined and unburdened with my continued exixtence. Trying to read some invisible message into every nuance captured on film. The fungus slowly ruining the features. We all play that game: reading our own lines into other's mouths. One time or the other.

Here's a few scanned in. A half-hearted effort to stop time's decay.

Technical details for those interested in obsolete stuff: The camera was a Himatic-7 Minolta, with a Rokkor lens coupled - 45mm and 55mm.
Controlled and malcontrolled by ME,that should be enough. Things associated with me include distilled boredom, gargantuan grunts, epitome of taciturness, among others,not to mention the smell of wonderfully putrifying erm...better not define it. Aruni "Alarond" Roy Chowdhury