the larger questions

there are two types of pictures, a small one, pasted in job application forms, in pasports and saving accounts, where your whole self is not required, the image below chest is usually edited out.
it is not short of a miracle that people are actually identified via these tiny passport pictures, often taken without color, preserved for years since the day you were a kid. passport pictures make you small, manageable,and often invisible to those who are supposed to keep watch.
i always keep couple of them handy, just in case these are to be pasted in some tiny box.
then there are these full-size photographs, often with a colourful studio background, taken at a certain age, for certain purposes appropriate of that age.
girls are decked up in some traditional dress, accosted to look pretty, these pictures are the saddest ones i usually see.
these pictures are not mere information, as the passport one wer; these seek judgement. these pictures are opinion about a person, enable the viewer to rate the person against others, not merely identify..
then there are group photographs, in formal settings, your quota in the picture reflects your quaota of everything in life..
the best pictures do not usually have human beings, but of beings that cannot comprehend their likenes to the image,..
the best images are images of beings too engaged to notice, or to naive to comprehend..

a Sunday escape

weekend are meant for quite a few things. there is usually a huge list of activities and theories about weekends. weekends are for taking a break from routine, for fixing things you can't during the week due to professional commitments..planning for next week, spending times with friends, reading books you were meaning to since long, going for an outing and so on..
heard a song, about a sleepless night, and desire for sleep for a moment, desire to let a dream run through its course, a dream that was broken, i remember this as my wish from childhood. i always wondered why i could not re-run the same dream if i tried sleeping again.why a moment is lost forever.. it does, i know that for a fact now and i knew it then, but why i do not know.
it is interesting how sometimes time runs in circles,you come to same point in your life again and again, and then you don't, in another dimension there is no turning back..
when i say no turning back, it gives the moment a weight, i wonder if i did the best i could in that moment, and then at another level it hardly matters..each moment of our lives we make a decision, on how to live it, or someone else makes it, or we make a policy on doing something or not doing it and we follow it..
we need structures, decisions, policies, orders and religion to assuage this fear of not making the right decision, the dread of making a decision each and every millisecond..
what it means is that the most important thing in one's life is to find the right anxiety management structure.. it doesn't make a difference all the time, but it makes you less anxious. so the proverbial;'he died smiling, in a ditch, shot several times and wounded, in intense pain in some faraway unknown country'.
now what happens if i make a wrong choice, or not make this decision at all, early enough in life?
i will be finding the hitherto unknown things, so i might become a fidgety, anxious, discoverer, or i might become a slob, i might find doing anything extremely difficult, start considering it a lost cause.
I might decide world to be a wonderland, and live in it, with interesting results, depending upon my station in life, if i were a prince, people might find my behaviour queer, but i might still live a happy life. if i were a to fend for myself, thing will be difficult.
who makes this choice for us, early in our age? or what influences it? what influences a fruitful evolution suitable for my life and times?
Parents, family, friends, environment & genetics are possible culprits.
interesting thought, a successful politician indulging in nepotism isn't really doing such a bad thing. he is sharing the fruits of success to those who make it possible..;)

learnings from things I read and see

the title is a contradiction in itself. Do I not see the things i read?
Some will argue that seeing implies observation and realization-association with things in real life. but then so it is with a book.
Living a life is as good as reading about it?
A scholar in ancient ages believed it to be so, and hence he asked the travelers in his boat to give up their lives rather than parting with his books and throwing them overboard when he was caught in a storm.
Therein lies a maxim 'never travel in the same boat as a scholar'-same goes with other important, learned men, men with 'vision'.
Men with vision deal with intangibles, would weigh you and these things, take decisions often at your expense considering the way the weigh goes usually..
It is better to be a scholar who loves books, a politician who loves his flag,a linguist who loves his language.
Wisdom brings ability to sacrifice some things for others, being these things relieves you of responsibility of making that important choice, of saving books that no one will read vs sailors who will die anyway.
This is why it is important to learn, go for higher education.
 I was reading about neglect of higher education by our government, which turned out to be an academic cribbing about couple of foxes of wrong colored coat not being ousted from their cushy VC posts..
I sympathize with academic. his book is being thrown overboard, he has every right to grumble.

one page from a 'staggered' night

one late night, staggering out of a 'watering hole' i realized i had nowhere to go. i had been living a dream for many years, a dream not extraordinary in any respect, an ordinary dream.
i often spoke about it, wrote about it, alluded to it, hinted at it, deep inside,i knew it to be a lost dream, deep inside i knew to be alive, it had to alive, it had to immortal for it was my dream.
Where do you go when you have nowhere to go?
well you land up somewhere where you can sleep peacefully until you were wiser, that is if you were fortunate.if you were unfortunate, you end up turning to one of the places that were..you might get eaten up by hungry wolves, or simply curious ones, (or you might join them. you might end up in places where people believe in euthanasia, or with someone who believes in enduring the suffering, preserving the sacred life and such non-sense.
there might also be places who are angry enough to bury you in them, and places that love you so much to let you lie/cocoon you in themselves.
Having nowhere to go throws up interesting possibilities, by choice or otherwise, it is interesting because you can walk for ages and reach nowhere, precisely from where you started, and that takes out responsibility from your actions, you can afford to be reckless, take chances.
this makes your dilemma quite absurd, and interesting, almost unreal to yourself.not unlike a dream from where we started.
I started from a memory, a powerful memory,etched, possibly with too strong a reagent, burning and blackening and blurring the written, making it illegible, unforgettable.
That night, and many nights before and after, i made some wrong choices, and many right ones,which are which, the perspective changes, as if i was watching the past from a fast moving train,torturing through the mountains and valleys, you climb higher and see the same track, the same view as if entirely renewed until finally, after many trips, you tune out the view and surprises, beauty and lessons it offers.
if you decide to go everywhere,do you reach somewhere in the end? not necessarily.
it's just that you understand that all the trips you took were on wrong path and right path at the same time, and it is possible to create magic..

Misery

It was the miserable rain that soaked my cloths as i reached home after walking for hours..the door looked slightly ajar. I pushed, it gave a little resistance, the lock that held the door slipped out, the door gave out a slow, agonized shriek as it opened into a short, dark passageway.
the house looked dank and deserted,there was a unsettling air to the place.as if i was entering a world i didn't understand.it was a misty winter morning, the drizzle adding to the darkness, walls of the house mingling with gray outside.
I could feel my feet sink in sand and gravel, just a bit uncertain about what lies beneath, tentative and nervous, i forged ahead, clutching my rucksack tightly, railing against the sickening cold.
I entered the first room of my home, the walls, the chips, the broken paint, all seemed familiar, even though i had never seen my house in this decay. It looked exactly the same, fitting in into the storyboard, the house in my memory had aged to resemble exactly as it was, the decay, disrepair, sadness, damp and dignity, yes i knew this place only too well for my ease..
It was not as if this house was always this sad. this house had it's days of sunshine, rejoice and affection.In this strange place, stranger then anywhere else- claim the legends of the land,I had grown up into the uncertain age that i was in, . this house was my limbo, my nourishment, my bane, a place that let me wait, scratch my nails against it's walls, bang my fist, wet it with my tears, brake it and rebuild it, piece by piece, This house was world to me=..once..
As the time goes by, you forget things, incidents, people, places- what remains with you is familiarity, the attachments and foreboding, memories make you smile and tremble with fear- and you do not even remember why..
I knew this place too well, i knew not what pulled me back into it.. one always comes home.. one always returns to some place. thought why is not that obvious, why do we return? why do we fear the unknown, why the endless path fills us with sadness? is rolling the stone up the hill forever any worse than watching it roll down and roll it up again?As always, I guess it will take another legend to answer that question, to speak that we know and dare speak not..
The story that brought me back to the house was all too familiar, you would have heard it many a times, in a different time and place, still, it will be an interesting story to pass our time, while we carry our stones, it's not too bad if we know all the subtleties of sufferings, if you were an artist, it might inspire you into something profound...
with these noble thoughts i started this story of my house, it's happiness and misery..i do not know if i will finish it this night, the end isn't here.. not yet..

The Two Schools

On my last trip home, I visited the two schools I had studied in, the old and the older, full of signs of decay, and growth. A new ugly section had been added to the 160 years old structure. It was a lab I suppose, a functional eyesore funded by the usual grants and donations our schools thrive upon while our government decides whether or not our kids have a right to education, whether to add or not another piece of dysfunctional tattered beggar’s cloth named fundamental rights.
Height changes perspective, so does age, I realized this as I walked through the empty classrooms and courtyards which were a large chunk of my world for many years. They looked different when I was little, my older school looked much bigger then, even daunting, awe inspiring. I remember clutching to my cache of prizes during probably my last year at the school, feeling proud in my father’s presence, and then growing smaller little by little as the prizes and their recipients kept coming and going on stage, and it hit me that evening was over for me, there was nothing more to do, no more prizes to be had beyond the ones I had already collected.
It is important to feel pride for your accomplishments and yet be humble, these annual ceremonies made me realize. That night was cool and breezy, and we were happy, full of chit chat and banter while we were returning. I remember taking a resolution to memorize a long poem at behest of one of my father’s friends, and being mesmerized as he broke into a deep passionate song, a long Sanskrit ode to lord Shiva. Happiness often comes in hindsight; we never realize that it could be over in a moment, that what we take for granted will one become precious, elusive mirage.
It did not occur to me then that this will be my last night at the school, it did not till the moment I returned to the empty auditorium these many years later.
When I spent my last day in this school, I was a kid who thought the world would last forever, when I went for first time in my next school; I had grown up, woken up to a world that did not last beyond a moment.
And yet this place accepted me, someone moved a bit to share space in the classroom, we chose our favorite places, our neighbors, our playmates, and somehow I no longer felt unsure of myself.
I know what I would do if I see some adolescent who thinks he is grown up and understands the world and it’s sadness. Or do I? I don’t mind if he understands all about fragility and sadness of world, yes one should know that, but then there is this game to played, there is this interesting story to heard, there is this beautiful song to be learnt, and all of these exist as much as sadness does. It’s a matter of choosing to live with sadness and happiness in their fair share, and not closing doors, not saying presence of one precluded possibility of other.
World of memories always looks smaller than the one in front of eyes, but it carries much more life in it...A large part of living is about remembering, being nostalgic, telling stories, some true, others make believe…I don’t know how important truth is, but I know that the stories are almost always interesting...

Sunday

here goes another weekend, another Sunday, another week, and now comes a new one, full of it's pushes and pulls,deadlines to meet,things to learn, things to sort out, it's quite a handful already,
I remember tricksters of childhood day, juggling so many balls at a time,the glass ones, the one in the intent eyes of the kids, the watchful ones of their parents, the disapproving ones from Know-Alls,expectant ones of his kid little tatter=wrapped kid standing nearby, the reproachful eyes of a wife who wanted a better quality of life, who thought his Hero will make it in life, The eyes of envy, the eyes of resentment,m of deceit,the eyes of the monster named fear. I used to see all of them, miss few sometimes. I still wonder what stuff heroes are made of; is the act of survival not the Heroism enough for the juggler? oor making it big, earning money makes a Hero? or dying at hands of known and unknown aliens, or killing them makes you a Hero?
Or you become Hero if you break new ground? or rather break new acceptable ground?
A hero is someone who is the lead character in a play, who takes forward the inherent message of the play as against a villain who serves to provide a measuring stick to judge the message.
I guess Sunday is a good time to ask this question, what is the message that i am carrying in this play?
Second question would then be whether this is the authors message or the counter message?

A Train

We met one dark (K)night. it must have been breezy, i don't remember anything about moon though..nevertheless, the night was beautiful as in the James blunt song-a night that wasn't really with you..On that breezy night, as i was waiting for a train on a desolate platform,i realized that i will never be with her again..All through the day, i had kept my fists tightly clenched, tight and tense, in way that i had learned in brick-brake class. There came the moment, as i tried to flick my hair away from my eyes, my fists startled me.they had melted, metamorphosed into a beautiful stone, they had turned cold- red and white,they had let go of all i wanted to hold as a souvenir.
I felt a shiver of happiness run down my spine, I felt my jaws relax, i saw a smile on my face as my stone-hands dropped back. i knew i was free..
I saw her form walking away,hair caught in breeze, playing along, I figured she was waiting for the same train.i felt an intense longing to follow her, prudence didn't allow me to..but i couldn't help staring at her..
naaz ada,andaazon se ab hay pilana dor hua
ab to kar deti hai keval farz adaayi madhushala..
I recollected this couplet by Harivansh ra bachchan as started to walk back towards my solitary bench