Stupendously Sublime

How do i put this gently, these guys are a freight train to my bridge. They shake me and wake me. They are like a triple shot of Hatti Kaapi coffee without the milk or sugar (well a little sugar cause they are sweet too). 5 years since i first met these guys, call me Jeet and the girl who loved chai (still does) and they finally came together to say hello to Bangalore. It was a trip of epic proportions and not in the amount of drinking these guys get through, it was epic because they came to have fun and boy did they have it. Wednesday, auri da came in and all hell broke loose. Now, the thing is that my levels of inertia are pretty high (just ask the people i live with) but auri da came and that was the impetus to some very uncharacteristic work that i put in. From coordinating various meet and greets, to managing accidents (i'm looking at you auri). From epic bike rides to climbing mountains, from grocery shopping to cooking heart-stopping (literally) eggs. I pulled out all t...

The title is a playful rip off from Real Madrid folklore. 10 years of knowing you, 4 beautiful and 6 in the ether. Treading down the narrow and congested lanes of my memory I see rooms upon rooms...not unlike a chawl, every room a flash. every flash a story...peering voyeur like into the rooms through the barred windows catching a happy flash here, confronted by an embarrassment there while a small piece of innocence suddenly confronts me in that narrow dark alley like a street urchin, clothed in rags, yet oblivious all the same. That is scary, the images we projected when we first met and at the end when we would've let go of all the pretension to make that moment permanent. Tricky little bugger time is, it slips through your ribs like a stiletto knife. Taking a cursory and brutal look at our friendships, we have grown apart to the extent that we have no idea who the other is. Everyone has new friends, everyone has a new life and we have learnt to live the new life we have ma...

My love for wildlife (and it is wildlife, not just tigers) has taken me to some fruitful and other fruitless places. The sum total of my experiences has brought me more joy than anguish and it is certain that this particular passion is not a passing fad. My latest sojourn (and I have many of those) took me to the literal center of India, Nagpur (they have something called center point or zero point, don’t remember which). Diverging from the topic for a minute, my job is absolutely awesome (though a raise won’t hurt) it pays me to roam around India talking to different people and all I have to do is to convince, cajole, prod them to join my organization. It is too good to be true. So, I was in Nagpur and through a gentleman that I had met at a leadership summit I’d heard about this awesome Tiger Reserve/National Park/forest range called Tadoba. He spoke with such passion that I was sold and it remained in the back of my mind. Now, Tadoba is about 160 km from Nagpur and a tough place...

Today after a long time, i had the opportunity to think..to really think about where life has brought me as person, as a son, as a friend and very frankly said, i have had some very romantic ideals; friendship, loyalty being there for my near and dear ones and for a long time i have followed them as well. But, during all this time i have realised again what my cynical self had proclaimed far and loud "everyone will betray you, it's not a matter of 'if' it's a  question of when" and i don't mean in a literal sense that someone will take a knife and stab me in the back. Its a betrayal of expectations, of trust, of promises and it happens with such regularity that it somehow astounds me and  amuses me to no end. As new people enter our lives we learn that there will always be people who will be there to spend our happy times with us and let's face it that we are in the prime of our lives, its all downhill from here folks. We take for granted our bonds...

The sound of silence is deafening, i never used to put up with such cliches but after having felt it so clearly i am a believer. The sound of no sound can madden anyone and many teeter on the precipice of their sanity for a long time without falling either way (madness is like gravity). My dark  brood  into the inner reaches of my  mind  was interrupted by the wind ruffling through the bamboo thickets of Mysore DC and these magnificent plants created an auditory effect that i could not have foreseen/fore heard. The thousands of bamboo leaves (they are not actually leaves, bamboo is grass) rubbed against each other, protested the wind and created an angry voice that could rival the biggest wave crashing into the rocky shore, amazed at this likeness i sat for a moment or an eternity in that storm of white noise  slowly clearing my mind of all its clutter, breathing in the nothingness and breathing out the cloud of doubt that dogs me everyday. For those few glor...

Strange, how things come to me so late at night, here i was enjoying one of the few delights in life: a great movie coming late at night (without breaks) on a weekend when i can watch it in peace and enjoy it like a fine summer wine and a beautiful movie it was, "Finding Forrester" was compelling but my thought was because of something the character of sean connery said in the film. He said, and i'm paraphrasing here, "don't think, write....write from the heart and edit with the brain" something similar that i have read as well is "write drunk, edit sober" (this is usually credited to Ernest Hemmingway, but it is actually the creation of one Peter de Vries) which makes sense or doesn't, i don't know, all i know is that i can't write when am drunk and i hate rework so i don't edit. Thinking or better still not thinking is the key to let your instincts and emotions guide the flow of your pen while you pour yourself out onto the pap...

Today as we were sitting together and wondering how the last year blew by, the finality of the  moment was starting to sink in. In the house that i have started to call home, there will be no longer a long haired pillock, sunk lazily into the bean bag, holding 1 device or the other. There will be no one to say "Ek aur"at 2:30 am at night. There will be no one to run errands, pick people up, score, bring different people into our lives and generally provide interesting stories and events. Today, a brother leaves for home, amidst a change that will be forever with him. Bangalore was what it was, because of him and its gonna be sad without him. But change is good, changing for the better is great, but changing for the better and remembering where you came from is the best. Pranav is a brother to me, usually annoying, at times Nalayak, part encyclopedia of useless knowledge and for whom the company of brothers was more important than girls. Now, before he starts to get a big h...