The Bridge..

'Seldom' : the frequency to which my encounters with inspiring pieces of text have decayed. So when I read this particular piece, from the ensuing stillness came the hurtling compulsion to acknowledge the the impact its had on me. Lucid, atmospheric, immensely thought provoking; reminded me of a combination of 'Virginia Woolf' and 'Two Tramps in Mud Time'....

'The Bridge' - Anushka Debnath

"My eyes fixed on the other end of that frail and rickety bridge. Their depths soon filled with the dawning of countless consequences eminent to befall my walk across the turbulent waters. The sun setting on the horizon marks the commencement of my journey. Slowly my gaze drops to the dark black mass of water - resembling nothing but a predator. A wise and experienced one - lurking and awaiting it's prey. Beguiling at first sight.



Again my eyes wander to the horizon. The last few rays of hope - the last few beams of guiding light - sinking into the depths of the unknown.


I see you standing on the other side. Friend or foe? I'm not too sure. You scare me yet lure me towards you. I want you and then again...maybe I don't. Who are you?


Every departing being has someone to bade goodbye. I turn around - wanting to see a friend who catches me in her embrace, wanting to see a loved one with a tear stained face, wanting to see the lover - each part of my being craves for, wanting to see the father whose worried eyes are clouded by his judgement of my apparent prodigality - nevertheless wanting to see someone. But all I am faced with is the ghost of happy memories whose invisible presence seems to be chiding me.


A single tear trickles down the side of my pale face. The quiet twilight and soothing russet sky - Nature's parting gift. But my choice has been made. A sigh escapes me as, with eyes downcast, I turn to face the bridge. My bridge."

Road Rage, Kitty Kitty and ImPULSEive CONVERSATIONs

Well its been a lot more than sometime since my last post and its only after having sent down a sumptuous meal to explore the inners of my insatiable stomach that I can now concentrate on creating the next post.

It was a pretty morose 23rd June afternoon. The clouds battled overhead. Cloud Warlord Apha cried like a baby at how mere cadet had stolen his thunder by posting incriminating images of the warlord staring at the fluffy rear of a 16 year old rep all over the world wide web. "So what if Im the 1st dark cloud leading a nearly all white troop," he thought. "Even I have feelings..Sob Sob". I sat there staring blankly at the resulting deluge of tears wondering whether Zeus would lament the lameness plaguing his ranks; he has been known to morph into a swan for the sole purpose of doing women. (Honest)

Then I got bored.

So I set off to IIT(Indian Institute of Technology) for the then ongoing Blender workshop, the subsidised food instilling feelings in my incessantly growling stomach that can be best described by this image (The gentleman on the right ie; worth a lot more than 1000 words).

The workshop itself proceeded pretty smoothly that basically consisted of me clarifying people's doubts (I was a Teaching Assistant). Smoothly because every doubt that I addressed ended with this smooth expression on the listener's face that looked more like I had just explained calculus to a child who had just discovered what Napier's bones are. Not a frown, mind you; frowns reveal partial understanding. This was just a smooth, blank expression of perfect indifferent perplexity.

My maligned communication skills pleaded for food therapy amidst hushed comments of "What a lame excuse to eat" in the background. A cup of subsidised priced cold coffee, a plate of subsidised priced maggi and a colleague bashing session that was in no way subsidised (Nitin has asked me to withhold his name, so pardon my impersonal reference of 'colleague'), we found ourself exiting IIT; we being Omkar, Prajakta and me. Next stop - Blue Frog baby!

Except for the fact that Omkar noticed this kitten at the gate. The deluge of emotions that morphed his face would've made Pacific look like a puddle. Under compelling need to express the poor animal's pathos, here's the conversation:

Omkar : "Here, kity kitty kitty"

Kitten1 :"Not again. Ive been felt up 7 times in 5 minutes! God, this is worse than being Bill Clinton's sec"

Omkar out of strong maternal instincts proceeds to pick it up by the back of its neck (resembling how cats lift their kittens while transporting them). He then, under emotions fast approaching 'incestuous' proceeds to cuddle and caress the kitten. The kitten meanwhile, seasoned to this treatment stars blankly at Omkar as if expecting him to start rubbing its belly with some lame excuse.

Omkar: "I shall now check if the kitten has worms by rubbing its belly"

Peta, who by some arcane survey has proved that since the living conditions of pet cats superlatively exceed those of slumdogs, human laws are applicable to cats as well, have found Omkar guilty of molestation.

A surprisingly comfortable train journey later we find ourselves walking toward Blue Frog: Omkar on the sidewalk, Prajakta just beside it and me a quarter way into the road. A speeding motorcyclist distracted by some cute girl on the opposite side of the road (at least i like to think he was so that i can partly blame him) raced past nearly missing me.

Since the motorcyclist's distress is comparable to that of the kitten's pathos, I againfeel compelled to relate his reaction.

Motorcyclist: "Abbe takle" (read: "Hey baldy")

That comment is courtesy my new hairstyle (or the lack of it) that has been a product of heat and boredom. But that's not the point. Being no stranger to the city's road rage and being more than acquainted to its expletives, a mere "Abbe takle" is a reaction that would safely win the guy a 'Most well behaved citizen' award. Not to mention a fleet of proud school teachers.

But here's why I actually decided to post this. Pulse Conversation playing at Blue Frog. Its usually a treat to watch your drum teacher shred the drumkit, but when all 3 of your drum teachers get along with a zitarist, a tabla virtuoso and a bassist the ensuing sound texture can send your adrenaline rampaging crazily through your blood. Well Im not sure if I would do justice by translating that into words (this is not good at all), so Ill just put up the video and let you all see what I mean.


Epilogue: Barack Obama has hereby banned all subtle referenes to him as Cloud Warlord Alpha. (I wonder why).

..Got A Green Heart..

Beauty lies in places deeper than your mirror.

After myriad thoughts that did not find preservation in words and a plethora of impressions written in sand, and wondering meanwhile what stares back at me from my mirror, I am back; hoping to pick up the thread I had left, or find a new one, knowing that each is an individual entity of the same rope entwined; entwined about what I am yet to figure out.

Well, getting back to the apparently more comprehensible thoughts, I feel this space would be put to good use if I mention Manasvi's poetry; refreshing pieces written with unapologetic honesty put forth with subtlety bordering on the outspoken. If you care to read them, you'll find them on allpoetry.com..been quite some time since I came across thoughts I could relate to, so I guess they deserved to be mentioned here.

Anyways she's given me a new topic to write about (because her tee bore a green heart :)), and I am curious to know what I can do with as randomly innocuous a source of topic as this one, so here goes (for the record, Ive got Goo Goo Dolls' Before Its Too Late keeping me company):

He stood on the edge feeling the wind play softly on his face. It was the first sense of movement he had sensed in the half hour that he had stood there. Or was it eons. He tried to feel the blood surging through his forearms. Or the adrenaline surging through that blood. He felt neither.

To the passers-by who glanced at him as an embedded part of the landscape, his thoughts seemed like a storm in a teacup. When he looked as far behind in time as he could, he felt like a teacup flung into an incessant storm. But he looked upon these things with a mildly detached, objective curiosity; as if he was seeing them from a protected pedestal behind a thin film, thick enough to let him feel detached, but thin enough to give him a tangible, remote sensation of the events that played out in his head. He longed to feel the angst he did not feel.

And so he allowed himself to fall into the abyss of analysis wondering how had he come to this.

It had in essence been a journey of his heart - red, because it had too much life running through the arteries, uh veins, (uh, we'll keep the biology aside)...Red, because it had a spring in its beat; because it beat with a hope to see the world being 'the stuff dreams are made of', innocently ignorant of the treacheries involved, living with infinite hope, like in a surreal dream.

But 'nothing's real until its gone'.

And so he had stood rooted, trying to feel her from afar..trying to see without worrying about cause or consequence, frozen in that moment, finding himself unable to turn away even after that 'moment had passed him by'. He wondered how many people let their lives be controlled by people who didn't care..how many spent their lives just existing, trying to be what they're told is acceptable, holding on to a social image that flatters to deceive..how many spend hours willing themselves to be what they thought others would like, realizing that those very 'others' forgot about them the moment they said goodbye. But man is a social animal, and we live in our relationships even 'if the other is hell'. So his heart felt bewildered.beaten.bruised.

And blue.

Blue, as if the oxygen had drained from it (uh, I guess we'll even leave the chemistry aside)..blue because he didn't know whether to run or wait for the smoke to clear and see who was still standing, or whether he wanted to know that at all..or whether it really mattered..whether there existed a truth beneath the lies, and whether he would find strength in it.

And ambling through fiction he found fact. He realized that all he needed to do was be himself; because he had his thoughts and he had hs belief and all those high-sounding things that are supposed to be good. But quite frankly, beacuse it is way easier to be yourself. And so, in giving in to yourself, you are actually conquering your faculties. I guss that's where the whole stoop to conquer thing comes from..And so he chose who should be happier amongst the two.

I guess this condition is a complicated mixture of being confused and mellow and assertive and confused about whether you should be assertve, so by the standard of my imagination, this condition would be like feeling yellow.

And thus he ended up having a green heart (= blue + yellow; sorry can't leave the physics aside) and he well, i guess just kept standing on the edge too bored thinking about all this and so came back in and went to sleep (sorry i'm too sleepy).

____________________________________________________________________

In retrospect, I started off decently and ended with a pathetic anti-climax (sleep does things to you), so I am sorry for being abstract. Uh, those who have to understand will, if they ever happen to read this crap, but more importantly Manasvi, I guess silence can sometimes say a lot more than words can; that's the state of perfect understanding, and yes, it is better to listen to you your ever screaming heart over the reasoning head.

Sorry about the tenses Sujit Sir, still working on them, and for all those who have endured this piece of 'heavy shit',
Thank You.