I’m not good...

It was yesterday. I was on my way back to my pad on a bus on Delhi’s busy ring road. Preoccupied with thoughts the origin of which I will never know, I was sitting by the window on one of the “ladies”-seat. i had almost started enjoying the humidity( you see, you don’t have a choice!), when we reached Sarai Kale Khan bus stand. As the bus slowed down to a halt, I was shaken out of my inner cosmos by a commotion near the door: the bus conductor was helping a man get down the bus, assisted by a passenger sitting near the door. At first I thought he must be helping some differently-abled person. But then I realized it was something else. The guy they were helping was so weak, he could not even stand on his own, leave alone walk. I was wondering how he got onto the bus. The conductor was helping him get down, with face all smiles, pride glowing in his eyes with an unsaid “oh! See people I’m helping him, am so good, so chivalrous!” I heard him say “ tuney hi isse bithaya tha”, to which the other man replied, “jaldi utaro, lene ke dene pad jayenge”.

They got him down and seated him on the pavement. It was only then that I saw him clearly, all weak and with only one slipper to walk on. He must have been about 60-65. Very thin and sinewy, the cloth of his pants failed to flatter his thin legs and I wondered if they had any flesh covering the bones. I could not help pitying him.

But all this while, I was a mute spectator. I wanted to ask the conductor if this was exactly the very stop where he wanted to get down. Ideally (that is, if I had listened to the little voice inside), I should have got down, asked him if he needed any help, asked where he was going, or may be, bought him something to eat or drink or better still, taken him to a hospital, informed his folks, DID SOMETHING, DID ANYTHING . I should have…would have…could have….but didn’t. I played the perfect mute spectator whom I so detest. I gave in to the lower self. Shall I add the best line here? “I am only human”- the ridiculously effective excuse. I really can’t help worrying and thinking what must have become of him, whether he reached home safely or not. I know it’s no use showing (shall I dare say) pretentious care.

It still hurts; no, it feels funny the way my conscience pricks me. All this while, I had been trying to pacify it. But it still rebukes me, my conscience. It’s mortifying to my self-importance, the self-righteous me to realize I am only part of the dirty pack, the filth which fills the world. No amount of reading good books, no religious hymns, no lengths of spiritual discourses is going to redeem me. It really needs relentless courage to do good, to be good. And I have none. I seek no redemption. With my tail between my legs, I admit, I AM NOT GOOD.

on a break, giving my egg-jam!

Friends, I've been off for a while and will be for a little longer...
but i found a really good poem and its hilarious parody for you all.....enjoy!

[By the way, the last date for form submission for IARI(PhD) is 11th April and that for ICMR is 29th of the same month....happy "Egg-jamming"!! :-P ]

"A PSALM OF LIFE"
WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN SAID TO THE PSALMIST

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream ! —
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real ! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal ;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way ;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb,
driven cattle !
Be a hero in the strife !

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant !
Let the dead Past bury its dead !
Act,— act in the living Present !
Heart within, and God o'erhead !

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind
Footprits on the sands of time ;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate ;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

~Henry W. Longfellow


...and the parody....

Life is real, life is earnest,
And the shell is not its pen –
“Egg thou art, and egg remainest”
Was not spoken of the hen.

Art is long and Time is fleeting,
Be our bills then sharpened well,
And not like muffled drums be beating
On the inside of the shell.

In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the great barnyard of life,
Be not like those lazy cattle!
Be a rooster in the strife!

Lives of roosters all remind us,
We can make our lives sublime,
And when roasted, leave behind us,
Hen tracks on the sands of time.

Hen tracks that perhaps another
Chicken drooping in the rain,
Some forlorn and henpecked brother,
When he sees, shall crow again.

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

Care to share?

"The sense of unhappiness is so much easier to convey than that of happiness. In misery we seem aware of our own existence, even though it maybe in the form of a monstrous egotism-this pain of mine is individual, this nerve that winces belongs to me and to no other. But happiness annihilates us; we lose our identity".
~Graham Greene

The above is an exerpt from Greene's 'The End of the Affair' and it truly describes what I often feel during New Year celebrations each year eversince I've been away from home. I know this has come a tad too late but still....would you care to share?

It’s that time of the year again…the more the noise grows, the lonelier I feel.
I might sound like a despondent soul and one might say, “Look at this poor girl, can’t she be happy when all around her are partying or getting ready for one, to usher in the New Year?”
How do I explain, if at all I want to! I might feel lonely but not despondent; and if I am, I am happy with that. It’s one of those moments when one likes to feel the pain and as the sweetness of the pain grows one falls in love with it; and when that pain goes away, it feels as if part of oneself is going away with it.

I might have really tested your patience by now and you must be wondering what exactly it that I am talking about is. I am talking about that longing for home. No, it’s different from being home-sick. It’s that time I long for, that time which will never come back again. When I was small, New Year’s celebration was one occasion when we kids at home had the license to do everything we wanted, from shopping to cooking. And all that would be planned days in advance, collecting money we had saved from our pocket money, one toffee less here and one pair of clips less there. Cooking on the fire we would make outside in the courtyard, under the starry skies, for us the food would be better than any fancy fare spread out in a five star. The best part was no elders would but in, all of them would stay indoors barring coming out now and then to remind us to keep our jackets on. But who cared? The warmth inside was enough to keep us from the cold outside!

This is what I miss when the old year slips into its dusk. With all of us, siblings scattered all over the country pursuing our dreams, it’s impossible to have it all back. These fond memories would live in each of our hearts, and that pain is forever welcome for it brings with it the chance to relive those nostalgic moments.

Queen of verbosity on a come-back..hee-haah!

Today, one of my friends accused me of treating my blog as a step child!...and indeed , I had almost forgotten all about it. Now, as is the tradition, let me explain myself for having been absent on the blogosphere.

Come to think of it, I had a host of reasons, and the award for the most important reason goes to.....the NET, the numero uno 'net' which never fails to trap many a student into a life time of studying hard. But no, I don't want to write about my NET paper, let's leave it for the examiners to decide whether I deserve to slog out the rest of my life in a research lab or should I have some sunshine outside the air-conditioned sterile atmosphere of a culture room!

Pardon me, I know I must have discouraged a few readers from getting into research by now (but please don't view it as my sisnister plan to reduce competition: I don't belong to that league of insecure candidates who would not share information about competitions just so that people might miss them out and competition might get reduced!..I mean jahaan pe lakhon log exam de rahe hai, ek do ko kam karke kya hoga! kuch karna hi hai toh koi bada plan banao...like tip off the terrorists about the venues where the briliant scientists of the future would be writing their exams so they can nip them at the bud!). That was gross... I realise I have taken too much liberty with the freedom of speech on my blog now.

Okay, okay don't close my page yet! Let me try once again.

Another reason for my absence was the department trip. I can almost hear my classmates saying,"shut up you melodramatic liar! The trip was for just four days and you had been idle for almost three months!!" You see, believe it or not, I was quite preoccupied with thinking what excuse should I give for not going on the trip. Well, I failed there miserably and finally went for the trip. Now, are you expecting me to tell you about the trip?

Alright, alright...no pricey act this; it's just that I had such an awesome trip with my friends that I didn't want to dilute the memory with my currently substandard style of writing. We started off for Rishikesh on the 23rd of November and put up in a government lodge. We had a very comfortable stay; in fact, too comfortable for my idea of a perfect educational trip for M.Sc. final year students. I was really looking forward to this one for I thought we were going on some kind of a camping where we would be packed into outhouses near jungles where our survival instinct would be tested to some extent. In short, I thought it would be more adventurous. But alas! that was not to be and I think, by now, you people must have realised why I was trying to think of an excuse for not going .

But still, we did have a lot of fun! The best part was our ecology experiment which we conducted inside a forest. That was the first time I had been into a forest and had a good time. That wasn't the only first-time thing I did: we went to the Rajaji National park, where we trekked a long way. Though we could not spot any wildlife there, we saw a dead animal killed by a leopard. Oh my! was it stinking! But we enjoyed even that as our brush with the wild!.And, of course, how can I forget those precious unforgettable minutes some of us spent by the Ganges at dusk, listening to the "sandhya arti". It wouldn't be an over-statement if I said it was a soul-stirring experience.

We also visited the Forest Research Institute, Dehradun, thanks to a sudden addition to our plans. There we went into their museum and herbarium -all very interesting( nevertheless I had my own personal vested interest too!). I must say, the FRI main block was one lovely building, though the mixture of Greek-like facades and pillars and the Gothic style corridors would have caught any puritanical lover of architechture in a tizzy!

I know I should be saying this in a more sombre mood, but yes, the relevant part of my hiatus was due to the Mumbai bombings too. I could have jumped into the bandwagon and expressed my grief, concern, disgust or whatever, but I wanted to just sit back and read or hear what others had to say, without adding to the already deafening cacophony. Taking advantage of the fact that I'm just blabbering on my blog, let me risk sounding a little cynical here by asking one thing: is it because the bombings were in metropolitan Mumbai or because it was the rich and the influential, who could afford to wine and dine at the Taj, who were killed that the episode was given much more attention (by making it the subject of great concern and nation-wide tirades) than the quite recent and quite forgotten but equally serious bombings in Assam? Even after having said this, please don't be mistaken into thinking I didn't write about it in rebellion, for what I have just expressed is a reflection on the aftermath and not a spontaneous reaction.

I hadn't intended this post to take such a serious note, but I'm running out of things to write with my limited creativity, which I need to recharge during this winter break. Let me sign off for now before I get crowned the queen of verbosity.....Oh! come on now, I can be excused this attempt to fill pages for once...I'm a come-back lady, people!....lol)

...and with this let the drought of almost 3 months come to an end...amen.

"PHOONK"ED!

It was a perfectly bad day...everything going the way other than the one I intended!

So I decided to lick my wounds in the comforting darkness of a movie theatre...along with two victims of my whimsical plan for a movie( I literally pulled them out of their afternoon siesta!).

There we were, standing in front of the supposedly best movie hall in north campus ( I can't help but mention the fact that movie-lovers would have felt marooned here had it not been for the Delhi metro) after a bumpy rickshaw ride, which reminded us we had been skipping the gym for quite some time. And guess what,....... it was "Phoonk" which was being screened and not "Rock on!"(now come on, how do I know the "Batra glitz" in the movie schedule is not our "beloved" Batra of north campus?!!). The three of us kept staring at the movie banner wishing something would happen and "Phoonk" would change to "Rock on!". After much brain-storming we finally decided to let RGV scare us a bit.

One step into the "chitra mandir" and I decided never to treat any of my south delhi friends to a movie in north campus( there are other distractions here...Kamala nagar and "momos point" zindabad!). The nauseating musty smell made me wonder if I would last till the end of the movie, though it was really comfortable with lots of space to stretch out our legs( did I mention two-thirds of the hall was empty?)

Then the torture began....would somebody please tell RGV that its not just low camera angles, going-round-and-round-the-actors( it does nothing more than making us dizzy) and close-ups of animal figurines ( may be in a hope that they would start doing an item number to save the fate of his movie) which makes a horror movie scary? Whenever the irritating background score allowed us to hear the mediocre dialogues we got the chance to give our ears a break. To tell you frankly, I got spooked only once during the entire movie in the mirror-walla scene. And one of my unlucky companions did the honours of reminding everyone that it was a horror movie that we were watching by shrieking at the top of her voice.

Then there was the very confusing message of the movie....what were these people actually trying to tell us, were they trying to testify the existence of black magic and all ( we can argue on this on some other post in the near future). No, thank you RGV, we really don't need to strengthen the grip of such beliefs from which science has been struggling to free us in the past many decades. By saying this, I am not denying the prevalance of such things in some quarters of our society but "Phoonk" was definitely not a sensible take on the subject.

Much bored, we were relieved when the movie ended, though the splitting headache as an after-taste of the experience was the last thing we had hoped for. What's more, the clinging hope I had pinned on the movie to redeem my day was extinguished with a "phoonk"!

Olympic blues...

Its Olympics time yet again! And my heart painted with the tricolour sent a silent prayer above this time too even though the site of a heavily disproportionate Indian contingent ( read more officials than required against lesser players than wished!) didn't fail to prick me this time too.

The first thought which crossed my mind (yet again), after the euphoria of seeing my countrymen among the world's best sportsmen died, was, " _ _ _ _!this handfull of players is all our more-than-a-billion-strong population could breed! that too after 62 years of Independence!!...to hell with the nuclear power, where is our manpower?!"

I don't want to sound like a cynic, but a cynic is what I become every four years since the first Olympics I watched when a kid. At that time, I used to feel embarrased when I saw the other major sporting countries' never-ending contingents, their jubiliation seemed like mockery to me, as if they were jeering at me...."look, kid! your men are so less here"....I used to hate that feeling.

Even as an adult, I find it hard to reconcile with the ol' feeling; now my pet sarcastic remark is ..."don't you think we should switch the channel to watch our 11 men in blue trying to compromise their gel-fixed hair in running after a stupid red leather ball for the whole day?".... then the dam of frustration would overflow..."why can't we deviate our attention and funds from the glamorous pseudo-athletes to the struggling Maleshwaris, P.T.Ushas and Kunjaranis? Their only fault is they chose to play a lesser popular game rather than opting for the sport played by our demi-gods!

But then comes the much-awaited respite, Abhinav Bindra has won the gold medal, the first ever individual one. But then the question which I had been trying to keep out of my mind overtakes..." could he have done it had he been not a billionaire's son and had been dependent on the Government for training and funds?"; well, this is a question I myself would rather avoid answering.....

The orbituary

I lost my baby
What can be more unhappy?
What a mom I am
Don't even remember it's name!


no...I didn't have a secret lover whose child I bore!!
Its an idea that I lost....I know many who fancy themselves as writers can understand exactly how I must be feeling.

It was just before lunch today that I thought nobody could stop me from winning the Nobel prize for literature now...what a brilliant idea it was!( hey, what's wrong in dreaming?).But before I yielded to my literary urges I gave in to my gastronomical demands.

The less-than-ordinary lunch in the hostel mess, a 'hi' here and a 'bye' there took me away from my "baby"....and before I realised I had forgotten all about writing it.The thought had got drowned in the violent red of Ram Singh's curry.

By the time I came back to my room the site of my study table reminded me of the "brilliant idea" I had left unattended, unprotected by the covers of my diary....."drats! now I can't even recall the title I had intended to give to my unwritten poem!"

I tried hard...I tried everything...recalling each and every thought that had passed through my mind since morning...I even untied my hair, burried my head in my pillow, was in a position anyone could have mistaken for a yogasana...hehe....but it didn't tumble out of my brain.

I know it's there,.. still there....hope it can, someday, come out of the tangles of my neurons!