A Poem A Day

In there, in that book of poetry,
Were unpredictable leaps.
To unknown sensations
And unforeseen lands.

Her fingers pry it open
With deliberate indiscrimination;
Anxious for her daily gift.

Will it be Pablo speaking off love,
Or Tennyson telling her about kings?
Or her life summed in four lines
Ironically attributed to “Anon”

Haal Kaisa Hai Janaab Ka?

The blog alarm went off. I have been off blogs, both mine and others, for a while. As I sit down with my trusted cup of coffee at seven in the morning feverishly typing a few words to construct something other than poetry, some highlights come to mind worth sharing.

InQuizItive

I am sure I must have mentioned this at some point in my blogging career, but back at Texas A&M, I had started, nurtured and grown a literary club called Literati to fill the void I felt having been actively involved in lit events including quizzing, back in India. For over two years, that became an important part of my life and others who were part of it remember it fondly till date. For the past four years, no such activity had taken place here. But a seed has been planted. We have started a small quizzing club here on Redmond campus which meets biweekly. As part of that effort, I conducted a cricket quiz yesterday. That pretty much explains my absence. Setting a quality quiz takes time, setting it while you are employed (my first such experience :-)) takes a lot more out of your daily schedule. However, it was all worth it in the end. The response was terrific and it was good to see others relative amounts of craziness for the game in others as well. Hopefully this endeavor will last long.

While my guitar urgently creeps?

I am good with percussion and a sense of rhythm. My tabla learning helps me with that. However, when it comes to such concepts as pitch and notes, I fall short. I can pick things by ear up to an extent, but that extent is limited. I have always wanted to do something unto that end. I wasn't keen on learning how to sing, so an instrument always felt like a good way to go. This best laid plan was waylaid for many years. Until now. My wife gifted me a guitar for my birthday, and my lessons start next week. That should be exciting. As a side note, I have always wondered why guitarists are considered cool, especially when you are in college. Poor old tabla players have no visibility if you can't match Zakir's flowing locks. I can't remember the admiration factor being high because one played the tabla instead of the guitar. So, I suppose I am on the coolness route now, about twelve years late.

Six-pack _______

There are two distinct categories of men: one who complete the above phrase with abs and the other with beer. More likely, the twain shall never meet. SRK has defected to the former group for his new movie release OSO (Om Shanti Om for the uninitiated). Which beats me: why would an actor known for his romantic roles work so hard to reinvent himself having crossed 40? The look is alright and I am sure he had to work on getting there, so perhaps he has earned himself the witty "re-introducing Shah Rukh Khan" caption that comes on the screen in the trailor of "Dard-E-Disco". Worth the crunch? You tell me!

Parth has left the building

After working almost four and a half years in a single little building, I have now moved to another newer, nicer place on campus. It is amazing how familiarity and attachment builds up even though it is your work place, not your home. In many ways, my old building was the focal point of the campus for me. All roads led in and out of that place and everything was relative to it. Now, the co-ordinates have shifted. I am on the fourth floor with a window office that overlooks a bridge over a freeway. It is a terrific view while I can watch pedestrians cross over, traffic weaving in and out of the freeway, and the rapidity of movement on the freeway itself. To top it all, even the sunsets are great to watch. The place is nice and bright and inviting. The only thing I miss is access to a table tennis table close by. I was meaning to put some photos up, but the resolution that the camera on my phone produces is pretty ordinary. The pictures I took did not show up so well.

20/20 vision?

The madness is underway with the 20/20 world cup. It is a new form of cricket and hence will always be interesting. Peppered with interesting events like Yuvraj's six sixes and the tie between India and Pakistan (what's with the ridiculous bowl-out to settle that? ), this will satisfy the slog-hungry viewer. Someone dispute this, but isn't the big hitting numbing after a while. I feel like someone is playing out the slogout game on cricinfo. Why not just get a bowling machine and ask it to pitch deliveries? Spare the bowlers. I don't think I am bought off, but I guess people's attention spans and ability to appreciate a good game of cricket have gone down anyway. So 20/20 is here to stay.

Haiku And Mighty

It has been a long time since my only attempt at haiku on this blog. I remember a suggestion made to add titles to the haikus, but I think it takes away from the impact of the poem. I should also add that I tried to be true to the 5-7-5 syllable format of the haiku, but couldn't completely adhere. There also seems to be no consensus on whether syllables in English correspond to the sounds in Japanese on which the haikus are based, so I will use that as my leeway. Here goes. Hope you enjoy them.

Wind screams
In shrill whispers
A cracked window

Mind awakens
After the body
Hot coffee

I swing.
I miss. I sigh.
A dot ball

The journey ends
No parting sorrow
“My floor”

Blinds closed
I pull the plug
On the sun

Garage Sale

The mother puts on a bellicose facade
Forcing her son into silence, who frowns;
At the loss of all things precious

Superman’s first adventures, torn
A bicycle too small,
A shirt too tight,
A dancing monkey,
His first tennis racket,
A poster of Agassi, with flowing hair.

Fifteen years of accumulation valued
At sixty dollars and twenty square feet

Three Down, Some More To Go

Three's a charm, a lucky charm
Three's the number of years this blog exists

(sung to the tune of some part of Do Re Mi from Sound of Music)

It has been a fun ride. Thanks for the company.

HP, HR, Rajni - The Deathly Halos?

I am done with my Harry Potter book, finally. I have to admit I am a moderate level fan unlike my dear colleagues Avinash and RTD2, whose passion was evident in the way they attacked the book. I am thrilled to bits to have finished the book, not because I wanted to know the denouement of the battle between the boy with spectacles and the man without them, but because I can now surf the Internet safely, without someone screaming the outcome of the book to me. Boy O Boy, its been a struggle to keep it secret. I can resume my normal life now.

The past few months have shown the power of publicity and the evidence of hysteria. Three phenomenon in quick succession have left the world gasping. First came the movie Sivaji, and with stories of the madness that engulfed India and Indians around the world. I have resigned myself to the fact that I won't get it, but hey, each one to his own. Waiting for the movie to come on DVD to watch it and perhaps understand it. I have liked Rajni in his Hindi movie avatars, especially as the perfect second lead alongside Govinda in Hum, but attempting to watch his Muthu Maharaja (the dubbed version) with lyrics like 'Bhoomi par Atom Bomb kyon hai?' (indeed) left me strained. However, I have been informed by my Tamilian friends that his movies have a social context that is not evident to those not from that region. Point taken. Anyway, overall, it was thrilling to see an Indian movie star whip up this kind of hysteria.

Then came HP, and all the secrecy around the plot. People lining up outside the stores and buying radish earrings like Luna Lovegood. The movie coming just a week before the book definitely added to the feeling. I watched it in IMax 3D and enjoyed it for the action scenes. I like the dark, grim tones that the movie set in accordance with the books. Which makes me wonder: at what point did the Harry Potter series become a book for adults?

Finally came HR, Himesh Reshammiyya for the uninitiated. The man is unbelievable. From being a TV producer to a music director to a singing sensation to a movie star!!! In many ways, this phenomenon is also like Rajni: tough to get. Unlike Sivaji, I have actually seen his movie, which is ordinary in terms of production. But the man with the beard in the baseball cap managed to garner huge openings in India. He is the man of the masses, just like Sallu was for the most part. Popular amongst the youth. I am not completely against his music. Some of his compositions are pretty good, and most of his detractors also grudgingly accept that. I sat bemused throughout the movie wondering how this guy could be a movie star, but there you go.

Cosmic Calling

Eddies start to form,
On the surface of hearts.
Most fickle, most unsteady

The moon draws maps
Across faces already lit,
In anticipation

They unravel sky's mysteries
Using a few mirrors aligned
In a little black tube

Astronomers, Cartographers,
Pioneers, Adventurers,
Young Discoverers.

Spotting the rings of Saturn,
A find worth its weight.
Three credits on the transcript

Wassup wid u ppl?

I must have missed the evolution of the English language. Trapped in my world of puns and punctuation, grammar and tense, I must have missed the plethora of changes that have swept the language over the years. I recently joined an online group where the average age of the participants is close to 20. Besides making me feel like I am pushing the age envelope (and I am not even 30 yet), I felt like a linguistically challenged kid in a class where the language of instruction is Latin. Was it not enough that I am forced to go the 'internets' each time I come across IIRC being used in an e-mail, or wonder what GMTA stands for, that I am forced to adapt fo the next level altogether? Sample some of this:

Dont understand wht iz deir prob???.I dont fink ne1 must b hvin ne probs wid me rite other den sum ppl??.

Ya actually der waz an monkey typin 4 me.Coz u knw ppl like u can only understand monkey language see no 1 else xpect u understood d language so i m gonna give d monkey a bonus 2day tell him wht a GR8 job hez doin!!!.Thiz Language iz specially 4 all so ppl in d Comm plzz use dis Language!!!!.

If d Mod doesnt hv a Prob den i dunno wassup wid d otherz.:-(

Ya i knw pri m wid u ppl hv been vry rude in dis comm

As I stared at my screen in distinct disbelief, reading through the lines multiple times, I realized that my style of communication may become anachronistic one day(if it already isn't), where a wide eyed android one hundred years from now will stumble upon this blog post and have an automated service 'translate' this into the language of the day. A hybrid between German pronounciation and English words, with the exclamation mark becoming one of the ten new alphabets with which to form new words, emoticons the new vowels and numerals substituted for every common occurence they can be used for.

Unless, I evolve, and attempt I did. For about three words I attempted to recreate the magic and mystery and essence of this confounding form of expression. And then I gave up. Here's the sad remnant of my attempt: Thiz blog rulz!

Outsourced

The sun seemed to slither away at the edge of the screen, sinking into the deep abyss of the Grand Canyon like a thief put to shame. There was none of that blazing glory Pranay was looking for. Just as much. After all, it’s a football going into a giant pothole, he grumbled irritatingly. He checked the time on his watch. The late sunsets in summer always upset his dinner schedule. The brightness of the light outside sent the wrong signals to his stomach, one accustomed to sipping tea at sunset followed by a meal cooked by his mother. He extinguished the sinking sun on his second hand TV and carried the remote with him to the kitchen. He missed his mother. More importantly, he missed her cooking. Twenty two thousand miles away from her, he stared at a can of Bush’s chick peas, his savior. His roommate would be back in a while, he thought. He’d better have his cooking turn over and done with. The punishment endured every two days, for all concerned. He spent a moment wishing he could have learnt how to cook better. But he hadn’t been prepared for it. After all, Wipro never did train him on the skills of cooking up a mean malai kofta. They packed knowledge worth terabytes into his rather untested brain and sent him off to Chicago, to work on a project involving code no one wanted to touch, and what most people wished was never written. He was serving time, away from his mother, away from his city, away from Mrudula. As he mixed the spices in the vessel less washed, he used his limited poetic license to liken Mrudula to the red pepper and himself to the chick peas. The spice in my life, he exclaimed. (At the same moment, a lyricist in a chawl in Koliwada had an epiphany about a song with the same ingredients).

In walked his roommate Bhaskar, a daily voyeur of Pranay’s reveries. What an idiot, he thought to himself. He has seen nothing but this apartment and the office, in all of three weeks. This is the land of the free, the city of the windy, where life is a breeze and you could ride the coattails of freedom. There’s strip joints and beer sold in grocery stores. There’s bowling and pool and football. There are good looking blondes on the street and everyone smiles at you because they like you so much. There is the searing effect of the wind and the dominant protrusion of the Sears tower. What’s not to like in this place? What’s there to mope about a girl who’s waiting for you back home? All I need is to do my work well, and get a job with the company. Then I don’t have to go back at all. The independence of being, and with Pranay’s departure, freedom from chick peas. What more can someone ask for in life?

The evening continued its merry ways as the two roommates entered into their daily discussion on whether or not they enjoyed life in America. Pranay’s melanchony ways were met with contempt by Bhaskar’s pragmatic arguments. They parried on till the sun sank through behind the towel Pranay was drying on the balcony and settled to eat dinner. As Bhaskar negated the taste of the chick peas with a big helping of chips, Pranay munched on the food without much concern for its taste. The evening passed the baton onto the night and the channels flipped from Lou Dobbs’s latest rancor on outsourcing to Jon Stewart’s latest joke on call centers. It seemed like the TV was speaking about them and to them. As they ended the dinner reaching for a bowl of Dreyer’s Rocky Road, the night firmly settled outside their apartment with crickets beginning their operatic solos on the trees below. Bound together by sense of origin, but separated by a sense of purpose, they sat in the balcony in quite contemplation. Bhaskar eventually looked at his watch and silently moved inside to be followed by his compatriot as both reached for their laptops. It was time to chat with their teams in India. The day had just begun, again.

P.S> I woke up this morning feeling discontent about this post. I think the characterizations are inaccurate, juvenile and shallow. Since I have typed it up, I'll leave it here.

Chupke Chupke Raat Din

The lyrics are by Hasrat Mohani and it remains till date, one of Ghulam Ali's most famous ghazals. In fact, it even made its way to the movie Nikaah. I tried to remember all the shers of the many versions I have heard of this ghazal. I think I am missing one or two. If someone remembers, do share. If you need more words explained, do let me know.

Chupke chupke raat din aansoon bahaana yaad hai
Hum ko ab tak aashiqui ka woh zamaana yaad hai

Tujh se milte hi woh kuchh bebaak ho jaana mera
Aur tera daanton mein woh ungali dabaana yaad hai
[bebaak=bold, outspoken]

Chori chori hum se tum aa kar mile the jis jagaah
Muddatein guzareen par ab tak wo thikaana yaad hai
[muddatein=length of time, guzareen=passed, thikaana=location]

Khench lenaa wo mera parde ka konaa daffatan
Aur dupatte mein tera woh munh chhupaana yaad hai
[daffatan=suddenly]

Tujh ko jab tanhaa kabhii paana to az raah-e-lihaaz
Haal-e-dil baaton hi baaton mein jataanaa yaad hai
[tanhaa=alone, paana=to find, az raah-e-lihaaz=with caution]

Aa gaya gar vasl ki shab bhi kahin zikr-e-firaaq
Woh tera ro-ro ke bhi mujhko rulaana yaad hai
[vasl=meeting, shab=night, zikr=mention, firaaq=separation]

Dopahar ki dhoop mein mere bulane ke liye
Woh tera kothe pe nangey paaon aana yaad hai
[kotha=loft]

One Day Mataram

I am getting tired of the state of one day international cricket and ICC is going all out to make sure I stop watching it. The latest World Cup was proof enough. The matches are completely listless and one-sided. The teams are unevenly matched and they play without any passion whatsoever because of the frequency with which this cash cow is milked. I can’t remember more than two or three one day games in the past year that really came across as exciting and stick in memory. The level of contest between bat and ball diminished as it is basically over-loaded in favor of the batsman. To add the final nail to the coffin, ICC has recommended that there should be a free hit (akin to 20-20) after a no-ball, and that the batting team can now choose one of the powerplays. Tell me, why would any bowler want to play anymore? To add to bowling on completely flat tracks and restrictions on bouncers and powerplays that are invitation to get whacked, now there’s the added insult of bowling a free-hit ball after a no-ball. Amidst all this, the BCCI and ICC send the players to random places of the world to play pyjama cricket. When they do play in regular hubs like Chennai in the sweltering heat of June, you wonder when a player is going to drop dead on the ground due to dehydration.

Give me test cricket anyday. I know a lot of people don’t have the patience to follow a five day game, but that works perfect for me. Therein lies the real skill, the real will, and the real battles. With Australia pushing the envelope, the scoring rates have also picked up in test matches and the tests these days are very result-oriented. A test century is worth its weight in gold, and so are twenty wickets captured with skill and patience. ICC, please cut down the games, balance the rules, else the game will just die.

Lonely Planet

A hand finds that dog-eared page,
clumsily bent at its edge.

The spectacles lodged firmly,
The cat pacified with a bowl of milk,
Mrs. Stenson continues her tour of Italy,
Twenty pages a day.

I got the inspiration for this character from that of Violet Stoneham in 36 Chowringhee Lane (the commonality being a lonely old lady with a cat). I don't like the wallowing in self-pity that loneliness is associated with. I want to view it as an independent stubborn streak.

Rarely

Rarely did he attend parties
Rarely did he speak with strangers
Rarely did he meet one he liked
Rarely did beauty affect him so
Rarely did he extend his hand
Rarely did he have a number written on it
Rarely did he walk with a spring in his step
Rarely did he not hide his smile
Rarely did he slip on the road
Rarely did his palms get wiped clean
Rarely did his luck favor him

The Land Of Miracles

'Welcome to America',
Greets the voice behind the glass.
I stare at my papers in disbelief,
At the instant fruition of fantasies

A swoosh of the pen
And I stand transformed,
Into an alien

Vestige

Does he stoop since birth?
Or is he burdened,
By a hundred failures?
Some his own
Some of his forefathers.
The inheirtance of dreams?

Stationary

The music floods the car,
"Break Away", she sings.
I move my car two feet ahead

P.S> I spend a considerable amount of time in traffic everyday with all the construction on my way to work.

Bequest

On the pages were listed
A small house in the country,
A trusty piano,
His collection of Mozart records,
A small Picasso he had splurged on,
A twenty year old car

The sons bore grave smiles
And paced nervously behind him
And wondered,
Is a father every really fair?

The lawyer put on his glasses
And laid the document in front of him,
With contained impatience.
A lunch with his estranged daughter awaited him

The signee cautiously flipped through the pages
Careful not to leave any crosses unsigned
An old habit.
The things you can’t bequeath, he pondered

Fourplay

As I watch in awe the rerun of the Sri Lanka-South Africa match, it becomes apparent that South Africa will always struggle to win the world cup. Perhaps every nation has a malady of choice that affects its teams. Pakistan has its internal troubles, India its star based system, South Africa it’s choking and Australia the winning habit. Malinga's four wickets in four balls only match the shock that his hair creates. Sri Lanka may have lost the match, but look good to go to the semis in my books. With Bangladesh and Ireland in the fray, the super 8’s have become the super 6’s. With England in the form it is, the question is: which other team will join them on the flight back home? The performance of West Indies in tomorrow’s match against New Zealand should give some inkling.

I completed reading Vikram Seth’s ‘An Equal Music’ and followed it up with Salman Rushdie’s ‘The ground beneath her feet’. I wanted to read them back to back because they were similarly themed, on music. Of course, they were set in completely different milieus, and Rushdie’s effort encompasses more than just the story of music. I’d recommend both books to be read. The painting on the cover of Seth’s book is Orpheus leading Eurydice out of the Underworld by Il Padovino. It is significant in that the Greek mythological story is the basis of the characters and their actions in both the books. Anocturne has a review posted here. Onto Obama’s ‘Audacity of Hope’ right now.

I finished watching Babel a little while back. I don’t think I was as impressed as I expected to be. Perhaps it is repetitive of this genre of movies, starting with Crash: multiple stories, multiple settings, all interwoven in some way. The settings invariably revolve around trumping up third world misery and celebrating their goodness. I liked the music and some of the shot compositions in the movie, but not much else. I started this little list on the left of the page churning out the movies I have recently watched. Does anyone have a better idea about doing that? I am currently modifying the template to list them, which is irritating. I’d like a more expansive space where I can put recommendations and short comments on the movies themselves.

The Indian store that I frequent constantly has some songs playing on the TV, mostly new work. I heard a song for the first time that stuck in my mind because of its tune and the use of the word ‘sutta’, which is the colloquial term for a smoke/cigarette. I came back and searched for the song and stumbled upon a socio-cultural phenomenon of sorts. Here goes the story. A Pakistani band (seems like one guy) called Zeest released a song called BC Sutta. I won’t expand BC for obvious reasons, the same reasons for which the song was deemed un-airable. It soon became an ‘underground’ hit, crossed the border by way of the internet and is apparently a cult classic in hostels and colleges across India. The song claims to use sutta as a metaphor for all dreams that have to be abandoned in life. The song I had heard in the store was a rip-off with a video starring Meghana Naidu and claimed to be anti-smoking in its message. Here’s the original sutta song and the copied remix that I heard . The furor is over the use of words that are commonly heard but never published. Judge for yourself.

2 hr 27min 29 sec

I completed my second half-marathon yesterday (the first one was the Seattle half-marathon last year). The race in case was the Mercer Island Half Marathon, set right between the Seattle and the suburban civilization. The weather was fine this time, it rained only for the first half hour of the race. The temperatures were bearable and the terrain seemed much easier than the Seattle half-marathon course.

I started off fast, maybe too fast and had trouble settling into a rhythm for the first three miles. Just when I got everything under control, my knee popped around mile 4. There was a searing pain through the left knee and I knew something had gone wrong. That effectively ended my run. The remainder of the nine miles were part running, part walking and part limping. Up until mile 10, I had still managed to keep a reasonable time, but at that stage the knee gave away completely. The remaining three miles were a fast stroll to the finish line.

On hindsight, not the best of experiences, because I went into the race with a slight niggle and insufficient practise. Maybe that caused the injury, maybe it didn't, but I surely will need better preparation next time round. On the positive side, I was desperate and determined to finish the race and finish I did. The timing was actually a bonus, it could have been much worse. Some friends managed to best their personal times, and that's a cool feat. If not for the injury, I might have had a shot too. Maybe next year. C'est la vie.

The Ground Beneath Our Feet

Mourn not
The scorching of prized dreams
The abandonment of Gods
The wilting of collective spine
The loss of the undeserving

Mourn
What it truly is
The death of misplaced faith

P.S> This is as much for me to come to terms with the reality as it is for all those whose gut it wrenching right now