18.55N 72.54E

In honor of the feedback received on the previous post, I am titling this one by the co-ordinates of the place I will be at in a week's time. That would be the city of Mumbai. I am heading over to the land I came from after a period of two and a half years. As always, I need to reintroduce myself to the place. The gap has been long and the changes must be plenty. So back to the shores of Versova, and the rickshaw rides. Back to the visit to the in-laws across town, and time spent with the outlaws, my parents. Back to tracing the evenings on the face of that city with my wife, retracing what we drew when we were dating each other, fresh out of college into our first jobs. Back to the meetings with friends of yore, reunions that have to be diligently set up. Back to watching cricket as it happens in broad daylight, and the movies that need to be seen in theaters close by.

The trip is long overdue. The house beckons, family beckons, city beckons. In the midst of this beckoning is the challenge of adjustment, the challenge of inquiry, the challenge of attachment. I am excited by it. To add to the excitement, I'll be making a stop en route. I am going to London to see the, err, Queen's palace? This is the touristy version of the trip, and I hope to do it all, the key attraction being a trip to Lords.

The outlaws are technophobes and promptly gave away my PC when I left the building. That opens up an interesting possibility for me. No internet access on the trip. I have done this on a previous visit and it is strangely therapeutic. I'll be getting my news the old fashion way, and I'll be taking along a sheet of paper with everyone's phone numbers on it. Its charming, to me (until I lose that sheet). That will imply a vacation from blogosphere. After a few days this week, I'll be away and won't be here, or there, on your blogs. I do promise to catch up once I get back. Till then, consider me latitudinally and longitudinally relocated.

Mach 100?

Seattle to Mumbai
In two seconds flat.
I land smoothly
As skin grazes plastic.

P.S> I recently acquired a globe that sits atop my desk in my arm's reach. Geography questions anyone? Oh, and the title is not meant to be accurate; before I get riled for bad aerospace engineering skill :-)

42

I rise from the depths of my own Deep Thought. Is 42 really the answer to everything? I had mentioned once in my old posts on Tendulkar's 35th test century: "With apologies to Douglas Adams, the meaning of life is not 42. It is 35." Am I being made to eat my own words? Tendulkar has had a fantastic year in one day cricket. Over a thousand runs scored, fantastic average, and more importantly the starts that have allowed India to win matches against England, South Africa and Pakistan. The glitch? A small matter of scores in the 90s. Six of them. Three scores of 99 (no other batsman in the history of ODIs has them) and the tally of 90s now reads 16. Its heartbreaking. Tendulkar has scaled great heights as a sportsman this year for me. He has proved that he still has the sublimity of a genius, but is prepared to grind his way through like a journeyman when he needs to. He has the footwork and balance beyond mortals, yet pulls out his grit from deep within when he shows up on the job with two left feet. Eventually, it is not about the runs. It is about the one shot in the innings that might stay with you. It is that single cover drive he hits. It is as if perfection has been defined and achieved at the same time. The one shot that makes something in your mind click because you sense you have seen something special. The one shot, like a straight drive for six off Kasprovich's bowling in 1998 Sharjah, where you can sense that he had that extra second to hit that shot; like he saw it coming and time slowed down a fraction for him to execute it. Genius is a lot of things, but at the end of the day, genius is that which reveals itself to the hungry waiting mortals in a brief moment. For the longer he stays, the more he unfurls. When he does unleash his skills and go through to the 90s, the anticipation of the hundred is heart-pumping. The sight of a forty-second century celebration, helmet removed, arms raised, a look to the heaven is now a sight for the expectant eyes. The century is not for him, it is for us. Having watched him come so close six times in a row this year has been agonizing. It is a comma, followed by a semi-colon leading up to a full stop. Get it Sachin. The answer to our impatience lies in it.

Entrapment

“Come on, I am going out on a limb here”, he urged with an expression on his face which was a cross between a smile and a smirk. He had spent the better part of the evening waiting for the right moment to go talk to the lady sitting across his table by the window. She seemed like the perfect prey; an air of prosperity tinged with a hint of vulnerability, in control but just, and more importantly, alone. He could sense these things now, as if a divine eye had blessed him with an ability to see through the mask that people called a face. He had watched her intently like a hawk, staring out the window, sipping her coffee, checking her watch. Whoever it was that was supposed to have shown up hadn’t done so.

“May I?” he asked, and before she could answer, sat on the seat next to her watching her startled expression. The words followed. The gentle beseeching, the tough affirmations, the unspoken realm conjured by his moving hands. She had to fall for it. She never realized how her own expressions started to intensify the scene. The discomfort gave way to curiosity, then to apprehension, and finally terror as her fingers involuntarily reached for her cheek. In two minutes, it was over. He had her. As per plan. He stormed away from the coffee shop with a broad smile. While passing a car parked on the curb, he didn’t notice its rear view mirror. He would have seen a lady sitting by the window, alone, staring at a little white tube. Anti-aging cream.

It Just Stopped Raining

All that remain
Are a few drops on my window
Of nature’s furious dance

The grey recedes
And white emerges
In a graceful arc

I watch in glee
A giant kaleidoscope
Turn by itself

P.S> From my very same office I mentioned here. Make do with these inept descriptions till I bring my camera around.

Agony Of A Protagonist

He talks of it
As if it were
Fiction

As if my world
Never did really
Exist

And I never
Saved it in
2260

P.S> Since this poem is not intuitive, here goes. The perspective I wanted to put forth was that of a protagonist of a story. "He" refers to the author. It is a about the protagonists' belief that he is real, for to him, his world is.

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