To all followers of gregorian calendars...

Wishing you all a very happy new year.

Insignificant.

That is what we are. We very often forget that and tend to consider ourselves above everything else in this world. We seek to conquer people, land, nature, God and, God only knows, what else!

Yet, there come times when we are sent a rude reminder that shakes us out of our fantasies and proves to us our insignificance to the Nature. That was so evident in yet another catastrophe that rocked India and some other countries yesterday.

All it took is some seconds and everything - including every pride and every prejudice - was levelled out. My heart goes out to all those who suffered. May God bless them.

The man in the aircraft.

Shailen's marriage over the last weekend has provided me with enough reasons to remember it for a looong time. For one, it was the first marriage of a friend that I attended. Secondly, the responsibilities that marriage brings with it and considering that I may probably opt to face one day scares the daylights out of me. Thirdly, I met Mr. and Mrs. Narendra together for the first time (I had not even seen their photograph taken together earlier), and most importantly, there was hardly any perceivable difference between the amount of fat that I carried and the fat that Nitin carried around his waist. Also, it was probably the only Gujarati marriage where there weren't enough girls; a reason good enough to put poor young lonely buggers like me, Shyam and Ashu into the depths of sorrows and disappointment. And last but not the least, I got to use my newly acquired digital camera a lot.

Anyway, the entire experience was good and enjoyable despite Nitin. :-)

While returning back to Bangalore the next day (this story is also interesting and merits its own entry in the blog), there sat a gentleman in the seat next to mine. I would have probably not noticed him ever if he had not taken out his laptop after we had taken off and started working on it. Desirous that I am of a laptop, the curiosity attached to the make of the laptop and the nature of his work drew my attention to him and with that a curious thought crept into my mind. Is work sometimes so indispensable that we cannot let go of it even for the few minutes that we get between the take-off and landing of an aircraft. The slice of time, in an otherwise casual environment, would be too insignificant to even cause us to feel guilty about letting it go without any creative effort invested into it? Is this phenomenon inevitable, especially in a field I am involved in where laptops or their likes are the only tools available with us?

Not venturing deep into the philosophical train of thoughts that flowed through my mind in that brief period when I was closer to heaven and God, I would like to mention here the prose that took seed in my mind then. With a generous help from Aldrin, I have been able to give it some semblance of a poem. It is as follows (as usual in a Romanized hindi script).

abhi subah ka aalam tha ki abhi shaam dhal gayi
jane kab nazar ke saamne se zindagi nikal gayi

kaamyaabi chhoone ki jwala jo dil mein jagayi thi
sholo mein uski apnon ki yaadein jal gayi

sajaye the maine bhi sapno ke kai shandar mahal
khuli palak to khwabo ki duniya pighal gayi

manzile-kaamyaabi ki oar bhaag raha tha 'aks'
ki pairon ke neeche se zameen hi fisal gayi


Sometimes, I wonder if what we think is important is really important in life!

"Mausam hai aashiqaanaa,
ae dil kahin se unko
aise mein dhoondh laanaa.."

"firte hai hum akele
baahon mein koi le le
aakhir koi kahaa tak
tanhaaiyon se khele
din ho gaye hain zaalim
raatein hai kaatilaanaa"

how true... just my feelings..