It rained

i was about to leave when it started raining
so i had to stay back in office
but i did not feel like working
so i started writing this
but i dint know what to write
so i started thinking..
why does it not rain when i have an umbrella
why does it not rain when i can go out and dance
why does it not rain when i ve someone besides holding my hand
why does it not rain when i am about to cry walking on the road all alone
why does it not rain when i am on top of a beautiful mountain
why does the rain not make me happy today
there were days when it rained and i smiled
when i watched the rain for three hours sitting inside an AC bus
when i got drenched wearing the newest dress but still smiled
when i made tiny paper boats and followed them until they drowned
when i danced in the rain not worrying who was seeing me
when i jumped into all the pothholes splashing the dirty water
oh it has stopped raining
and i have to leave now
why did i want the rain to stop today
hope there is a day again
when i smile as i rains.

An Eventless Life

i saw them win
i saw them lose
i never won; but i never lost either.

i saw them laugh
i saw them cry
i hardly laughed, i hardly cried.

i saw them hug
i saw them fight
i never hugged, and i never fought

i saw her dance
i saw her play
i never danced, and never played.

i saw them become leaders
i saw them become followers
i never lead, but i never followed too.

they said she was beautiful
they said she was ugly
they never said i was beautiful, but not ugly too.

i saw them love
i saw them hate
i never loved, and i never hated too.

i saw them live
i saw them die
i never lived, oh but i will die someday

For all that i have done, and for all the i have not done
for all that i was, and for all that i was not
i call it an eventless life, but still, i love this life.

Short-cuts

A two wheeler is the worst option to travel in Bangalore. By the time I reach office I wil be covered by an inch of smoke and dust and my clothes will emanate a nausiating smell of smoke. Even abundant amounts of deo cannot keep this smell away for long. There is an option of covering myself in a jacket, gloves, scarf for hair and face, shoes socks and what not. I have an inherent dislike for gloves, scrafs and even socks which somehow suffocate me. Wearing all these trendy accessories and riding on the foot paths criss-crossing the oh-so-many-small-big-noisy-smoky vehicles on the Great old Madras road tops my list of "Worst thing to do on a Monday morning".

But for a change, I like bangalore traffic. After trying the two wheeler for a week I sold it and started travelling by bus and the bus journeys make me like the notorious Bangalore traffic. It takes me around 30 minutes in the morning to reach office which is 6kms away from home and again around 30 minutes in the evening to reach back home. It is during this time that I get all the time on earth for myself. I donot talk with anyone in the bus, I want to be alone, listen to music, look out of the window and think. An hour's idleness is a luxury these days and that is why I like Bangalore traffic. No 2 wheeler please and a big nooo to 4 wheelers.

Two years of bus jorneys have taught me a lot. I have realized that I did not "think" much about anything before in life and I learnt what is thinking. I have thought a lot about the past, what I have done and what I have not done. And I have come up with some theories about life in general which might be seen in my future blogs. This post is not about my one of those yet-to-be-made-public theories, but a story about an incident in pursuit of short-cuts.

The incident occured on a monday morning. Like any other so-called-techie I hate Monday mornings and usually get late by 2 hours to office. There will be someone somewhere conspiring against my sincere efforts to smile on Monday mornings. So on this fateful day I woke up late as usual and decided to take an auto to office as I did not have the patience to walk till bus stop, wait for one, buy a ticket, catch a seat, again get down from the crowded bus at the proper stop and again walk till office. Accepting that I am a little lazy I got into This auto.

At some junction, the auto driver took a turn in the opposite direction of Old Madras Road. This turn in the opposite direction leads to a road which is supposed to be a short-cut with lesser traffic. As I have an aversion for short-cuts and narrow mud roads I told him to go back to the proper road in the correct direction. The autowala started arguing that this route is shorter and takes very less time compared to the OMR. I was not in a mood to argue and so I settled down to try this famous short-cut.

The auto crossed an arch and entered this road whose name I donot know. It was a bumpy road which was narrow enough to be a one-way road but it was a two-way road. If the short-cut is a little famous, it always happens that the short-cut is more crowded than the main road as everyone want to take the short-cut. And so, this short-cut was crowded with all sorts of big and small vehicles, the narrow roads making the traffic very slow. The autowala got impatient after inching some distance behind a truck and took a left turn into a narrower lane as soon as he found one. A short-cut in the short-cut. He then criss-crossed through a lot many lanes of some Palya and entered the main road of another Palya. Again he took a right and entered another road where I got a little scared as it looked like an isolated area with some construction work going on in the surroundings. No short-cuts in the city are spared and hence vehicles started appearing in this mud road as well which convinced me that the autowala had only the short-cuts in his mind, not my money or mobile phone.

The auto went left and right into innumerable lanes of many Palyas confusing the auto driver himself. Finally, he somehow managed to enter the Kaggadasapura main road. I was happy to be back in familiar zones again but the happiness did not last long. This road has a railway crossing where all the action was. There was a traffic jam on the railway crossing. Well yes, it happens only in India. The place was in total chaos. The jam was because a city bus and a truck carrying water were trying to cross the track from opposite directions at the same time. Neither of them could switch to reverse gear as there was a big queue of vehicles behind them. The two wheelers were trying to squeeze in every possible hole and people were left with no option but to shout and honk. There was not a single traffic police to been seen in another 10 miles and hence some abiding citizens who thought that they could handle the situation better than others took the charge of policing, only adding to the chaos. It was an amazing show altogether and I was enjoying it like a live movie until I heard someone shouting we will all die if its time for a train. I was alerted by this and made sure that there was a railway checkpost, atleast with a watchman and a phone. The jam was ON the railway track and nothing could be done if there was a speeding train except running for our lives. Hope the watchman and the phone worked as they were supposed to work. Thankfully, there was no train and the jam was unjammed with a lot more of shouting and honking. It was more than half an hour since I had boarded the auto and it was my turn to shout at the autowala for taking this short-cut. He mumbled something and again took another set of narrow lanes before turning up on the outer ring-road.

We had to cross the outer-ring road and reach the road on the other side which leads to the rear gate of my office. But alas, there was another traffic jam on the outer ring road. This traffic jam was because there were more vehicles coming from the service road than the ring road and everyone was trying to enter the ring road at the same point but in opposite directions. Hope you understood what I meant. Never mind, traffic jams are not meant to be understood. Incidentally, a truck carrying water was the main culprit here too. Cursing the trucks carrying water, I got down from the auto and decided to cross the road and reach office by walking the distance of half a kilometer. Remember, I was lazy to walk till the bus-stop and wait for the bus. The autowala had asked for 10 rupees extra but neither of us had change and so he got only 3 rupees extra. I heard a voice saying "That is what you deserve". Finally, I walked and reached office 1 hour and 10 minutes after leaving home.

If I had taken a bus or if the auto driver had taken the OMR instead of taking the short-cut I would have been in office within 30 minutes and in better shape. You know, it was a monday morning and something is supposed to happen on monday mornings. But this episode left me thinking. About short-cuts. My aversion to short-cuts got stronger and a lesson in life was proved. Never to take a short-cut. Especially a famous short-cut. Short-cuts might look tempting, but they cannot really match the main roads. They are narrow, confusing and mean. Its only a belief that we will reach faster if we take the short-cuts and it might be true sometimes. But we will always miss something if we take a short-cut. The main roads might look longer but they are more sensible and always leave us at the correct destination. The hurdles on the main road are easier to handle than those on the short-cuts. So never take a short-cut - the Long Way is the best way. You know what I mean by short-cuts :)

The Thorn Bird

There is a legend about a bird which sings just once in its life, more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth. From the moment it leaves the nest it searches for a thorn tree, and does not rest until it has found one. Then, singing among the savage branches, it impales itself upon the longest, sharpest spine. And, dying, it rises above its own agony to out-carol the lark and the nightingale. One superlative song, existence the price. But the whole world stills to listen, and God in His heaven smiles. For the best is only bought at the cost of great pain.... Or so says the legend...

The Thorn Birds is the title of a novel by Colleen McCullough and this paragraph is the prologue of the book.

These lines intrigued me. Does a bird like that really exist? I searched a lot in google but ended up with the same paragraph everywhere. I read it again and again and again.. The same questions come up everytime I read it. Does the bird really exist? Why does it die? Why does it sing only once? Is it singing or crying? If it is a legend, what does it imply? The lines are very intense.. deep and painful.

No gain without pain is one implication. One can be at his best only when he has gone through a lot of pain in learning and practising. There is also frustration because he is trying to give his best but he is not able to do it. He knows how his performance should be and he has done everything possible to achieve it. But he fails again and again. It looks perfect to others but not to him. There was something missing; it was not as he wanted it. He tries again and again. Until one day he succeeds in giving what he wanted to give and how we wanted to give it. He is reborn after that performance. It was an eternal bliss.

One more implication could be something like this.

People cry with all their heart only once in their lives. The agony that is pent up in the heart from so many years makes its way out only once. Its not a cry, it is something else. It leaves everything around numb for sometime. Life is not the same after that.. Life changes..

PS: Joblessness over the weekends makes me write such absurd posts. Hope the next weekend is not so ......

About googling and blogs

I created this blog an year ago. There is a reason why I stopped after 2 posts. Maybe this post is something like a confession of a secret habit that I have developed over some years :D

I have this habit - dont know whether it is good or bad. Whenever I come accross a new person, I search for their name in google. Not just new person. I pick up names in random and google. Old classmates.. schoolmates.. collegemates.. colleagues.. people whom i dont really know.. i just know their names.

The first thing that comes up when I google is their LinkedIn profile. They seem to have a wonderful SEO team. The next thing seen is their facebook profile if one exists. The rest of the links are usually irrelevant, but sometimes I happen to come across their blogs :)

I donot know why i like to google for people's names. I never googled for Bill Gates or Barack Obama, but for the common people around me. Some people are interesting and some are boring. Well if they have a (an updated) blog, they are usually interesting people.

I know only their names, but if i happen to come across someone's blog I will end up knowing a lot more about them. I like to read these blogs. It sometimes feels like I am tresspassing into someone's personal life, or almost always. Because one cannot avoid giving this "personal touch" to any post. Even when they are writing a movie review or an article about a bomb blast there will be something about them in the post. It tells you what the person's interests are, his/her likes and dislikes, etc,.

The purpose of this blog is to talk about what people usually write in their blogs. Some blogs look like newspapers - people write about bomb blasts, chandrayan etc. Like the newschannels and newspapers donot do enough coverage(they do an over-coverage). I really donot understand why people like to write these essays. I dont read them anyways. There is a difference between expressing your opinions and reporting. These bloggers might be jobless or they want to blog but they donot want to write anything personal.

Some bloggers write about the events that happen in everyday life. Not extraordinary or unusual events. The normal things that happen in day-to-day life. Writing is magic. Even if they are not good writers they put in their thoughts and analyze the events. It gives a new meaning to an ordinary event like say getting stuck in traffic or just what they did over the weekend. I like to read these blogs. These are the most interesting things to read, especially when the writer has a good sense of humor and has a good grasp of the language. Some are really good writers, they can make you think, laugh and sometimes cry. These people are sensitive and philosophical.

Sometimes there is no event but just a random topic - like this one. It cannot be called an opinion. These are just random thoughts about a random topic. These are interesting if the topic is good and the post is not long (hope someone read this article :P) . The most interesting thing about these blogs is that I have never come accross two blogs which talked about the same event or same topic. Even if they are close never the same. A 100 different people can write 100 different articles about the same topic too.

Some bloggers write reviews. about movies, books, travel, food, etc,. They also have a lots of pictues, comics.. just about anyting. I stay away from the long ones but these blogs are moderately interesting, especially the travel stories. These are people who have a strong opinion about everything and who like to express their views. And they are interesting because they watch movies, read books, travel and also think about what they did.

Some blogs look like personal diaries. Abstract personal diaries would be a better description. Because these people are writing something personal but they donot want to mention any names. And they donot want to mention the actual event they are referring to. But still they are writing about their feelings, usually sadness, failures or frustration - something which they are not able to share with anyone. Rarely anyone talks about happiness. One thing that is common to these blogs is loneliness. These blogs were written when the authors were lonely. I feel guilty when I read these blogs because this is surely tresspassing. But what can i do , the blogs are not private :)

So thats about google and blogging. I did not know what I wanted to blog when i started blogging an year ago. And i have read a lot many blogs. Like i said u will come to know about the person's thoughts when u read someone's blog. Well that is what i was avoiding. I dont even like to tell someone what music i am listening to sometimes, because that will tell something about my taste and mood.

I dont know how to conclude. Blogging surely is a good thing, but is it ok to read a blog written by someone whom u donot know? Is it ok to google for someone's name :P. Maybe i am jobless, but i donot discuss about these blogs with anyone. i mean i donot gossip. But i dont know why i google for names. And i did not want to blog because i donot know who would read it. And i was not sure what to write because like i said every post gets personal even if you donot want to get it personal. Maybe its good, maybe its not..