Bangalore diaries

Day 1:

- Flying over Mumbai yet another time, I promised to come back :). Got a pretty warm good bye from hostel mates and a surprise visit from a new acquaintance.

- Bangalore rocked @ night. The weather was nice, antiquity was good, and two friends high on nostalgia even better :D.

Day 2:

- Wake up late, pass time, check mail and get ready for lunch. Ideal morning :P.

- Time pass @ Reliance Time Out after lunch. Get to know of Pol Pots and Edi Amins.

- Get bored, settle down in a coffee shop, and write to your friend on coffee tray mats in absence of paper :P.

- Meet new people, special people :P. Watch a bakwaas movie and roam around the near dead city in night… Time to get to bed.

Day 3:

- Repeat day 2 as much as you can.

- Try doing something wild, ask a girl out for coffee. Accept a ‘no’ and try recovering from the treatment :P.

- Listen to “Hallelujah” and get rejuvenated. Prepare a blog entry sipping the Kashmiri “Kahwa” tea.

- Find a firangi babe sitting alone in the same café. Ideal setup for a ‘chance pe dance’, he he. Oops! It worked :).

- Chit chat, and just when you don’t want your friend to show up for 10 more minutes, expect a surprise visit. Curse him later, but it won’t help :P.

- Get hurt on the foot, no problem. Pay a compulsive boring visit to your kin – get thoroughly bored and sleep like a devil.

Day 4:

- Get ready for fun. Shave your head, and take a decision. Offer more than hair to the lord. Work towards the commitment.

- Join in the running trail. Pass an ordinary night. Sleep while others turn in their seats :D.

- Join in the line of the lord. Support sleepy falling off friends.

Day 5:

- Indistinct transition of the day, coz there happened no night. Morning did happen though, at a lodge which offered an hour’s sound sleep.

- Miss breakfast, rush to catch a bus about to leave you stranded :D.

- Pretend to feel fresh, and keep dozing off at every opportunity. Wake up, make and crack jokes at every opportunity, sleep, and repeat.

- Wait in line for an hour or more, get a glimpse of the lord for a minute. Not that it was less, because nothing will fill your heart staring at that majestic site.

- Cool breeze, nice view, four friends and laddus. Made my day! Get late for the bus yet another time :P. Who cares by now.

- Shuffle seats and exchange wish lists. Get to know better, and enjoy the company.

- Get down, get wild. Eat, roam, drop back home. Get senti and all, and cut the crap. Reiterate we had fun – we all know we had fun – to make it even more lasting and positive :P.

Day 6:

- Face a power cut all day. Sleep, sleep, sleep and suddenly wake up to call Prafful.

- Get into a bar, share past and choices. Regret not being more with a guy of your tastes and views. Deny getting high on 7 beer glasses :P.

- Repeat silly and redundant phone conversations. Make the lady at the other end listen to you, and thank her for the concern she expresses :P.

- Sleep at some hour without realization, and thank your friend for being around.

Day 7:

- Wake up and tabulate events. Enjoy time, wait for internet access, wonder if the parcel was delivered, and when to meet Shishir, and what all interpretations last night call left to that special someone, and when to give a call to Chitra.

- Look forward to another great sunny day :).

Signing off!

Happy Ending...

There’s something with death that brings me to it again and again. Probably because it defines life, in a way, just like every other thing is identified with its boundaries as much as with its characteristics…

I sit here in a tea-bar sipping the Kashmiri ‘kahwa’, dejected by a rejection of an unkind lady to accompany a stranger to a coffee for some fun time, and quiet unaware of the moment of success and sweet memory to follow. And as I write this, a statement echoes in my mind – along with “hallelujah”- “When I’ve completed that, I’m done”.

I’ve thought innumerable times over how people, blinded absolutely by the way others live, just keep on imitating, or at best innovating. They have the exact same definition of being ‘alive’, but they believe strongly they are ‘individuals’ making their choices and controlling their lives. I say men innovate – they do change the way they spend, the way they earn, the way they sleep, the times they weep, the promises the break, and those they keep. But they are – at the end – innovators for an alien eye, or an eye of a philosopher.

Explaining how an inventor would be better (or even different) than an innovator is difficult – and I’m certain I carry a personal definition, so I make here no promises of delivering this to you. And as I scribble this, I’m very aware of being an innovator myself. With ‘hopes’ of a future, and ‘responsibilities’ of a kind, and with the ‘borrowed’ world view I have, I feel almost incapable of being an inventor.

And as the echo hits my mind again – I recall there is a certain someone who knows when he’ll be done with life – or at least, he claims to. Not that I’m going to drive the same point home – but the same bottom line – death AT WILL.

How many times have you wanted a trip, an examination, a meeting, a movie, a moment to end at the exact same instance – and leave you with that feeling forever! And how many times did you repent to stretch it – and showed desperation to get it back?

Yes, at times life’s good, and at times it’s bad. But at times it’s high! And don’t you live for those moments!? What if you identified the highest point of your life? Would life be worth more? Would you remain hopeful of feeling higher some day – would you still look out for futile purposes (assuming God made you for one specifically) and pleasures – would you still want to keep exploring more – would you give in to your redundant responsibilities and the cycle of life – OR would you, even for a split second, decide of surrendering yourself to nature, to end your life on this best of moments where you’d have nothing evil on your mind to take back in heaven?!

I know it’s a tough call – listen to Hallelujah, Fade Out, and more – pay a visit to Ajanta, Puri or Varkala – sip Mochachillo/ Kahwa @ CCD/InfiniTea – spend an evening with the best of your friends – contemplate – make plans to earn millions in an evening (for women: making plans of spending all of it the following evening :P) – dream of rearing a child. And you certainly realize there’s never a highest point, atleast not an identifiable one – hope carries you, pumping you and making you live for more.

But then I go back and compare proportions of times that left me with good feelings to those that left me with the bad ones. (Trouble, tension, EMPTINESS, monotony, boredom, greed, craving, fear, loneliness, compulsions, unhappiness) vs. (Bliss, fun, joy, excitement, anticipation, thrill, happiness, others…). And then I find large parts of it go plain and dry. And I wonder what hope gives me?!

When you write something like this, and you really don’t expect people to welcome it/ appreciate it/ even comprehend it, do you really blog it? Is an idea as ridiculous as – death at will; even worse, suggested at the highest point of your life – even worth consideration? I don’t know.

I’m not sure what death will bring me. But I’m sure it’ll release me of the pain of being an innovator, and being aware of it. I’d wish to live, invent and fall off the globe… And as sure as I am it probably won’t happen – one can't guarantee :D.