Just blogging.....Thought I wished to talk about MEN...

At the very outset, let me clarify that MEN doesn't mean the members from the not-so-fair sex. I use 'men' to speak about random people (like they did in epics and also the Holy Bible) irrespective of sex divides.

There is a constant tussle between two of the mankind. Be it in love or friendship or neighbourly relations or even within a family. The same underlying conflict is found in every aspect of our lives. No one (excuse the generality) is at peace today. Why? None of us really know. We all believe we have something yet to be achieved. That mystical something that has eluded us so long. Once we have laid our hands n that "something", ranging from the fancy piece of automobile to a new shirt to any god damned thing ever created by the complex human mind, we go on to the next level of the chase. There is a replacement already ready to be pursued with added vigour. This goes on. Today when I took an accidental break from my personal chase, I felt something like a wreckage inside the head. There was a tangle of myriads of images, thoughts, people. They floated around like they do in the space.

While typing the words right now, I want to talk about numerous things. But the clot in the head deviates me from one point to another and then to a third. In a matter of few seconds I apparently travel places and times and incidents. Some that happened today, some that are now in the past and yet correlate with the day's happening and some that just flash in and out. I am stuck in dual sensation. Rather say multi-sensations. Equally vibrant and emphatic.

The inter-looped relativity Me has with things around and the same things have with others and the chain that is formed this way is fathomless. And the different "men" I met in this relative force is stunning, which almost benumbs me.

After the last statement, I am totally numb and sitting before the computer, thinking whats the next fancy thing I should write so that people applaud my writing skills and leave words of praise. But the current state of mind does not seem to know what it wants to think about. There isn't anything coherent that is evolving. I cannot even pretend to be the aspiring writer who has bagful of 'nothingness' to describe through well-drawn similes and intelligent rephrased terms and words. The confusion wants an outlet and I presumed (too soon!!) that only penning them down would ease my tension. But it feels worse now because nothing suitable could be created. Neither did I feel like Gibran or Amitabh Ghosh or Marquez. Nor did I feel the existential angst of Samuel Beckett. Nor do I feel the anger like the angry young man from John Osborne's "Look Back in Anger". I better end this post soon. Its scaring me enough to make me drop my plans of a full-time writing career.

Don't know whether others feel the same way. But except wasting some more space and pronouncing the names of all the writers I read, i seem to be doing exactly "Nothing".

I feel like a "nothing".

They Who Broke News!

This post was originally penned as a response to an article by a beautiful and equally talented fellow journalist on the vicious Breaking News trend set by the news channel, specially the kind of propaganda that was raised regarding the experiment conducted by scientists of CERN. The Indian media had ludicrously termed it as the doomsday experiment….
(Please pardon me fellow journalists. But I know there are many like me who are from the same boat and heavily anguished to see it sink!!)

How much information is right information? This is one aspect which the so-called India’s better than the best news channels overlook at their own leisurely convenience. If this is what the Fourth Pillar of India’s democracy looks and acts like, then a doomsday of greater magnitude isn’t far behind. Media men excuse themselves (lamely though) with the repugnant statement “This is what viewers demand”. No Chayya (the teenager who committed suicide after repeatedly watching the day long broadcast of ‘The day before doomsday’ programmes run by the news channels) would have liked to see the world come to an end.

Thanks to my wise colleague, for describing the reality effectively. I am sure many like me agree that Indians are not over enthused to know the “Way to Yamlok (hell)” when the visuals are infact of the ruins of forts in Rajasthan or of the snow-clad mountains in the north. We are already surviving in hellish times. Nor are we inclined to lose our much needed hours of sleep to be hell-informed (oops!!) about the certain spirit of a nautch girl who brutally slaughters life as an act of vengeance. We have enough gory incidents in our daily lives to draw pleasure or excitement from such televised thrills. The likes of Ram Gopal Verma and his poorer cousins, the Ramsay brothers have entertained us enough with their spine chilling and at times, mind-chilling movies. The much assaulted and well battered senses of the common man (that includes even the Gucci and Prada wearing gentry!!) need a little respite and some actual news which is far removed from the hyped trend of gimmicky stories garbed as NEWS.

After witnessing the over-the-top, maniacal coverage of the Big Bang experiment, my friend, Arvind, much disturbed that he was, ruminated and made a statement, which apparently might seem simple, but on a second ponder reflected what media had come to become in the present times. “Gone are the days when we looked forward to ‘The World This Week’ every Friday on Doordarshan for news and information.” True Arvind, those days are gone and somehow ominously have dragged the true essence of news along. We are left amidst a heap of despicable, shoddy scribes and so-called 24/7 news channels which nonchalantly make a mockery of the profession and us, the viewers, who sadly provide them with another equally vile phenomenon, the TRP.

Also now it seems the print brethren have picked up the trend and customised it to suit their medium. Or how else could one explain the stories, severely lacking in details and facts about the same Bing-Bang doomsday that did the rounds in some of the leading dailies and their supplements.

Irony infact is that journalism, today, is vis-a-vis a Black Hole like phenomenon, with mindless reporting and factually lacking stories, irresponsible and mob journalism waiting with their mouth open to drown this much hailed profession into eternal darkness.

So the next time, dear friends who are reading this article, you want to switch on the TV, remember that there are entertainment channels too which serve what they claim. I say so because I somehow have taken pity on their sloppy TRPs, thanks to all the ‘masala’ and sleaze that is served by the news channels. Zoom sulks because its programme content was long televised by India TV and Star News!!

And as I decide to wind up for the day, truth seems to have dawned on me and I know now why the vernacular news channels behave like mad, rabid dogs biting at anything that looks even a tad-bit like news and ballooning them to gigantic proportions. Because;

“If you are on the idiot box, do as the idiots do.”

Quoted By Ogden Nash, Poet, (1901-1971)

Love is a word that is constantly heard,
Hate is a word that is not.
Love, I am told, is more precious than gold.
Love, I have read, is hot.
But Hate is the verb that to me is superb,
And Love but a drug on the mart.
Any kiddie in school can Love like a fool,
But Hating, my boy, is an Art...

My jeans doesn't fit me anymore!

It opened a window back in time! And with the clothes that tumbled out were the days that filled the mind of times that were boundless and virgin!


The blue , pleated skirt was there! The one which read an almost epic like school days of twelve years! Those years of chalk and blackboard, of the wooden ruler, of a marvellous transition from lead pencils to pens! And there she came running, gasping for breath, her pigtails trying very hard to free themselves from the black ribbons! My best buddy! I tried to figure out what she was whispering! But as impatient as she was, she almost disappeared, leaving behind a trail of dust on the playground and a bonny lad chasing with all his might! I no more had the power to be a part of that which gave me two slashed knees and a few troubled "Parent-teacher" meets!


What did I see lying next to the skirt? That lovely little petite white and green frock worn on my seventh birthday!



The same dress, which had a replica in the safe and zealous custody of my sister. Though the idea of possessing the same piece was not too encouraging, yet all this was drowned in the incredible high decible noise with my friends pouring in to celebrate the most coveted day of my life each year, my "Happy Birthday", as it was popularly described during those days! Well, a birthday was always meant to be "happy" and there was no other emotion that I could attach with it!! The most awaited moment arrives and there on the glass table lay the cake! Mom's spent a good deal of the day readying it for the evening. The cake is a bunny this year. Makes me ponder with a sense of juvenile pride, "My Mom's very smart!" Its too pretty and I can earn a lot of "wows" from my buddies. With imaptient hands I run the knife midway through the bunny! Oh! Only if I could preserve it!! But there were more significant things yet to be performed, including the ritual of smearing some cake on each other! Even on the 25th one, I couldnt help but repeat the act!! Some habits never die!



Hours of games and laughter just go by and tiny yawns descend on our eyes. It time to say "Good Night" to my friends and address the most important task. Unwrap the gift packs! Sleep cannot divest the giggles and tiny yells of joy that accompany this fanciful job!! I am a year older and I wish it happens quicker the next time!!



Something tugs at my heart. It is one of the multi-colored pair of gloves. The winter descends. I hear mom insisting that both, sister and me should wear our caps and be well-covered in layers of sweater! How I hate the burden. Feel like poor Atlas, who shoulders the Earth! The misty mornings, the daily inner tussle to-go-or-not-to go to school ofcourse! The hands that led me on to the gates of the school! The tales to keep me awake during the arduous tred! The candies I managed to bag feigning disgust for school! When all the while I could not wait to join my friends in the classroom and on the play field. She saw me off everyday! The eyes which kept their promise, the eyes I searched long after they closed for one last time. My granparents taught the art to smile through turmoils. I am yet to master the art! The gloves still smell of their touch, their warmth, their strength.

My legs took me to the corner where lay an old pair of canvas shoe. The blue and white, now popularly marketed as "Converse" and lapped up by younsters and not so youngs! Then they were the shoes which took me to most of the places, the dance classes, the afternoon rendezvous with buddies, the market and for those walks with my pet Dachshund. The pair was not the seemingly feminine one, which I dreamt of acquiring one day! The ones which all the older girls in school wore during fests. But those were apparently not great for girls of my age at seven. The dirt and slush still remain on the pair...

A little more of hunt unravels that the most coveted piece of attire I have treasured. The first proper pair of denims. There I was, wearing it, flaunting it but as subtly as was possible. It was the call of freedom, of the emancipation the teenage soul seeks. The thrill, the exhilaration is stupendous. The feeling that I have arrived! The world seems conquerable! The jeans irons in the realisation of the self, the desire to feel beautiful, the need to be appreciated, the starry dreams which crowded the head. There she was still wrapped those days of confusion and arguments, of furtive glances and impish giggles, the zillion card and notes received proclaiming undying love. The jeans which trekked with me through the new meadows of emotions and the renovated world, which shielded me from the first atrocities the world throws. I better call it the Today Tomorrow pair. The one that kindled the thought to see beyond....

As I fold them back into their napthalene protected shelves of the almirah, the images swirl around me. They dance in gay abandon. They donot have to struggle through another day. They are forever young. 7 to 17 they will remain. They are the schizophrenic illusions which transfer me into the world of carelessness, of dirt and grime, of severe caning and tear stained cheeks, of heart breaks and gregarious flirting, of hemlines rising, of candyfloss still attracting longing eyes.

I still wear denim...just the shades have been altered....

U-Special

Am about to retake a step towards the place I first stepped into when I came to Delhi...University of Delhi..The haloed institution of be it learning, unadulterated fun, countles (yet most of the time genuine) protest marches, college fests, umpteen visits to Kamla Nagar market or pure vellapan!...u say it, u see it, u get it! And after more that two years I plan to do a U-turn and go to re-enter the haven and all thats fun and serious at the same time.

All sounds great now. But there is a lingering apprehension deep down. What would it be like returning to the same place?...Would I successfully adapt back to a student's life after a lapse of so much time/ And many more....Also the fact that I will be leaving my job...The assured domain of work, money etc...There is a certain fear of going dependent on parents again...not that thats blasphemous, yet independence tastes sweet and the fear of losing even a bit can be nervewrecking.

Tickling anticipation however dispels the doubts.I await the first day of my rewound student life with the enthusiasm of a freshman, only with a pinch of salt!

Alas!!!

The dog-earred wishes now rest in peace between pages 

That might never again meet a finger 

They sigh in the silence of words 

Just to hope a redemption of all that made tears and smiles

Life's got too many cross roads

There's this constant rush to make choices or grab the best possible opportunity.And i find myself neck deep in this notorious game of multiple choices.Is it always about this way or that? I think no.Perhaps even more deeprooted is the thought now when i gotto take a decision whether to keep chasing news or return to books.The world seems to crumble under the 'weighty issues' of finance or career choice and higher qualifcation.When the going gets real tough a prayer just escapes the lips-can at times the way out just rain on me just like the first monsoon showers in a desert?But after hours of a grand fight with self and mind-(god surely has a sense of humour!) I manage to gather myself and dust the incongruity of the situation and limpingly reach for the only walking stick i was given...absolute faith in faith! sure one day i wont be thrown unawares into the warfield of faceless decisons which have the power to seize a life and throw it in the dungeons of mean restricted materalistic foolery...for now just hunting the doorway