Patience

Patience means holding back your inclination to the seven emotions: hate, adoration, joy, anxiety, anger, grief and fear. If you don't give way to the seven, you are patient, then you will soon understand all manner of things and be in harmony with Eternity.

-- Yoshi Toranaga - noh - Minowara

"Shogun" by James Clavell

The pleasures of public libraries

One of the things I like most about Singapore is the chain of public libraries here.
I read books voraciously. In Bangalore, to satisfy my appetite for books I used to buy books every other weekend (What a pleasure that used to be!!!). Of course it was big drag on the monthly budget.

Here I find that that "fixed cost" can be taken care of rather simply by becoming a member of the National Library Board. Now suddenly I have three floors of books to choose from (apart from a floor of DVDs, VCDs and Video Cassettes). The first time I entered one of their branches close to my office, I felt like I was entering Alladin's Cave.

I guess I will have a lot of fun now especially with their History section.

There is only one pity though. I am only borrowing the books, not buying them for keeps. I wrote about books becoming friends in an earlier post. I will have to say bye bye to my new found friends only after three weeks of getting to know them....

No subject

When in silks you came and dazzled
Me with the beauty of your Spring,
You brought a flower to bloom -
Love within my being.

You lived with me, breath of my breath,
Being in my being, nor left my side;
But now the wheel of Time has turned
And you are gone - no joys abide.

You pressed your lips upon my lips,
Your heart upon my beating heart,
And I have no wish to fall in love again,
For they who sold Love's remedy
Have shut shop, and I seek in vain.

My life now gives no ray of light,
I bring no solace to heart or eye;
Out of dust to dust again,
Of no use to anyone am I.

Delhi was once a paradise,
Where Love held sway and reigned;
But its charm lies ravished now
And only ruins remain.

No tears were shed when shroudless they
Were laid in common graves;
No prayers were read for the noble dead,
Unmarked remain their graves.

The heart distressed, the wounded flesh,
The mind ablaze, the rising sigh;
The drop of blood, the broken heart,
Tears on the lashes of the eye.

But things cannot remain, O Zafar,
Thus for who can tell?
Through God's great mercy and the Prophet
All may yet be well

Thus wrote Bahadur Shah Zafar shortly before his transportation to Rangoon after the fall of Delhi in the 1857 mutiny. One of my colleagues used to exhort me to start appreciating poetry. I never listened to him. Now when I read such lines and something stirs in me, I remember him.

I have just begun reading "The Last Mughal" by William Dalrymple.

Its a pity that an Englishman needs to come to India, learn our language, unearth a treasure of previously un-researched work lying in the National Archives bang in the centre of Lutyens' Delhi and write a book which sets the record straight (atleast I hope so) about something that happened in India in 1857 which is so much a part of our national fabric.

Even today historians bicker about whether it was a general rebellion, a sepoy mutiny or the "First War of Indian Independence".

Apparently all of the arguments in that debate are based on the material provided by the Britishers while thousand of Urdu documents lay rotting in the vaults in Delhi and no one bothered to look!!!!

Either ways, I still cannot forget this poem as I turn off my light tonight to go to sleep.
Good night!

Hello Again...

Hi,
This is being blogged from my brand new laptop. I have had a craze for Apple Computers for a long time now and suddenly I am the proud owner of one.
I just bought this macbook. Its looking nice and whatever I have come to know of it delights me. Still there are a few errant issues that I am facing (you know.... how the hell do I install and run software... no google talk... no "My Computer"...no "Start Button"). But these are all normal traumatic events that one faces after having used a PC for a long time.

This is my first post from Singapore. While leaving Bangalore I had promised everyone that I'd keep them all up-to-date with frequent blogging. Looks like that is not happening. Oh well.... best laid plans....

A few things I noticed here:
1. This is an extremely clean city. We Indians who have a healthy disregard for public hygiene are in for a shock because everything here sparkles. You try to change that and you get a fine. Not that I have seen anyone being fined here but even the spectre of paying an amount I would have to toil more than a month to raise sends shivers down my spine and the waste paper bag back into my pocket
2. Metros run, buses are not congested. Their idea of rush-hour crowding does not include the concept of a free body massage by other passengers jostling and pushing into you.
3. Roads and city layout remind me very strongly of what I saw in USA or Canada. I guess they re-used the same designs or probably even the engineers and planners.
4. Food..... sigh!!!! Its all Chinese and the Chinese have a slightly irritating habit of eating absolutely anything irrespective of whether it is alive or dead, has vertebrae or not or has sex or not. They actually pride themselves on being able to eat anything. "I have eaten weirder things than you" is a common boast. One Chinese colleague assured me that he had eaten brains of a "live" monkey with a spoon. I guess that's an entirely new dimension of the phrase "Bheja Khana" in Hindi.

I guess if I really get down to it, I will write a book about the culture shock that I am experiencing but that will have to wait.

Do I miss India? Absolutely! But I do it more because of the people than because of the food or anything like that. So many people who were just an STD call away are further now. I miss Purple Haze, I miss my gang in Bangalore and I miss the prospect of catching a train and landing up home. But beyond all that, I like it in here. The work I am doing is good and interesting. And I have enough money to buy a laptop like this without worrying over-much about what it would do to my yearly budget.

If only the women start paying a bit more attention to this lonely and homesick geek!!!!

Snooping around

Well I would call it that...
I have just disabled the profile visitors thingy on my orkut profile...

For lay-men, it implies that anyone can now look at my profile without me getting to know who. The better part is that I can also go around looking at the profiles of all the girls I have crushes on without them getting to know that I have been up to some mischief. (Is that a good thing????)

I turned it off just for kicks with every intention of turning it back on again sometime. But now, I don't want to. Its fine the way it is.

Today was hectic. All sorts of stuff got carted away from my place. My TV, refrigerator, "my" DVD player, all my books and my rags.

Its a strange feeling.....

Oh well!!! Man proposes and if God does not dispose, the girl's Dad opposes.....

I have grown up in life!!!!

Helloz!!!!
The subject line is because my Dad offered to share his drink of "100 Pipers" with me!!!! I had waited an age for that momentous event to happen....

Anyway, I am busy in wrapping up things here in Bangalore before I go home to unfrazzle my frazzled nerves for a fortnight. Then I take a flight and land up in Singapore.
Dad came here on a whirlwind trip to take a look at how his youngest progeny was getting along. He took a peek at my apartment, was suitably appreciative, had assorted edibles for lunch and dinner, drank cups of tea which I made and offered to share his drink with me.

It was nice on my last day at work. Lots of people came and shook my hand and wished me luck.

I did not know I had so many friends there. I will miss you guys!

No subject

I'm not a perfect person. there are many things i wish i didnt do
But i continue learning. i never meant to do those things to you.
And so i have to say before i go, that i just want you to know

I've found a reason for me, to change who i used to be
A reason to start over new, and the reason is you

I'm sorry that i hurt you, its something i must live with everyday
And all the pain i put you through, i wish that i could take it all away
And be the one who catches all your tears, thats why i need you to hear

I'm not a perfect person, i never meant to do those things to you
And so i have to say before i go that i just want you to know

I've found a reason for me, to change who i used to be
A reason to start over new, and the reason is you
I've found a reason to show a side of me you didnt know
A reason for all that i do, and the reason is you



Don't worry I just flicked the lyrics from Hoobastank. . . . . . . They are nice!

Patience

A few days ago, there was a nice article in The Hindu about writing a novel.
This gentleman called Amitav Kumar has just published a book and wrote an article about what the writing was like.
It was long but interesting. The major idea I took away from it was that it requires a great amount of patience. A full evening can be spent in writing out a character sketch and you still might not be done. From where I come (where every task has to be accounted for in hours) this sounded like the height of inefficiency. But then I realized that I was missing the point.
Writing a book is not about efficiency. Its about creating a work of art. That requires time.
Since then I have started thinking that I find the idea of going through that labourious process rather interesting. Character sketches, plots, similes, metaphors, first drafts, second drafts, third drafts...... If not anything else, this process might just end up teaching me patience.
Talking about patience, I just happened to watch a chinese tea-ceremony on television. Do watch it and you would feel the tea-bag, hot water, sugar and milk powder affair is a blasphemous act.....

I should go home...

On books and music

This other day I got this strange idea.
Music (cassettes or CDs) is like a mistress. You love her, you cannot live without her. She consumes you but six months later you get bored and you move on.
In this case to another album or another band. You keep the music for memory's sake but once the magic has worn off, well its worn off.
Books on the other hand are like friends. You get to know them. You are wary at first about what you are getting into. But as you get to know them better, your friendship grows. You go through them (the books I mean) but you never finish them. You always keep comnig back to them for solace, advice or just for a few laughs.

Talking about friends, a bunch of them have been a great help lately. Very self-lessly one chap has gone out of his way to help me in something important. Even though we knew each other only vaguely when we were in the same milieu. God bless my friends!

I miss Delhi and home.....

A new bookshop in Bangalore

No no! Its been around for ages. Its just that I ran into it (or rather insides it) a few weeks ago and now I am a fan!
Its called The Bookworm. It specializes in second-hand books and sells them at dirt cheap prices.
The books don't look second-hand. The book seller only insists they are. I don't have a problem with that. I get them at a third of the price I would normally pay for them.
Especially now since these days I seem to be perennially out of cash.

Snatch

Yesterday I watched Snatch for the fifth time and could not stop myself from falling off the chair laughing.
My God! Its so funny!
I now HAVE to get hold of Guy Ritchie's other movie..."Lock stock and two smoking barrels".

Ho Hum....

This is the toughest thing about writing a blog. Figuring out its title.
So Ho Hum...

I have not posted in a long while (as if anyone is waiting with bated breath..) because one fine morning, I got up, yawned, rubbed my eyes, padded over to my study and turned the computer on. My nostrils were refreshed by a smell of burning plastic. Turns out that the SMPS of my computer decided to throw the towel in. One DAEWOO chip in it is all black.
Looks like getting another SMPS is going to be much more painless than hunting for that elusive chip. Now since my proactiveness in household matters is legendary, the box in my study has been lying as a box for the last month or so.
Meanwhile I have had fun. Went to Kerala (beautiful place...will write about it sometime when I decide to put all my travelogues online...), went to Delhi for a whirlwind trip (My! How thin have you become ....exclaimed Mummy....and then she promptly let a barber loose on my hair which had just decided to form itself into a pony-tail-like shrub) and had an even more whirlwind trip to Hyderabad.
Also, I got roomies to relieve my loneliness.....a whole hive of bees. I have been at my wits' end as to how to regain my loneliness back!

This is rather funny. For a fortnight before that fateful morning, I had been flitting all around India and Bangalore. The only thing I did at home was catch a nap before hopping off elsewhere. So I get this morning free. I wake up, stretch myself, pick up a book (Icon..Steve Jobs' biography) and walk over to my study balcony. I hunch over the railing and start reading. A bee whizzes by my face angrily, I recoil only to find a HUGE hive not six inches from where my head had been.... That balcony has been an out-of-bounds area since then. If you are reading this and are a well-wisher, just pray that I can get someone who will break that hive and let me loose on that balcony again.....

Ciao

orkut.....

Just checked into orkut. The daily fortune told me that I will inherit a lot of money.
Please God, I don't want to inherit a lot of money. It implies that someone is going to die......
Been loafing around orkut. There is this poor girl in M.S. Ramaiah College who has an orkut profile showing nude pictures as well as a community called "....... lovers". The "...." was for her name which I would not like to divuge. You get into the community and there are discussions about how much she charged for various favours.
This is plain harassment!!!! Someone should put a stop to this!
Besides there are these tremendous bores.
You find one profile with a decent looking photo. You check out her profile and you find dozens of frustrated souls asking her to be their "fren"
God!!! Guys get a life! There are better ways of finding a girl.
But girls are no exception to this. A friend of mine has a nice profile and every once in a while he has to turn down friend requests from girls he does not know. It gets rather tiresome. You ask them who they are and they of course don't reply. This poor guy once put his cell number on line. This girl adds him. He wonders about it but accepts. A scrapping game begins. Finally one fine evening when he was really busy, our lady calls and pains him repeatedly. The poor fellow had no clue what hit him when he heard lines like "I am coming over to Bangalore. Don't disappoint me, I thought we had something going." Since he had his parents' phone number also online, he promptly removed all phone numbers from his profile and now only accepts friend requests from people he knows.........
God! This is harassment!
If anyone is reading this....please leave orkut clean and fun!

By the way...

This blog started out as a travelogue. The initial intention was to keep it that way. Since I keep making a lot of trips, I decided it would be a nice way for me to record all my trips and keep them for posterity (Man!!! Do I use big words..)
I have been sadly lacking in that respect. After the Bandipore trip, I took a lot of trips which I have not recorded..... Sakleshpur, Pondicherry, Savanadurga, Coorg.
Now Hetul has been pestering me to put down atleast the Coorg trip. It was one of the most fun trips I have had......
If anyone has been reading these idle thoughts of an idle fellow, please be patient. The Coorg trip deserves a decent travelogue and will get it in good time....

On the therapeutic effects of heavy metal....

Rock has always been a part of me. Starting from Bryan Adams (off a cassette which my bro bought and I stole..) to Rammstein, ACDC, Green Day that I listen to these days.
Many people have been responsible for giving this gift to me. My brother, Brijendar, Madhu (school-time buddies), Chiro, Sid, Shiraj, Arnab Chaks....etc...
These days when I sit and mope in front of my PC and look at the list of people who have checked out my profile recently (all of them entirely male...unfortunately), I just turn on ACDC and lose myself in the sounds of the guitar.
It would be a mistake to call ACDC melodious....blasphemy even. All I can say is that it resonates with whatever I have inside me. Now elementary physics tells you that resonance leads to increase in the energy levels of the resonating system. The same thing happens to me.
After a tiring day at work, I need half an hour's rock therapy to get me going for a nice post dinner session at home.
Rock rocks!!!!

This and that...

Mum's here.
She came in, took one look at my house and uttered these fateful words, " Kanan, you need a woman".
I was calmly refreshing myself with a big swallow of water. I promptly coughed.
I need not have done that. She only meant a house-maid.
Well, let me state right at the outset that having a "woman" will do me a lot of good. Particularly the live-in kind, but the house-maid she got me has already done me a lot of good in other respects. The house looks spick and span and well organized.
She even got a complete bar-service. My friends (Hetul and Tarun) were thunderstruck when they opened the package. So was I, but to a lesser extent.
God! Its nice to have such cool parents.

Lonely lonely nights...

Please don't jump to the conclusion that I used to have not-so-lonesome nights earlier....Sorry! Life is too unromantic for me.
But yes, I have shifted into my apartment and its lonely.
Its nice otherwise. Nice locality, place all to myself. I have a bedroom and a study. The study has a broadband connection and LOTS of books. But things are all in a mess right now (And I hate messes.....both at work and at home). There is no maid to clean up and do the laundry so I have to do it myself. (which I don't do....)
What I miss the most is the laugh riot that we used to have in our apartment when everyone returned from work...Saraogi, Soni, Hetul, Gunjan, Surya, Tapan...
Now they have all gone their separate ways.... (Hetul is very much around and lives right above my apartment but we hardly get to talk after his status change)
Hmm hmm...I guess I'll blog a lot more now.

Before Mao....

My weekly posts are getting quite depressing these days...
There is a pattern to them. They all happen on Sunday night. That I guess, explains everything.

Just finished reading "Before Mao" by this guy called Patrick Lescot.

It details the history of this guy called Li Lisan. He was one of the architects of the Chinese revolution and this book details his travails in China, Russia and France.
He marries this ravishing Russian girl, has kids by her, is pilloried by the Russians and is kept in "exile" in Russia while Mao goes on with his revolution. He is thrown in the Lubyanka and the Lefortovo. Only when Mao wins, is he freed and allowed to go to China. That too, only when the Chinese government asks for his release. He comes to Beijing and is made the Minister of Labour.
After a few years, when things finally start going ok, Mao thinks up his Great Leap Forward. There is a famine because Mao tries to do in two years what other countries took a century to do. Li falls out with him and is stripped of his powers.

Then the Cultural revolution happened.

Mao needs another revolution to liven up his nights. The results is thousands , nay millions of people killed, a lot of China's cultural heritage destroyed.

And seventy year old Li was pilloried publicly, his house was ransacked and his family was imprisoned in solitary confinement. I went through the gory details for two pages, before I skipped it all and went straight to the epilogue.
Li died of a broken heart caused by his public humiliation and because of his world crashing down around him. His Russian wife Lisa was kept in solitary confinement for eight years. His daughters went through it for two years and then were sent to plant rice.

Finally when Deng Xiaoping came to power, he released them all and overturned all the verdicts. Li Lisan was no longer a revisionist, semi-Trotskyist, reactionary, bourgeoisie spy. But he definitely was dead........


This book depressed me so much that I badly needed a shock therapy. This was duly administered by taking a four kilometer long walk with Green Day blaring in my ears.
As I have related in my previous posts, heavy rock music never fails to buck me up.

Billi Joe...you are God's gift.....to me!!!!

Punnu....

Punnu came home today.
We both lived together in Patel hall. Technically he is my senior but really he is as great a friend as a batchmate (or maybe better??? Who the heck cares anyway...).
We both have seen the best and the worst of life....or probably he has seen worse. But we saw it together. We shared the joys of getting the sports G.C. We grieved together when our hall came under a cloud with the authorities. (Though it was more personal for him than for me). One fine evening, we (me, Punnu and Madhup) climbed the "Patel ka L*&%d" together and held the railing to stop ourselves from getting blown away by the wind.
He graduated six months before I did. There after we sort of lost touch. Next I heard that he had got a nice job. We met in Bangy a year ago and had a rather impersonal "dinner with friends".
Last weekend Saraogi came and we called him. Then I heard that he is freelancing and is in and out of Bangalore though he stays in Mumbai.

This weekend he came home.

Its really nice to have a chat with a dear friend.
To laugh over past trifles (How after a tiring day in the illu, he spent the better part of the night bursting crackers outside my door in the hope that I would wake up and kick his ass.....I was too zonked out by consecutive night-outs to care...).
To grieve over the GPLs we got.
To swap stories about mutual friends (Who married whom).
To seethe over the injustice done to each....

He could'nt, of course, help swiping one of my photo albums (In which he is cavorting around half-naked. And there is a Sardar somewhere admiring his paunch). He promises that he will return it but I have scant hopes....


Its nice to know friends like that.

Hetul's got engaged

Hetul is one of my roomies. He is cheerful, chubby and has a ready laugh. Crack a useless joke and he will laugh. Crack something and he'll laugh. When you are down, he is the best person to buck you up. He and I are room-mates and are going to be neighbours for a decently long period of time.
This weekend, he disappeared on a whirlwind visit to Kanpur and he returned with a ring on his finger. After the customary bumps and heart-to-heart sessions (What did she say? What's her younger sister like?...) reality hit me.
This is an attack on home ground. The "belan-brigade" has signalled the beginning of the onslaught. We are all hugely in the marriage market and one by one each of us is going to be picked off. All of us are dreading the visit home now. Who knows who's turn is next!!!
I am BLISSFULLY happy in my single life. Don't want to change anything. But if all my friends ... people who have given me advice and encouragement when girl after girl ditched me.... If they are going to start disappearing, I don't know what I am going to do.
Should I get a dog? Cultivate a newhobby? Find a support group?
I don't want this life to end. Friday nights at Purple Haze, Saturday nights at 12th Main CCD, Sundays with a nice book and weeknights with my walkman and the walk on outer ring road.....
Why can't we all stay this way all the time????
(The writer got too overwhelmed after this continue writing. He promptly went in search of dinner)