Old Chest

The light bounces off an old chest in the corner,

A thick film of dust adorns it, sparkling in the sun,

Outlines of the once beautiful craving dot the top,

And all but one of the handles remains on the side.

Years of neglect has turned this treasure trove so,

But today this would reveal its contents,

As this hand shall dust off the years from this chest.

The cloth quickly turns brown from white,

Nothing that a flick of the hand can’t cure,

Slowly but steadily the grime dirt starts to come off,

Thus showing the intricate cuts beneath.

Inside it are the remains of the world that was.

Little pieces of history that have a story to tell.

The smell of once crisp pages overpowers me,

Rendering me oblivious to the world that surrounds this body.

I can sense the hands that once flowed over these pages,

Firm yet gentle, determined yet unsure,

The ink has faded but still the story lingers,

Of lost dreams, and the unknown future,

Of deep thoughts, and deeper feelings.

As I read them, I get to know why they were hidden away,

Locked away from the world in the corner,

The truth is not for me to uncover,

Digging up old skeletons would lead only to more pain,

So, I put them back, for someone else to make the decision.

चाल चल ऐसी कि देखे जमाना

राह पर पत्थरों से होगा परिचय,
कांटे के गुलदस्ते से होगा सम्मान,
पर जीवन को कोस कर,
वक्त ज़ाया मत कर, ऐ दोस्त,
चाल चल ऐसी कि देखे जमाना।

हर मोड़ पर छूटेगा किसी का हाथ,
पल-पल बदलेगी राह की रेखा।
पर जीवन को कोस कर,
वक्त ज़ाया मत कर, ऐ दोस्त,
चाल चल ऐसी कि देखे जमाना।

कभी सूरज डूब जाएगा, अंधेरा छायेगा,
बादल गरज कर खून के आँसू बहायेगा।
पर जीवन को कोस कर,
वक्त ज़ाया मत कर, ऐ दोस्त,
चाल चल ऐसी कि देखे जमाना।

हर कदम पर मुरझाएंगे ये फूल,
पेड़ों के पते बन जाएंगे पैरो की धूल।
पर जीवन को कोस कर,
वक्त ज़ाया मत कर, ऐ दोस्त,
चाल चल ऐसी कि देखे जमाना।

Don't Close Your Eyes

Don't close your eyes,
Because you would miss it,
The moment you always dreamt of,
Would come to pass today.
Don't close your eyes,
The skies are overcast,
The sun is in position,
The light is just right,
Don't close your eyes.
Trust me, you would be surprised.

Flower by the Road

I was walking on a road that day,
As far as the eye could see there was flatness,
Trees were hard to spot, here and there stood one alone,
Not green anymore, blackened by the smoke of the cars that passed.

I was troubled and sad, with the road mirroring my feeling
Singing songs of lament for missed opportunities,
Missed chances, and missed deadlines.
My voice, tinged with sorrow, flowed like water in the plains.

I heard a little cry, indistinguishable words,
A shrill voice, like that of a child in pain,
I stopped alarmed, looking around for the source,
Again the cry went up, chilling my blood cold, making it curl.

Again, I looked around but saw no one,
Third time the voice cried, the words making sense now.
"Look down, I'm here." The voice seemed to say.
So I did, only to see a small lily, that sprang in this forsaken place.

I knelt down beside it, looking in wonder,
At this talking flower, saying things,
The businessman wrestling with the human inside,
Should I take it home, or listen to its tale of woe?

Feeling won over the reason,
"What is little one?", asked I.
"Little water, O Traveler! Just some water."
I poured some water on it, the little withered flower.

"Sometimes I wish I was never born",
Said the little flower sadly, looking at me.
I stared blankly at the flower,
At a loss for words at this talking flower, full of remorse.

"Why would you say that?" said I.
" Nobody sees truly sees me,
Nobody stops and stares,
You do so, since I called you."

Ashamedly, I looked at the passing cars,
Full of people on their 'important' jobs,
Without caring for the beautiful things in the world,
Nor for the little flower by the road.

"My life is but short. And not for long shall I remain,
This beauty lasts only for a few days,
I would soon shrivel up and die,
And be nothing but a dead flower by the dead road.

This is how you make me feel
Singing songs of sorrow, and self pity,
Your uselessness in the world,
The lost meaning in your life. "

"S o I do, little one, for the world is cruel.
The world does not see me try,
The clock runs as fast it can, pays no heed,
To the needs of the people like me."

"Let me tell you something, Traveler.
I live for a little time, with my beauty of few days,
I also did curse Him above for giving me so little,
But He gave me a reason to live.

It's the light in your eyes that makes my day,
It's the open eyes of a child that looks in wonder,
At my beauty, useless as it is to me,
And runs away, refreshed for the day.

Live so, not for yourself,
But for others, to see you and be heartened,
Do things that make you happy,
Because it makes the one near you happy.

That's the way to a full life."
With this the flower gasped and died.
And I started again on my way,
A different man, taught by the dead flower by the dead road.

Study

Even as my head threatens to fall off, I try flipping through the book in a vain attempt to find something in plain English, something that doesn’t contain any jargon. The futile search yields nothing, just the fact that if the author had been a nanny, he would have been figured in the top ten in the world. Sitting on the chair and table make no difference, I fall asleep all the same. But then suddenly a Thought breaks ranks, making me wake up with a start. All the Thought had to say, exam is tomorrow. Three words that would make even the most seasoned of army generals shy away. Shy away as in run away. I look around the room to see my roommates in a similar spot. Everyone is flipping through their books like it’s a novel they’ll like to buy in a bookshop, only to adorn them at home, trying to show their visitors that they too are intelligent. With a sigh I turn back to the task at hand. The size of the pages left to read simply over dwarfs the pages done. What baffles me the most is that I actually have an interest in the subject, and at any other time, such as before another exam, or in a time of boredom, would have picked up the book for a reading. But today, when I have to absolutely complete the prescribed text, my mind stands firm. No amount of cajoling, bribing, threatening can make it grasp even the simplest of the lines. And now, a mist seems to form in the front of my eyes. I get up in order to visit the washroom, in order to wash this wretched fog off, but it seems I’m dragging my dead feet over Mt. Everest. As I look in the mirror, I see a haggard, worn down face that a hardworking breadwinner of a family would have been proud of after a good days work. But unfortunately for this worker, the day’s work is not enough. Muttering curses to the authors of the books, I make my way to my room, only to find one wicket down and the other two, with the perseverance that would have put Mr. Dravid to shame, stick to their wickets. Taking care to disturb the others, I sit down, bellowing forth the choicest of the words for no one in particular. Pretty soon, my reserve of the bad words run out and I retire to my morbid thoughts of tomorrow. Then a lighting strikings! The Course! With a flourish, I take out the laptop and look up the course. You ever been in a situation in which you believe it could not become any worse when in fact you were only at the middle? I said I had morbid thoughts earlier. Well I clearly overreacted. What I am having right now are Morbid Thoughts. What I had previously are well good in front of this. I decide to do what presents as the most logically course of action right now. Sleep.

Eternal Battle

I take a walk on the beach, leaving footprints in the sand,

That make a line that stretches as far as the eye can see.

They follow not a straight path, rather a zigzag one, one that bypasses obstacles.

Tired of the friction of the sand under my feet, I sit, looking out to the sea.


The waves fascinate me, rolling away, white frothy foam, making strange shapes.

Some like a herd of wild buffaloes, some like white riders on the helm charging,

Knights with long white spears, and white shields, blinding as they come.

I look up in the sky, to see a riot of clouds, coming together to form strange shapes.

Like grayish castles, up and beyond my reach.



The scene soon melts into one, the sky and the sea,

the castle up away, a targeted place, attacked by the riders on the wave.

But alas for the riders they cannot reach, the castle up in the air, grayish and black,

Stretching up in as far as the eyes can see, far beyond the reach they seem.


A salty taste hits my lips, looking up I see the damsels in the castle,

Locked up by cruel masters, weep, for their knights in shining armor,

If they died they would be free, free like the wind,

But now instead they weep, casting huge drops, on the earth below,

Maybe perhaps in a bid to enhearten the riders.


And lo behold! The riders seem to move faster, higher up,

With each try better than the last.

Pretty soon, the masters of the castles are furious,

Cracking their whips and shouting aloud, and the scene descends into a chaos.


The damsels weep, the knights ride harder, and the masters rage.

The battle rages on, on and on.


I, the observer, watch, drenched in tears of the damsels in the high towers.

I look back, to see the footprints being washed away the path I took is now unseen.

The canvas I now paint on is now clear, a clean slate to start again with.


I get up from the battle field, an eternal on at that.

The battle rages unabated years on end and will do so forever,

But they wipe the slates clean for people like me.

Battle Ready

“Fear not, O Friend, I’ll battle this evil with ye”, said I as I sat down with him under the shade of a tree. He produced a bottle of some strange potion, and took a swing from it. I had been on an errand that would have to wait, when I had encountered a comrade of old, along the road, whose resigned look made me weep for the ways of this world. “Tell me more about this evil sorcerer you spake about.” “Oh! He is a master of words, he shall ask you riddles of deceit and trap you in his unbreakable spell. His ways are such he can deceive even the King!”, he said. “But then again why you go to battle him, single handedly when you yourself say that he can deceive even the King himself?” “O Sir Knight, it is not on my own that I go. This sorcerer has called upon me, bidding me to come or he shall make me repent for my mistakes.” “You speak of the messenger that came to your castle with a parchment of unknown origin?” , I asked. “You also have received the summons, as I did?” “So it seems Old Friend, but alas to my dismay I had other important matters at hand to deal with, I could battle this one before. If only I had, you would’ve had to see this day. Today I shall set the wrongs I did before.” I replied, looking at the trees that seemed to hold the sky in place. Throwing away the bottle, my old friend and comrade, looked remorsefully at the sky, and said, “You think lightly of the battle at hand, don’t you?” “Isn’t he just a master of words? I fear no one in the battle of swords and I believe I can easily battle him in wits.” “Well Sir Knight you could, but then again you remember the Knight who the last Championship Bout at the Capital? Well, believe or not the champion himself was trapped as a fly in the spider’s web.” “You words do in fact bring a certain amount of blackness to the entire business at hand, but you don’t dissuade me from the quest I have undertaken to aid you, no matter what you say.” “Well, If you have read the 13th and 14th chapter thoroughly then you have no problem with this viva voce.” said he, as my gears of war was transformed back into with a bag full of books and the armor back to jeans. With a sigh I said, “Which I have not, even this assignment is missing a few questions. I just hope he won’t notice. Just let us get it over with.” Dragging our unresponsive feet, we made our way into the cabin of the professor.

Beach

Alone I stand on the shore, the water seemed to stretch,
Forever and ever on the horizon, one thing fascinates me,
Why is that waves gain momentum near the shore,
When all the sea is calm for all to see in the endless scene?
Foam forms at behest of sand, slashing and splashing at regular intervals,
Threatening to take the land beneath, your feet, sand shifted away,
Only leaving you small islands, to perch upon. A foam so formed covers,
The intersection between land and sea, thereby making boundaries vanish,
I walk in water trying to decipher, thus water end?
Or when, does this beach and both the sides?
I stand and watch sand castles, being built and watch them fall,
Battered by the relentless water on their walls, foundations shaken violently.
I stand and watch the birds, one time here, one time there,
Flying as they please, no regards for time nor for the boundaries humans make.
I stand and watch the shells emerge from their hiding place,
Hurting the feet as they come beneath, but pleasing the eye as they come in hand,
I stand and watch the sun plays a riot of colors, expanding its light into seven pieces,
Each splitting to give a feast for the mind, ever so more as the water flows.
I start walking again with the sandals in my hand wet, the bottle in hand empty,
I feel a void in my hand, something that I can’t make head or tail of,
Is it the troubles I faced, over the years weathering each as a storm?
Is it for the sorrows I feel, for something lost forever?
And lo behold! A wonderful scene emerges yonder,
I don’t know at that instant, a trick of light I perceive,
I saw a scene that made me happy though nothing much more than the beach,
Lit up like the Paradise itself, a scene worthy of Him.

Dream

When I woke up this morning, my eyes were moist,
Though for a moment the reason eluded me,
But then it hit me, it had been you,
Crying in the dream.

I had held you close to me,
So close that your breath became mine,
So close that a salty taste lingered upon my lips,
There as you laid in my arms, and cried.

I try hard now to remember the details,
But to my dismay, just the tears are clear as day,
Everything else seems so distant,
Hidden, it seems, in the folds of my brain.

People would say, it was just a dream,
But how could I have felt your weight,
On my shoulders, and the wetness of your eyes?
So much so, that I was moved to tears?

I now just rejoice the fact that I held you,
And gave you something to lean on.
Even if I had seen your face, what could I do?
Console you for what you felt in the sub-conscious realm?

I Wait...

As the sun decides that enough is enough,

And starts his journey back home,

I wait, though I know not what for.

Do I wait for the sky to turn black,

And bathe the earth, making it clean?

Or do I sit here idle, waiting,

For the trees to shed the remains of their clothes?

Or do I wait for the earth to be shrouded,

In as white a garment as the color of wisps of cloud,

On a bright and sunny day?

Or do I wait for the sun to blaze in all its glory,

Scorch the earth as if to bake it?

Or do I wait for the Nature to show that everything,

Everything that we have lost over the year,

Can in fact come back?

That the world again shall be green?

That the chirping of birds would still be heard?

That all is not lost but just in hiding till the worst is over?

I wait, though I know not what for.

What does it take to 'know' a language?

What does it take to know a language? Okay, I’m talking about the computer languages, commanding languages that the little resistors and the capacitors in your computer understand, making them work in coordination to give you what you see on your PC. There are machine level languages that interact directly with the hardware, the languages that consist of 0’s and 1’s, that is HIGH or a LOW signal to the electrical instrument (they don’t understand anything else). Then in the hierarchy follows the low level languages that go a step further and give you mnemonics in place of the binary numbers, which are followed by the middle level language that allow you to type in a seemingly English-like syntax, and finally the high level language that have infect full English like syntax and sometimes also have graphical interfaces to help you make the one program you will be ultimately remembered for. In this level wise distribution, there are tools that help you to convert from one level to the level below it, so that ultimately the languages is feed 0’s and 1’s, that it understands. There are infecting two kinds of these tools, interpreters and compilers, the basic difference lying in the fact how the process the program to be converted, either line by line or as a whole.
Coming back to the point, I have come across many people who say ‘I know 5-6 languages’ and then they start to recite the names by rot. C++ and Java rule the roost, with PHP, C#, VB.Net following suit. I have also come across a section of people who say ‘Arre yaar, I HAVE to learn 5-6 languages. Please suggest.’ Every time, the first thing that comes to my mind is that what the hell does these people mean by learn, in both context. That is the meaning I’ll strive to find below.

I had C++ in my 11th and 12th, nothing strange about it. We studied the basics the first year around, and then jumped to some more complex things in the next year. What basics did we learn in the first year? The OO Concepts, the basic syntax and all those building blocks. Then it was the turn of things that were build on those blocks, classes and linked lists. Nothing special, just that we learned everything at a slow pace, digesting it and moving on to the next concept only when it was fully understood. Then college happened. In the first term, others were face with the task of learning what I had learned in little over 2 years, in a meager 3 months. Naturally, I excelled in the subject, as you kind of do when you have studied the same thing for over 2 years just before the start of the college. Hell, the board exams were held just 4 months back! With everything fresh in my mind, I was very comfortable with the proceedings. But then people would come to me and say, ‘Arre yaar, you know C++. It’s not hard for you, is it?’ I was stumped. I had never in my whole life boasted of the fact that I knew C++, because I don’t. The only people who can make this tall claim and get away with it are the developers who have worked with it for so long that they can speak it like their mother tongue. I have not ever made a directx program in my life, the kind that you see on your screens now. The whole Windows OS, Linux etc have been built on the same language, or its variations, with the user interface of just a line. C++ is always throwing up surprises for me, like the other day I learnt about the function that allows you direct contact with the processor. Therefore I cannot say that I know C++, rather I know a little about C++, enough to keep me floated. Although, I can safely say I know about the concepts, like abstraction, data-hiding, etc. Then again the ugly monster gears up his head. Do I know the difference between functional abstraction and the syntactical one? A few days before, if you had asked me the same question I would be lost for words. The level of knowledge I have is rudimentary, just so I can make myself merry by making a simple linked list program, a simple emulation of a queue. Why just C++ then? Over the terms, I have been exposed to a variety of languages, ranging from PHP to SQL, from HTML to C#.NET. But other than making simple programs in them, I am unable to use them to their full potential.
This again brings us back to square one. How do you ‘know’ a language? Do you know each and every pins and bolts in the languages, or you are aware of the specific information pertaining to you area of interest? Another question is begging to be heard. How much time does it take to learn the language? I recently read an article that admonished the concept of books like ‘Learn Java in 24 hours’ and others, showing in clarity the reason why the very concept of learning something that took over 3 years to make is not as simple as it is made to be. What can you do in 3 days? Let me see, first day, learn the mind boggling concepts that make even the most experienced developers think twice while answering, second day, learn the syntax, the very syntax that I’m sure you would have forgotten by the next week, owing to the lack of years of practice that makes the remembrance of the syntax next to impossible, and by the third day you are an experienced programmer in that particular language, right? No, you are infect a very ill-informed, inexperienced programmer, akin to a novice who just has been given a super bike to ride with, with nothing more than a day in rules, a day in how to ride, and one last day given the roaring bike to ride with. What do you think would be the result? An accident to be sure. When? It depends. Could be just a minute after, or the next day, but the laws of physics are sure to take notice and work their inevitable somehow the other. The entire thing could be taken out of context. I never said the wannabe biker has to be coached for years on end and then only given the bike to ride. But you have to make the rider ride a smaller bike, a bike with smaller CC and then allowed to build over it, like I the way I was taught C++. But this method also has its flaws. Like, what if the person loses the zeal to advance to the next level? What if the person is happy where he is, rushing past the landscapes at 70kms/hr? What would you do then? Give him the bike forcefully, right? But its human tendency to resist something that is thrust upon by others. So you really can’t be sure of the outcome of such an experiment. I am one of those riders, the ones who don’t graduate even after spending 2 years on the seat in case of C++.

Like I mentioned earlier, I have also tried my hand at various other languages, I say tried my hands, since all I did was learn the way the language could be written, the concepts I carried over from C++ and then I used the various code snippets, made by those well versed in the language and played with them. This enabled me to make a full fledged site complete with intra messaging, a forum, a mail feature, etc, software that catalogued your movies, getting information from the net. However, the whole thing was not just cut and paste. The initial ground had to be laid by things that were made by the masters of the game and then could a new playa like me could ply the roads, and choose what I wanted. The whole exercise taught me something, it was, how the great minds worked. Take for example, the login script I used in the website I made. I just download the whole script from the net and used (it was free to use, provided the name of the programmer was left there), I learnt the way the commenting was to be done, how the structure of the whole script was constructed, inside out, the script interacting with the database at the end of the level and the one interacting with the user was at the top.

That’s the point. The more you are practicing and getting exposed to the things in the language, the more you ‘learn’ it. The article that I was talking about earlier, the one concerning the time required to learn a language, pegged the time required to a convenient ten years. The article writer wanted the programmer to get a feel of the very skeleton of the language, to study and make use of it until the programmer is very well versed in that particular language. But the article also begs to differ, it mentions the huge risk that the developer would take if he/she decided to put all the eggs in the same basket. The language would be obsolete or the company promoting it vanish.

Whatever be the case the argument lies still unanswered. The argument of ‘knowing’, who knows the answer to that? Okay let’s look it from the point of view of the spoken languages, like English or Hindi. Everyone ‘knows’ how to speak, read and write their mother tongue but is this ‘knowing ‘ enough to make the person write poems that move the heart or does it make the person wield the pen in such a way that the world stands up and takes notice? The idea or the message that the person wants to convey can be conveyed in any language because the person knows what is to be said, he feels it in his mind. The language is just a tool to let others know about the idea and make feel the same way you do about that particular thing. Maybe, someday, I would learn the exact meaning of what it means and so, I could say to the face of the person sitting opposite to me in a room with a table in between us and my resume in his hands, that yes I know n number of languages!

Messengers of God

The following is the poem I wrote for my parents on their 25th anniversary:

One day when the future seemed bleak,

And the southern skies were overcast,

I dragged my feet in the sand,

Begrudging what was to come,

And cursing what had taken place,

‘Oh God! Have you forgotten me?’

I cried, loud enough to stir the birds out of trees,

Thus lamenting, I walked on,

Then I saw you out on the beach waiting for me,

But I, ever the sad, waved you away,

And still drudged along my way,

Casting deep marks in the sand behind.

Once again I cried pointing upwards,

‘You have forsaken me!’

A cry stopped me from behind,

It was you that cried,

‘Son, wait for us. Let us help you!’

To which I foolishly replied,

‘It’s a matter between me and my God, you can’t do anything!’

And I walked ahead, a little faster it seemed,

Until I reached the end of the beach,

If indeed anything of such kind exists,

There I stood for a long time.

And then, at last walked into the water,

Mindful of what I had now decided,

And lo behold! I felt a hand on my shoulder,

Warm yet cold, soft yet hard,

Hands that were lined with years of care and love,

I looked behind to see Him standing there.

He just smiled and said,

‘I never forsake you; I was there all the time,

You didn’t just see me. Look.’

There you were, standing, smiling,

And it became clear to me,

To whom I was refusing to,

Messengers of God.

Choice

Once again I find myself at a crossroads I found myself almost a year ago. The only difference is that this time around I seemed to have moved down a few steps on one of the paths. The thing that rattles me the most is the fact that the view of the section of the road where it divides into the fork is not entirely lost till now. I still haven’t come to a sharp bend that would ultimately rob me of the sight of the other road, thereby allowing me the pleasure of the focusing on the road ahead, not look at the seemingly parallel road that somehow seems a trifle more easy. The choice that I have to make, for which I have consulted numerous people, websites and books, is quite simple. Whether I should go for Java Platform or should instead focus my energies towards .NET Framework. I know this must be quite appalling for few people, my constant thinking and wondering. To hell with it, take a coin and flip it, they would say. The very fact that I am on the fence for the last one year, stands testament to the difficulty I have faced in making it. Both the companies, Sun and Microsoft, are in no way on the brink of falling in the abyss. On the contrary, both stand tall even as smaller companies become a part of them, somehow akin to the Transformers, just snapping into place. Sun has made sure that Java is now supported on all the operating environments, and at the same time MS is currently making sure of that. The one thing that lies quite heavily on the shoulders of MS is that the Java Platform is older to .NET, and so has higher following amongst the geek population. But, then again stats make it quite clear that MS is leading seller of the software, thereby cementing in the need of the programs that would behave like native windows programs (frequent crashes included!). This easily achieved as MS is making .NET framework and so naturally (hopefully) its workability in the Windows Environment is guaranteed. The recent release of Windows 7 has acted as a stable pillar, without which critics would have completely written off the Redmond company. This was due to release of Windows Vista amidst huge expectations and the subsequent failure of Vista to stand up to them. Coming back to the point, I still have to decide between the two, for it would ultimately decide the map for the rest of my life. Or so I feel, however my course makes me think twice. Would it me fruitful for me to learn only one platform or should I become the jack of all trades and master of none? After all the Manager has to know something about everything, and not everything about something, or why would anyone call them managers, and employ them to sit around all day, making other people work? In the past I have studied C++ for about 2 years in my school days, the language that many say as the foundation stone of the programming world. However, over the past few projects I have somehow managed to get hold of languages that resemble the C language. It could just be my inclination towards the windows specific programming that makes me more and more dependent on the .NET framework. But, as many argue, Java is just an extension to the C family; albeit some more features. That also holds true for the C# doesn’t it? My decision is based not entirely on the reason of the monetary value, rather that I could spend the rest of my life in retrospect, what if? Or maybe, ultimately I should just let my mind adrift, and make the time’s stream take my boat to whichever bank it deems fit.

Court

Today I went back to one Court where I felt I was placed among the nobles, not the king but still a person that inspires men to lay down their lives, men who’ll follow me into battle with their eyes closed, laying their faith in me. It looked different, smelt different, although I am not sure that if it was the place that seemed changed to me or was it some part of me that had been changed during the long absence of mine from the one place I loved, or was it that I had, god forbid forgotten the smells, the sight, the very touch of my favourite place on this Earth? I walked into the Court with my head held high, with my eyes riveted to the front, my steps somewhat faltering because of the absence of my old trusted sword broken in battle not long ago, the battle that had forced me to take a sabbatical from this Court. Striding, I could sense the eyes of people on me, scrutinizing stares that conveyed to me that I was unknown here. New faces, expressionless but with eyes that spoke volumes, I could see gazing around, in vain I tried to find old and familiar faces, ones that I could not spot, ones that would have been killed or gone away. With a small wave I strode forward into the court, taking a seat behind the Court’s nobles. I wanted to observe the young men and women who had replaced the wise old men I had left behind. It had been too long and time had slipped by me so fast. Silence had descended with the very first steps I had taken into this Court, but now it was now broken with whisperings and muttering, obviously to my account. Looking around I could see the contests among the nobles, with swords drawn, they strove to better themselves amongst their peers. I could see the amount of talent that seemed to ooze out of these youngsters, whereas the experienced swordsman in me reasoned that they needed work. After some time, one of the youngsters, after vanquishing everyone in sight, strode towards me and said, “I wish to challenge you, O stranger, who has so unwittingly come to this sacred Court of ours.” “O nobleman, great is your power while wielding your sword. I unfortunately, do not have my sword here with me, having broken it in combat.” “Fear not O stranger, we’ll find you a suitable sword!” So ultimately, armed with a borrowed sword I strode forward into the ring, aware again of the stares I got. With a cry the nobleman charged and I, a son of great fathers, also swung my sword high away my head and brought it down with great speed, only to have the ball fly out of the tennis court, accompanied with a call to arms, “ Bhaiya! Ball le kar aao!”.

Life's Speed

Life has suddenly taken up a speed that I can only watch dazed. By just looking at the passing trees of days from my window, I feel too much out of sync nowadays. Is it because before all of this I was so happily strolling down the garden path and now I am sprinting behind the truck carrying sugarcanes, grasping the thin air? I have no problem in sprinting, but then again when I look around, I can clearly see that if I continue sprinting in shall lose sight of what had happened earlier much before I would want to, that I am not currently not at leisure to observe the things that speed by me, things that I would miss even if I blinked. But the thing that most scares me if the road ahead. There is an unsettling doubt in my mind that if this sprint continues at this very same pace, would I not stop completely much before that is expected from me, let alone that, stop before I reach the goals I have set for myself. I now have started looking for the niches along the way, in tunnel I run in, to stop and rest. But alas to my dismay, these niches are few and hard to come by. Even when I starting getting into one of these, dead tired, pausing to rest, the other runners along the same track either display dismay, ‘come on, there is no time for waiting’, or display a snigger that clearly says, ‘aha! He has paused! We can overtake him now!’ But, what see of feel is the fact that I run at a faster pace than them. But then again the fact of life makes a last ditch attempt to throw me off-track,’ What is fast for you may not be fast for you.’ This statement alone is enough for me to pause while writing this, smiling at the language that I use. Looking back at the path travelled, I can see there are two paths by which I could have come, that have originated from a single one long back. Both move almost parallel. I say almost since there are many loops and turns, bends that occur in each of them, almost equally, with the only difference being the fact that in one they appear at set intervals whereas in the other they occur at random. Circumventing the various puddles and the huge rocks, these two converge at the point that I stand on right now. But the thing that scares me is that I don’t remember by which path I came from. Was it the one with regular bends or where they were irregular? Or was it for me to decide? Or was it someone unknown who hid the alternative path from me? I’ll never know. Then there is something known as relative velocity. Simply put, the velocity that something seems to pass you by is the sum of your and the things speed. At this point of time my mind refuses to believe that the speed by which the things fly past me is by my fault alone, it’s just that the speed of things is complementary to my speed. I write this at a place that is somewhere I am supposed to move with a pack with a single person leading it. So is this my fault that I can find only this time to stay back and do something. Or is it that life is not a highway, rather a tread mill with its control in an unseen hand?

I had a dream...

I had a dream. While there is nothing strange about it, the eerie reality of the dream shook me up. I could actually feel the adrenalin rush, whilst I was there. the smell of the rooms I went in, the faces of the people I saw so clearly, people I had never seen in my life, be it my friends or even a single face amongst the flood of people on the train station, and the actual feeling of holding and object and using it really made me uneasy when I woke up. These types of dreams have in fact happened to me in the past but the only difference this time around was that I woke up to find my mobile on my bedside, on which I typed out at least ten words that I knew would bring all those memories of the dream back. They did not. The intricate details of dream, the faces and smells are lost to me. The basic outline remains, using which I try to reconstruct what happened. What had happened was pretty normal for an over-imaginative mind like mine. There was this hostage situation in my college and I was unaware of it. So unknowingly I start walking to the hostel and then suddenly I’m pulled into the bushes and told everything that has happened till then. I somehow manage to get a gun, if I remember correctly .22 magnum, and start taking pot shots at the attackers on the roof-top. What happened next was something that made me remember this particular dream. I could very clearly see the faces of the people on the roof, joking and smiling. The feeling of drawing up a gun and shooting it at them, was so real that I could actually feel the weight of the gun and the recoil when I woke up, even though I haven’t even laid my hands on a .22 magnum. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that I had fired upon a human being, with the smoke in my eyes but my heart refused to believe that. That is power of the so called sub conscious mind. The sub conscious mind is something that has baffled people from all over the world, across generation. Some say you attain the next level of consciousness with it, some say that you travel different planes of this universe with this. I don’t know about that, but that feeling was so profound that I later would actually feel the tears in my eyes when I talked about it. Why tears? I can only say that when anything life changing happens to you its then the mind is so much affected that it pains to think about it.
I shall always connect my mind with the feeling of Déjà Vu. That feeling at a microsecond that makes me gasp, the feeling of my being already here is so compelling that I can hardly breathe. The sheer clarity, the most breathing taking accurateness is very scary. Some time back an image was in my mind of me taking part in a contest with a friend of mine, with I would have never partnered with normally. This image soon drifted off in to the oblivion, and up came up a contest. Believe it or not, with life playing games with me, I was sitting there with the same person, when it struck me as a lightning bolt, making me swear out loud at the sheer audacity of my mind, that yes! I have been here. The position of the pen, the exact sitting style of my partner, was so uncanny like the image that I had, that I couldn’t speak for a minute. That moment hung like a bell, suspended in the air for me to observe. Later when I got down to thing about all that had happened, I could only display astonishment at what had happened, it was as if my mind had acquired psychic powers. But it is not a very uncommon thing,
Mind like I said is indeed a powerful thing. Be it the déjà vu thing or dreams, it is really creepy. There is again this feeling of being watched. The head moves on its accord, with no prior indication, just turns in a direction and poof, there is in fact someone watching you. The most compelling feeling comes when you are in a crowed place. When there is a magnitude of people around, how the hell did I turn my head exactly to where someone was watching me? Some say people have the same feeling and they turn and there you are turning at the same instant staring at them. I don’t about this but then again if I get this feeling I shall go up to the person and ask him/her about it, if in fact he/she had the same compelling feeling to turn around. Mind is a mysterious object, and I somehow feel the science wouldn’t be able to understand even if it tries its level best.