The life that I have
Is all that I have
And the life that I have
Is yours.

The love that I have
Of the life that I have
Is yours and yours and yours.

A sleep I shall have
A rest I shall have
Yet death will be but a pause.

For the peace of my years
In the long green grass
Will be yours and yours and yours.

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
She was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever, I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

this is absolutely ridiculous. i have been sitting here since 10 in the morning and the server is down since. I just have three days left here at DLR trying to sqeeze in as much work as possible and the server of all things lets me down....

talk about IT.....technological breakthrough my arse!

7 Things I want to do in this lifetime:

1.i want to build an airctaft.
2.i want to tour the world ( already toured europe and south east asia )
3.watch a football worldcup final live.
4.i want to have a bedroom with mirrors on all the 5 walls...for obvious reasons.
5.i want to be a writer.
6.learn to play the guitar
7.have an enviable library and cd collection


7 Things I can do:

1.cook[i make amazing omelette and coffee]
2.self motivate at the rate of knots
3.i can fix a fuse :D
4.i can swim,row and skate
5.gossip 24*7 without a break!
6.sleep for days altogether
7.Bawl at people one moment and forgive them in the very next


7 Things I can’t do:

1.play my guitar!
2.hide my emotions
3.put on make up like a pro!
4.tolerate snobs,liars.
5.get on with people who have no goal in life
6.i can't dance even if i am paid to.
7.keep my closet in order


7 Things that attract me to other person:

1.intelligence
2.ability to strike up a conversation
3.witts
4.courteous and responsible
5.broad minded outlook, ready for a challenge ( i define broad minded as someone who can accept and respect cultural differences, reason things out without blindly believing what has been put down from the ages. Please do not confuse with conservativeness and outgoing behaviour. Being broad minded is not being outgoing for me. I hold my reservations against wannabe outgoing people )
6.mature and sensible
7.expressive


7 people i prize the most

1.dolon
2.somshubhro
3.nirjhar
4.raunak
5.debanjan
6.roop dada

anger

'Managers help people to see themselves as they are. Leaders help people to see themselves better than they are.'

- Jim Rohn.

'The thing is that you are making me angry.' That is what a feminist acquaintance told me once during one of my visits to my old flat in Kolkata, and as it might have happen to you at some time or another, the thought of that phrase just keep popping up in my mind, for years.

I don't remember anymore the infamous tug-of-war that made this young lady angry in the first place. Perhaps was the fact that I don't like popcorn, or perhaps it was that I said that whales are not a plague after all, like some suggested.

It is not that I have kept a grudge about it; not at all, but nevertheless, the thing just persisted suggesting me its idiotic nature but without words. You know, like one of those things that you know it is terribly wrong, but you don't know how.

How can someone turn us angry? Do we have dial, like a microwave oven, or can our anger be controlled by infrarred devices, like your TV control? Isn't it demeaning to ourselves to suggest that someone else is 'making' us angry, happy, sad, etc.?

Bluntly said, it means that someone is controlling our minds. Just the thought, the expression, the notion that someone is able to manipulate us in such a way is to admit that we are not free after all.

Chilling.

Indeed, we are free but from ourselves. For all that matters, it is just to fool ourselves to pretend that our emotions, whether good or bad, justified or not, are controlled 100% by outside forces.

If someone 'makes us angry', then we are admitting to ourselves and to the world that we have no control over our emotions, that we have no sophistication because our minds cannot detect what comes from inside them, and what comes from the outside, treating exterior ideas as our own, thus letting others 'make us', or generating its own and pretending that they are not, thus pretending that others are 'making us.'

If we go on thorough our lives with such a posture; if we always act in such a way in front of our troubles. If we let ourselves be easily angered, offended or outraged, and instead of admitting that it is us who becomes so instead of being manipulated into such a state, then we are transforming ourselves into slaves of a self that we pretend that it is not in our minds but elsewhere

If that self acts, for all matters, like another being that controls us and we do not recognise as our own concoction but pretend to be from someone else's then what happens is that we relinquish control over that piece of brainy real-estate by assuming that it is our neighbour's.

However, since nobody else is able to read our minds, nobody could care less about our little conspiracy and so, this 'alien self' becomes orphaned.

Therefore, by 'letting others' control our minds instead of admitting our own emotions, mistakes and ideas, we are starting our way to truly become slaves of and orphan master who has no tangible existence.

Quite a stupid way to become a slave, isn't it? And what's more: ideologies such as feminism were born to free a significant part of our world from injustices and ignorance, and these are being embraced every day by lots of people seeking to be freed from others who 'make them' poor, sad or angry.

Most do that just to feel gratified. A few might generate some new ideas about the fact, but for all accounts, those are exceptional individuals.

We are pretending to save ourselves by assuming that we are brutes with no control over our fate. Quite an escapism, don't you think?

Life is about choices. Feminism, like many other political ideologies and philosophies, was born to bring equality to nothing more and less that 50% of the world's population.

However, like many ideologies, it represents two kinds of people: those who think, and those who don't, because every new idea is always take and juggled with by people who seek to improve them, and by people who just want to feel better by letting others explain their world.

The problem with ideas is not who has them, or even what those ideas really are; after all, we have democracy for all the related house chores. The problem in this world, and what transforms ideologies in fanaticism is who do not have ideas, and just import them from their outside.

So, next time someone else is 'making you', if you truly want to feel alive, feel proud of your own concoction, and don't look for aliens in your soup.

the end of cricket's greatest ever

for one last time as the prince of the Caribbean strode out with that magic wand in his hand, my eyes went watery. Ever since i have watched cricket, this man has been an inspiration of an unique order. His exquisite style, the flamboyance, the arrogance and the controversies....its all been endlessly fascinating. Ive watched all his innings and they are still fresh in my mind. Its a bitter pill to swallow......the realization that I will never get to see the brian charles lara flourish on the field, that i will never sit so tensed as if i was batting out in the middle to watch him bat, that those late night mesmerizing Caribbean innings will not come anymore. Unexpectedly his decision to retire from test cricket has come as a surprise.....and i need not say that the WICB is solely responsible for it
they say sachi tendulkar is the greatest batsman of all times......i beg to differ!. To carry the burden of a losing team for a better part of his career and still to produce the goods at the consistent rate as him is praiseworthy.

hail the great brian charles lara......ur legacy will remain forever!

TRUE TO EVERY WORD

Well after all, Pickering, I'm an ordinary man,
Who desires nothing more than an ordinary chance,
to live exactly as he likes, and do precisely what he wants...
An average man am I, of no eccentric whim,
Who likes to live his life, free of strife,
doing whatever he thinks is best, for him,
Well... just an ordinary man...
BUT, Let a woman in your life and your serenity is through,
she'll redecorate your home, from the cellar to the dome,
and then go on to the enthralling fun of overhauling you...
Let a woman in your life, and you're up against a wall,
make a plan and you will find,
that she has something else in mind,
and so rather than do either you do something else
that neither likes at all You want to talk of Keats and Milton,
she only wants to talk of love,
You go to see a play or ballet, and spend it searching
for her glove, Let a woman in your life
and you invite eternal strife,
Let them buy their wedding bands for those anxious little hands...
I'd be equally as willing for a dentist to be drilling
than to ever let a woman in my life, I'm a very gentle man,
even tempered and good natured
who you never hear complain,
Who has the milk of human kindness
by the quart in every vein,
A patient man am I, down to my fingertips,
the sort who never could, ever would,
let an insulting remark escape his lips
Very gentle man...
But, Let a woman in your life,
and patience hasn't got a chance,
she will beg you for advice, your reply will be concise,
and she will listen very nicely, and then go out
and do exactly what she wants!!!
You are a man of grace and polish,
who never spoke above a hush,
all at once you're using language that would make
a sailor blush, Let a woman in your life,
and you're plunging in a knife,
Let the others of my sex, tie the knot around their necks,
I prefer a new edition of the Spanish Inquisition
than to ever let a woman in my life I'm a quiet living man,
who prefers to spend the evening in the silence of his room,
who likes an atmosphere as restful as
an undiscovered tomb,
A pensive man am I, of philosophical joys,
who likes to meditate, contemplate,
far for humanities mad inhuman noise,
Quiet living man....
But, let a woman in your life, and your sabbatical is through,
in a line that never ends comes an army of her friends,
come to jabber and to chatter
and to tell her what the matter is with YOU!,
she'll have a booming boisterous family,
who will descend on you en mass,
she'll have a large wagnarian mother,
with a voice that shatters glass,
Let a woman in your life,
Let a woman in your life,
Let a woman in your life I shall never let a woman in my life.

The Return of ......

....sentences not seemingly unconnected to the previous and subsequent ones.

I wish sometimes that life wouldn’t be such a fine balancing act in its entirety. In its entirety, mind. I’m given to sloppiness, and I detest having to accept being inevitably penalised for it. Penalization is a wonderful slavedriver, but the whiplashed soul craves respite, at times. The super ego that hitherto commanded discipline has relinquished its authority, as a potentially ruinous consequence of which, the id, hardwired as it is, for slacking, hasn’t been channelling its energies toward anything productive for quite a while. yes, its always an internal tussle. it matters little if life were regimented by external sources. The self would then just rebel. And that is worse.
However, all units shall be duly deployed for damage control henceforth. My life’s an endless cycle of damage and remedial measures. I suppose everybody’s is, and I am merely magnifying my own condition as we humans are wont to do. Everything I say and feel and do has already been said and felt and done by others a gazillion times before.

Things are a bit stringy.

So, as I was saying, its all such a ridiculously close balancing act. Like individualisation and socialization. Yes. Ok Typical teen things. Its perhaps not as deserving of attention as quantum teleportation, but I think about lesser things in times of ruminative idleness.

Disclaimers aside, this is the epiphany of the day, then.

Too little of both individualization and socialization begets useless islanded beings crippled by The Hedgehog’s Conundrum. too much of individualization and little socialisation never did anyone any good, rebelwithoutacause and all of that. This misguided fervour for separating the self from the system on grounds of the self’s conviction of its own superiority/inferiority is utterly ineffectual.And illusory, too.
And we all know what becomes of stunted individualization and freewheeling, bordering on addictive, socialization. Everybody becomes even more of an assembly line dummy than the rather long passage of time since the first human learnt to think would have one be. I suppose I should present that favourite excuse for intellectual bankruptcy here. Again. Its all already been thought of. And trying to think of something new is even more of a pain than it probably was a century ago.
But that’s all batbogey. *New* is limitless.

But wait, there’s that state of fabled equilibrium here as well. The Doctrine of Moderation. Its deceptively simple, like everything else. What one must make oneself do, in order to avoid becoming food for the ones higher up the food chain in this perilously overpopulated, competitive environment, is to grow from the knowledge of the rest.

Perfect Person...

#1. MUST provide me with an inexhaustible impetus to better myself.
#2. Must be a sufferable know-it-all so that I at least know what i dont know and hence make an effort to know them, clever without being pompous, that is, but allowed to be so when with other persons if he/she so desires.
#3. Must have cold cold cold palms, and even colder fingers.
#4. Must divine when to leave me alone and when to be around.
#5. Must treat me like a god, pamper me silly, shower me with attention,love, generally be possessively crazy abt me .....blah blah blah.
#6. Must walk around with me, aimlessly, for miles, in companionable silence and hand in hand if need be.
#7. Must be extremely mature+tactful+know how to make max use of time, resources, i.e, evrything that I aspire to be.
#8. Must be able to make me grin n be happy without ne one traceable reason.

There, thts done.

Ne1 answering ne 5 of the above requisites free to approach me.

Quota Mayhem

"........If the Union HRD minister's reservations proposal goes through, then only 9 out of over one lakh candidates who sit for the AIIMS entrance test would get admission in the general category. The rest of the 400-plus seats would be filled by the various reserved categories."

~from The Telegraph

Somebody suggested all-sc/st/obc institutes.

But they who make the decisions have decided to increase the total no. of seats. Something not attempted in the last 29 yrs.

Of course, why bother about trivial issues such as brain drain?

Arbit thoughts of a jobless mind

I speak in excerpts of my thoughts, rather disjointed, fractured they are. I must work at effective communication. I view writing as a way of organising as well as purging my thoughts. Hence, the following. This is, I think, the most feasible, and, unobtrusive medium through which I can expound my opinions/ideas/worldview on the rather motley range of things that prey on my mental faculties and take up a lot of mental activity.

Besides, its a sunday, and my prior engagements have been cancelled. This is practise,so I do not slide into the words-don't-flow-from-me-anymore mode.


Every new person one meets outside of one’s habitat is a potential clean slate. Whoever doesn’t know about one’s background is another potential study in the dynamics of human psychology and the organic matrix of interpersonal relationships. One can present any picture of oneself. Unless the person at the other end interacts with other people who know one, that person, in all probability, will fill in the blanks themselves and form a mental picture not completely congruous to that formed by other persons one interacts with. Hence, a world peopled with polygonal, multicephalous human beings.

But well, one’s entire existence can only be effectively called real and worthful if and only if it is acknowledged/sanctioned/approved(?) by other points in that vast organic matrix called society. One might as well disintegrate into ectoplasm if nobody else could be bothered enough to acknowledge one’s existence.

At this point, I must post a disclaimer. I do not, in any audacity, claim to be possessed of an extraordinarily keen facility of observation, nor any bloated repository of knowledge about the intricate interdependent functioning of the world. On the contrary, I’ve viewed only a microcosm of it which cannot, by any stretch of imagination, be taken as a reliable sample to make generalisations about.

Consider a name. What purpose would it serve if it were not spoken of by the other assorted inmates of this reality-prison? A group of syllables, merely, to facilitate better retrieval from memory, communication, and to inject order into society. Identity is a myth in one’s head to reassure oneself of one’s worth in the grander scheme of things, whatever that be, and an ostrich-like state of denial in the face of impermanence.

Entire human lifespans evaporate leaving little, or no trace at all. Only memories, in other humans' heads, other humans with equally short lifespans. Perhaps that is why men of yore sought to build magnificent tributes to their vanity, (pyramids, et al) why humans of a slightly elevated, enlightened plane, in all epochs, have sought to create things of enduring allure-- things of art. It is one's only shot at preservation, immortality, dare I say?

Living in the present!!

I don’t understand. There’re people who derive an unseemly, malevolent pleasure out of inflicting misery, unprovoked. I wasn’t even aware of their existence until sometime ago. Which got me thinking. I’ve led a very cloistered existence. I’m looking at my life right now and I’m marvelling at the absolute absence of evil in it. Which is not to say that that is the case in actuality. It just appears so now. I feel incredibly untainted right now. Some other time when I feel particularly wretched, I’ll rant about the horrors lurking in the recesses of my very selective memory, distorted, I’m sure, several times over.

I’m going through the I’ve-always-been-happy-as-sunshine phase. I’m looking at my life right now and I’m thinking about something called “Gandhiji’s Talisman” that used to be printed before the contents page of every NCERT textbook I’ve had to read. Funny I should think about it, really, because I don’t like the man, and moreover I don’t exactly follow his talisman, verbatim. It says something like when one’s in doubt or when the self becomes too much with one, one must apply a test, and recall the face of the poorest and the weakest and ask oneself if the step one’s contemplating would be of any use to him. And then it goes on about swaraj. The doubts and the self’s supposed to melt away by doing this. I only do the recalling bit.

It's been saving me since class IV.

Being acutely aware of having been given more than enough, while others, perhaps worthier, have no choice but to fight tooth and nail for the same, can sometimes be an extraordinary incentive to hold on to what one has with redoubled tenacity, hitherto undiscovered. This is how I was taught to value things. "Lokey khete paye na", and all of that, but with a very scary Darwinian twist- "Eta koro, noyetoh you'll end up in the unselected reject pile. No offspring of mine is going to be in the reject pile." One of the perks of having a mother obssessed with genetics, evolutionary biology and the like. Come to think of it, she could have made an excellent teacher, if she could explain the 5observation/3inference Natural selection thing to a 4 year old in a way that that 4 year old never forgot. Sometimes I miss the Punett square games.

I’m always marvelling at my fortune, and thanking whatever it is that’s constructing my semi-charmed reject-pile life.

I’m looking at my life right now, and I’m smiling, and inside my head its wow. WOW WOW WOW!!

The why WHY WHY WHY can go knit itself a furry yellow jumper to keep warm while it sits out the cold treatment it shall receive for some time now.

I’m Jack’s irrepressible half-grin, at the moment.