Friday, October 2, 2009

Lyrics : STAY

You're too old for fairytales they say,
Not too old to take a hit.
Get lost, or maybe find another way,
To lose yourself, bit by bit.

Lights burn through the moonlit sky,
The starry holes, cleare than ever.
And blind yourself, as much as you try,
Dreams were never supposed to be clever.

So stay, won't you listen to me play.
The night is for lovers, they say.
And dawn is coming soon anyway
So stay, till the winds take you away.

Lights haunt my blinding dreams,
they drive the madness to play.
I'm plagued with horrors, not to be seen,
these horrors, leave and come as they may...

So stay, won't you listen to me play.
The night is for lovers, they say.
And dawn is coming soon anyway
So stay, till the winds take you away.

Stay, choke on that hollow cry.
Not because you can, or want to.
But when you've got a strong urge to fly,
And you've got nowhere to fly to.

So stay, won't you listen to me play.
The night is for lovers, they say.
And dawn is coming soon anyway
So stay, till the winds take you away...

Lyrics : PAST MIDNIGHT

Stop losing your head in the noise
When little plastic people are all you've met
Try keeping your smile, keep your poise
And you just might hear it yet

Its been a lonely day, you say
and you've talked your way through it.
Long past midnght, and if I may
Because none of us is done yet

The night changes past midnight
Your dreams no longer out of sight
Let not the emptiness haunt you
The better ones haven't left yet

Its been a lonely day, you say
and you've talked your way through it.
Long past midnght, and if I may
Because none of us is done yet

The searing sun is long gone
The day ain't over yet.
Have your words run out now?
Because mine havent ceased yet...

Lyrics : SOMEPLACE ELSE

Take the money now and run.
And don't look back at what you've done.
Take the li'l folk as they come.
Pretend that your race is won.

I'd join you if I can.
I'm not too sure, where I stand.
But the day I finally get the joke,
I'll turn you in like all the normal folk.

She ain't someone in my head.
But "no narcotics"- she said
So I can never be too sure.
Haven't we been here before.

Take the money now and go.
Let the clouds drag you as they flow.
And if you make it out the other end,
Remember us and let me know.

She ain't someone in my head.
But "no narcotics"- she said
So I can never be too sure.
Haven't we been here before.

Lyrics : HONEST ENDEAVOUR

No, no, never knew why,
between life and songs we try.
To make sense of another lie,
make sense of another lie.

A li'l tale, not for sale,
a li'l bit fresh, a li'l bit stale.
Some music, a band, livin' it grand.
Bunch of people making their stand.

This ain't something clever,
Something that'll last forever.
Its just an honest endeavour.
Just an honest endeavour.

A li'l more gain, some sustain.
A hundred efforts we try again.
Hundred efforts, most in vain.
Yet the song remains the same.

When you can't end what you've begun,
A li'l trip, a battle won.
Coz words have ceased, it's almost done.
A funky tune and more to come.

This ain't something clever,
Something that'll last forever.
Its just an honest endeavour.
Just an honest endeavour.

Sunday, August 2, 2009

But It Rained...

It had been a hell of a week, with endless assignments and truckloads of tests. Seriously, if this was the “good, old” college life, it was a nightmare for me. Music had proved an equalizer for some time, but now even the rhythm divine had given up. The weekend ahead held no respite. It was one of the times when I just pushed the entire world aside and allowed my couch-potato of a mind, whisper to me-“Yes dear, you need a break.” A cup of coffee in the nearby café was an irresistible thought.
As I flung open the door, my entire world seemed to undergo a makeover. The sweet smell of fresh coffee coupled with the cool air-conditioned breeze worked wonders for my nostrils, which had previously been tortured by the nauseating odours of uncanny, uliginous chemicals from the endless lab-sessions. Thankfully Prayag had saved us the trouble for another week in that dungeon which reeked of god-knows-what. I wonder how the lab instructor survived an entire week there. God bless Prayag for his nonpareil skill for organizing mass bunks. No wonder he’s standing for CR. Anyway, before I hive off from my train of thought again, so there I sat in the café, amongst a mélange of people. People of all kinds, students, uncles and aunties, li’l kids too, girls (obviously), office goers etc.; A crowd not usually found in café. You’ll normally expect CCD to be filled with college students (mostly girls you want to check out), or the spoilt school-going brats who have their pockets filled with enough moolah by their folks. This wasn’t like any of that. Misplaced. I couldn’t help noticing that it was unusually quiet that day, an aura of gloom hanging in the backdrop, as if everyone had something to brood about under those tufts of hair (bald pates for others). There I go again. Analyzing people, trying to figure what goes on under those thick headed skulls. Guessing at what Li’l-Miss-Pretty thinks about Mr. Striped-Shirt…
I glanced out of the window. The clouds were gathering. It looked like evening already at 11:00 am in the morning. Now that is the kind of weather I like. To put it in simple words, I have nothing against rain. Rain is the perfect setting for a cuppa in a café, especially if you have someone to talk to at the same time (No, someone more than a friend, you know what I’m talking about…:P). Rain provides the consummate setting for a classic street football match, the kind you view in those Nike commercials. I’m not exactly talking about the kids running around, most of them in their undies, but about a rugged game, that’s more of a guy thing. Anyways, rain gives you an inner sense of warmth, leaving a tenuous cold sense on the tip of the skin, almost like miniscule goose-bumps. Be it pakoras or bhuttas, these monsoon treats aren’t much of an item without the rain gods devising the environment accordingly. Rain is what completes them all. But at one point, it gets too much. Rain leaves behind an awful mess. There’s nothing more irritating than spoiling your new pair of Converse in a sticky puddle, or walking through a street which actually is more of a jumping session to avoid the icky lakes of water and tiny rivulets flowing by the side. I tell you, people in the regions with perennial rainfall may be experts enough at the act, they just might be able to jump over the Berlin Wall… Besides, the pre-conditions of a good shower are essentially perfect, be it a romantic setting or just another soul spinning dreams in the back of his mind. That’s what I prefer any day.
I’ve always loved the rain, however I wasn’t in a mood for a downpour that day. I have always loved to go out and get drenched, age no bar. Yet somehow it didn’t feel quite like that. It looked like Mr. Gloom in the backdrop had got me in his clutches too.
Then out of nowhere, she slipped in. It was as if someone had reached out and switched on the lights in the back of my mind. A fragrance as sweet as the early spring reached me and encapsulated me in its aromatic wanderings. She looked around, hoping to find an empty seat. One was on my table. Another was nowhere to be found. Wow, Lucky me!!! “Excuse me ma’am, I’m really sorry but I don’t think we have any free seat. Are you waiting for someone?” Rats! The waiter was going to spoil everything. Who the hell asked him to intervene anyway? “No I’m alone. Are you sure there isn’t any seating. I so badly wanted a cappuccino right now.” Screw you dude, there’s a chair right in front of me. Why don’t you gather up that etiquette you just showed and ask me if I’d let her sit there too? The gods heard me, I guess. The waiter did exactly that. “Sir, are you expecting someone? This lady has no place to sit. Would you mind her sharing the table?” Thank you god!! Excellent work you guys doing up there. “I…uh……yes…I mean no….uh…” “Sir?”. Right, I finally get what I want. Perfect timing to start stuttering. “Yeah sure”. Whew I manage to get some words out.
She orders her cappuccino. The waiter gets us our orders. I can’t help noticing the fact that she appears familiar. Definitely not the same college, would’ve seen that right away. Maybe school. We gradually get to talking. It turns out we actually were from the same school. She being in the commerce section, they don’t usually notice engineering dorks like us. We find out we have a lot in common. She likes Manchester United, I worship the Red Devils. She’s into western music, mostly rock. So is yours truly. Besides, I’ve never seen a girl wearing an Iron Maiden shirt before. Meanwhile the clouds gather together strongly as ever. Rain seems inevitable, though I pray it’s prolonged for just a little while. It looked like the gods were taking care of that too. It’s funny how you meet a person, who’s a total stranger. Yet you can strike up the best of friendship over a cup of coffee. “There’s a gig this evening, in the café just around the corner. Wanna go? I guess it’ll be fun.” Ok. Not a bad move, you’ve got to admit. I’m no expert at asking out, but it was worth an effort. “Sure. I’d love to. Hope it doesn’t rain. Don’t want to wet my hair. Besides what time is it, the concert?” “7. Omigosh. Its 6:30 already! Can’t believe I’ve spent over 4 hours here!!” She giggled. Tsk tsk, Girls… They don’t want their hair wet, they giggle if you lose track of time, they hate monsoon showers for what it does to their make-up. Okay, before I freak out, we get up and get ready to leave. I can be late for classes, dental appointments, movies, dates but never ever for a gig. We step outside, onto the sidewalk, our cheeks flushing with smiles and… SPLAT! A miniscule drop. I glanced up. SPLAT! Yet another into my eye. And the rest is spontaneous. Tiny droplets of water running down my back, on my forehead, through the criss-cross alignment of my hair, sending little streams of water here and there. Rain! Just what was needed. I could feel the gods smirking, seeking malicious humour in my confused self. Their tiny little water balloons bombarding every inch of us, shattering the plan for the gig with every drop. It was there, the puddles, the rivulets, the muddy lakes, dirty converse…water, water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink and all the irony. Next thing I know, she rushes back into the café’s refuge, leaving me standing out there, getting drenched and hating it for the first time ever.
Drats!!! It rained.

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Back To School

“What is the capital of Slovakia?” intoned my younger brother working on his assignment. To me, this was too much stress and embarrassment to suffer in one sitting. During the last couple of hours, I had already feigned a couple of restroom trips to sneak a peek at internet’s take on Genghis Khan’s lineage. Did one really care about whether the Mongolian marauder lived in a ‘ger’ or drank fermented mare’s milk called ‘airag’? Life seems rather unfair that one is now required to help out with one’s sibling’s homework. I am forced to revisit my school days that had happily ended over 3 years ago. Memories of what one learned then escape me. But honestly, hasn’t the world kept on changing ever since? Whoever had heard of an Arctic hamlet called Resolute or an Eskimo tribe called the Inuit before all that talk of global warming? When was anyone interested in the geography of Uzbekistan or the people of Tajikistan before the mighty USSR crumbled into fragments of free thought?

At times I stop to question- where has all the creative thought gone? Is it left behind in those day-dreams we used to spin on the last bench in the classroom? Is it lost in the endless brooding on “Why did the chicken cross the road?” or “What came first, the chicken or the egg?” I long for the times, when one simply used to sit n’ try to pry open the nearest bit of machinery one could lay hands on (considering it as a hyper-beam laser to blow up planets!), the ultimate childhood engineering fantasy. Kiddos today prefer to stick to internal combustion engines being published in those Autocar journals (Boy, they do understand those!).

Likewise I eschew my brother’s science homework. The subject, Introduction to IT - one declares loudly for the entire family to hear-was included only a year back! I wasn’t taught that in school. Or, take for that matter the entire world of New Vedic Math that was just digging the roots of the Indian education system even as one was slipping away from the grip of my final school years. Disjoint sets or unions were not in the same league as age-old equations to calculate the height of a tree using the length of its shadow as a parameter. Having reassured myself that one could not possibly know everything that young children expect us to know today, one tackles them with stern confidence. “Check it up on the Internet.” The other day my brother whooped in joy. He had picked up a social studies project needing to describe the development of the Indian classical music. The music buff I am, this must surely be a period he expected me to be intimately familiar with. Save the rock cult one gets to read about in the Rock Street Journal, my memory of the topic in our social studies books is only a blur. “What is the basic difference between the Hindustani and Carnatic gharanas of music?” he commenced his barrage of questions. “I am busy” one replied, pretending to reach out for the phone. “Go, ask mom”.

To Conform is To Enervate

should've added this a long long time back...anyways, better late than never...

Through the entire matrix of human development, from the Stone Age to the man and his civilization as we know it to be today, CHANGE is the only constant. All human progress is the outcome of a mind that questions what is, and dares to dream and realize what it could be. All growth can be attributed to this courage, to step beyond the tangible into the realm of creativity, to question the relevance of traditional practices, to innovate with a zeal to contribute, unfettered by social conditioning or the need to conform to an unserviceable law or a custom which has lost its validity.
This attitude exists as a commonality in all great personalities who have made significant contributions towards growth and development of man. If a handful of people can contribute path breaking views such as the Energy Equation, Theory of Relativity, Laws of Gravity etc., then imagine the huge potential of the millions of human minds which can go unexplored and unexpressed; wasted just because they were constrained by a mind conditioned by convention, restrained by a fear to step beyond the known.
The quantum leaps in the quality of human existence have resulted only when someone believed that there is a better and more efficient way to do something other than the traditional methodologies that we are comfortable with, and that there is something more to life than what meets the eye. It is only then that man has outperformed himself, and rediscovered his true potential.
A case in hand is the developments of the communication systems, in history from mere beating of drums and using smoke signals to sending messages through birds and couriers, followed by the e-mail and the latest avatar , the SMS.Incremental improvement only leads to incremental change. As a result of ever-developing technologies and fast changing socio-economic situations, change is avalanching upon us, and if it is not met with certain preparedness, its speed may overwhelm us. The trouble with being on the right track is that you still experience the risk of being run over if you just keep sitting there! Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if not altered for the better, by design. He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery. Growth, after all, is the only evidence of life. In the words of William Blake- “The man who never alters his opinions, is like standing water. He only breeds reptiles of the mind
Flexibility, adaptability, and open-mindedness are far greater virtues as compared to the non-threatening, safe haven, of the known systems and predicted results. Unpredictable, valuable discoveries have been made and exponential learning has been made available due to the out-of-the-box thinking whenever a questioning mind has ventured assertively to explore higher possibilities.
This courageous act is the direct outcome of a man assuming absolute responsibility of his life and actions which in turn provides for the ultimate experience of true freedom for it is then when life and situation do not control him, and man actually steps out of the cocoon of a comfort zone to create his own set of rules, live his values, realize his dreams, fulfill his possibilities and express his true potential- living and experiencing life and freedom, truly and fully, to the hilt.
It is only in man’s imagination that the truth finds an undeniable existence. Rules of the society as we know them today, and our sense of reality is the creation of our own minds. If we created these, we should realize and exercise our ability to create a new order- to reinterpret reality, to recreate life itself.