and...Thud!

"Investments Analysis tere chacha padhenge?" asks the other me. Mid-term tomorrow and lots pending. Stop dreaming. The subject is to your liking and you need an A after that Border B Neg. Stop airy talk... this one needs intelligence, not intellectuality. Short-supply of both. Optimize resources!

Welcome back to the real world. Let me go! I like it here. No I don't!

Wow View

K tells me the two windows in the quad face the two mirror pools of SV-3. I say, wow nice. Sw tells me one window of his quad faces the plush C-lawn with the hang-out rock, and the other one faces a window. I say, wow nice. Sh and other lucky SV2-ites have a balcony to spend an idle evening with hot coffee or, say, Baileys? Nice again.

My window got Dh thinking, but I've ignored the view from it mostly. Today it is pouring outside and the jungle greens have wrested back their multi-shade existence from the dusted mono-shade. (Opinion credit, Ne). I say, not bad! Wish I still had my costly Canon. Help, As!

Trishanku?

It is not always possible to experiment with your outlook. But whenever a touchstone comes by, it is useful to verify or falsify the beliefs you have tenaciously held on to.

I believed that the best good that common citizens can do is to act small, do good in the immediate neighborhood without philosophizing about the society, government and humanity in general. Sen's 'The Argumentative Indian' started to change that, though I haven't even read the whole book. Act Local, think global is good, but why not talk global too? Which one is better - to preach (dharma) or to practice (karma)?

It took a hundred intellectuals to rubble-rouse for decades before the French hoi-polloi took charge and the Revolution came. While the real action would never have come from the polemicists like Voltaire, the masses would never have come together without the Enlightenment ideals. So then, we need both.

An engineering mind seeks quick, tangible results. A philosophical one revels in fuzzy, nebulous ambiguities. A management mind keeps oscillating between the two states. However, we need not be undecided about which path to take to better the world. We are equipped to both give to the society and to... "appropriate value", what?

Ma Night

Night comes to me gently softly enveloping,
The pains and the guilts of the day
And brings with it a present, oh, the wonderful
Gift of hope and heart, tomorrow.

Not mine. Va had written a poem years ago... these four lines stayed in my fickle memory; the essence at least, if not verbatim. Now, in TX and settled in matrimony, wonder if poetry gets its due attention once in a while. I wrote in the resume, October 2002 to Feb 2005.

ET

Spotted a big insect, black backed

Six tiny legs, scurrying away

Six yellow spots, ladybird?

Road is not your safest stay.

The pink paper, its wing a while

Six seconds, I’m done for the day

Why worry

When there is much to worry about, I end up thinking about all of it so much that there is little room left to accommodate actions. I remember the last months at work. There was a project to wrap up and another to hand over to the able juniors. There were three universities to extract an admission from, and there was an answer to seek… it was not forty-two. I used to come back home late in the night. Home, the 11x12 penthouse room in Koramangala that I had tastefully left undecorated in spite of Am wanting me to buy some nice drapes and sheets. Who was it going to please anyways? Home, where I spent the last 6 months in Bangalore living alone, constantly tolerating my nagging landlord, Mr. Shetty, and worrying about if to hold on to the cubbyhole or just move out.

It was one such night, which was happier than others, when I composed Basant. It had vigor, optimism, even playful romance hidden in the lyrics… I had made sure to use only short words, no more than 2 syllables. Words flowed into each other in the way old hindi “Chhands” we learnt at school do. I did worry about the song too when Jay, Ar and I were polishing the tune to make it more Avadhi than Carnatic. However, the difference was that action followed the concern. We managed to create a hit.

Cut to now… there is term 4 to take care of to begin with. With several ‘Border B’s’ in my portfolio of grades, I no more used to believe I can make it to the list. I said to myself - this term is the term when I get over that childish craze to do well in exams. Then friends egged me on. I don’t know if it makes sense to prioritize that over the more important ELP project, the couple of B-school comps, the music that I seriously want to make an honest attempt at. So, I worry, but then I don’t do much else.

Bleak Black

Is your good hope shining still?
Seek the silver lining still?
They won't let you be until
Self-inflected torture will.

Shoot the gun, it's good in hell
Ring yourself your own death knell
World's black magic, you know too well
So end a life to ... break the spell.

I don't feel all the lines now... Much of it is poetic impersonation to create the right effect. It's not for me or you or anyone in particular... really. So don't call me morose. It's the 2 o clock night that's black.

Why not?

And then again, why? How, whether, when don't make much sense as such. Even primitve men looked for reasons for everything in the nature, didn't they?

The final month of being with Sec-C begins. We haven't done the chant or the 'war cry' ever after the initial frenzy. Especially for me, Term 4 has started with a bang... and will keep banging? :-) ?

Little Italy in Bangalore. Aah! Little Italy in Banjara. Whoa! Will go there again, hopefully soon?