HAPPY NEW YEAR 2010 !!

The year 2009 has been an extremely good year for me(personally, that is…), especially towards the end… Things which I wanted since a really, really, reallyyyy long time became a reality… Here's hoping that 2010 too brings a lot of happiness, joy, peace and contentment not just for me and the ones I care about, but for the world at large, who contrary to popular perception, does deserve it…

P.S. Come to think of it, when I look back at the year gone by, there have been disappointments galore and a lot of things which I wanted badly didn’t come through. But my continued bout of optimism makes me want to believe that God is taking care of the bigger picture… So, cheers :)

One Day??

Cameron Diaz in "What Happens in Vegas" before she quits her job:
"I'd rather do nothing and be happy than do something and not be happy..."

I sincerely hope that one day I reach a stage in life where I can make such a statement and get away with it... :)

TEA.... Yuck !!!!

I had tea today....Ugh!!! Totally against my principles !!! For the first time ever(since i can recall).... and that too 'sarkari chai'.... The worst kind possible!!!

What all one has to endure for an industrial training :p :sigh:

OCD

A Medical Condition: Obsession with multi-tasking and the overpowering desire to squeeze the juice out of every second. Subject gets extremely hyper, fidgety and uncomfortable if someone/something knowingly/unknowingly prevents him/her from doing this.

Does anyone out here know what exactly in medical terms this condition is called?? Help me out here please....

Lyrics...

I soooo love these lyrics from various songs.... dunno why...

1) All alone I have cried silent tears full of pride
In a world made of steel, made of stone...

2) Lekin main mashooka kiski,
Jaane jaan mehbooba kiski...
Yeh to hai mujhko hi khabar... :p :p :D

I bet on you... You're going to be my winning bet... FOR SURE.

:)

Lesson (re)learnt in June 09:

Bringing a smile to someone's face when he's close to tears can bring tears (of joy) to your own eyes...

Moral of the story on Nov 21, 2009:

Being there for someone when he's down and out can really reaffirm his faith in all that is beautiful in the world...

P.S. I had my microprocessor project submission today. After an unexplained run of good luck all through last semester, during which all my projects worked perfectly, this semester, my one and only project refused to even light up its LEDs(even after I'd spent the last two nights soldering the stupid thing meticulously, getting very little sleep in the process)... Spent the whole afternoon cursing the damned project while some friends worked selflessly at it.... even when they didn't have to... when they could've easily walked away....

I couldn't submit my project in the end... Coz when we finished with it, the teacher was gone... and he's on leave tomorrow (yes, this sunday is working in our college :p)which means i'll have to coax him into accepting it on monday... Frankly, i might have been perturbed about my non-working project before noon today, but now i don't even care what my prof will have to say on monday... I've got better things to be happy about... My reaffirmed faith... There are still a lot of things that are right with this world... :) :)

Beautiful...

Excerpt.

Still trapped in the tangled web of her destiny… Still trying to balance emotions; assuage hurt egos and frayed tempers. Still trying to resolve situations that were not of her creation. Still trying to balance all sides of all metaphorical relationship equations. Still trying to keep everyone else happy and still trying to find her own happiness in the happiness of those she loved. Continually feeling more and more helpless, knowing there was going to be no respite, save one… The final *********

Author's Note: These few lines are actually part of a long story that I've written. But after penning down the first draft, I realized that the story was soooo close to my heart that I couldn’t bear even the thought of anyone debating or even discussing anything in the story. So, while the story stays with me for now, I let these few lines find their way onto my blog :) BTW, anyone who attempts to judge the content or central idea of the story through these lines is fooling himself :p The story is NOT related to women at all. It's a true masterpiece, a work of art, something even I'm proud of(which is hard, considering I'm not easily impressed ;) :D )...

Yay :)

Got a call yesterday from a very close and dear friend who's only geographically far away… :)

She's one of the few true friends that I have and even though we don't get time to hang out together or even talk for weeks at a stretch(it's mostly my fault, my commitments are endless :p), I know that if I need some advice, a true opinion on something, a long girly gossip session ;), or just simple chit-chat about nothing in particular, she'll be just a phone call away. And I never have to think about what to say to her, I can simply talk about the next thing that comes to my mind.

There are very few people in the world who truly understand me(even though almost all people reading this post will think they fit the bill :p :D ). The friend I'm talking about is one of those few. And it's always nice to know and be reminded of the fact that she cares. And if you're reading this, thanks for everything :) :) :)

A Brand New Start :)

"Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending."

And as I make a fresh new start, I vow that I will give it ALL I have and make it a success...

DESPAIRINGLY IN DISBELIEF...

It was his decision to come close
His decision to go away...
His decision to make me his world
And his decision to push me to its periphery...

Only decision I ever made was...
That while it isn't going to be possible for me to let go of this relation
I'm not going to be a part of any new relation ever again...

Coz it's the same with everyone here...
The more you invest into them,
The more they're going to use it against you some day...
And even if they don't today...
They sure as hell will tomorrow.

Now I'm going to act like I 'forgive & forget'
Even though it's never going to be possible to forget what you said
I'll wait for you... till eternity...
Coz I invested in the relationship
I'm not sure whether you ever did
Whether you truly loved me
Or whether it was all one big lie...
But still, I'll wait for you... till eternity...

Coz to be loved by someone who you love
Is something only few are fortunate enough to have...
And I have long reconciled myself to the fact
That in this life,
That fortune is something that I'm never going to have.

An oversimplification, perhaps... :p

" I think everything you do should make you happy, it's really that simple, otherwise why are you doing it? "

-Anoushka Shankar

EASY WAY OUT...

Day after day
Time pass away
And I just can't get you off my mind
Nobody knows... I hide it inside
I keep on searching but I can't find
The courage to show...
To letting you know...
I've never felt so much love before
And once again I'm thinking about
Taking the easy way out...

But if I let you go
I will never know
What my life would be
Holding you close to me
Will I ever see
You smiling back at me
How will I know?
If I let you go...

Night after night
I hear myself sayin'
Why can't this feeling just fade away?
There's no one like you...
You speak to my heart...
I'm too shy to ask...
I'm too proud to lose
But sooner or later I gotta choose
And once again I'm thinking about
Taking the easy way out...
-West Life

HIS Blessed One

Knowledge of 'psychology' is the single most biggest and most important knowledge in the world... Sometimes I wish I'd gone by my instinct and taken that up as one of my subjects while I still had the chance... Maybe I would've learnt a lot of things sooner and in a lesser painful way than I have now by hit-and-trial... Maybe that would've even taught me to look at things in a more impersonal way, to not be much affected by them, rather to take care of them in a more scientific manner... But maybe, that would've taken all the sensitivity out of me... coz maybe then, I would've looked at people merely as subjects -- to be studied -- and not as humans - to be understood and appreciated.

Whatever happens, happens for the best... I have always been a firm believer of this... More than anything else, the fact that nothing can happen to me without HIS knowledge keeps me going... HE will take care of me and all those who I care about... I know this... coz I'm His Blessed One...

ORIENTAL LADIES

Took me almost 27 months to complete, but now that it's done, I realise it s been worth all the effort... Take a look at the Oriental Ladies... :) :)

Mind you, the whole thing is HUGE and the photograph has been taken from quite a distance so as to get all of it in the frame... So, i guess you'll be missing out on a few details but I sure hope you get a general idea of my masterpiece... ;) ;)

BLIND IN LOVE

When you are in love... Your heart starts to feel like an overcrowded lifeboat... You throw your pride out to keep it afloat... And your self-respect and your independence... And after a while you start throwing out people you trusted... i.e. your friends and everyone you used to know...And it's still not enough... The lifeboat is still sinking and you know its going to take you down with it...

- Gregory David Roberts

(SHANTARAM)

Living on the surface is killing me now... I've got to dive in, cut through the waves and depths of the ocean... coz maybe the pain that I experience there will be lesser than the one that I'm experiencing right now...

For all your days prepare

And meet them ever alike

When you are the anvil, bear --

When you are the hammer, strike.

WRITERS…

I recently read this somewhere… Thought I’d share it with you all :-)

This is what being a writer meant in the early 1960s:

a) A writer always wears glasses and never combs his hair. Half the time he feels angry about everything and the other half depressed. He spends most of his life in bars, arguing with other dishevelled, bespectacled writers. He says very ‘deep’ things. He always has amazing ideas for the plot of his next novel, and hates the one he has just published.

b) A writer has a duty and an obligation never to be understood by his own generation; convinced, as he is, that he has been born into an age of mediocrity, he believes that being understood would mean losing his chance of ever being considered a genius. A writer revises and rewrites each sentence many times. The vocabulary of the average man is made up of 3,000 words; a real writer never uses any of these, because there are another 189,000in the dictionary, and he is not the average man.

c) Only other writers can understand what a writer is trying to say. Even so, he secretly hates all other writers, because they are always jockeying for the same vacancies left by the history of literature over the centuries. And so the writer and his peers compete for the prize of ‘most complicated book’: the one who wins will be the one who has succeeded in being the most difficult to read.

d) A writer understands about things with alarming names, like semiotics, epistemology, neoconcretism. When he wants to shock someone, he says things like: ‘Einstein is a fool’, or ‘Tolstoy was the clown of the bourgeoisie’. Everyone is scandalized, but they nevertheless go and tell other people that the theory of relativity is bunk, and that Tolstoy was a defender of the Russian aristocracy.

e) When trying to seduce a woman, a writer says: ‘I’m a writer’, and scribbles a poem on a napkin. It always works.

f) Given his vast culture, a writer can always get work as a literary critic. In that role, he can show his generosity by writing about his friends’ books. Half of any such reviews are made up of quotations from foreign authors and the other half of analyses of sentences, always using expressions such as ‘the epistemological cut’, or ‘an integrated bi-dimensional vision of life’. Anyone reading the review will say: ‘What a cultivated person’, but he won’t buy the book because he’ll be afraid he might not know how to continue reading when the epistemological cut appears.

g) When invited to say what he is reading at the moment, a writer always mentions a book no one has ever heard of.

h) There is only one book that arouses the unanimous admiration of the writer and his peers: Ulysses by James Joyce. No writer will ever speak ill of this book, but when someone asks him what it’s about, he can’t quite explain, making one doubt that he has actually read it.

To Parul and Sabia...

Aubveeuslyyyyyyyy.... (OBVIOUSLY... ;) )

This is the one word which when uttered by different people refers to different people;)

Education...

Education makes people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern but impossible to enslave.
- Henry P. Brougham

Perspective. And a point of view I endorse.

The piece below is an excerpt taken from an article written by Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar and published in The Times of India. It’s a fresh take on terrorism and I really liked it because it’s something that I myself have been longing to say for quite a while now but somehow I’ve always stopped short of putting it down in words. Anyways, read on…

“Cooler heads point out that “war on terror” is a meaningless phrase. Terror is simply a tactic used by certain groups, and you cannot wage war against a tactic. When terrorism arises from an ideology or set of grievances, imaginary or otherwise, killing one bunch of ideologues may simply deepen the grievances and create thousands of fresh terrorists. This has been demonstrated graphically in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Angry Indians say something must be done. True, but that something happens to be patient diplomacy and international pressure, which will take years to bear fruit. Ultimately, we need to change the mind-set of terrorists, and that may take decades.”

I’d also like to add more to this. The people who are waging this so-called “war on terror” have their own vested interests to fulfill. Why is the US so determined to “help India out” this time around? This is because the attacks on the Taj and the Oberoi also took away the lives of a few Americans. The US, which was until now, nothing more than the issuer of another statement whenever a fresh terrorist attack took place in India is suddenly keen to bring the guilty to book, to be the one who will keep a check on whether Pakistan is really doing enough.

Also, the United States of America which considers and propagates itself as the peace-maker, the Supreme Court and the Mr. Always Right should not forget its own shady past – how it itself spread terror during its “war against terror” in Iraq. I truly shudder whenever I remember the photographs of the atrocities committed on the Iraqis which were somehow leaked to the media. God alone knows what these people must have done in Afghanistan and places elsewhere. And who knows – maybe it is these very and other such similar grievances that the terrorists carry in their hearts when they set out to spread terror.

Lest the readers of this blog accuse me of supporting terrorism, I would like to make it clear here itself: I do not support terrorism… OF ANY KIND – Be it the terrorism wielded in the name of jihad, or be it the “terrorism” which America considers legal and is now supporting openly.

What I really want to say is that contrary to what we all sometimes believe – there is no absolute black and no absolute white. Almost all things, people, ideologies and beliefs lie in the grey area. It’s only that some of these shades of grey are darker than the others– and hence comes the need to view things in the correct perspective.

YIPPEEEE…!!!

There was a contest in Hindustan Times in which a clichéd line "It was a dark and stormy night" was tweaked a bit and thrown at us. And what were we supposed to do with it? We were supposed to come up with the first paragraph of an imaginary novel. Why? Because they say that the first paragraph of a novel is the part that an author is most finicky about.

The best 10 entries from all over India were to be published on January 11… I sent an entry in my father's name (he's lucky for me :-))… And I won!!!
Take a look ;-)

SINGH IS KING…!!!

Congratulations, Bhai…!!! You've done it and made everyone soooo proud… You deserved this and a lot more & now you’ve got this and I’m sure there is loads more in the offing…

Great going… Keep going… Love U Lots :)

P.S. I do wish you had provided them with a newer pic of yours :p

HAPPY NEW YEAR !!!!

A very happy and prosperous New Year 2009 to all !!!!


Till then, I'll just leave you with the magnificent fireworks at the Sydney Harbour Bridge on New Year's Eve....