Life's Onward Journey...

Let thy love play upon my voice, and rest on my silence. Let it pass through my heart into all my movements. Let it shine like stars shine in the darkness of my sleep, and dawn in my awakening. Let thy love... This was my favourite hymn in school. The composition which we were taught by Sister Coletta was very "happiness inducing". I still sing it when I am feeling low. Reminds me of old days and also cheers me up. The year is coming to an end. Last year at the same time I was wishing for all the negativities to disappear from my life in the new year. After a bad 2007, I so wished for a change. 2008 provided no respite. Neither on personal front nor in general. This is Moshe, son of the Rabbi who was killed at Nariman house during the terror attacks. He is just one of the orphans created by the acts of terrorism in the last year. The more I think about it, the more it disturbs me. Those who are indulging in such violent acts in the name of God or religion, have never known ...

I had been waiting for long to write this special post. However, I had not decided what will be the content of this post. I wanted to write something which I have not written before. But then I didn't get enough time to put in more thought. So, I decided to write about my blog on my blog. I came to know about blogging from my friend K2. She was a regular blogger and I loved reading her. One day I was remembering another friend of mine who is no more amongst us and I decided to express my thoughts in words and the result was this post . My second post was about the first love story of my life. Then I started writing about a subject which I love the most-"Movies". I am a complete movie-buff and all those around me can vouch for this fact. The first movie review i wrote was for 'Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna'. It became the most popular post on my blog but I deleted it sometime earlier this year. With the post all the 'fantastic' comments were also lost. I regret do...

Finally there is something which i am beginning to like about Ghajini . It's the song "Kaise mujhe tum mil gayin, qismat pe aaye na yaqeen..." The lyrics are not great but the tune is very sweet and has a certain kind of calmness. And the picturization seems to be good. It shows Aamir Khan in a pensive mood, going away from Asin (no idea about the situation), he first takes an auto, then is seen in a car, getting down at the international airport and then is seen sitting in a chartered plane which finally the takes off.... It reminds me of the similar scene in the "Tanhaai" song from Dil Chahta Hai . The way things are moving, mostly I won't be able to watch the first show of Ghajini. Will try to catch the movie on the first day or the latest by the first week :(. My record of several years is going to break... :( Picture courtesy: aamirkhan.com

http://www.johnclearygallery.com/pics/smith/couple.jpg The other day I was talking to a friend of mine and the topic of discussion changed to "Marriage". This friend of mine is very different from me and he often introduces me to alternative perspectives. The good thing about him is that he doesn't impose his point of view on me (sometimes he does that with other people though). We talk peacefully, he speaks his mind and I speak mine. I was telling him how much I am scared of getting married to a 'wrong' kind of person. By wrong I meant a person with a personality conflicting to mine. e.g. I like movies and he is a movie-hater. I like to be organized and keep my workplace and home clean and he turns out to be a person enjoying the mess around him. There can be different kinds of mismatches on different levels of personality and I won't name them here. I can't live with and share my life with a person who is so different from me. Actually "different...

The End of Innocence is not an extraordinary story but it is worth a read. One of the negative points of this book is its similarity to Bapsi Sidhwa's Ice Candy Man . I have not read Sidhwa's book, however I have seen 1947-Earth which is based on it. The theme of both the books is similar. A child sharing space with the adults and trying to understand the world of grown-ups. In the End of Innocence Laila is the 9 year old girl who reads Enid Blyton and wants to 'solve a mystery' like the Five Find-outers. She has dreams of a child but wants to grow-up fast so that she can talk like one of the adults around her. She finds a friend in Rani, who is 6 years older than her. Rani, a teenager, has a different world. She dreams of falling in love and getting married. She shares her feelings with Laila who is too young to understand it wholly but still she acts like a good listener and poses to be excited in front of Rani. But the truth is that she does not understand the gra...

I went for this movie with zero-expectation just to watch SRK after a long interval of more than a year and I didn't get disappointed. Seriously, it is a very ordinary movie which takes up an age-old idea (of arranged marriage) and adds all kinds of 'spices' and SRK to it just to cater to a very specific kind of audience, which includes SRK fans and YRF loyals or time-pass movie goers. Surinder Sahni cannot be 'one' single man. There are many contradictions within this character. The man leads a dull, boring, monotonous life with his yellow suitcase, yellow tiffin, yellow car and a yellow bed sheet... (i might have missed other yellow objects around him). And he accepts the fact that he is indeed a boring person. Now, he decides to change his personality just to surprise his young, vibrant, newly-wedded wife. He turns himself into the "movie-hero" who makes his Taani ji smile. The surprising part is that he looks extremely comfortable in this new transfo...

I was going through the current issue of Science journal and got stuck on this article. The article is " The spreading of disorder " by Keizer et al. This article discusses the spread of disorder and criminal behaviour in surroundings which are already marked by signs of pre-existing disorder in the form of litter, graffiti etc. A theory known as "Broken Window Theory" was given by Wilson and Kelling in 1982. According to this theory signs of disorder induce more disorder and petty crimes. This theory is controversial since it still has to be proved (i guess mathematical proof or something like that). Although there is a report that when in early 90s New York city was cleared of such signs of disorder, the crime in the city underwent a sudden drop. (Quite interesting!!!) The authors of this paper carried out 6 different experiments on unsuspecting normal crowd and found that people do litter more when they observe some sort of disorder or a law broken around them...

My school SLS Now I am on this side of the door... (still i sneaked in with the help of my friend) The lab and the bench where some degraded RNA was isolated followed by some weeping followed by a trip to canteen with the seniors who pampered me. The 3rd floor corridor which I identify with an eversmiling face gesturing me to enter the classroom and stop loitering around The classroom and the hangout place in between the lectures. The stop for frequent chit-chat Gateway to the university "The Administrative block" (reminds me of the first day) The bus stop where hours were spent not waiting for the bus. I remember this was the place where a feeling of being alone in the big bad world first came to me after my dad left for home leaving me alone after the first few days of settling down. Sabarmati Dhaba. The refuge for a cup of tea and a mouthful of pakodas. The road which goes to Tapti. Don't know how many times this road was crossed everyday.

The day came and went but not like any other day. I was on my toes the whole day. A lot work needed to be done. I had to work on my manuscript, finish my experiment, pack my bags and catch a train. And in between there were phone calls from friends (many of them call me only once a year and i do the same). There was a lot to talk to but i didn't have time. A childhood friend got irritated when i told her that i will call her on tuesday (instead of saying i will call you in a couple of minutes). It took a while to pacify her. I will be dead if i don't call her up tomorrow. I reached station 15 mins before the departure time (that was an achievement). I really love traveling by train. Most of the time when i am going out-of-station for a vacation or for professional reasons, the 'high point' of the trip is the train-journey. Will write something about it sometime soon. But this particular time, i was unhappy because of one reason. Many of my friends could not wish me sinc...

A new week began today. A new week after the recent happenings. I had decided 2 days back only that I will be going to Colaba today. I had some "genuine work" around the Taj area, Fort and Kaala Ghoda. I didn't want to delay it for later as it was important for me to see that the place is back to normal and that there are no army men and NSGs moving around, as we saw the whole of last week. As I approached Regal from Cuffe Parade I became happy to see that there were many school kids on the street. The Colaba Causeway looked just the same, as if nothing had happened. I felt even better. I took the road adjacent to Cafe Mondegar, which goes towards the Taj and i noticed that the road was blocked and there was heavy security beyond Curio Cottage. I had to go to the bank (which is a few metres from there) so i requested the security person and he allowed me to go. There were several others who were stopped at that point. I looked back to see who these people were. There were...

Slept at an earthly hour last night (after a long time), but woke up because of some loud sound and then could not go back to sleep. Also i have been getting scary dreams since last 2-3 days. I remember I used to get scared of thunderstorms (I still do) and message my friends in hostel "Darr lag raha hai" and one of them used to come to my room or i shifted to their room and sleep. Remember Monika :) It sounded very funny when I told them that thunder makes me feel as if a war is going on and that people are getting killed. And now when something like that has actually happened I am very disturbed. I can still go and sleep in my buddy's room or call her here...but i don't want to do that. I want to fight this feeling. I wished I was a child who cuddles to its mother and feels completely secure... Arms around me, a slow pat on the back, a beating heart and flow of breath of a live person near me... and then fall asleep. Thank God that when it is night here, there is da...