Heart weaves the thoughts
Mind delves into the mysteries
Hands do the magic
Eyes play the game
Feet tread the path
Lips lament
...
Its the fingertips that really love!
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Visits
Friends’ visits are always like a fresh breath of cool early-morning breeze. They arrive, with bags full of energy, enthusiasm, (and gifts if they remember to); life changes for those couple of days, it is loaded with all sorts of activities – sight-seeing, roaming on the streets aimlessly yet consumed in talking about ambitions and future, eating, laughing and most importantly, feeling happy!
Even God loves it when friends meet up. You want to know why? Well, Hyderabad weather hardly rocks, but last weekend, as one of my BITSian friends planned a sudden trip to the city, God made the blues of Hyderabad heat vanish altogether and we couldn’t have asked for more.
Two days and the Threesome. There was not a road left un-touched. From Old City to the modern one, the two city-dwellers among the three of us covered every nook-and-corner of the city so that this friend gets to feel the true air of Hyderabad!
Three spots we visited are worth a special mention here for three different reasons. One was Charminar, second was VengalaRao Park, and the third one was the Barista coffee shop.
Every tourist to Hyderabad has Charminar on top of the list of places-to-visit. It wasn’t so on my friend’s list (he had no list actually!) but once there standing in front of the monument, he couldn’t resist going up. Although the climb is not much of a delight, the circular steps of Charminar remind you of two things – one, the fact that you are entering ancient history; second, you think of how easy it was for Harry Potter to go up such a staircase when going to professor Dumbledore’s office, that you wish it magically started to rotate!
Once up on Charminar, you can get a microscopic view of how huge our population is. People sprawling all around the monument, it seems and feels as if the monument is adjusting itself between the swarm of people, somehow balancing itself amidst all chaos. And in that chaos, there are the lives of hundreds of people – some praying in the mosque on the left, some stopping by the small vendors to buy balloons bags or bangles, some auto-wallahs looking for a customer, some kids playing on the sides of the roads, some fruit vendors… And that is not chaos for them! That is Life, and everyone there, here, everywhere survives on a balancing act!
VengalaRao Park is a city park developed by the GHMC (in the Naidu times), that stands near the Nagarjuna Circle on the road towards City Centre Mall. It has an extremely beautiful and placid landscape, adding to the scenery is a small pond in the middle. The green lawns sprawl all around it, with many ‘comfy’ spots for couples on one side, and a playground full of swings and slides for children on the other! We reached this park late afternoon on Sunday after a tiring climb at the Golconda fort. And for the most part of the time that we spent there, we slept. There was so much beauty all around, yet all that we did was sleep. And, we couldn’t have enjoyed the place better. Facing the overcast sky, with dreams on eyelids and serene breeze blowing on the face – all that one can do is Sleep! So we did!
Barista was our stop in the evening. This was my first visit to Barista – THE coffee shop! My brother later congratulated me on achieving the feat; he is 16 and has been there more than he should. What I liked the most about this coffee shop was the game of Scrabble they provided to customers! It delighted me totally J Of course, I did enjoy the coffee, oops, Cappuccino as they say, Cookies dipped in Cream and Chocolate syrups and obviously the Conversations. The coffee shop does come across as a simple and Costly affair, but for those who love chocolates as much as I do, the Dark Temptation is a must-try, although the Strawberry Delight looked equally delicious for a summer-evening snack!
Apart from the eating, licking and drinking there, we realized how meticulous we were at filling up the Feedback forms, how strangely what seemed to be there was actually not there, how when it came to chocolates and syrups we lost all etiquette, how miserly we were at paying compliments, how girls attach more emotion to detail than boys ever imagine to, how distracting a cricket match can be, how interesting coincidences in life are… and much more. After all, life is all about realizations!
Two days, the Threesome and it was Terrific!
Visits are always too short than they seem to be. But, KD – thanks for making the weekend so full of fun and laughter! (And perhaps, gear up the longer weekend trip that’s coming ahead.)
Jumble Word, Crossword and Much More
This is a long standing tradition at home, to start the day with a cup of coffee, a cup of tea, a mug of Bournvita and perhaps another mug of Complan, coupled with solving puzzles that spread across the everyday newspaper. You must be wondering why all the four together! Well, that’s in order of the beverages each one of us has in the morning as we say, ‘Suprabhatamu’ at home. Pa, Ma, Bro, and Me.
To describe it from the mind of a management student, here’s a brief:
Venue:- the Dining Table
Time:- around 7am. Of course, my timings are a bit more flexible.
Inventory:- Pens and pencils, Newspaper. Preferrably Telegraph.
Activity:- Solve Jumble Words, Crossword next; and not get up from the table till you think you have exhausted all the resources that you can lay your hands on to help you solve that entire crossword.
Resources include:- Oxford Dictionary, Thesaurus, the Encyclopedia, Manorama. And of course, the four bright brains!
We are like four arrows pointing at the four different, mostly opposite directions, thereby having contradictory but mostly complementary viewpoints in Life. If one points due North, there will definitely be someone pointing due South. With the rest two of us, pointing at East and West – sometimes apprehensive of taking either of the two others, or sometimes because of plain boredom! So, we do not spare even the beverages.
But this is what adds spice to our lives. And no wonder, we have had such wonderful conversations on the dining table during our meals. Be it about Indian Politics, about Cars’ engines, about exams and entrances, about Philosophy or simply about the routines of the day. The discussions are innumerable; and inevitable! And yes, like all Roads lead to Rome; all Conversations finally lead to Cinema. That is a characteristic feature of our talks over the table.
But the morning-gathering is definitely a tad different. It begins and ends with a play of words, and only words! The Telegraph was our favorite for a really long time. As my father’s visits to the capital city increased, we began to have a new addition to our game of words. The Daily in Delhi called Mail Today carries a supplement, Coffee Break, which includes countless puzzles – Sudoku of varied types and difficulty levels, Kakuro, Codeword, Cryptic Crossword, Daily Jumble, Word Wheel, Navigati, Minute Maze – with Cryptic Crossword having picked up maximum popularity at our table. The time spent over this is a mixture of emotions – with Pa feeling proud at every word correctly solved by kids Bro and Me, or Pa trying to (still) woo Ma with his wits! In one word – it is an absolute delight. To watch, to solve, to share, and to learn! And am grateful to my Pa for stimulating our minds from such a young age to spend time over Page 8 than o’er Page 3!
P.P.S Do get your online copy of Coffee Break if you are into Puzzles.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Nine's and Three's
Exams are always a help I say! These hours spent in the loneliness of an examination hall where one cannot talk to even the dearest of enemies and have to spend the entire stretch of unending tick-tock with painstaking concentration on wholly one’s self, can sometimes reveal the funniest of facts – of course, only to the self – and bang the head with the brightest of ideas too!
Well yes, exams are the place for absurdities too! You don’t know why something happens the way it does when in an examination hall. For example, how a bright 16year old sitting through the mathematics paper of the CBSE class 10 boards could not simplify ‘square root of nine’ as three; ahem, + or – 3 as always corrected by my father; is something even beyond his own comprehension. Thereby, he reduces the quadratic equation to a step from where it could have actually been reduced further – yet the 16year old feels completely at peace and perhaps proud too that he did it All alright!
It reminds me of the scene from Taare Zameen Par where the little Ishaan travels in his space craft to Join ‘planet’ 3 with ‘planet’ 9 as an answer to the problem of adding 3 to 9. This has been picked up straight from one of Calvin and Hobbes comic strips, which were brought to my notice by a friend – who instead of generating Sales for his company in the crucial month of the last quarter, was actually busy laughing over Calvin and Hobbes sitting on the 19th floor of his office building overlooking computer-wallpaperish scenery of the Pacific bay, sipping on coffee and munching on cookies! Well, he claims he passed one big exam of his life – the IIT JEE, and whatever has followed till date has been the fruit of passing that one exam.
Friday, March 13, 2009
She
All on a summer’s day
She walked out
Into the sun;
Hat on her head
Sparkling shoes on a stroll;
She knew no walls
No tricks, no play
Out she was, on a
Rhythm with a pretty gait.
Trees bent down and
Greeted her; she kissed
their leaves,
Hugged the cool breeze; and quietly
Blushed at her flowers.
Tip-a-Tap Tip-Tap
She hummed a tune
With her hands at a clap.
Sun shone at her bright
She walked on
Without a hesitation in sight
For she knew;
And smiled with glee,
Time had come for her to Be.
Bell
On the slab of the window
She sat and watched the sun go
The sky changed colours
From blue to hues of pink and yellow
She sat and watched the sun go
The sky changed colours
From blue to hues of pink and yellow
The wind touched her bright face;
Her only companion at the window
Moved gently,
And played music with grace
On the green grasses of Sky
They sat; watched the sun come by
It added new colours
And took away the gray
The wind was with her today
And her old companion
Was moved over, gently
To the wind where his music lay
Of Mails, Kiddo and Blogs
Inspirations. We all have our Inspirations. I have a few of them in my life. People and Moments. They have helped me shape my life the way it is now, and I am grateful to them for it.
The one Inspiration that needs a mention here is a dear friend of mine; was a senior at engineering college and is popularly known as Banjo to most. For me, for a long time this person was the most delightful writer – writing what, was and still is a personal choice – in my life! Words that always stuck the right chord; Notes that tuned in the right music – and I knew the very first time he wrote to me that I had got myself a friend who wouldn’t stop throwing Gyaan at me.
Now, as I sit here in front of my laptop and begin to draft out the first post of my blog, I realize I cannot start blogging ‘officially’ unless I confirm my gratitude to this man who made me believe and made me feel that I belonged; and inspired me to make my own story. It is to him that I dedicate this post to, and earnestly thank him for stirring the emotion in me to paint this canvas with my dreams!
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