Memories
Memory...
An endless whiff
Floats back and forth
Between you and me
-A strange chord
Fluid and abnormal
Faded yet strong
Time has made it translucent,
A Liquid story
In which our unsaid words
Float and swim across silences....
Perhaps they will melt away
heal
and lay to rest
all those aberrations
that we could do without
Perhaps,we can then see
That it's all okay either ways...
However,It has stirred something
That changed...
Who we are..today
End Of one beginning is the beginning of another one!!
“ The end of one beginning is the beginning of another one…” My stay in this city to which I am addicted has come to an end. Sometime in the middle of the next month I will be shifting to Pune to join my husband and begin a new chapter of my life and it feels extremely strange.
Whatever I have learned from this city, I would not have in any other place. “ The me” who entered this place is so different from “the me” who is leaving….There is one song which plays in my head “I am leaving on a jet plane…donno when I will be back again…”
There are lessons learnt, friends forgotten, new ones discovered, the sweetness of solitude cherished…and somewhere there is pain..but it does not hurt..coz I am numbed .Numbness…one very important lesson learnt for keeps.
It’s strange that though now I am married and communicate far more with my family and friends, my individuality is far more defined..I am at peace with myself and there better be something very grave to disturb this peace. There is a shift on the understanding of the term grave and at times the most grave situations just don’t disturb..because I am numb and comfortable with that feeling. I have realized that everybody has a lovely person hidden inside and one must explore that side of oneself…that it is really difficult to be lonely, even if one is alone..once that person hidden is discovered.
I have learnt that one should empty oneself of emotions to keep that equlibrium in life maintained, because the pendulum of life swings both ways.
I have learnt that there is nothing that is right, wrong, black or white..everything is a shade of grey and that is just okay. It pays to give people the benefit of doubt..that life is beautiful and adventurous and each one is alone…everything else is a facilitator to achieve that one purpose..which you think is your mission on earth. And yes, This mission changes with each passing year or maybe even every day, at times!
Since one is alone all that one Is obliged to do is to keep oneself happy by exploring that good side that one has…
There are memories which maybe, at some point will lie in a dusty corner of my mind..but when these memories were events they made me what I am…and I am happy the way things turned out to be…That someone else will occupy the same place that I do now and life moves on..and that is a beautiful feeling to have!!
I have learnt to seek humour coz there is no other manner of dealing with a situation and it is funny that as my folks shift to Mumbai..i shift out..that when I got settled in mumbai it’s time to leave..that when I was looking at blogging even more…the department of telecom had banned this site in the name of terrorism.
I am awaiting to tell those many many stories that are still untold..waiting as life shall unfold..J))
An Idoit called Rajdeep Sardesai..and many more in the making...
As Blasts hit mumbai and hundereds died, thousands injured…all eyes turned to television sets….particularly this one….CNN-IBN, as the anchor Rajdeep claimed”We are the first ones to bring the news to your drawing rooms.”
He went on to say that “"These pictures are now being beamed on all CNN networks all over the world. Indians all over the world watching CNN are now watching CNN-IBN. This is the power of CNN-IBN"…the most shocking part was the smirk on Rajdeep’s face..as if saying “here’s the oppurtunity which the other media channels couldn’t grab and I will have the highest eyeballs visting the channel…because we are the first one’s to bring this news over.”
The media, has surely become a business like any other.Where has the essence and the objective of media gone?What are they trying to achieve through all this…More disappointing was the fact they tried commenting on Reader’s Digest survey that Mumbai Is the Rudest city….and then making debates like”Mumbaiker Ko Gussa Kyun Aata hai”…they also aired some extremist comments like “Mr Prime Minister..you keep sitting in your air conditioned room and we will keep facing the brunt of such terrorist activities.” I was completely unable to comprehend what was the objective..did they want to fuel the fire, could these news channels not rise to the need of the hour…which a common slum dweller could, who rescued people, unrelated from the site,…The media on the other hand were asking questions like “Is there a feeling of anger,Despair….what do people think….cant media be put to greater use….could they not act as a source to help locate people…when telephone lines were jammed and television and radio were the only source of communication.
What contribution did these channels make to bring things in order,apart from informing people in different parts of the country of the blasts and trying to get the best debates on the topic.By virtue of showing the images that they did,both during the rains and now,they created panic within the country.Isn’t it a known fact Mumbai gets the maximum number of people from other states and people live alone in this city,where parents cant get in touch of the kids..…does the media not have a moral responsibilty.When common individuals are coming forward to help the ones in distress should the media not contribute.
It makes me wonder
1.Should the media not have a code of conduct.
2.Like every business has an objective,should the media BUSINESS not have an objective for its exsistence.
3.Should there not be a law under which such actions, like creating panic etc..be taken to task.
What kind of medium is the MEDIA…different papers report different figures and it seems like they all looking for a good punch line..which will appeal to the entire target segments…some are comparing it to 9/11 by calling it 7/11…some are using the digit 7 again and again..7 blasts in 7 minutes and 170 killed…It’s a time for a wake up call…where are we headed!!!
The Mumbai Blasts
There is a pattern which screams Global Terrorism, from the blasts in Kashmir to these…but our country is committed to peace and hope. More people are killed in these blasts than any other blasts in the world…NY or the London Tube Blasts. But we need events which are far bigger in magnitude to raise us from the deep slumber that we are in.
Coming back to the city called Mumbai. Common people,like you and me, travel in those first class compartments which were blown into shreds yesterday.Three are immunerable stories of people that I know who missed those trains by couple of minutes..some due to delay some otherwise…yet others who were in those trains but in different compartments…and we as an organization have lost 3 people and still figuring some other!!
The images and names of places like Bandra, Matunga, Khar sent a shudder down my spine….for one the Khar blast was some metres away from my house.But by the time I reached home bodies were already cleared and the injured sent to hospitals.I have never been so close to a disaster as this one and what I saw will stay in my memory for atleast some time to come. Some thousands of people travel by those trains everyday and it strikes me what a natural, easy spot Mumbai is to throw the system in a form of disarray.
Do you feel bad for a Mumbaikar!! He is atleast 2 times more productive than a normal Indian in any other part of the country. It’s a city where an Auto guy will render you the exact change!! Where no matter how late in the night it is…you will almost never feel unsafe to go back home. Where there are immunerable stories of difficulties being turned into opportunities..from the dabbawala to the “muchhad” panwala…to the guy on the khar station who will serve egg bhujji and pav at midnight.
It’s surprising that a city like Mumbai,where distances rule your life and you are at the mercy of public transport springs back to action almost instantly. There are only two emotions for this city “Feel Good” or “Feel Numb” …Nothing deters…It seems as if “The Mumbaiker” knows that disaster is going to hit again and again and the only attitude in life is to “look forward” and “solve the problem at hand.”…which is why you will find one Mumbaiker helping the other…while the authorities will come In late and the television channels will show the most horrific pictures again and again, which spread more panic…where telephone lines will not work. People you hardly communicate with otherwise come together as family…maybe out of a necessity of being in a group and deriving help..while the blood family just watches the city’s disarray on the TV screen.Helpless.Where husbands and wives living in the same city cant help each other..just wait, watch and accept!!
Today morning albeit late, the crowd in office is turning to office…work has started as usual…people have taken the same roads, same trains to travel to work…to schools.There is music playing on the laptops and people are talking business. If a stranger were to enter office…he would not have known that 8 blasts have hit this crowd..some amongst us are either dead or injured..coz the show must go…coz the monthly targets don’t change…coz at the end of the day we need to deliver and live…coz there is still after after the disaster..!!
Here’s a salute to this city, which yet again stands up to face another disaster…a city prepared, atleast mentally coz The city which delivers 30% of the Tax to the GOI cannot afford to loose a business day..Does the government not owe it’s part to the city and step up the security???
My Favourite Poem..
From birth to death
time surrounds us
with its intangible walls.
We fall with the centuries, the years, the minutes.
Is time only a falling, only a wall?
For a moment,
sometimes,
we see-- not with our eyes but with our thoughts
--time resting in a pause.
The world half-opens
and we glimpsethe immaculate kingdom,
the pure forms,
presencesunmoving,
floatingon the hour,
a river stopped:truth, beauty, numbers, ideas
-- and goodness, a word buriedin our century.
A moment without weight or duration,
a moment outside the moment:
thought sees, our eyes think.
Triangles, cubes, the sphere,
the pyramid
and the other geometrical figures
thought and drawn by mortal eyes
but which have been here since the beginning,
are, still legible,
the world,
its secret writing,
the reason and the origin of the turning of things,
the axis of the changes,
the unsupported pivott
hat rests on itself, a reality without a shadow.
The poem, the piece of music, the theorem,
unpolluted presences born from the void,
are delicate structures
built over an abyss:infinities fit into their finite forms,
and chaos too is ruled by their hidden symmetry.
Because we know it,
we are not an accident:
chance, redeemed returns to order.
Tied to the earth and to time,
a light and weightless ether,
thought supports the worlds
and their weight,
whirlwinds of suns turned into a handful of signs on a random piece of paper.
Wheeling swarms of transparent evidence
where the eyes of understanding drink a water simple as water.
The universe rhymes with itself,
it unfolds and is two and is many without ceasing to be one.
Motion, a river that runs endlessly
with open eyes through the countries of vertigo
-- there is no above nor below,
what is near is far --returns to itself
-- without returning,
now turned into a fountain of stillness.
Tree of blood,
man feels,
thinks, flowers,and bears strange fruits: words.
What is thought and what is felt entwine,
we touch ideas: they are bodies and they are numbers.
And while I say what I say
time and space fall dizzyingly,restlessly.
They fall in themselves.
Man and the galaxy return to silence.
Does it matter? Yes -- but it doesn't matter:
we know that silence is music and
thatwe are a chord in this concert.
