The sigh of summer upon my return..

Certain songs are sprawling threads to the past, sometimes. We hear a particular song and are immediately reminded of the scene when we first heard it, or that special moment in life when it was playing in the background.

Sometimes, I wonder whether all this stems out of the perception of man that his life is in fact a “real” movie and afterall, it’s the soundtracks that make the movie dramatic and we are all drama queens in some way. Or that the rocker drumming it out there is just you in some different spiritual form.

I ve gotten hold of this old CD of mine, Still Life (Opeth) and immediately have been thrown into nostalgia.

Still Life was a typical Opeth album released before Blackwater Park and Deliverance (read Steven Wilson).. which wavers between progressive and death metal. Their lead (Mikael Akerfeld) exhibits everything from growling to screaming to deft vocals in a seemingly conceptual album about a girl called Melinda. There is one song called “Benighted” (which apparently every girl-friend of mine likes and every guy skips on play) where he almost passes off for any random Tom Yorke. In the same album you have “Godhead’s Lament” which has the conventional heavy metal intro and “Face of Melinda” an almost jazzy solo included soft one. This is not a review hence no song descriptions, but any one’s who’s ever heard Opeth knows what I am talking about.

Why is this album special to me? Again, stupid personal reasons.. there is always something somewhere in an album you can relate to. Or maybe, it can be as simple as an object of sentimental value.

What can I say, I am like this only (apologies to the originator)..

This is an overdose!

All afternoon, I have been dreamily bobbing my head and humming Raindrops keep falling on my head (B.J. Thomas) I can't get it outta my head.

Seems like the monsoon spirit has won me over.

Raindrops keep falling on my head
And just like the guy whose feet are too big for his bed
Nothing seems to fit
Those raindrops are falling on my head, they keep falling..

There I go again!

Rain rain..

My friend let me drive her car to work today, as we were getting late and I was considered to be the better Schumacher of the two. But I don't particualrly fancy Santros with their feather light steering and rock strong brakes. I am always hard on brakes in a Santro, always.. its an illness, I tell you. So, I avoid them all together.

It was also pouring, (get the Schumi analogy?) so I was showering my "blessings" on quite a few unsuspecting and disgruntled pedestrians. Five to be precise. Every one of whom bared their teeth and clenched their fists. I felt sorry for them but the idea of halting and apologizing didn't seem very sane.

Finally, in spite of traffic and everything, we made it on time. Without a wet spot, at that :p .. making faces at my drenched motorist collegues, strutting to my desk, I get to my toil ground, my wage earning sandbox, my work.

(Luch time)

It's a beautiful sight, rain is.. little drops hitting against the glass pane.. hot coffee cup warming your palms.. head against the wall.. looking down at the streets, watching little kids play.. those innocent smiles.. it's a beautiful sight, I tell you..

"Arre.. Dee.." a hand tugs at my shoulder, the same shoulder that fathers my arm, which in turn is related to my edgy wrist, guardian of the half filled coffee cup. The little animation results in a nice abstract model of caffeine art on my shirt and an aide memoire - splash and thou shall be splashed upon.


Cheers.

Here I go again..

This is a bitch-eat-bitch world, they tell me. Being a romantic in life is being a fool. But isn’t it all about being true to yourself. Knowing what you want, your life and the world you choose. Even if it is dubbed unsuccessful in the worldly norms.

I ‘ve always oscillated between two points of view, one of that which an objective views of life, the self progressive, self gratifying way, and the other of the simpleton where love and happiness is the answer to everything. As a teenager, that was my identity crisis. Years passed, I grew out of teen-hood.. and started living the ‘real’ life, you know the one with money and extant societal subsistence issues. I stopped thinking about the values behind life, though from time to time, leisure fetches the topic in.

I have gotten into one of those moments again.

Is being individualistic overrated and glorified? Can an independent entity exist in this society? Is existence the mere dictum of life?

Too many questions. No appreciably rational answers cropping up.

I think I should go to sleep.

This is hilariously aberrant...

It is one of those days in the office where I have nothing to do (read have no intention of doing anything). Out of sheer boredom, I discover...

What Famous Leader Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

I got this twice in two different tests :p

How to pick up a great book..

About two months back, I was walking through the aisles of this one bookstore, accompanying my more well-read friend on a general shopping trip. My friend, who is a bookie, no.. that means something else, my friend is a books-enthusiast. If she gets into one of those bookstores, it is hard to drag her out of one.

It was one of those quintessential situations. It had been twenty minutes and there was no sign of her approaching the counter. I begged, pleaded.. no avail, I caught her by the hair, and pulled out, no retort.. just an absent minded nod. Finally, after an eternity she looks up and says.. “Why don’t you pick up something?” The last lit book I read was something by Vikram Seth, a delightful book nevertheless, but I am not one of those bookies..er.. book-people. I was a computer girl. I didn’t read books unless it had names, Richard Stallman or Steve Jobs on the cover and they had none of them around.. at least none I wanted. So I just tailed along her, tugging away at her salwar like those lil kids in super markets pestering their parents. “Ee.. chupp!” she hushed me up, typically. “Pick a book and we’ll leave..” she mumbled. “Promise??” I hopped. “Umm.. promise..” I heard a reply.

Desperately, I looked around that shelf, nice hard covers, beautifully made intelligent looking covers. But all intellectual books by some obscurely famous writers, I never knew. After bobbing my head up and down first and the rhythmically right to left, then left to right, suddenly my eyes fell on this title.. “Brave New World” it announced. Iron Maiden in a book!??!! This was the album that ruled my ex’s car forever. I never heard a different album, ever in that car, never. I can sing Wicker man better than even Bruce Dickenson. I grabbed that book (amazing abstract cover.. didn’t even bother reading the foreword) in one hand and my wailing friend in another and marched to the counter.

Ten minutes later, we got out the bookstore with her sporting a silly grin. Two hours, I wince. Two months later, I complete a dystopian novel by Aldous Huxley.

Confessions

“I don’t do this often.. in fact never..” this is my line. I use this almost in every possible situation imaginable in a social lifetime.

Last night, I was up till three in the night(morning) talking to a stranger online about how life treats its owners. I don’t do this often, in fact never. That was my first time a public chatroom, a depression support one at that.

What started out as an insensitive prank turned into a therapeutic session. I was told its liberating to confess, apparently it puts phantoms of the past to sleep. There are these little boxes in the church where a padre sits listening to sinners admit to their follies. They call them confession chambers. In the comfort of anonymity, one can find solace in strangers. I don’t know.. I am not too spiritual sort of girl.

But I thought I found one of those boxes yesterday. They call them Yahoo IM chatboxes. Who knew, a 32 year old house wife in Ohio would turn out to be my best shrink! Well.. what can I say.. mysterious are His ways.

Btw, seen this?

Tennis anyone?

Yesterday night, I watched someone play tennis the way I had never seen in a long time. True, I don’t watch tennis as religiously anymore, so I am not abreast with the Nadals and Sharapovas. But after a long time, I watched a tennis match in continuum. But this kid played what I thought was pretty darn good tennis.

There is something about lefties. They make everything seem so easy. They say there is one left hander for every ten right handers. That puts them in an exclusive club already, if consider minority an elite.

Anyway, I was talking about left handed tennis players. Monica Seles, Martina Navratilova, Thomas Muster, Marcelo Rios, John McEnroe... a few I can remember. A few that I liked watching.

When a left hander whips a forehand crosscourt leaving Serena Williams bemused, its fun. It’s fun to watch. When she runs down the baseline and returns a passing shot kissing the line, it’s more fun. When she lobs one right over her head and it lands inches inside the line.. it’s hilarious, no.. actually that is fun too. I never liked Serena Williams. Maybe because she had better triceps than me, or maybe because she pretends to have a fashion sense. Factual ‘bloody’ errors, both of them. But this is not about her, it’s about a 20 year old American called Angela Haynes. 14-12, she won the first set tie breaker, before Star cut off transmission. I am not going ahead to make a Vijay Amritraj like statement that she had tremendous future blah.. blah.. because I know zilch about tennis and yes, that is a humble statement. But she is GOOD.



Eventually updated, Serena Williams won 6-7, 6-4, 6-2. Nevermind!

I want to go to Africa!

Perhaps he knew, as I did not, that the Earth was made round so that we would not see too far down the road.

kismet : n : fate, fortune

Do you believe in kismet? Notice the ‘e’ instead of the ‘a’ to testify my anglization of the word. Well, either word.. I believe it.

Yesterday I had written a hopelessly sorry and pathetic post about my past. Well.. it was one of those moments! I wanted delete it for sometime but then let it stay for some odd reason. It represented my state of mind for the evening and the following morning. I carried it through to my work and generally kept to myself. Noticing my unusual un-chirpiness, that word is quoted btw.. a friend decided to take me out for coffee. Half a cup into the evening, I was there checking a guy out. I don’t this often, but there was something very stimulating about him. I kept looking at him through the mirror. He was not your average hunk to go drooling over but was more a regular software engg types. Soon, his companion informed the chap about his new found “aficionado”. I know, guys tend to overstate. We do too. So, this guy turns around.. smiles with a raised brow and everything and walks right up to me.

With the continuing smile.. “What are you doing here?” he asks.

I thought that was a bit brusque and impolite. I thought it was an unwritten rule that coffee bars are a place where people exchange implicit looks. It was no grounds for an inquiry of any kind. By anyone.

“I beg your pardon!” the poor lil me exclaimed in a sense of absolute astonishment and ignorance.

The guy was rather taken aback by the antagonistic response. “Err.. sorry. I thought you were some one I knew.. sorry..” he excused himself and wimped out. I felt sorry for the guy. There he was standing in a popular societal spot being mortified by a girl who was till then checking him out. I gave a very assuring no-problem sign with the hand and a polite smile. He walked away nodding his head.

But he turned again, my eyes widened. “Are you not Dee?” he asked. That was my name alright. My eyes ran all over his face then pinned in. Then they exploded out. “ARUN!!!!?? You dog!!!!” I shouted out so loud that his face which balanced the pink tone then embraced crimson.
I knew that red faced wimpy canine. He was my ex’s band’s bassist. I had not met him in an eternity. He had this typical rocker look in those days, with long flowing tresses and unkempt beard.. torn jeans. They all wanted to be a cross between George Michael and Slash in those days. They failed miserably on both counts, thankfully. He was the Trainspotting connection. He had all the contacts, he was the man to get the maal.

As I looked at a man who looks far from the loser I once knew, for a moment, just for a moment I wonder – are coincidences for real?

I walk a lonely road

When I first heard the Boulevard of Broken Dreams, I thought I should write to Greenday for a royalty. I had written that song when was 19. Years later, they released the song in a different country under a different name (mine was called Avenue for devastated thoughts). But I got busy with other things and never quite wrote to them. Moreover, I liked their version better.

Loneliness has been an integral part of my life, among other things. It was my Hobbes. NO, I am not trying to paint a gloomy picture of a recluse with no friends. I had friends. They called us groupies, I didn’t like the name. I liked calling us friends. We were just there to cheer the band on and go back to watch “Trainspotting”. But they never figured that out. I was thought of being odd and cavalier. This was true. Not the odd bit, but maybe sometimes offhand. But hey, I was a kid and Trainspotting was a good movie.

Then I grew up, became a GOOD girl. I did the right things. I started being industrious and righteous in a secret hope that the karmic accountant relieves me of the seclusion. I stopped being vain, stopped being a dump, stopped everything that made me a me. All in the hope that someday the laughter I sported in the congregations will invite itself when I sit alone next to the wall. I hoped. I am still hoping. It has been years and I still am waiting to see if the hope materializes.

Till then I'll walk away.

Customization

Sometimes I did certain things in a different way just because everybody else did it in a particular way. They said that is because I suffer from certain complex to be different. They also told me that this is quite a common trait. So, I started being normal, started to do stuff everybody does.

No, there was no wit in that. It was just a confession.

Blogging again!

I spent the entire afternoon playing this game called Desert Combat. I know girls are not supposed to play games like this, there are better games in town. I also know that Enemy Territory, Natural Selection or the good old Counter Strike rank better on the list. But hey, a game is a game at the end of the day. I am not an avid gamer per se, which translates into me being an ersatz tomboy. I admit to it. I turned to gaming only because one geeky friend who would spend hours in front of the TV with that lil playstation of MINE and get lost on those combat turfs, and since it was MY playstation I had to outdo him, also that, and someone had a crush on a certain someone. That was where it began, my obsession to video games (we stick to the old names). Did I mention I kick butt in FPS games?