My echo, My shadow and Me...

JANUARY 30, 1987 I still remember the excitement. Through out the last week of January our National Broadcaster ' Doordarshan ' was running promos of Richard Attenborough's Oscar winner " Gandhi " . National premier of the movie on the 30th, on the occasion of the Martyr's Day. Right from the morning we heard elders discussing the movie, adding spice to our excitements. Though it was not a holiday, classes were dismissed after 12 O' clock. Parents were also back from their work. Mama took all possible steps to ensure that we finished our lunch by 1 O' clock. Something that delighted everyone, our neighbour arranged an electricity generator so that unprecedented power-cuts do not disrupt our viewing. From 2 O' clock onwards there was a virtual stand still, all glued to the TV set for the next four and half- hours. After the movie we were hardly talking to each other. There was some kind of heaviness on the air. I was sad that ' Bapu' was no ...

Three days after we celebrated our 57th Republic Day , we are settling down to normalcy. National flags dismounted and songs that infuse the sense of patriotism in us are dying out. We are readying ourselves for our day-to-day struggles. I will be able to steal a little time out of my schedule to complete the post, before there is another scam or another controversy breaks out and we get busy in digging them out. (I started writing this on 22nd of January, with the idea of publishing on 26th, the RD Day but failed to do so...Better late than never!) 26th of January, 2004 . I spent the day at a remote village in the "remote North East Indian State of Nagaland ". It happende to be the only Republic Day so far I have spent without once hearing the National Anthem and seeing single National Flag waving on the sky. Yet, it’s a day I’ll recall on every Republic day I celebrate. Distance between the district head quarter of Zunheboto and the state capital Kohima is about 150...

This time I was double tagged by AFJ and Dwaipayan . These are the rules... (1) Write a 100-to-200-word entry using the following words: I, me, blow job, grapes, random, power, loneliness, water, robot and blue; (2) use these words once and only once; and of course (3) the entry should make sense. And here's what I produced after hours of discontinuous tap tap tap... Vivek decided to go for a random walk. "At times you need to do some out-of-the-routine things to assert yourselves that you are not a robot . Specially, after six days of rigor." This is when Vivek misses the cool breeze on the banks of the river and the mighty water current that used to infuse power drops in his blood vessels. "There can never be fatigue or loneliness when the river is around," his father used to say. Now there's only the vast blue sky to gaze into. "Stop following me !" Shrill voice of a woman in rugs forced Vivek to a Holt. She was trying to drive away a group...

Clemenceau… The ship that died. But didn’t stop killing. Imagine you're the State of France. What do you do with a 27,000-tonne warship full of asbestos, PCBs, lead, mercury, and other toxic chemicals, which you don't want and no European country is willing or able to scrap for you? Why, you send it off to India to be broken up by hand in a scrapyard where impoverished workers are injured and die every day? GREENPEACE, india

And the pull exerted by Rita reached me. Here are the rules of the game that I have done ^C and ^V from her post: 1. The tagged victim has to come up with 8 different points of their perfect lover. 2. Need to mention the sex of the target. 3. Tag 8 victims to join this game & leave a comment on their comments saying they've been tagged. 4. If tagged the 2nd time, there's no need to post again. "Eight points! OMG!" That was how my mind reacted when I read Rita's post. I do not have that many parameters for my perfect love. That will be a really mind crunching task. Still I am giving a try... Target: Female My perfect lover should be 1.Cute (with a beautiful mind) 2.Accept me as I am (with all my limitations) 3.Always demanding (to give me hard time struggling to fulfill them) 4.A chatter box! 5.Not always asking for explanations of the things I do (excepting for crucial matters). 6.Ready to accept that there can be different views. 7.Cooks delicious food (of c...

The one-kilometer stretch from Connaught place to Gole Market is one-way for the traffic. Once in a month I have to make a trip between these two places and I love the walk back. In spite of being at the heart of the national capital New Delhi, traffic on this way is scanty and the well-defined footpath (it's hardly so in most part of the city). My latest walk back on this road was at about 11 o'clock last Monday. The morning TV news bulletin said it was going to be one of the coldest days with the possibility of mercury touching the ZERO mark! I was enjoying sunrays playing hide and seek through the road side tree leaves. " Can you tell me the way to Baba Kharak Sing Marg?" " What are you looking for?" " The state government emporiums." " A little ahead on the way, but we have to take a right byline. I am on that way only." Paul Bremer was from Sydney. This was his second visit to India and first time in New Delhi. He was in Kerala two...

Do you believe in "afterlife"? Do you believe in the predications you come across now and than? I think I am a non-believer of the both without any specific reason for my non-belief. It's just one of the thousands of beliefs I believe that neither our past nor our future is scripted. But today I discovered, irrespective of my reservations about the abilities to read one's life, that I enjoy these predications. While googling the net I came across a site that claimed to give a BIG VIEW about life. Along with Big Views on Mind and Consiousness , Tao Te Ching , Greek Philosophy , Buddhism and Space and Time the site generates information about your past life . Here's what it says about my past life... I don't know how you feel about it, but you were male in your last earthly incarnation. You were born somewhere in the territory of modern Tibet around the year 1550.Your profession was that of a banker, usurer, moneylender or judge. Your brief psychological profil...

"The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers." M. Scott Peck