My echo, my shadow and me...

I grew up rolling and strolling through a world filled with little wonders. Among them were the fireflies—those winged beetles that lit up the dark lanes of the suburban town where I spent my childhood. It was more of a village, untouched by the city's electricity network and beyond the reach of its bright lights. I still have vivid memories of running and playing on the grass-covered streets, watching fireflies drift through the moonlit night. The excitement would peak when I woke up in the middle of the night to find one or two glowing softly inside the house, breaking the darkness with their flickering luminescence. For a time, my friends and I would catch them and stuff them into transparent polythene bags, turning them into makeshift lanterns. But that joy faded when an elderly man planted a thought in our young minds: "Imagine how your mother would feel if someone trapped you in a plastic bag like that!" The guilt struck deep, and we abandoned our harmless but thoug...

It often makes me wake up with a jerk. “Had a dream of the big rat again?” asks wife with tone of absolute certainty. She has got used to it. I dream myself in sleep when a big rat hits rushing from the other side of the bed and I roll down the bed to be dropped on the floor. I can feel the momentous but immense feeling of weightlessness, while on the free fall, till I hit the floor. Display intercom flashed “Boss calling”. “Can you come to my room?”…I found Vivek was also in the room. “Close the door”. While following his instructions, a felt the big question mark that popped up somewhere in my mind. This is something he hardly does, closing the door while talking to his “team“. I took the seat next to Vivek. “You must be wondering why boss has called both us together today!” A dramatic pause! Vivek and I looked at each other’s face with extreme curiosity. “Why???” I felt the question mark growing bigger and bigger, as if to explode out of my head and almost shrank to zero when boss’s...

I do not remember what it was that made me realise, 'I am moving too fast'. I pulled in the breaks to a jerking halt. I looked back to check how far I have travelled...the meter says I did travel a lot. But how can I still see the 'square one' clearly with my naked eyes? And where's the trace of 'me' that I am looking for? Why can't I see even the vague impression when I look forward? Was my journey like a wind mill? ' Running fast, but travel no far'? It was some twenty years back. Just like many others, I asked the simple three word question ' Who am I?...Finding no one around to answer, I started my journey on foot. A search, for an identity... And now when I glance back, sitting still on the corner of the tranqil lake, I can recollect answers to many questions that I have gathered during the journey so far...I know what I am, I know what I can do, I know what I can't...I know what I have gathered, what I had gathered and lost while ru...

So many times it h appens. Standing at cross roads, you try to decide whether you follow your heart or your head. After hours of deliberation, you arrive at a decision, assure yourself that you will stand by yourself on any eventuality. You take the turn and enter the wonderland of Alice. Life is never the same again. While in transition somehow the bitterness, that drove you to the decisive turn, goes to the posterior. You try to recollect the smiling faces and the echoing laughters and wish they were a part of the newness around you. Can't avoid the painful realization that these wishes can never be true... With time you too manage to change yourself, at least to fit yourself into the new world. But some how, even after traveling thousands of miles, you find you are not far away from the turn you have taken. As if you are traveling on a circle, with no starting point defined and no end too.

I got curious and peeped out of the window to check what was happening on the lane out side. The little girl was crying her heart out stumping her feet on the ground. That she was crying despite being alone ( there were no one to pacify her) made me feel she was really upset about something. I usually find her playing with her playmates in the evening but never had any chance or reason for interaction. "Hey, what happened?" It seemed my question fueled her grieves and she started crying even lauder. " What happened? Why are you crying? May be I can help you out?" My second question succeeded in generating some response from her. " I am trying to collect the marbles in my hands," she said maintaining her sobbing. "But every time some of them slip out of my hand". That's when I noticed the collection of some twenty marbles she was struggling with. She had palms too small to accommodate more than five marbles at a time. Even if she managed to pi...

My echo... Slowly the cracking sounds of the dry leaves died out and I got a feel of the rocky ground I was walking on...only sounds remained were that of wind and the last rays of the setting sun getting reflected after striking on the sharp edges of the uneven rocks... "Is there any one around? Can any one hear me?"...ear me?...r me?...r me?...me...e?...e?...e?” Words kept on bouncing till they lost all their energy in the roughness of the rocks and died out. My shadow... I saw him standing in front of the mirror with the same old tool box. "Hey, what are you doing?" "Can't you see? Trying to fix a smile!" "What a big job that is?" "Why don't you help me out? I have been trying for past one hour. But some how none of the smiles are looking good on my face?" I got busy with the screw driver...fixing different curves on the face, to fix the smile that looks perfect...after struggling for one hour mo...

Blankets of fog on both sides of the road showed winter is making inroads into Delhi. For the next few months, the city will be a pleasant stay. Lazy traffic movement on the road added to the deserted morning cityscape. As if being forced to leave the pleasant winter morning sleep, disgusted, the vehicles were moving on snooze. All these including the smooth movement of the vehicle, the road side trees running backwards produced a mirror with a hazy reflection of me in it...with time passing by it became clearer, to the extent where I can see the tiles of different colours that I am made up of...some of them with throbbing colours, some of them faded with layers of dust gathered over time... I found myself following the instinct, got busy dusting the tiles... Perhaps I was too consumed in restoring the fading colors and realised it only when the vehicle came to an abrupt halt, tossing me out of my place... "Mere colour, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, ...

For most of the people from the part of the country I come from, Diwali is just an occasion to burst crackers. It was not much different for me too. The very thought of Diwali was scary (!) for me. My poor lungs were too weak to bear the amount of pollution in the air, thanks to the tons of crackers burnt. As the days closed in to Diwali and people around start count down, I would be crippled by the images of me, sitting in a corner of my bed, struggling for breath. I have had sufficient reasons to hate the festival. Even then there were certain things I liked about the festival. I was scared of it but waited for it...waited eagerly to watch the lines of diays that maa (mamma) would put around the house, making it look like a heavenly abode...I longed for the day when there will be silence all around; I would sit on a chair and watch the flames dancing with air waves. Sight of diyas struggling to keep themselves alive when air movements became too ruthless evoked countless thoughts i...

"Yuji San! Are you happy?" asks Frank. (San is the Japanese equivalent of Mr.). Yuji looks at the space in front in a meditative mood (as if he is trying to work out whether he is happy or not). Then he draws a typical big Japanese smile on his face that reflects extreme happiness and shake head heavily, "Yes, Yes"(the second yes to confirm the first yes). This would set all five of us into a roaring laughter. This was the second time I met with Frank. He is 67 and a manager of a European auto giant. He works till 2 O'clock in the night (!) and gets up at 6 in the morning. In spite of that I have never seen him dozing off on a ride as long as four hours. I also have never heard him raising his voice to express dissatisfaction. His silence was enough to set all of us into motion to correct what ever mistake made or occurred. However his voice shakes everything around when he is happy, when he laughs. Yuji is an engineer. As it happens with almost all Japanese, Yu...

After fretting for a long time about the sameness of the days it was time to have a taste of the other side of the coin. At the end of a week long race against time and spaces, I am physically exhausted but mentally prepared to live n number of weeks like this. There were hundreds of occasions that made me aware of my limits. But there also were multiple of hundreds of factors that inspired me to strive to defy these limits. The three hour journey from Mumbai to Silvassa was a picturesque ride among the lush green hills, charged by the touch of monsoon. Watching them with wide open eyes, I struggled for words to appreciate the beauty. But somehow I failed to enjoy the sight. Open eyes does not necessarily mean sight. To enjoy beauty you need to have imaginative eyes, need to integrate the inputs from eyes with the imaginations of the mind. But the later was busy in searching ways to manage the loss that Mumbai rains have caused, messing up all our plans. Trapped for hours on the Mumbai...

I usually don't peep into the affairs of others around me. But I failed to avoid noticing that the girl (in her early twenties) sitting next to me was dozing off with a book open in her hands. Allan Pease's "Body Language: How to Read Others' Thoughts by Their Gestures"...I felt the curves on my face taking the shape of a big smile. Perhaps it's the period of life when almost everyone craves for a peep into the life of the people around. I too tried my best to acquire the magic power of reading one without letting know that I was doing that. It started with my reading of a piece of Allan Pease's article in the magazine Competition Success Review about the importance of the ability to read body language of people, how mastering it can make things different for one, improve communication skills etc etc...inspired deep into my heart, I tried to grasp everything I can get on the topic. I n the same process I came in terms with the art of analysing handwritings...

Lightening that mocks the night, Brief even as bright… PB Shelly, Mutability Her questions stripped off, one by one, the faces I was wearing, and here I was facing the reflection. "Damn it!" I screamed, frightened by the sight of real me, perhaps first time after decades. The escapist, in hibernation, who has forgotten how to stand the rays of the summer sun. I have been here before, But when or how I can not tell: I know the gross beyond the door, The sweet keen smell, Sudden Light, Dante Gabriel Rossetti Yes, but I never bothered to peep into, beyond the reach of the sunrays. I never thought there can be so much of darkness hiding in each and every corner of the rusted inside. I sat in my cold stone room Choosing tough words, granite, flint, to break the ice. Demeter, Carol Ann Duffy Now, I am sitting with the old rusted tool box. As the keys have denied moving inside the lock, I have to hammer it down....

Here's a spur-of-the-moment struggling to live an organized life. Perhaps it's like a creeper trying to standalone, imitating a tree. Suddenly I realized everything was going out of control. You have ten things to do, all of them having nearly the same dead-line. My gut feeling was that I have to rearrange my mind-set and upgrade it to 'multi tasking enabled' mode. And I started using an organiser...get the habit of preparing ' To-Do-List'. Preparation of TDL before start working became a daily ritual. At times I have had to drag myself an extra bit to meet the self commitment. But the results of doing so in the first few days really satisfied me... It does not take long for the nuptial to be over. I found myself revising and rearranging the TDL many time a day to meet the demand. No matter how hard I tried, there were left-over of the day's TDL, for the next day. TDLs started piling up. Now I am a silent helpless spectator, of the TDL getting elongated ever...

Sounds of quarrelling squirrels, chirruping house sparrows and warm rays of the morning sun whispered into my ears, "Hey wake up, it's a new day at a new place." While struggling to set myself in tune with Delhi, I have almost stopped expecting this type of natural greetings. It's a bonus for us with the new house we have rented. The new environment forced me to flashback into the times when twittering of house sparrow; magpie robin, bulbul and the signature tune of All India Radio (everyday sharp at 5:55 in the morning) were synonyms to our mornings. It was mandatory for us to leave bed with these. So they were integral to our day-breaks, sometimes to the point of exasperation. I wished I could set aside those obligations. Integration poses binding. Compulsion at times brings bitterness... Now only after they are back into my life I realized how much I missed them, right from the time I left home. I'll have to rewrite many notions I have shaped about this city. T...

Friday March 24, 2006 Reminder alert of the cell phone dragged me out of sleep at 5:30 in the morning. The screen flashed FMC...FMC...FMC "Friday Morning Class? Oh shit!" (It's one of the hundreds of things; I am trying to absorb either into my daily or weekly schedule thanks to my new profile in a KPO.) That means I will have to reach office 45 minutes earlier than a normal day, sit patiently in the conference room, either listening to the lifeless preaching of an unmotivated 'motivation expert' (something I hate from the bottom of my heart) or struggle to make sense out of a presentation by a Chartered Accountant or an MBA on some topic of their interest. I am the odd man out in such classes. But attending them is mandatory. While concepts of management always tickle my senses, I feel awkward listening to CAs. The Topics they discuss hardly make any sense to me. So I have find out various ways of utilizing the time I feel I am wasting. When there's no other ...

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 ...

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...

"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

there's an ugre to repeat those words of Faraj Bou al-Isha Wait do not leave yet. Let me rearrange the world for you. feeling like holding the breath, grabbing the moments passing by... but how can we deny the excitement of digging into the uncertainities the fourth dimension will bring while on the walk... So let's enter the future...