Mixed feelings

Yesterday was one of the pleasant days in recent times .. the school kids came to TIFR on an Open Day .. the purpose of the event being to popularise the interest in science from the school level and simultaneously publicising TIFR's effort in pure science research! Good to get the chance to do some 'dadagiri' on the tenth standard students. Some of our professors gave inspiring talks .. some showed demos and the best part was taking the kids to different labs. At the end of the day felt very tired and slept very early compared to recent standards.

So this morning I woke up before sun rises in Bombay and came to the institute at a time when the morning school kids queue up in the colony gate awaiting their school buses. Felt very fresh and was feeling thankful to the one who woke me up ..

and the final decision as to not go for the upcoming event in Kolkata (in the next week) has been taken today .. and in my afternoon nap I saw everything associated to my home and my mom that eventually made me feel homesick. I am determined to get the tickets cancelled tomorrow so that I do not have any more dillema in my mind and can concenrate fully in my work. On top of that .. just received a mail from my guide who expessed his helplessness in guiding me on certain issue that I asked his help for from far away .. that results in either I shall have to dig deep into it to fix up the problem myself or else I'll have to give up and have to omit that item from my project .. things are suddenyly running in the wrong direction just at the time when I thought fortune has begun to smile on me! Do not know why this happens with me everytime. .. feeling like singing the Tagore-song: "tomar kachhe shanti chaabo na .." .

Back to business!

This is the time for having free treats of sweets .. as people are coming back from home from a short Diwali vacation .. with big smiles on their faces .. refilling their energies (we call it 'reloading the batteries' here) .. mails from people outside TIFR, who also went home on vacation, have started coming again ...

In the midst of these, we the unfortunate few (not so few, infact) are trying to have fun remembering how one particular sweet tastes in our native place .. and what we would have done had we gone back home .. and telling them the not-so-interesting stories that took place in the campus in the last four/five days ..

This is life, these days.. not too exciting .. rather getting back to routine days ..

Nice memories ...

So at last I got a nice weekend .. I was looking forward to that actually .. Started from Thursday night .. I have been having a glorious time ..

Thursday we had a jalsa in my room .. a bengali gathering to celebrate the Kalipuja night .. with music and chatting .. and of course with Rasgulla .. Friday I went for movie - Veer Zara; quite liked it .. we were the first person to go for the first first show of a newly-opened multiplex near Marine Drive .. the charm was more than one .. the night went in celebrating Diwali in the hostel with sweets and crackers .. Saturday was supposed to be the day for study but I the Indo-Pak match took care of it .. :-) .. and yesterday was the best among all .. for it was bhaiphonta (bhaiduj) and I went to my cousin's place .. and in the evening we went out for shopping to a departmental sore .. it was a nice feeling coming back to TIFR at nidnight leaving behind all the sweet memories of the day!

And today .. I am here .. in front of the stupid machine .. trying to crack the same old code that I was given .. hope I can make something out of it today ..

Meanwhile some phone calls made me very happy .. some from my new friends wishing me Happy Diwali and one from my old friend whom I talked after a long long time; and one from an even older friend who was missing me on the day of Diwali, for last year we spent the Diwali together ..

On Love!

some quotes ..

Perhaps the feelings that we experience when we are in love represent a normal state. Being in love shows a person who he should be.

There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.

Sometimes when you look back on a situation, you realize it wasn't all you thought it was. A beautiful girl walked into your life. You fell in love. Or did you? Maybe it was only a childish infatuation, or maybe just a brief moment of vanity.

Just because you love someone doesn't mean you have to be involved with them. Love is not a bandage to cover wounds.

Gravity. It keeps you rooted to the ground. In space, there's not any gravity. You just kind of leave your feet and go floating around. Is that what being in love is like?

To be brave is to love someone unconditionally, without expecting anything in return. To just give. That takes courage, because we don't want to fall on our faces or leave ourselves open to hurt.

The first duty of love is to listen.

Love is an irresistable desire to be irresistably desired.
Robert Frost (1874 - 1963)

Love isn't a decision. It's a feeling. If we could decide who we loved, it would be much simplier, but much less magical.

Quiet afternoon

It hardly happens that I am writing blog in an afternoon .. Today I just felt like .. I woke up late, as a hangover of yesterday's late night work .. it's been only two hours and a half that I am awake today and already I am feeling sleepy .. I thought of sharing some time with you, my blog .. but sitting before you I have become speechless .. suddenly a sense of guilty has surrounded me as if I have not done anything significant since the morning and as if I am wasting time with you .. this is a peculiar feeling when nothing goes right (atleast in the way you want them to go) .. you can not concentrate on the thing you want to do neither you can do anything else for a sense of feeling guilty ..

How can one get rid of that .. my psychologist friend might come up with some scientific reason .. for me it is a state of unstability, disbalance in the distribution of time gives rise to it .. resulting in an uncomfortable feeling!

enough .. I must go now .. before I start feeling so much gulity that I might go to sleep :-)

Senorita!

These days I am swpet away by the wonderful old english classics by some of the veterans .. as Bob Dylan, Niel Diamond, Don Williams, Keeny Rogers .. I am exploring the world of goof English music lyrics : here is one such such a nice simple song ...

*********************************************************
Senorita (Don Williams)
-----------------------

Back in the innocent days there was a young Cowboy
Who was in love with a Mexican girl,
Only she didn't know it,
And he would watch her when she walked back,
In the cotton dress which danced in the wind
And her eyes held the stars
Now, she was the most beautiful thing
That cowboy had ever seen
Sent down straight from heaven
But he was afraid he would never win her heart
'Cause of some family scars left by the rain forest
But oww... how he loved her

Senoritra passing by
Pardon me if i stop and ask you why
Senorita could it be
Someone like you could love someone like me

So he walked up to her
Tipped his hat and introduced himself
And she looked up at him and didn't know what to say.
So he told her the story of his family
The trouble that brought the barbed wire
And all the things that he could'nt change
And then he told her that he loved her
And studied her reaction
And by the time the spring rains came
They were married
And there's an ol' song that my family used to sing
'Bout a young cowboy and a mexican girl
How they fell in love

Senorita passing by
Pardon me if i stop and ask you why
Senorita could it be
Someone like you could love someone like me

Senoritra passing by
Pardon me if i stop and ask you why
Senorita could it be
Someone like you could love someone like
Someone like you could love someone like me
****************************************************

I have the song with me in mp3, I wish I could attach that along with this .. but I think it is not too difficult to find it on the net .. one should listen to it simultaneously looking at the lyrics.

The other song I have been humming these days is Bob Dylan's Mr Tambourine man (this inspired Suman to write his "Gaanwala")!

Rainy Day!

Today morning started differently .. I usually wake up early for the lectures to get fully ready before 9 .. today I somehow missed the alarm (or may be I stopped it when it rang) and I did not ask anyone to wake me up .. I guess the 'late-rise' was partially due to the antibiotics taken for the running nose and partially due to the strange weather today ..

Yesterday it was a gloomy day through out .. the Sun was making its existence felt with a diffused ray of light through a rather thick cloud .. today when I woke up .. it was drizzling .. it was pretty dark even at 8:40 when I woke up ..

After a long time it has been drizzling in Mumbai today .. I somehow like such weather .. in such a day I feel like putting on some 'Thumrian' by Girija Devi, or playing some Kishori Amankar's 'Miyan ki Mallhar' .. taking a cup of tea, and reading the newspaper in gory details spending
the whole morning in that .. and then go for a shower late in the morning when it is almost lunch time .. then meet a friend in the corridor and keep chatting .. start from any relevant issue and then keep shifting from it .. and spend the whole day .. come back to your room .. in the
late afternoon and write a few letters to the people close to you .. talk about the weather .. how it is raining at an unexpected time of the year .. and recollect all the memories from the past .. what you had been doing when for the last time you had such a drizzling day .. feel a bit homesick .. ring up your parents ,,. and spend some time talking to them ..

Occasional rainy days have something in them .. they make you start thinking about those whom you care for .. proper-rains(downpours) and drizzles bring in different feelings to you ..rain makes you creative, inspires you to write poems .. drizzle makes you emotional, you feel relaxed, feel like sitting idly thinking about the days gone by .. Well that's entirely the way I feel.

Sun setting in the horizon, taken from the train .. on my way back from London to Cambridge, in the summer of 2002, the day I went to Madam Tussaud's for the first time! 

Another sunset!

kabhi dur jab din dhal jaye ..

Another sunset! I am looking out of my window .. imagining how beautiful it might look like from the seashore .. not feeling like going that far! .. just remembered I once told a friend of mine that these days we are getting such nice views of the sunset almost everyday that I shall start taking photos everyday .. till the role finishes .. but I forgot to buy a role in the first place. This again shows how lasy I have become these days ..

One more day has gone .. without much work .. apart attending a few lectures and seminars .. no creative work as such .. or I should say I have ceased to do anything new these days .. looking at some old programming code and trying to remember how cracked that once upon a time ..

There has been a general feeling of confusion as in what to do .. it started right at the time of Durga Puja .. but seems that I have not quite get out of my Puja feelings yet. Have to do someting very soon ..

For the sake of poetry!

Thanks to my friend .. for drawing my attention to another poem similar in spirit to the one I posted last.

Poetry
------

And it was at that age...Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating planations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesmal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
I felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke free on the open sky.

- Pablo Neruda