IPod Vs Radio (the softer side of Me vs Myself)

My previous post 'Me vs Myself' , seems to have scared many of the few people who read it. Some felt it was gruesome, too gory, some felt that the idea was excellent and some said its nonsense. This post is like the "behind the post" part.

I believe , one of the easiest way of classifying our school of thought or i should say our orientation towards life is by dividing it into two ways, by choice and by chance.This thought took form while i was travelling from hyderabad to guntur and was listening to songs in my Ipod. I have two or three favourite playlists which i listen to, for most of the time.I somehow felt bored of hearing the same thing, so i thought to put a shuffle on all the songs on Ipod(that was about 1500+) and listen to any song in random. I was already feeling asleep, so i thought i would as well fall asleep in half an hour or so. I was expecting a very bad string of songs. To my own surprise, i kept listening to those songs for almost 2 hrs. Whats the point?

IPod here stands for choice, we choose what we want to hear, though i left it to choice by putting it on shuffle. This is what typically happens on a radio, you do not have a choice, you listen to what ever the radio station plays. Using these two and my little experience, i would like to go forward on the topic.

what happened to me that night...

I was bored with my choices--Many times in life, we are so excited with new things, first day in college, seeing a movie on the first day etc. But slowly we get bored of them. And sometimes it so happens that , our choices lead to failures leaving uf feeling that we are ineligible to make a choice. So we give way for chance.

I came across new things-- While listening to songs in random, i came across a lot of new songs which also seemed very good. These are like opportunities that we rule out without any information about them. We typecast ourselves to a certain category and we go blind to anything other than those. Chance gives us a chance to explore such new avenues.

I was compromising-- While listening, there were bad songs too, i mean songs which you would hear for the first 10 secs and say "forward". But sometimes, you comnpromise with that, you look at the good part of it (when you dont want to go back to Choice mode). You will try to listen to one instrument in the song that is being played well etc.

A more clear analogy to this is the funda of marriage : You meet a person , get to know each other for a few days under the condition that you are going to get married(you dont have much choice). So we obviously tend to like the other person. We get married and now its like a one way, so we compromise and fall in love again. So we would be happy for life. There is a funny question here (from a movie Missamma), the whole process that happens here is not dependent on either of the persons involved, i mean it is like X1 marries Y1, the process works fine even if its X1 marries Y2 or X2 marries Y1.There is nothing like the "Someone somewhere is made for you" or " Neo is the one" type funda.

This shows that everything in life runs on a track with two rails, one is choice , one is chance and may be, what connects these two is compromise.

PS: I would like to be clear that , i am not for or against any of the schools of thought or the marraige system.I only wanted to tell that these schools of thought are embedded in our lifes right from our birth and they keep fighting and compromising through out the life.

Running for...

I dreamt that I would only be running in dreams at this time of the night. To shatter my dreams, I am running in reality. There was darkness all around me. There were only two or three souls on the road that managed to open their eyes and notice me. However they didn’t find me worth caring for. In fact I didn’t care for their care. Any person on the verge of losing everything he has, or had, would feel the same way. Oh! God What if-.

I didn’t dare to think. But I couldn’t help. My destination seemed miles ahead, it was something that I would never like to reach. But tonight , I have no option. Even if I scream and shout at my legs or even tie them up, they wouldn’t stop. They were running as fast as my heart was pumping blood into them. Heart, bloody thing, one thing that could never mind its own business. I could never even figure out what its business was. It hadn’t been a week , since I was supposed to forget everything. I know , I am not making sense, how could I , I almost drowned myself in alcohol, the other day.

I was seeing, what ‘night is young’ meant. I hoped for the night to die young and bring light. Bloody Hell, how could it happen now, is it to prove something? I mean, something like , I can never forget her, whatever happens. I mean, I know, I didn’t dream of her when I was in mother’s womb. Then why the hell am I running like this. I didn’t know that someone like her existed when I started to exist. It’s just been 2 years since I met her, I mean two years in the whole 25 years of my life. And now-

I never ran like this in the darkest of the darkest nights for anyone in my life. Now, I cannot even dare to confess to myself that I am bloody crying. Why am I doing this? What does she mean to me? She’s almost a part of me. Not a single vehicle could be found on the road. My shorts just don’t seem to stick to my waist. How far is it? God- I don’t want to go there. I just couldn’t stop.

I spent 6000 bucks yesterday to forget her. That seems enough to forget her for just yesterday. She used to say “You forget everything so easily, you don’t remember my birthday, you don’t remember what I like, and you don’t remember when we first met”. Bloody, I remember, we met 2 years ago on this day. And now, I would never ever forget it.

I wonder who is to blame for all this. May be its just fate. But how do I deal with it. The perpetual presence of her absence would just kill me. We were so together, I remember the last time I kissed her, before things just started tumble. Things change, and they change so drastically that you could do nothing but stare at them as helpless chap. Or at the best , you can run, but you cannot change them to normal. I wiped off sweat and tears from my face.

I was there. Bloody, I don’t like this place; this makes you hear the inevitable. It doesn’t give you a choice to do something, even if it gives you, its like choosing between bad, worse, worst. I hoped that I would drop dead right at its steps. Last time we saw each other , She said “ this is reality, we need to get used to it”. I didn’t accept it, I argued “Reality is not what happens, reality is what we do”. “ I am sorry, I love you”. She kissed me on my eyes, the way she used to do it always and left. That’s how I saw her last time, that’s how, I see her every time.

My legs ran to the reception and then climbed up. I don’t like long corridors. They are like obvious destinations. You see everything, yet you won’t stop. You almost become a masochist in that little walk, enjoy every painful moment as you get used it. But you cant turn back. You see people looking into your eyes, eyes so blank that you cannot find your own images in that. God , I wanted to scream “ Someday Talk”. I know they couldn’t, they are as dead as I am. I dragged my legs to the obvious end of the corridor.

--
At two o clock in the night, my cell had 99 missed calls and a message “You Drunk Bastard, wake up, she met with an accident”.


PS: I don’t know why I wrote this, just because I got an idea or had a clear vision of it. I empathize with my characters more than the people around me. So its been really difficult to write this. Just trying to be Shakespeare with Tragic stories.

Me vs Myself.

'Me' spit blood and laughed at 'Myself' showing all his teeth but one. He just spit the 'but one' tooth along with theblood. "Ha, Ha" Me laughed loudly and brought his fist back into position, right in front of his face. They started again. Myself threw his arm at Me's face. Me ducked and dug his punch into Myself's abdomen.The punch pushed him back by a few steps. He got up straight and came back at Me with a fierce hard blow on the right cheek bone. 'click' came a sound from within. There is no more a full right cheek bone for Me, there will be two half bones. Blood woozed out of the cut as water leaked out of a pored hose. Myself watered himself in the fountain.

Me didnt stop laughing , the 'but one' tooth's place was compensated by enough blood in his mouth. Infact one couldnt differentiate his jaws from his teeth.Everything was bloody red.This time he didnt miss his shot, he moved backwards as if in retreat and went forward with one wide arm swing and all his power packed in one blow took Myself on his nose.Me crashed his hand fully into the area between Myself's eyes and lips.Myself's nose was no longer nose. It was almost almost falling apart, he was sneezing blood through his cut. Me stood there in the ring, while Myself was struggling to keep his feet straight.Me's face started to swell on the right side, blood was sliding down on his face as sauce slides down through gaps in a burger.

"Come on, its you or me today" said Me " only one thing should exist after this, my way of living by choice or your way of living by chance". Me ran into Myself and gave a hard blow from under his chin. Blood spilled like milk from a dropped glass, two of his teeth accounted for glass pieces.

Myself was still trying to find his ground, he leaned on to the railing and took some support and finally stood up.
"I am not going to fall today" said Myself clearing his mouth with his tongue "You cannot fight against what you cannot control". Myself stepped forward, throwing the whole weight of his body on each feet for every step.Me moved forward for the final knock out, Myself stepped aside and put his across Me's path. Me tumbled and fell with his face to the floor.

"I told you, it takes just one mistake to fuck you up for life" said myself and banged Me's head to the floor. Me had one last vision of the white floor while his head was dragged away from the floor and before it came fiercely down back on to it, after that he only saw the floor red.

They didn't stop after that,infact they wouldnt.They werent fighting their strenths , they were fighting their weaknesses.Their power did not come from courage but from fear, not from strenth from weakness, not from joy but from despair, not from satisfaction but from frustration.They never stopped, Myself was looking through one eye and Me was breathing through cuts and they never stopped.

Its another day

the rain bowed to the sun
the sun rose to the rain
they just said, "its another day
to be happy and gay"

Touch

I thought I will be open to a movie like Brokeback Mountain. I was already bowled over by the simplicity and the undeniable truth in tag line “Love is a Force of Nature”. Though I did not see the whole movie due to some reasons, but there are some things from the movie that touched me.

The setting in which the movie starts with green meadows of the Brokeback Mountain leaving the two lead actors all alone with a large flock of sheep. And the move just stays there with this background for a while and lets nature show its force. That very slow pace at which the movie was set in the early part was just to make the audience feel the inevitability.

The rapport the lead actors share was a beautiful presentation of the vacillating but sensible and sensitive side of human emotions. As the movie moves ahead and the actors get separated and start to lead their own lives, it left me waiting for the moment at which both of them would get back together. In fact I was waiting for the eruption of long suppressed emotions within their own waiting to tapped open by each other and how all this would be presented.

At last , the characters meet , as one of them runs down the steps and embraces the other with in his arms. They hold each other tightly for a few seconds and I don’t know why for those few seconds, I felt the emotions were not communicated in detail. Just then, one of them drags the other aside catching him by his collar and they both start to kiss each other as is they wanted to gulp all the love emanating from them. I felt satisfied.

On one hand my satisfaction could be attributed to my own standards of filmmaking and raw presentation of human emotion. And on the other hand , I loved the way the director could actually dare to deny the so called taboos of the society and put things as honest as they were. In this process, I could not help acknowledging the fact that Touch is a very important and integral part of human life and it is The most significant thing while expressing emotions.

But at the same time, I believe it is the least used form of expression in countries like India. I don’t think conventions in a society would ever help in creating an environment where ones mind could follow his heart. By setting some rules, the conventions rule out half of human’s honest instincts as taboos.

There a lot of instances when a boy feels like touching a girl to show his concern for her or vice versa, but it might just be curbed for the sake of virtual society. The fact many of us prefer to Touch each other only when we are private proves that our instincts are succumbing to an external force. It seems we are programmed to emote in such a way. But in such a way we seem to be bypassing paradise.

From the Devil's Workshop-II "A&P"

Sometimes, there seems to be some words in English which seem to be used very rarely and doesn’t seem to be very important to have a place in our vocabulary. There are two such simple words that i discovered recently.
1)Priority.
For the sin I have made that I fell in love in with a subject called Operational research in my engineering, though I could only remember the greek letter ‘mew’ of the long formula from queuing theory, whenever I used to stand in a queue in a railway station , I used to think of the service rates and the demand rates and the 'n' number of queues and how each queue is getting serviced and which queue is the best to stand in.

Now the last idea “which queue to stand in” would have been easily solved if it carried 16 marks in my final exam and I had all the data to solve it. But it’s a totally different thing here. Any way I feel taking a decision about which queue to stand in is a lot easier than to choosing among people.

This is where the word Priority comes in. And before I go further into Priority, there is a very good logic in set theory about how many subsets are there for a set, it says we should count the null set also. Now there is something, which one forgets a lot of times while Prioritizing is the person himself. I feel that’s the unseen null set.

Now I can't even imagine the number of factors that influence a persons Priority. But I wonder at the frequency of the rate of change of Priorities. Let us assume two sets , where both the sets contain all the people in the world. Now if we are mapping both the sets and for each mapping we give a number based on his or her priority (I mean explicit priority). There is a minimum probability that a person is mapped to his own self in the other set.(This is my belief, however there is another side to it.)

To be clear on the word Priority in terms of people, I would like to refer to 7 habits of highly effective people where it is said every thing is created twice, once in mind and the other in material or physical. So if you are deciding between two persons, the degree of thinking about them in mind is what I would call Implicit Priority and the conversion of thought into practice by doing something or spending sometime is what I would call Explicit Priority. Its not for sure that both the lists would match.

Now to move ahead, I would like to bring in the next word,

2)Acknowledge

I some times feel Acknowledge is a very young brother to the word empathize. Its very funny that we don’t acknowledge the word Acknowledge itself until we receive an acknowledgement card.

So moving ahead Acknowledge is what acts as a bridge between Implicit Priority and Explicit Priority .There are many things we feel in ourselves but never acknowledge the very feeling that exists in ourselves. For instance , selfishness exists everywhere , infact in every person. The fact that we feel happy after doing a so-called selfless act is a proof of our selfishness. One would not have done a selfless act if he or she doesn’t feel happy. There is this wonderful line (or a rather cynical line as some would call it) “Buddha wanted all his followers to be devoid of desires, which in itself is a desire”. May be He just didn’t acknowledge it.

There is an interesting Phenomena of Acknowledgement while prioritizing. At every step of explicit prioritizing , we put ourselves on the top of list of Implicit Priority. That is, if we are spending time with some person, it is only the happiness that we gain through that meeting that makes us to put that person on the top.

In that case there might be a statement or rather an argument that a person himself will always be at the top of the Implicit Priority list. There are a lot of things which we do even if we are not interested in it , but we do it for someone’s sake and which is absolutely by force. We will not be on the top of Implicit Priority list as long as we are thinking of someone else’s happiness and not even acknowledging our happiness and how many other people we are ruling out and whether we are ruling them out with or without a reason.

There is one more interesting proposition where the person himself is on top of the priority list. This would happen when we are in control of every decision we take and every priority. In fact I skipped a significant case where your priority number towards a person is not matching with the other persons priority number towards you. To analyse that case, I think one can refer to the Law of Demand and Supply. I don’t think there is a better way than that law to explain it.

One last case-When there is no one to prioritize, even in this there are two cases, that the person may still be not on top of the priority list as he is still thinking of someone else whose priority relation is not at all mapped to him. They can be called fools.(and people like them write articles like these).Only way out of this case can be derived from age old process of formatting our computers. We use a reboot floppy which supports to install a new operating system. The only reboot floppy we have is we ourselves. All we can do is put ourselves on top of the list and reboot.

P.S : It seems the devil had gone more devilish. I could not cover the word Acknowledge as much as I wanted to. I have strayed from my usual style of writing where I do not make statements regarding personal issues. And I think , the usage of the pronoun of the word “we” would have change the essence of what I wanted to say. It could be replaced by “one”.But as usual , it seems I have been successful in negating myself a number of times.

To the youth

How great we are at spirit,
that rocks would break to bear it
Neither do we care for the logistics
nor for the power it takes

But how tender we are at heart
that we ourselves melt
not to the heat of the moment
but to the emotions we underwent

My Friend's friend is not my friend-I

"Can you represent the statement My Friend's friend is not my friend in Functions" he asked. I took the pen out of my pocket and just when i started to put my mind to work on the socio-mathematical puzzle, my mind started to get into a bipolar disorder or to speak in english -a split personality.

Somehow i was still in control, i could do it , i wrote down the answer FoFoF is not equal to FoF where FoF stood for relation or function "friend" and so the whole thing stood for My friend's friend is not my friend.

"Oh! Good!" he said and asked "how would you represent the same in Set Theory?" I was going numb already, "Hah Pardon" I said and he repeated the question. It was the last thought that my intelligent mind could generate before it succumbed to the outburst of the past memories.I drew a figure with three circle.

And i explained that one circle represented me, the next one to me is my friend and -i stopped for a second and recollected the energy to say that the third which is not interesecting with me is my friends friend and is not my friend.

"Good, can you represnt the same in Matrices" he asked.

I dont know if i heard that or not , i only shook my head sideways and luckily that was the last question of the interview which was supposed to get me into a reputed business school, but more than any thing else ,it brought me back to the harsh reality of life that i have been trying to evade.

"Ok.. Thats fine , thank you Mr.Vinod" he said.

I stood up and walked out of the room. The sun was signing off for the day. I still felt lost; I walked to the nearby railway station to catch the local train. I took a ticket to the terminal, though that was not where I wanted to reach, I just wanted to sit and think for myself. Sometimes memory is such a good thing that it has the power to bring past to present, but when you get to know that the present is totally disconnected with the past, the memories start to haunt.

** Three months ago**


.....To Be Continued

From The Devil's Workshop-1 *THE "1" - THE "0"*

Two things that rule our life. They are the root of every software program that runs in this world and every semiconductor that is moving the world and simultaneously making its way to the much debated (especially in the movies) artificial intelligence.
Other than that i strongly believe that every new technology is only a new version of our real life in a technical world. It is like the Nueral Networks and genetic algorithms which are extensively used for Optimisation are a product of study of human evolution and the interaction of nuerons in our brain.
Now coming to the inter-relationships between real life systems and the technologies, 1s and 0s also have their origins in the human mind and many of our activities which take only two answers yes or no.When i say "many" , these are the "many" which we acknowledge as affirmations where only yes or no are used.But actually, every activity of ours is a result of yes or no or rather 1 or 0.

Now what is special about this 1 and 0, these are objectivity personified, i will not try to define objectivity as I might end up manipulating Ayn Rands definition. When we say 1- it does only one thing, when u say 0 it will do nothing at all. Whatever happens with these two, they have a reason which is Absolute and thus they work by it. To be simple it is like the Dialog popping up with the message that says "Do You Want To Save -Yes or No".Where "Yes" means yes and "No" means no. I know there will be people who will be saying what does the cancel button in Microsoft Word or Excel.That is where i will be getting to.

Every thing we do actually starts from 1 and 0 , which in turn generates a lot of binary operations which also works by the 1s and 0s and the end result is what we call a thought sometimes and sometimes feeling and sometimes emotion.The first one i.e thought is the one that we acknowledge is a product of the 1s and 0s, while the other two are apparently a product of the same 1s and 0s, but the difference is we do not acknowledge it and thus drive away the reason behind it and thus give birth to subjectivity.

This can be demonstrated from many examples that are related to science, we will start with the assumption anything that can be reasoned by science is a product of 1s and os.If a boy sees a good looking girl, the end result (depending upon the boy ) will be a nice feeling, what is behind this feeling is a million binary operations , of which some are, see the girl -yes or no, image loaded yes or no, image processed-yes or no, is she good -yes or no, if yes-( is she very good-yes or no(if yes generate adrenalin-yes or no)if yes(generate the thought to move towards her-yes or no)if yes (move towards her yes or no))else (is she very bad yes or no)... so on

i have used some terms like good and bad which are supposed to be subjective, but at the lowest level they are driven by a reason, they only move across levels like good, very good, excellent etc.There is a better example which i picked up from Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy- Place one hand in hot water and place other hand in cold water. After sometime place both the hands in normal water, now what we experience is what we term as a confused feeling, but which is actually a result of the previous experience of hot and cold water. It is like the result of one process is 10 and the other is 01. Any decision or emotion we face is only a result of a prior experience , so as the experiences are different for different people, we tend to call many opinions subjective but it is not so, it is an outcome of the undesignated objectivity.

And the Cancel button also means just Cancel, it has an objective,a purpose as Agent smith says in "Matrix Reloaded". We just need to recognise that purpose and reason behind whatever we do rather than disregarding it.

P.S: I have just written the most confusing and futile article, but thats what i do in the devils workshop, when i am absolutely idle. It is actually open to one's own interpretation. So nothing much to say about that.

Coming soon in Devils Workshop-Heart and the Hypocrite .

The Butterfly and the Big Bang .

My First Story

He was restless, he brushed his hand through his hair for 99th time and made sure that he was looking good. He pulled out a small paper from his pocket and read something that was written, he closed his eyes and recited it. He was sure this time. He can tell that even in the middle of night. He looked at the black board in front of him, he was sitting in the bench in which he sat four years, four years ago.

He felt as if he was taking his final exam, but he had a lot of training for this, his friends worked hard on it. Everything was planned, the venue, the dressed, the phone calls, the date and the dialogues too. He is here to deliver it. He looked at his watch it was five to five. She would come in five minutes.

She was his friend, something more than that, they were in the same class for four long and memorable years. They knew each other well, their relationship was not remarkable in the early years, until he started to take lenience and tease her now and then. Together, they shared their feelings and emotions, they had some unending conversations, but he feels now that some thing was missing in those conversations, he wants to fill it up now. He was waiting. He had a medley of dreams last night, a hug, a slap, a ridicule, a rejection, and a kiss.

Only one would come out to be true this time. He had experienced many of those from her. The one he cherishes most is that one tight slap. Once in his college days, he told her that he would accompany here to a book exhibition, but he went to a movie with his friends, the next day she was furious and she was like a beautiful beast with that frowning face and semi closed eyes. At that moment he tried to explain her, he managed to smile, she could not manage, and she just slapped him. As he was thinking the sound of slap still rings loud in his ears. She was still furious, she couldn’t tolerate that, suddenly tears flowed down her cheeks like waterfall, and she hugged him tightly and cried. It was hard for him to adjust to the high paced transition of emotion. But he cherishes it to this moment. That is why he is here, he cannot forget her.

He had his chances after discovering that he admired her, but he just missed them. Once after a lot of training and rehearsals, she couldn’t come. They left their college and the farewell day was planned as the final chance, but he couldn’t attend as he had his visa interview. After that he flew off to the US for his masters, but he believed that he would comeback and someone would be waiting for him. His belief was proved true, she was not married. He called her this morning and told her to come to the place where they came to know each other. He was waiting in the classroom. It was 4:59, as the seconds were ticking, he brushed his hair for the 122nd time and for the last moment, he closed his eyes and thought of her.

The smile, that made her look like divine goddess. Those eyes that always used to say something enigmatic. The cheeks were hard to find grip and had the real thing of beauty in them, those dimples, he used to tease her saying that he could cook food in those dimples. She was fair enough to show him way in the darkest nights. But more than anything, he loved one thing he could not see, he could only feel, he loved her conscience, her heart, her mind, her soul-- He loved her.
He heard something. He heard the ring of the anklets slowly approaching him. He looked at the door. She was there, he had not expected her to be the way she was, she was – he had no words, she was wearing a saree, red colored, a crape, it was dazzling, more than anything she was beautiful. She wore a necklace, the bangles, they were also red, the glittering silver watch, that was his gift. She knew, he loved that colour. He didn’t get a chance to observe all this, the cherubic smile and those cute, cute dimples arrested him. She was smiling at him. He was gaping at her.

“Hai, There you are!, you have changed a lot” said she.
“Ah!” he fumbled, he came back to his senses and said, “that’s nothing when compared to you”

She came nearer and took her seat in her bench, the bench next to him. He still couldn’t believe the way she looked. He was mesmerized.

“What is this you have changed the whole outfit” he said.

“Why!? Don’t I look good?”

‘Great!! This would be the dress for their marriage’, he thought and said “not bad, I think you overshadowed the beauty of the dress.”

“I know, you wouldn’t change, the same teasing, Come on, this is specially for you, you like red sarees, Don’t you?”

He was afraid that he would die out of happiness, he still couldn’t believe, this is not a dream.

He said “Thank you, Madam, Now tell me, How are you? How did you spend these four years, how many bakras did you make out of people like me, How many people went head over heals for you?”

“Will you stop” she put a break closing her ears “that should be my question, I know, you would have roamed about all the beaches in US, running after those bikinis that you dreamt of, all through our college”

“Hey, you are insulting me”

“Sorry, you have nothing special to be insulted”

“Ok, now! We are not here to fight OK”

“Aha! Then what are we here for” she asked nodding head to all sides like a cute girl.

The question was there, he had the answer, but he is to wait for at least 15 minutes after the start of discussion.
“We are here to talk all that we missed to talk for these four years. Lets keep walking around the college. I think we should leave before 6:30, they will shut the gates by then, lets move.”

“OK” she said, as she stood “as you said there were many guys after me, but I was not interested, you know that guy in our class, smart, tall and handsome, who used to come first all the time.”

His heart skipped a beat, ‘nothing like that’, he thought ‘for god’s sake!! Not before me’.

He managed to say ‘ya’.

“He proposed to me, it was really great, in a posh restaurant. He was good, in fact-- Hey! Are you listening?” she shouted, as his face was almost ashen pale.

“Ya, Ya, I am, so you did it ha! Congrats”

“What!?, what for congrats, I rejected ra , I was not interested”

“I know, I know” he smiled, blood returned to his face “ I know you love adding names to your bakra list, thank god I am not there “, he didn’t want to say that. But he did.

She gave a queer look and a sarcastic smile.

“I know you are really out of discipline these days, that’s why you are speaking like this, you are missing something.”

“Is it? What do I miss madam?, would you please give me that?” he asked, unaware of what was going to come.

“With pleasure sir” she said and she gave one tight slap. “ Ha, ha, you got it, you asked for it “, she was laughing in his face.

He was having some big surprises, his hand to his cheek with his mouth open “You!!” he shouted, she started to run, and he was after her.

She was still laughing and running, it was difficult for her to run with that saree, she turns back at every few steps and laughs at him, the sun was setting, he couldn’t run, the beauty hypnotized him, it overtook him, the smiles struck him like cupids arrows. He stood there watching his all-time sweet girl smiling at him, she too stopped. She came back and held his shoulders and shook him and asked, “ what happened, you don’t need so much of discipline, OK!”

He smiled and thought ‘God Help me’ “I will take revenge and I know when I should do that. Anyway, thanks for that sweet slap” he said rubbing his cheek.

“Ok then, how is your job? You know that I am also working here, but it is pretty boring ra. It is not as good as our college days. You know….”

They went on like that for an hour and they recalled many moments of their time, laughed, teased and ran after each other, he told about his job and the bikinis and the beaches. He forgot the 15 minutes constraint, it was 6:20, and it was getting darker. They talked as if they had no idea of parting today, they stopped under a light, and he looked at her. He never saw her in a saree before this. His friends said that she was beautiful. She wore it for their farewell, he was not there that night. But he didn’t miss the train this time. He forgot everything, he forgot the paper in his pocket, his training, his rehearsals, he has no mood in telling her now, she was the same he saw her for four years ago, the same friend, he thought ‘she wouldn’t accept the change’.

“So, I think we should leave now, I might be flying away next week, I never knew , time would move at such a pace, hope we had some more time” he said , his face was almost dull, he had no more chances, its now or never , he decided never would be better.

“Ya that’s right “ she said “it was like hell when you were away, time used to go so slow and now! – Funny! Isn’t it? So when are we going to meet again?” even her face was gloomy like the moon behind the clouds.

“I don’t know” he said, he felt ashamed of himself for his fear, he cursed himself, ‘say it, say it, say it and run from here’ he thought- he couldn’t “ I will be out of station for the next week, I do not know when I would come back, I would meet you then, if you are free”. He was afraid of losing her, he was shivering within himself, he was crying within. He took her hand and left it” I will miss you a lot”. He headed towards the exit.

He was stopped, she held his hand.

“I too will miss you a lot, but I do not want to miss you. I was waiting for you for four long years, in fact for longest years in my life, now I do not want this to end just like that, I had dreams, I had sleepless nights, I had thoughts, I had tears, smiles everything for you, I longed to see you, you know this dress, today its for you, if I am like this here, its for you, I was going mad taking proposals and rejecting them, I believed in you, you would come back for me, I cannot wait any more” her head was down as she said this, her voice was shaking, she was crying “please do not say no”, she lifted her head , tears were rolling down like golden pearls as the eyes opened like oysters, he couldn’t see into those eyes, he got his biggest shock of the day.

He couldn’t believe his eyes, he is seeing the girl of his dreams standing in front of him and saying what he wanted to. The love of his life is here.

She fell over him and hugged him tightly. There were emotions everywhere, words had no place to get through them. He loved the moment, words turned into tears, his eyes were filled with them to the brim, he closed his eyes as he closed his arms around her, giving her the warmth of love that they both were longing for.
At last, he spoke “ I am sorry, I was late, I would never ever leave you, even if you give me those tight slaps for hundred more times”

They both smiled resting their heads on each other’s shoulder with emotions overflowing. Thus their conversation ended, which was still devoid of something, they forgot to say,

I Love You.

-K.Kartheek


P.S. It took almost three hours to write this, it was almost 1:30 when I completed this. I do not think, I ended it as well as I started it due to fatigue. But I hope my first attempt in writing a dialogue is good. It is my friends and my dream to convert this into a short film, which was almost fulfilled in college if we had found the girl to act.

To Sir Isaac Newton...

I was still in my sleep. I have already caused the chaos i could by pulling my sisters blanket and pushing her down the bad and stretching myself from one corner to the other. It was a routine for me. I do this every day. There were days when my sister used to sleep on floor to avoid my invasion. It was fun. It was one of the moments that still keeps me as a kid even after the girl I am at the age of 22.

I do not know why ,but this word "routine" keeps coming into my mind every now and then. I never used it in my college life, though literally speaking, it was a routine too. Going to the college at 11 o clock(supposed to start at 10),bunking half the classes, being in the canteen, roaming and chatting with friends and being with 'him’. It was everyday schedule, but everything was so new everyday. I thought over it for a long time, why I didn’t use the word routine, there was one reason i could drill down to, it was ,whatever happened , "I did something”. Nowadays whatever happened "Something was done by me" or "Something was done upon me".

I know those lines bring back those haunting memories of English grammar classes on active and Passive voice. The voices speak for themselves "Active" and "Passive". I woke up and sat in front of the mirror, I was rubbing my eyes and my image started to get clear, the clearer it was, the hazier was my mind. For a moment I started to get scared, there was something wrong with me, that makes me detest myself. I tried to open my eyes wide and look into them and find out what were they seeing. I saw it and I closed my eyes.

I am getting married next week. I know it is a big event for the whole world ,it is the biggest event for my parents and logically speaking(logic as in society's sense) it should THE event for me. But for me, it is just the routine because I am not marrying, I am getting married. Some times all those images just run in front of minds eye, how easy it was just to sit their crying in the sofa while my father had a stubborn "NO" for anything i said about 'him', My mother was also there crying, I did not know for whom she was crying. For sometime my sister could not choose what to do, after sometime time she had nothing to choose but cry.

"Crying is the best form of escapism", i read this somewhere, I did not know what was escapism at that time. Now it seems i am escapism personified. Today i realize that i was not doing anything even then i was just crying 'Passively’. I did not raise my voice against the obsolete caste system and the reasons that my father gave which themselves killed rationality and the emotional blackmail that had no bounds. The only result of all this absurdity is the routine of everyday. I know, I know, though i could not take the guts to write it, I am the culprit and 'he' is the victim and the society was just a spectator with its irrational reasons acting as a catalyst.

I had to open my eyes because i had to. I saw me again, I was not looking beautiful. "Beautiful"- 'He' once asked me in the morning "Does the sun rise with you or Do you rise with the Sun". His thought leaves me vacuous; there is one thing that I could remember in that lifeless vacuum. A quote that many people like me live by just to bring up that artificial smile "Life Goes on".

I stood up and walked to the door when one of my niece came running into me and dropped her book on the floor, I smiled at her and picked up the book. Returning the book, my eyes caught the snap shot of these two lines

Newton’s First Law:

Every object continues to be in a state of rest or uniform motion unless an external force is applied to it.

It is so true, I do not know what was that external force, but it was me who was in a state of rest or uniform motion without applying any force on my life when i could. The simplicity of the law took the strength out of my legs. I could hardly stand. I do not know what was it that moved me from rest; i just walked up to the wardrobe. I opened it and reached out for a photo and somehow i dared to look at it.

Right behind my view of the photo was a certificate laminated and hanged to wall, which read "Awarded First Prize for Excellent Academic Performance in Science."

There was a sudden roar of whispers in my house. My would-be has come.

P.S: Inspired from the innumerable love stories that I listened to and that had ended in this way and the book "Alchemist" which speaks of the Universal language and Soul of the world that i strongly believe in.

-K.Kartheek

Sometimes there are moments, that take a lifetime to recall, because,You never forget them

Sometimes there are moments, that take a lifetime to recall, because,You never forget them ************************************************************************
I was there in a saree,I can not say to myself that I was beautiful, though I was feeling to myself that I was so stunningly beautiful that I could lock everyones eyes on me. And god weren’t the girls jealous,I felt I was cursed for every glance of a boy that turned to me that eventually changed to a stare, well! to be modest, I accepted the compliments with a smile.

But there was someone in the corner of the long hall, sitting with his legs crossed and his back straight and for a change,was not looking at me or should I say was trying not to look at me or was dying to look at me but wasn’t. He was looking at the glass in his hand and occasionally looked up and smiled at his friends who were my victims. Well I knew what the smile meant, it meant “she is mine”.

Deep in my heart I loved the feeling of his ignoring me,as I felt in that one way he could be different from the lot and I said to myself “he is mine”.

I always thought ,boys wooed for girls and it followed the process of proposal and acceptance. But it was not the case between us, there was a harmony between us that led us both together to the inevitable romantic insanity—love. Sometimes I feel ,we acknowledged that insanity when we ignored each other consciously.

Well, that’s a long and memorable story..from we both meeting each other for the first time, ignoring each other and then giving up as we succumbed to the insanity, me sneaking out to meet him, long drives when the sun shone like a fire ball right on our head ,but could come between each other, the long talks on phone when we killed the last obstacle between us-time, the birthday gifts that were the tokens of our insanity, the days we fought to my tears and the hours that were years when we didn’t talk to each other…and to the moment.

He stood up and started walking towards me. I thought he would fool me by turning away, but he could understand that I couldn’t take it any more.

“Hi”, he said looking at me, straight into my eyes.

“Hi”, I replied, with all the elegance I could, though I was burning inside as I thought there could be better things to say than the inappreciable and clichéd “Hi”.

“you seem to be late”

“yes, took a bit more time than expected to get ready”, I knew I would do this, I blurted ,I wanted to get noticed by the last person in the room who was not noticing me. Even as a consolation to my irresistibility to get noticed, he didn’t give up easily. I said to myself “let the joy in the wait last for some more time”

He was about to say something and most uncalled for announcement popped up
“Dear seniors, Please be seated”

I stood there with the desperate expression that asked him what were you saying.

Somehow he read me, well that was the beauty of our relationship, he said “I will get myself a drink,you go and sit”

I thought this was a limit for things, I couldn’t wait any more, I turned around to see my victims who were no longer so, they were rushing to find a seat, though some gave an occasional look at me, but that didn’t make any difference to me, the person who could was still not considering me.

I walked down the row of chairs with dropped shoulders and I had no knowledge that I walked up to the dais, may be a subconscious effort to get noticed. I had to take a seat in the first row to avoid walking back. The microphone started to speak something or someone started to speak in the microphone, I didn’t care.

I was sitting there with my head down, where my mind was strained between the fight between my conscience and sub conscience where the former said “don’t care about him” and the latter screamed “how much more time”.

Well … to sum it up, couldn’t help being a girl.

Someone sat beside me, I didn’t turn my head. He offered a drink, for a moment I thought I will throw it onto the floor, but from a corner of my eye, I could make out it was he. With all smiles, I took the glass.

He smiled back. Things were changing for the better, I thought. It was like a circus on stage, people were playing some game…truth or dare, where people need to either say a truth of their lifetime, this is where the dumbest of the lot got their chance to speak up and say “I have a crush on her” or one can choose dare where u are supposed to perform a daring act.

I was supposed to dance with someone other than him, I looked at him, he didn’t make a move, neither in his eyes, nor in his smile. I thought it was my time for revenge, I did my best, but it was as if I was supposed to lose for the day. He didn’t mind my best performance with someone who wasn’t him or should I say he didn’t care.

It was his turn, he was given a dare, he was asked to kiss any girl he wished to.
For a moment, the hall was abuzz with everyone whispering as loud as it couldn’t be called a whisper, I didn’t turn my head, but I could sense some girls blushing already, god, I am jealous now. He was still sitting there beside me. At last, he started to move, he was as firm as he was, there were some innumerable thoughts in my mind at that moment ,that I couldn’t even pen down, I would have gone mad if the moment had lasted more than the second it lasted.

He stood up, faced me, took my hand in his hand, bowed down with his face to my ear and whispered

“You look like a princess, why do you want me to say that, idiot ,anyway I lose”

He looked into my eyes with a smile, and

He kissed me.

Sometimes there are moments that take a lifetime to recall, because….
…You never forget them. This was the moment. For a moment he made me a lady and he was the man for me. For a moment the insanity was given a form. For a moment we owned each other so much that we had to lose ourselves. For a moment we had the whole world with us and his had only me and my world has only him. For a moment, He numbed my senses one after the other. I couldn’t hear any thing, all the loud whispers sank into oblivion, my eyes, I think they had tears, my mind had no space to think about them and I could feel nothing but him. For a moment I lost to him, making me realize that that the last word he spoke wasn’t true, or it could never be or I thought it should never be. The moment was larger then life.

He sat beside me smiling.

For sometime, the microphone didn’t speak or nobody spoke in the microphone, I didn’t care.












(P.S: Written on Feb 14th 2006. The story took 2 hrs (9 pm to 11 pm) to finish. As usual I am not satisfied with my work at the climax, but it was a pleasure being the boy I am, experimenting to write a girls mind. And thanks to some girls whose honesty in their emotions helped me in writing this.
Kartheek.K )

Hi,this is kartheek,the laziest creature ever born on earth. If i start anything,i have stop it before it is finished,that had been the trend through out my life.

However somethings i tried to do completely were to write a diary,which i would have continued if my mother hadn't read it. well that diary was full of my dreams about the girl i had a crush on or should i say the girl who crushed my heart..dreams were only dreams.

My diary gave rise to a by-product ,which was my skill to write crap about the crappiest thing possible.Though half my writings go back to the theme of adolscent love and romance (as i am still haunted by my dreams),i am trying to write something different. One more species that had fascinated me other than myself is the Fairer Sex. So my stories also have their fascination for the fairer sex. and with this species..i believe "Truth is stranger than Fiction".So most of my stories are inspired from true life.

other than writings,there are some borinng things about me--I am a big movie freak,i saw some good movies,thought of seeing many such good movies,and dreamt of making some good movies,made one at last-Cocktail-(some call it good movie)..so that makes me smile half the time..

My reading habit havent been regular,but i was lucky enough to come across some good books like Fountain Head,Lord of the Rings(I am not the Harry Potter maniac),Alchemist....

Since i was lazy enough to postpone reading hundreds of pages, i found one good thing which had equal effect-Movies.My favorite movies include--Schindlers List,Forrest Gump,Shawshank Redemption,Goodwill Hunting....

Something which was more interesting than the above two is reading people,there are hundreds of interesting people i have come across in my life till now.Of these some were kind enough to let me read them.These were the people who made my boring life interesting.

and one last and interesting thing about me is , i am the Swiss Bank of love stories (True love stories).I feel i have an affinity to listen to others stories ,though i hade none to my name till date(Fairer Sex..Are u listening).

Ok,thats it for now..Feel free to criticise my crap :)