THE THIRD OBSERVER

It Happened One Night

2009-03-08T06:39:00.000-07:00

They run into each other on a journey through. They fall in love and finally depart vowing to meet again.

The similarity to DDLJ and countless other such love stories ends here. Get ready for an unforgettable night as they walk the almost-deserted streets of Vienna, hand-in-hand, discussing topics we always wanted to talk about, holding each other the way we always wanted to hold the person we love, being so honest to each other that we used to be in our uncorrupted childhood.

They enter a small chamber in a music shop to listen to a romantic song. The song playing in the background, they are so close to each other yet it is just the beginning of the journey and they are not sure about the feelings the other person has for them and so they try to avoid each other’s gaze all the while looking at each other. Forget the beautiful song and its lyrics; the scene itself says a thousand things.

In the night, walking down the banks of Danube, they come across a bump, a german poet that offers them a deal of writing a poem on any word they choose and if it adds something to their lives, they can pay him whatever they want. The couple agrees and keeping up with the out-of-the-world yet so simple experience they are going through, they offer the word Milkshake. A word so out-of-the-world for a romantic poet yet so simple and common to many people’s lives than maybe a red rose or a walk in the starry night.

“Milkshake !“ The poet shrugs and after a while comes up with this,

‘Daydream Delusion, Limousine Eyelash

Oh babe with your pretty face, Drop a tear in my Wineglass.

Look at these big eyes, see what you mean to me

Sweetcakes and Milkshakes !!

I am a delusion angel, I am a fantasy parade

I want you to know what I think,

Don’t want you to guess anymore

You have no idea where I came from

We have no idea where we are going

Lodged in life like branches in a river

Flowing downstream caught in the current

I carry you, you’ll carry me

That’s how it could be

Don’t you know me?

Don’t you know me by now?’

They talk and how! She says that she feels like a commander of an army when in a relationship, always trying to figure out the opponent’s moves and weakness and leveraging it to her benefits.

In another conversation, he says that if re-incarnation does exists, where did all these billion souls come from? They must be the tiny little fragments of the souls that existed some 50000 years ago. Is that why we feel so scattered? So specialized?

The climax of this fairytale for me is not when the lovers depart vowing to meet each others 6 months later at the same train station OR when after their departure, the camera rolls to the deserted places that they visited the night before OR when they dance on the streets to the music coming from someone’s home OR in the garden in the night before, when they drink wine and talk childishly and make love.

For me, the climax is the fake phone call game that they play when sitting in a restaurant. They describe their possibly truest emotions to each other. They share their fears, their joys. And then there is no more the two of them. There is just one. There is only love. Not unconditional love but love without any need of an adjective.

And the magic happens between a young, recently heartbroken American and a beautiful and yet so simple ( or is it the other way round? ) French girl. The magic happens on the streets and gardens and even a graveyard in Vienna.

The magic happens Before Sunrise…

Looking back...

2009-02-01T09:13:00.000-08:00

It’s been a year since my last post on this blog. Right now, sitting in the balcony on this beautiful Sunday evening, I wonder how I could possibly manage to stay away from writing for one whole year.

It was a LONG year. Long and mostly painful. The pain was more on emotional and mental than on physical front. Things were changing so fast that I desperately wanted a break or a halt. THIS is not a halt. It’s more of a semi colon. Half of the sentence is complete and I am looking forward to the other half to get the complete picture. Sometimes it’s like a train, coming out of a tunnel towards you. You know that the train is coming, you can hear the sound, feel the vibrations of the beast. Yet, only when it comes out of the dark do you see what it exactly is. Sometimes it’s just the way you imagined it to be. Some other times, it’s totally different. I mean it’s still a train with compartments. But it’s definitely not what you imagined.

Coming back to the year that went by, there was sorrow as well as joy. However as one of my once-best-friend used to put it, ’there was no sense of control’ in any of the situations. It is only when you grow up and are out in the world, do you realize what fate exactly is [I’d rather not use the word ‘luck’ as it is mostly used in positive connotation]

With so many things going out of proportions and so many out-of-order things falling into place, it was surreal. Be it the project that turned out to be a total disaster OR the results of some of the examinations I appeared in, chaos was everywhere. There was I, a 24 year old (Now about the word ‘old’- today when a boy of around 12 referred to me as ‘uncle’ , I was shocked. It reminded me of the numerous ‘aunty mat kaho naa..’ gigs from Hum Paanch and made me feel like Pooja Aunty J. I blamed the comment on my big belly and small beard. Finally being fat paid out. anyways ) who like his innumerable friends works in an IT company having absolutely no idea whatsoever about what the fuck he was (and still is) doing there.

There were some great moments too. Some with family, rest with friends. Talking in the night over coffee on topics ranging from philosophy to books to classical music. Re-discovered some of the old friends and friendships which turned out to be fantastic.

One year has passed and I am as clueless as I was before. Only people with whom I interact can tell if I have changed as a human being. There were moments when I realized how much I have hurt some people knowingly or unknowingly and how they still forgave me and it made me rethink about my behavior towards people in general. In the future, I will try to be more tolerant.

As far as the questions are concerned, as charu puts it, ‘the questions are not to be answered. The quest is to live and grow with them. The questions will answer themselves. Till then just hang in there’.

With some unanswered prayers and letters, some unreciprocated friendship and love, some friends who no matter how far are from me are still closest to my heart, some when’s and some how’s , I walk through the dark towards light.

Am I special?

2008-01-31T04:31:00.000-08:00

Its been almost 10 months since i created this blog and posted on it. Ten months is a long time. Especially when you are writing in your second-language. You get this feeling of being compartmentalized with the "English" compartment abuzz with ideas and memoirs.

It atleast happens with me. When i start thinking in english-and i mean 'thinking', not translating- i automatically start viewing things in a different light. Might be the 'foreign' light. :)

Anyways. What provoked me to post on this blog is a conversation i had with my friend's Mom. She is someone i have immense respect for. Not only because she is highly educated and works in a respected profession but also because she has this immense confidence in herself that is becoming hard to find in the right places. At sometimes she is adamant on her view. And even if the thought of doing what she is expecting you to do is a bit too much of activity for us (me and my friend), somewhere in our mind we all know that it is the 'right' thing to do. To sum up, i think she is great as a human being.

Now, about the conversation. We were discussing the course of life and the decisions that she took when she was young that shaped her professional life and the state of mind she is currently in. I asked her, 'When you wake up everyday, do you have any regrets for the decisions you took in your life?' She answered,'No. Certainly not. Even if this is not what i actually wanted my life to be, this is what i chose it to be. No one but me is responsible for what i am today'.

Then she went on to add,' You know, when i was young and a school/college going girl, i was a bright student. I could do so many things and excel in them. Everyone around me praised me for my achievements and told my parents, 'she is someone SPECIAL. She will definitely go on to become an achiever.' A winner. Someone whose photo you stick on the wall besides your study table and get inspiration to do better. And all those years, i thought to myself that i AM SOMEONE SPECIAL. I am far better than people around me. Then, years passed by. And one day it struck me that i am not special. I mean not AS SPECIAL as i thought myself to be. Althought better than most of them , certainly not the best. It was difficult for me to digest this feeling. Then it slowly sank in that i am a small drop in this huge flow called life and things became a lot easier.

I was pondering on the above discussion-or you may say the statements she made- for one whole week. At first my 'rand'ian mind refused to even think about giving up and becoming a loser. But 'loser' is a strong word. And my friend's mom is certainly not a pessimist and boy she demands excellence from everyone in their work.

Then what's the glitch??

The most basic and obvious reason she gave for her thinking was that if she would really have been special, she would have shone like a bright star at an early age in her career. Infact she chose not to be so by not working 'that' hard.

Hmm.. The more i thought about this, the more i liked it.

Being a realist has its own advantages and disadvantages. However after all those books about excellence that i read for all these years, i think its good to have a reality check after some time or the other. It really makes life a lot of fun if not immensely successful and GREAT.

With the risk of sounding a loser and an escapist, i think everyone is special. All you need to check is the definition of 'special'.

Ahhhh i m feeling comfortably numb. :)

Choice

2007-03-31T06:58:00.000-07:00

A choice , to me it seems , shapes our lives. At every moment , we make a choice. To proceed or to halt , to take the easy way or the correct way , to listen to reshammiya or to rehman or to ravi shankar . Choice.

The word ‘choice’ strikes a chord inside , makes me remember The Matrix where Morphius tells Neo , "You take the red pill , you stay in the wonderland and i will show you how deep the rabbithole goes !". A choice between the green and the red pill. Accept the situation or change it.
Choices are often the reflections of our past failures and successes. Our ALU calculates the probability of being ‘correct’ , making the ‘right’ choice, based upon the experiences of past. The experiences needn’t be his own. The choices made by his parents , siblings , friends , people he read and heard about, in the similar or the same situations, affect his judgement.

The word ‘right’ may not mean the same to someone else as it means to me. For some people , some things are more right than others. Again choice comes into the picture. What should i accept? That which everyone has accepted or that which no one has ever seen or stumbled upon ?

The choice to become the smartest man makes a william gates the richest person in the world. The choice to accept the genghis khan philosophy ‘winning is not important , everyone else must loose’ made a lawrence ellison build a multi-billion software empire. It is a choice to take the ring to the mount doom that makes a frodo baggins more than a hobbit. It makes him a hero.
It is a choice to become great that stands by your side when you fail, when you are in despair , when everything seems to come to a halt, to an end. Only the choice you made makes you feel better , stronger, only if you truly believe in what you choose.

This belief comes from the knowledge of the thought-process (if any) behind the decision-making. Was the decision influenced by someone else or was it entirely my own consciousness that made the choice? This has to be known. One must seek the reason behind a particular choice. Why did I do it? Why did i say it? If you dont know, look into yourself. The answer has to be there, nay it is there (AS MY FRIEND SAID :) ). Unless you become aware of your own self , you cannot support or justify the choices you made. There is nothing to regret if you know exactly why you did something the way you did it.

Once this knowledge dawns upon you, its time to make another choice. Should i just ignore this whole choice thing and live my life the way it was or should i go out and prove myself to the world? The choice if asked to make for someone else , is easy. Ideally everyone should become a hero. In reality , few do. That is the reason there is only one Federer or one Jordan. Even if you make a choice like that, you have to stick to it till your death. At every inch of his journey , Lance Armstrong makes a choice. A choice to beat everyone else. Every second , every minute , at each of those moments when he can withdraw , he has a choice to make and he makes it. The yellow jersey symbolizes that choice.

Be it your personal life or professional. Doesn’t make any diffenrence. To believe in something and to go at length to be faithful to that idea is damn exciting. Make a choice and stick to it.