Mask !

It was one of the most tiring days oflate. There are simply few items that you cannot delegate and even if you want to delegate and have the confidence in your guys, the client doesnt want to. These are critical and no one wants to take the risk. Whoever said, "Life is the greatest RISK", apparently is not a Software guy I'm sure. By the time I drove down on that stupid traffic ridden road, (can you believe you are held in traffic at 22:45 hours) and reached home, I needed a really warm bath and something to relax...The best way - catch up with a fav movie of mine ....I filled a big bowl of Salad, ( plain the Indian way - no fancy dressings), a tall glass of chilled Vegetable juice and perched onto the Bean Bag watching "The Mask" - a movie I can watch over and over, an all time fav of mine. *sigh* If there is one role I wld love to perform, it would be that.....only thing that was missing was the feel of someone seeking the comfort of your shoulder ! Ah ! How I wish I had the mask to myself !

Current Music : Avril Lavigne - Complicated

Rhythm

Have you ever had some lines reminding you some place, some one when u r listening to a song?

I was listening to Rhythm while driving this morning (and since then I have been humming this song like crazy....) and the following lines reminded me of my trip with a friend of mine when I happened to get drenched myself in the flowing waters of a dam amidst a nice rainfall and thats exactly where I had spotted double rainbow. It was a day to remember !!!

October Mathathil, anthi Mazhai vanathil, vaanavilai rasithuirunthen
antha nerathil yaarumillai, Thoorathil ival mattum, vaanavilai rasika vanthal


The rhythm of life is mysterious, intriguing, interesting and captivating as well.

Music for the ears !

I like to work in silence when I'm completely concentrating, which most of the time is not feasible bcos working as a consultant is to be disturbed. However, "Busy Hours" notification does help, though I very rarely use them lest they lose their significance.

Otherwise, I would like to have soothing music being played on while I work. And if there is something that I lacked, it was nice ear phones thats soft on your ears and a whole load of nice music. I just got myself equipped with loads and loads of Kenny G and Enigma and a nice integrated Ear phones/ Mic from HP. Boy, work is nice and engaging after a painful / irritating start to the day to see someone screwing up your bike engine completely when you were away for a day. Wish people knew not to take advantage of others and understood niceness is not weakness.

Dusted from the Drive...

The Confrontation

He parked his car in the parking lot facing the beach. The ride had been unusually silent. ‘She is not her usual self’, he thought. ‘I must talk it out today’, she decided. He did not say a word. They got down and walked towards the water. They had always liked their evenings together at the beach. They walked close. He put his hands around her. She snuggled up to him. They went and sat down, the salty moisture laden breeze settling down on their lips. She leaned on him.

"What’s bothering you?" he asked.
"I'm sorry", she said.
He remained silent.
"Won’t you ask what for?"
"Does that make any difference?"
"Yes it does. I acknowledge the fact that I hurt you and I'm sorry for it. I'm sorry for what happened in the party that night. I shouldn’t have hurt you like that."
"Let’s forget it."
"Aren’t you trying to avoid confronting your own emotions?" she searched for an answer in his eyes. Instead she found an amusement completely belying her expectations from what she sought to seek in his eyes.
"Are you ready to handle such a thing?" he asked her back. Of all the things, this is not what she had expected to hear. She should have expected this, unassuming and mysterious as always, she told herself.
"Why not? Isn’t it what people do?" she looked up at him hoping a positive answer.
"Do you really understand? That by confronting the feelings when you are unsure of it yourself means you will hurt yourself and by that, hurt me! Do you really want to do this?” he thought and looked back intently, letting his eyes do the speaking.
He knew she was unrelenting
"May be" he said and looked into the direction of the waves.

She leaned on his shoulder, her head seeking the comfort of his shoulders. He put his arms around her and pushed the hair falling in front of her face. Her face glowed in that moonlight while the streaks of her soft hair danced to the tunes of the wind. ‘You are angelic’ he thought.
"Why do you give me such a feeling? I wish I don’t have to go through the kind of feelings I go through." She pulled herself away and turned to face him.
There he was looking at her as ignorant as a kid with no traces of any disturbance and still drowned in her eyes.
He chuckled and asked "What feelings?"
"I want to understand what I’m to you. I don’t like the twin emotions of love and hate towards you".
"Hmmm"
"I want to spend all my time with you, talk all things, every minute, I think of you and love you. The weekend you do not come home, I feel lonely. I want to come over to you at those times. I just need your hug, the comfort of your shoulders. I feel you know lot more about me than I even tell you and I want to know everything about you. But I have this nagging feeling at times that I do not know you, that I mean nothing to you, that you care a damn for me, that you have zilch feelings of what I have for you, that you ignore me, that you deliberately are staying away from me and when I have this feeling, I hate you for what you do to me. Why do you do this to me?" she looked questioningly into his eyes.
He looked thoughtful. His smile vanished.
"Isn’t that the reason you kissed the other guy in the party that night?" There was pain in his eyes.
"I'm sorry. I wanted to make you jealous...."
"..hoping I would get angry and accept that you mean a lot more to me" he cut her.
She remained silent.
He caressed and set the hair flowing across her face.
"Do you want an honest answer?"
"Of course I do"
"You scare me".
"What?" She looked at him in disbelief.
"I'm scared and one reason is you" he repeated very softly.
"You are rushing things too fast and that scares me. I want us to take time, be friends, but you do not seem to want that. You are rushing into the relationship too fast and I'm scared of hurting you, I’m scared of losing you"
"Don’t you feel comfortable with me?"
"Infact, I feel a kind of comfort I have never felt with anyone and that precisely is the reason for my apprehension. I want to give us time and take it easy. We started to talk and let me admit that you mean a whole lot than you think you mean to me. But I would like you to understand what you want"
She smiled.
"But you never say anything about you to me. We talk more when in a group than we are together."
"Learn to listen to the silence", he winked and continued "Seriously, how do I say when everything about me seems just exactly what you want. You scare me when everything for you revolves around me, when you make me feel like I'm infallible, that there is no life beyond me. You scare me even more when you try to change yourself to suit every mood of me, when you want everything that I want. I want you to understand that I have my own shortcomings too. I want to sit with you, talk to you for hours about us, about our past, and listen to our stories of childhood, our crushes, our mistakes, our dreams and our fears. I want you to understand what I mean to you, the real you.
"Hmmm" she listened.
"The way you take this relationship makes me feel it is too good to be true. It feels great to get all the attention a girl can possibly give. It is a feeling of intoxication and it makes me wonder sometimes that you do all this just out of an infatuation and when it all fades, you would be gone. I have a nagging feeling that this is not the real you. And that you are trying to be everything that may interest me. I would like our relationship to be defined by friendship and love, not desire. And that precisely stops me from being anything more than a normal friend. It makes me create a wall around me. We share a friendship that is so very different for both of us. I want us to give that friendship the time and respect it needs"
“I understand".
He smiled. "I really hope you do".
She smiled.
"There are lots of things you do not know about me and there are a lot of things that I know about you that you have not told me yet. It makes me feel you do not trust me enough. And I believe if there is one thing that can create that kind of a trust, it’s only a friendship. I just want you to be yourself. You entered my life at a point when I needed that one friend. I'm scared I will lose her. That I will hurt you by leading you onto something that I'm not prepared to give as of yet. And reasons are plenty behind it. Today, I'm not sure if you would be able to understand them and wait. Honestly, if you ask me today, I would only say, I would prefer to be a friend for life than a lover for a while. You are too precious for me to lose. And that my dear, is how much you mean to me. I like you to be what you are."
She leaned on his shoulders. His hands went around her to give a comfort hug, the one in which she always felt secure.

Exhibits

With lotsa celebrations at work this whole week (its truly festive atmosphere with Onam bringing all the girls in sarees and many guys in their dhotis today), theres lotsa events being organised....Everyone is allowed to submit ONLY one of their best shots. Though I do have experiemented and liked some of the shots I have taken, I have picked a couple of them of which I havent decided which one to submit. Please pass down your preferences and yes may be a title too ;-)

The most riskiest of all the pics I have taken so far, on the curvy hill roads of Coonoor hanging from the railings of a speeding van with one hand and clicking the road ahead with the other ;-)

A very very favourite of mine when we walked up the hills in Coorg to catch the breath taking day break - well, from above the clouds - literally. As it dawned, the clouds gave way for the mountains beneath to show up.

Taken early in the morning at Tiruvanmiyur beach when an over enthu group of friends decided to do some one-day-fat-reducing exercise ;-). I feel very positive when I look at this pic.

A post-card pic . Nothing to say about it. Taken at Algonquin Provinical Park, Canada during the fall of 2003.

Surely one of my best shots in clicking people and moods. Taken on the same day early in the morning at Tiruvanmiyur beach. Loved clicking it, and can weave a poetry out of this !

BTW, I have another address too : its http://bim-bam.blogspot.com

Truly enchanted

Sometimes in life you may never know if you have lost certain things - because you may have never been sure if they were yours in the first place. However, in the myriad of emotions that you pass through, you learn to accept your losses, you learn to live with it and love it for what it all means, meant and will mean to you. When you learn that, you realize how beautiful the once so barren path has blossomed into a beautiful world of its own. Each day thereafter becomes enchanted. The lost dreams find a new meaning. New perspectives, new thoughts. The memories that you tried running away from, become the most pleasurable and pleasant ones you start your day with. It brings a smile in what ever you do. They start living in every little thing you do in life, right from tying the shoe laces to taking that yearly vacation.

P.S
Written when I was reminded of something pleasant while tying my shoe laces this morning., a shoe I had not been using for a long time.

Excitement

You know things are gonna be pretty much good when you start your week, all dressed in black & black formals, your work has been hindered by scheduled maintenance and have pretty much nothing to do, when you have your considerably revised pay scale waiting to be disbursed, when you have a new job offer that you may want to contemplate taking and when you have lotsa travel plans on the cards.

Things are just the way it should be...

Music : Belly Dancer
Pic Courtesy: Myjanee.com

Tear Drop

Quite a long time since I came across a forward that I really liked. Its beautiful.

Sky: I could not hold
Hold anymore
I wanted not to
But I let u go..

Rain: I knew I must go
Unnerve will be mine
Yet, I still remained
Remained as a dream..

Sky: My heart burst
Burst into tears
But u were gone
Gone far away..

Rain: Dear.. I deserved the earth
There I deserved to die
The moment I die
I still loved U more . . .


Pic Courtesy : Rain Drop Image
Text Courtesy: A forward.

Love and Me

Isnt love nothing but all about

But hey wait..... Isnt me all about

Note:
Just a stray thought on seeing some pics of a forward.....

Current Music:
Buy me Love - The Beatles.

Two steps behind

Walk away if you want to.
Its ok, if you need to.
Well, you can run, but you can never hide
From the shadow thats creepin up beside you.

whatever you do
Well, Ill be two steps behind you
wherever you go
And Ill be there to remind you
That it only takes a minute of your precious time
To turn around and Ill be two steps behind.

Kutti Helmet for a Kutti !!!

Was amused at that small helmet on the kid the other day !!!

Just got my hand on That summer of Paris !!! The review of the book seems interesting and I hope it would be a good read !

Currently Listening to - Swear it all over again - WestLife !!

hmmmm

It was more than two hours of nice and entertaining performance - and all at a cost of what ? Rs 49/- Before I go onto tell about the play , a few things about the place where the event was organised.

Rangashankara was the realization of a persistent dream of a man who had immense passion for performing arts. Please do visit www.rangashankara.org

Well, I almost thought I would be late as I cldnt leave early from the office yet I made it in time for the play, ignoring the calls of my stomach which if you know to listen, you could hear it as a growling noise ;-) !!!


It was a palette of four plays in complete-the-story style. The actors enact the story and freeze it at one point. The audience collectively give their reactions and one of the climax is enacted on the spot by the actors. Its an interesting style of presentation.
And this was the first time, this group is staging in this style for public audience. They had earlier done it only for a certain select audience.

Each play was of a different language ,Kannada, English, Tamil and Hindi. However it was interspersed with lots of dialogues in english so that the audience do not have a problem in understanding.
They were Purple Roses, Ctrl+Alt+Del, ShanthiNilaya, Friend philosopher guide. And the second play was also presented in perspective theatre style where it is enacted in the perspective of one character where if that characters thinks the rest are clowns, they become clowns.

Well, I cldnt have asked for a better evening on a tuesday leave alone the fact that I had just an akki roti for dinner during the interval. For a moment, I wished for my friend to be there with me, but I guess I enjoy my outings any case these days, like I used to before. So here are the storylines for the four plays...Anyone wanna complete it and know how it was done finally?

1. Purple Roses
Set in the Zamindar Era, the story is narrated as a folk tale by a group of villagers. This is a story of a girl Rajini who is in love with Nagendra who goes to the city to make their dreams come true. Rajini in the meanwhile goes after money and gets married to a narcisist zamindar who illtreats her. The zamindar is lured by a visiting Englishman who promises him power, fame and fortune in return for serving him with his wife. Rajini gets a letter from NAgendra who comes back for her to meet her near the bridge at sunset which the Englishman reads and offers to take her to London with him relieved of all the problems. Finally, she meets him at the specified place when she is caught red handed by the Zamindar along with the Englishman. The story freezes here.

2. Ctrl+Alt+Del
A modern office story where three collegues (one, being the lead who steals others ideas as his own) are pitching for a high volume business. The night before the pitch, the power goes off suddenly and when it returns the files are deleted and the old chai wala tells them that the back ups of the compaign and the printouts in the studio are burnt. A thunder, a lightening and the studio burst. The gods are angry and the world is coming to an end he says. There is also the beautiful secretary who is accidentally hugged from behind during the power failure while the doer takes his friends help to hide it.

The story unfolds as an investigation from each ones perspectives....Starts with the perspective of One where its a mafia set up in lines of GodFather. Believe me ,that was awesome piece of enacting by the guys in the mafia role ;-). In the other, the characters become the historical kings and Narad, ( the best part when the secretary becomes meera bhai) . Each one seems to accuse the other, while one is angry at his ideas used by his boss, the other is angry that the boss and other guy are in a relationship and ignores him and the boss himself guilty of stealing ideas.

Well, audience had to decide whos the cuplrit who actually deleted the files and burnt the generator and why?

3. ShanthiNilaya
Set in the Bangalore of 1980s, its about a family where the woman of the family is a pain in the you-know-where, a silent husband, their daughter, poor and illtreated beautiful maid, an unruly, stupid and funny uncle, a driver, both of whom try their luck at the maid. With the head of the family also giving her glances occasionally. The daughter takes to the maid for everything, she teaches the maid and becomes a moral support to her. One fine day, the uncle finds a medical report in the kitchen which says the maid is pregnant. Three guys in the family, now, whos the culprit?

4. Friend Philosopher Guide.
Set in the env of a railway station, its a story of a tourist guide, his chai selling kaka and couple of awaras singing. It was made as a musical with those awaras playing the right music for the situations. They were brilliant. The guide meets Sapna, who has run away from the family and waits for a boy friend who never turns up. The guide sympthasises with the girl who doesnt speak, tries in vain to reach her boyfriend and puts her up in a hostel and then slowly they meet daily..The girls goes on to get a job and this guy becomes a marketing executive and just when he is ready to porpose the love for the girl, the boy friend calls him.
The story freezes there and the audience had to move the story forward ....

Trust me, we had a hearty laugh at the reactions and suggestions of the audience. try guessing the way the stories have to move forward....

BTW, to get the audience to a comfort level intially, we tried something where each one has to turn to their neighbours and try to guess which part of India they come from ....I had a young couple on my right and a senior citizen on my left. I was amused to find that none of us actually made a right choice the first time. The man on my left was a Kannadiga who had worked in Chennai for 10 years and the lady on my right was from chennai again, and settled in north for a long time and had moved to Bangalore. Was interesting and a simple exercise but so easy to break the ice....And I also observed before the start of the play, two guys seriously discussing how the pricing of the tickets were a wrong strategy and would not even help them in sustaining the auditorium and they were almost creating empirical relations to figure out what the right cost of the tickets would be. Well, mes not into work at such places, hehehe !!! I guess some people just cant get out of it.

A worthwhile evening in all !!!

Current Music : Nickelback - Faraway

Provided By MetroLyrics

Final Touches

Been a long time since I visited theatre and I hope to have my seat tomorrow evening. Wld be a welcome break to continue with the rest of this week ;-) !!!

Current Song - Real Love by Massari
Thanks to DV, I did not have a copy of this song at work ;-) and now I HAVE !!!yipee!

Hooked onto

Check out the song on your right....thats one of the songs am hooked onto off late.....
I just loved that voice....nice video too.....

A simple hug.

 


Had ample amount of time this weekend to organize all the pics, I mean the memories, going throuh each one of it and reliving all of it.....(Incidentally my friend called me up just when I was browsing a special set of pics of our first trip together, is that what they call telepathy?).....The whole exercise started after getting a collage of my profile done by my friend......and thats when I browsed through the above pic....
It was taken at BelleVille Water Front Festival in the June 2003. I had just reported to work and I was watching a show there, when my eyes caught something that was happening away from the stage.....A simple little hug, that assured the kid of all the security in this world - well, that sight still remains as a vivid memory. Nothing beats the comfort of a warm hug ! 
Currently listening to : No promises by Shayne Ward

Choice

You choose - either your past or your future - and you stick onto it. !

Vienetta for breakfast? Are you crazy?

You can crave for ice creams and chocolates. You can be crazy about them.
You might find them as quick alternatives to gain back the lost weight, but you just cant have Kajar Ka Halwa for dinner and Vienetta for breakfast.....AH, but aint I different?
So what do you do? Get back to working out!!! am just back from a rigorous work out and boy oh boy, it feels so damn good and especially after a wild wild weekend of partying which was
quite a different experience than I thought it would turn out to be.
On the other hand, its the business calls that are spoiling my health ...In a whole enthu of all the work and the opportunities ahead, I had taken too much on my bin and with the calls not there for a week, I'm just emptying everything and getting back to my schedules which would mean, I'm gonna be back strumming the strings with help again.

Mood: Excited
Song: Buttons

On a lovely rainy evening

After a hectic schedule and deliverables, today I was in the mood - thanks to the rain and the clouds here - to free up my time to do what I like - to browse randomly. But then, suddenly I opened up a directory on my machine that was a back up of my previous machine and documents. I was so surprised to find a whole list of documents that I had typed to a friend of mine - random thoughts, penned down feelings, strong emotions, and what not. I found my lips curving to form a smile. And thats when I know what this person meant and means to my life. Pretty ironical sometimes life is when you have to lie to the very last person on Earth to whom you would want to lie, a person with whom you can be yourself, no pretense, no manipulated thoughts and emotions.


I don't know why you're so far away
But I know that this much is true
We'll make it through
....

hmmmm...Life goes on as it always will. On the other side, I started to date again. People amuse me a lot, ok, no offense, they interest me a lot. And Gosh, isnt there any smart women in Blore, someone who knows to carry herself well, and who does not put up a pretense but capable of just being herself, who has her feet firmly on the ground yet is full of a woman? Or does it happen only to me? I'm just losing interest in any parties / date. All the recent dates have all been lousy and one of those days, I actually ended up having a lonely lunch. I rather would prefer a nice travel mate so that I dont end up feeling wasted like this with stupid bunch of people.

hmmmm

No one remains in the same state of mind all the time !!!

Story of my life

Story of my life
Searching for the right
But it keeps avoiding me
Sorrow in my soul
cause it seems that wrong
really loves my company !!!

- Borrowed from Rihana (2006)