(1st March, 2012) A Walk to Remember

I dedicate this post to whose birthday happened to fall on this day- Neha Kulkarni. Neha is one of the people who make MICA what it is for me. She is probably the most understatedly awesome person I have ever met. I know the looks I’ll get when she reads this, but I know I’ll miss her like hell! I will avoid going on and on about her though (for fear of borrowing too much from that dreaded thing called the testimonial) but her birthday was definitely a good start to the end of our days at MICA.

But this post is also a dedication to the one MICA phenomenon that is associated with a lot of people (including Neha)- the walk. The MICA walk is many things. It is an indicator of relationships to be for, it is a gossip session in itself for others, it is a desperate, intermittent, and mostly unsuccessful attempt by some others to lose weight.

A very wise soul once said, that Facebook should have a relationship status exclusively for MICA called ‘is taking walks with’. The walk- a simple act of traversing the path from the cricket ground, past Chhota, around the football field, through the parking lot, all the way till Nescafe and back- has been the cause and location of many friendships that erupted in discreet corners of Palaash, Parijat and Silver Oak. It is also the cause of many a love that bloomed on campus (and sometimes met an early demise) and also of many, many discussions of everything under the sun. In the same breath, we talked about placement woes and whether they’ll make biryani in the mess tonight. It was where we fought over what-letter-of-the-alphabet school MICA is.

The walk in MICA, for whatever it means to all of us, will always be a special memory. We’ll remember those precise moments when we discovered each other and (for want of a better cliché), ourselves.

On love… (Bob Marley)

Just something I came across, pretty interesting I think…

You may not be her first, her last, or her only.
She loved before she may love again.
But if she loves you now, what else matters?
She’s not perfect, you aren’t either,
and the two of you may never be perfect together
but if she can make you laugh, cause you to think twice,
and admit to being human and making mistakes,
hold onto her and give her the most you can.
She may not be thinking about you
every second of the day, but she will give you a part of
her that she knows you can break her heart.
So don’t hurt her, don’t change her, don’t analyze
and don’t expect more than she can give.
Smile when she maked you happy,
let her know when she makes you mad,
and miss her when she’s not there.

Love Story

‘Next Station: Bandra’ said the recorded notification system of the local train.

She climbed into the crowded compartment with her father. The compartment was too crowded to afford either of them a place to sit and in the jostling of the crowd that followed, she was pushed further and further away from her father and landed up right in front of him. She looked up at him, slightly uncomfortable at the proximity and in a moment their world changed. In that one unexplainable moment, it was like a star was born in a faraway galaxy and world stopped moving. The heat, the dust, the crowd all blurred into the city that sped by outside and they both just stood there looking at each other. There was something in the way she leaned into him when the train curved sharply on the tracks and the way he stood firmly before her. And all of a sudden, the next station came and her father pulled her away from him and she was lost in the crowd. He remained there, stunned, as the train began to move again.

‘Next Station: Santacruz’

The Dog Who Never Liked Me

There is a little white mark on the back of my right hand. You’ll never even see it till you know it’s there. Today I look at it and I remember that face. That face, who was always growling when he saw me. Always angry because I was responsible for putting him behind bars…or two sticks across the living room door in this case.

He mistrusted me with the most unadulterated, most pure mistrust that only a dog is capable of and yet there was something unmistakeably endearing about him. Every doorbell was greeted with sharp loud barks and every attempt at forging peace disregarded with a statutory growl.

When I write this obituary for Foxy aka Gabbu, I’m filled with a lot of memories but most of those aren’t mine to share. All I know is that here was a dog who loved his family so much; he could do anything to protect them. Here was a dog so beautiful that it broke my heart every time, knowing he would never like me.

But that little puppy who once tumbling into this world unannounced and unwanted has left in his wake so much for everyone to miss. He left behind a place that no one can ever fill and took with him a little piece of our hearts.

And now, every time, I see that little white mark on the back of my right hand, I’ll remember that growling face and those big brown eyes and hope that he has found his peace.

For the chaser-of-sparrows, fearer-of-firecrackers and the barker-at-urchins, I really did like you…

Khyal…

जब अधूरे चाँद पर ले जाओ,

कस के मेरा हाथ थम लेना ज़रूर,

किनारों पर से गिर न जाऊ कही…

जभी मेरे लिए coffee बनाओ,

तोह फून्ख मारना ज़रूर,

होंठ न जल जाये कही…

किसी शाम मेरी अगर याद आ जाये,

तोह आँखे बंद  कर लेना ज़रूर,

लम्हा न खो जाये कही…

यु ही कही बैठे हुए आँखे नम हो जाये,

तोह मेरा नाम ले लेना ज़रूर,

तन्हाई न छु जाये कही…

A little bit of you

A night so silent, not a wind in sight,
A darkness so plain, falling over the night,
In the stillness, something was amiss I knew,
All I wanted was, a little bit of you

The mountains called and the chill descended,
A bat flew by, the quietness offended,
A soft sorrow crept as the star remained unmoved,
If only I had a little bit of you

Somewhere far away, wind gasped,
And just for a moment, a leaf dances,
Once again, I could hear the owl hoot,
It was all here, except, a little bit of you

Love…

“Someday, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God, the energies of love. Then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.”

-Teilhard de Chardin

(As quoted by Ruskin Bond)

For All My Closest Friends…

I will not tag anyone in this post,
it is for my closest friends,
they know who they are,
and they’ll find themselves in this poem:

Moonlight

I see the moon every night, as he chugs along the train with me

He used to remind me of you, when you weren’t around

But today he seems to read my mind and refuses to smile at me

Half hearted he shines in the sky, hiding behind a cloudy veil.

The moon is incomplete tonight, just like my thoughts

I decide now and in a flash,

And delete the memories and lose everything with the click of a button

How I hate technology…

It needed to be done long ago, long before I ever started thinking

But it didn’t; because you didn’t believe me

I often said it would end, and often I warned you,

You refused to believe me and denied my fears

It’s happening now; less to you than me

But maybe you were right, because there never was anything to end

Maybe I made up that pretty illusion…

I hung on to it with all my heart, only to watch it die away in the moonlight

I feel happy now, happy to cut myself away

The cut might hurt, but only for a few days…

There is no cure, but to cry myself to sleep tonight,

And wake up tomorrow and talk to you

To you it will seem the same and nothing will have changed

We’ll meet months later, smile politely, ask how we are

We’ll even share a cursory embrace

You will never know, of tonight

Again I saw the moon tonight, as he chugged along the train with me

I thought of all this and smiled at the moon,

But he refused to smile back at me.