Waltair

Waltair is one of the oldest names of a town/city by the sea.Only after leaving behind twenty two years of uneventful birth,adolescence full of mirth,wasted flush of youth and love's labour lost did i realise how much it was inside my being.There are two kinds of people in this world , in today's digital world i suppose generalisations can only be binary ,ones who have lived by the sea and ones who have not.The sea and the plains , the coast and the inland , water and earth.

I feel the current more than ever when in huge inland cities.Man for all his sublime intellect and growing mastery over nature can never replace it.Standing in front of the sea and watching it reaffirms life.The ebb and flow are vital reiterations of the same life force that exists in us and in nature.Airconditioning,automobiles,multiplexes,plushly upholstered skyscrapers and anything we have made do not have this intrinsic quality in them.

In the madness that life in megacities has become one eternally feels as if one is in transition and then after another day of waking on the wrong side of the bed the senses sing a song of unbearable longing , for the sound of the gush ,the sight of the rush ,the scent and the splash.

The Bastardisation of Everything

Many hail the liberalization of our country a decade and a half ago for the cushioning comforts it has bestowed upon our lives and hark back to make comparisons with rightfully demonised License Raj that was the third child the great lady gave us along with Jekyll and Hyde. But looking deeper beyond the gloss into how our country has changed, more specifically our culture and lifestyle and how for the poor the things have not changed, we have to question the paens.

Liberalisation has directly made a substantial monetary and hence material difference just to one strata of society:the no longer middling class.What about the poor, well they are waiting for the trickle down effect and given the immobility of labour in India they will all be dead in the short run as in the lon run all of us will. But the greatest and most telling effect of 1991 has been on our culture and lifestyle.

The liberalization of 1991 was not the opening up of the economy but the prostitution of Mother India; we opened her up, and our generation the bastard children born out of that continuing prostitution. We are the bastard children of that prostitution because we have no identity, we can no longer call ourselves Indians in the truest sense nor are we truly Western because we only understand their superficialities and popular culture.

Every country and its people evolve a culture over a period of time, like a girl transforming from the sparkling adolescent to a beautiful woman, that is unique, that is the churning of the great minds that their land produced. The culture manifested through language, music and various art forms passed on from generation to generation who develop it and help it along its further evolution. India is a marvel because of the multiplicity of languages and cultures. But the future of our rich cultural heritage seems bleak.

Our current education and value systems governed by free markets and designed to produce alpha males/females to work for big corporations and ensure that wealth goes into a few hands, do not even provoke thought. More and more children of coming generations would know their mother tongue only in its colloquial form and would be unaware of the beauty of its literature and hence would not contribute to it. Kids being prepared to become scientists and CEO's have too much homework and parents are busy meeting deadlines to even contemplate such trivialities. Do children down south still take lessons in Carnatic music in the same numbers as before or even my generation, do youngsters between 15 and 20 in Maharashtra ,Bengal and Kerala take an interest in their theatre and literature, i would not hazard a guess.

The precious little time people get is used to devour popular culture, which also is no longer Indian. Liberalization and hence the right of MNC's to sell their products in India has brought about a fundamental change in our society from a predominantly non-materialist one to a materialist one.Ours was a land which espoused the need for moderation and futility of trying to find fulfillment of the material unlike the West which was always so, and now we are more like them than ever before, just like Japan is a cheap imitation and hence a huge market for the U.S. . Selling products, as my fellow MBA's would vouch for, is done by occupying mind share and this by altering popular culture through the media. Our wants are controlled by the constant bombardment of audio-visuals through the media. Television which at one point of time aired simple gems like Nukkad,Rajani,Mr.Yogi and the list goes on.., can now only pathetically ape the reality shows which are popular in the West, and which again just prostitute the emotions of the common man and his near and dear ones for TRP’s.

Capitalism creates an illusion of happiness. It turns all of us, like Tyler Durden said,into nice consumers . I'll sell clothes to my friends while I buy their housing loan for that cozy apartment, car loan for that sexy SUV , insurance incase I can't withstand the high pressure lifestyle and deadlines and finally all the cosmetics in the world to keep me forever a young metrosexual who downs his food with cola.

Man has always been driven by the hunger for power and possession and since the first one became the leader of his tribe, we have been constantly been evolving more sophisticated methods concentrate power and hence possession in a few hands. Earlier it was direct, riding on regal horses and elephants with majestic swords in hand chopping of heads in a single swoop, now its totally subtle, it will happen while you are watching Indian Idol and you kid is on the computer. They don't need your body, just your mind.

Is there hope and salvation in any other 'ism', yes nihilism.Human beings essentially flawed as we are can never do justice to any ideology but the one of self-aggrandisement.So even if the revolution is achieved ,the power its brings to the victors will betray the very ideology that gave them power.

The big wheel is moving on, a few cogs make a noise,drop out drowned in the din of the great march forward,and roll away into silent lush dark green alleys and slowly nestle under their favourite tree with all the time in the world waiting to rush into their outstreched arms, if only more could and would do so.

The Sacred Feminine

Intoxication is good, especially the kind when you have cosmic air circulating inside you. Noise in its truest sense is quarantined and hence allows for an interplay or jugalbandi between the senses and the mind, where the nuances are appreciated in the most mundane inanities and profound sensibilities. Each of the senses is at its receptive best: music never sounds more crystal, words are never more meaningful, the eyes see patterns hitherto unknown, the taste buds at the touch of food (and lo behold if its sweet….) transport one to heaven, all this is possible because one travels from point A to point B in any of these experiences far more slowly, imbibing and assimilating bereft of any noise. But the experience one would truly cherish beyond the sensory is when one lets the mind travel, find something and then delve into its essence. In my mental eye I am running across the lush green grasslands that is my mind, in search of a thought or an idea manifested as a poem, a song or even a person. Knowing an idea by reading is incomplete knowledge and experiencing the depths of it is knowledge with understanding.

The conscious is nothing, it’s the subconscious that everything. What is consciousness, a state where our five senses working in perfect condition take us way from ourselves towards the outside world, the things we hear, see, listen, touch and taste. The knowledge of the subconscious is what takes us closer to our “selves”. Last nights ruminations during travels in the subconscious were such a revelation.

Human beings yearn for affection at their very core. In their partners for life they are looking for this very affection: the male for maternal and the female for paternal, and in generally in a strictly non-Oedipal sense, though the latter also exists. In short men look for mother figures and women for father figures. Women have a latent maternal affection in them because of the faculty of childbirth. Hence between two mature individuals of the same age the woman will more than fulfill the man’s need for maternal affection but the man cannot provide the same. Thus, a woman can be a mother to a man a couple of years older to her because of the latency that makes up for age and the man with the wisdom of age can also reciprocate the same. Therefore what ancient wisdom states that there should be a certain age gap between a man and woman in a relationship is very correct and profound. Freud with his insights into these needs shocked the laity in the early 1900’s; the ancients would also have had the same insights and reasons but would not have stated them openly because of the nature of society at that time and also because men were more willing to follow what the learned said, unlike today when the virtue of recognizing one’s ignorance about the self and the world is a forgotten one.

Taking off from the above hypothesis, if the concept of a God as the Creator and the apotheosis of Love, Compassion and Forgiveness is true, then the sex attributed to the human embodiment of this concept cannot be masculine it can only be Feminine.

Wanted : Absolutism not Relativism

January has been a hectic month for Bollywood and for the viewers because of the spate of high profile releases.The arrival of the multplex which provides so many screens has made this possible for filmakers(especially the smaller ones) .But alas though smaller filmakers have found financers and screens for their films the quality remains to be abysmally low.But what is most disconcerting is the qualilty of film criticism in the Indian media.

Rushed to watch "Black" and found the movie a decent one.Bhansali's script and truly marvellous performances by Ayesha Kapoor and Rani Mukherjee are the high points of the movie.But his penchant for visual beauty in the scene irrespective of its requirement ends up undermining an otherwise good movie.The hospital( milky white with Rani all in Black),the house where Rani stays when she goes to study are too cosmetic and plainly irrelevant. This proclivity for visual esthetics ends up making the entire atmosphere inert(which could have been achieved by other means if that was the aim) . The form should flow out of the content , but with all of Bhansali's films there is an overall look that is is superimposed on the content and at times totally unsympathetic to the needs of individual scenes.

The Friday release of Black was followed by euphoric reviews that elevated Bhansali to stratospheric heights(equating it with Satya and even greats of world cinema) a sense of deja vu crept in.In recent months the pretentious Raincoat also received similar reviews.The inanest thing being this line by a reviewer "The scene where Ajay Devgan is shaving in his friend's bathroom , has him squeezing cream out a tube while his friends shaving foam is in the background, what a sublte way of showing the huge economic disparity".It is but elementary that when one sketches a character everything from his clothes to his accessories are appropriate.Similar if not tamer eulogies for the horrible "Page 3"(whose first half will give any recent Dev Anand flick a run for its money) and the earlier excruciatingly painful Joggers Park seriously cast a doubt on the standards of judgement used by critics.I even feel that positive reviews were consciously plugged(as if a supposedly dense movie which happens to be directed by a Bengali can only be intepreted by hallowed reviewers and hence they can serve us trash).

The pattern most seem to be following is judging films with respect to their contemporaries.This is a great fallacy because one just cannot elevate an average film to outstanding since the routinely insipid fare has kept our cinematic taste buds parched. The criticism can definetely be done after compartmentalising films into genres , but erstwhile demarcations like mainstream and parallel cinema can no longer be exactly applied .The standards also need not necessarily be international nor within a contemporary time limit since Indian films mainstream,parallel and regional have produced and continue to produce quality films.Mili,Ardh Satya and Anahat to name a few illustrate the previous point.

Another aspect of criticism is positively reviewing actors who have a good press or may be are genuinely nice,strong individuals in real life.Sushmita Sen is a case in point.The gushing plaudits she received for her qawwali in Kisna are undeserving, compare it with Rekha's performance in qawwalis and the exact point of this whole piece would be self evident.Reviewers/Critics should use absolute standards of judgement not relative.

Kolkata Diaries

The first impressions of Kolkata on my second visit here was the very striking resemblance of its physical landscape to my native Kerala.The presence of many small waterbodies and wild greenery (as opposed to the manicured lawns of Delhi) is very similar to places in Kerala. Another similarity, which was a homecoming of sorts for my taste buds, is the easy availability of rice and fish curry, which I continue to relish each time as it were the first, much to the chagrin of my trousers' waistband.

The city has a uniqueness vis-a-vis my previous haunts Mumbai and Delhi.Time is measured in different unit when compared to commercial Mumbai which races at a breakneck pace.The transition to a truely cosmopolitan city in terms of its architectural landscape and attitude was very smooth in Mumbai ,in Delhi it was done while preserving the identity of our architectural heritage,whereas in Kolkata neither has happened.Trees and buildings alike(the travel from railway station would vouch for it) flaunt dirt,dust and decrepitude.One will be wary to sneeze lest the relics come crumbling down.Another inescapable fact is the inexpensiveness of living in this city.Transportation is cheap, though the garish yellow of the cab can be jolting at times and the buses that ply would be better off in a museum.The costs of roti and makaan too are very low when compared to the other metros.

The most unique of all is the Bengali himself.Starting from a penchant for outlandish and loud colours(coupled with a total absence of any sense of style) to a resentment towards bodily hygiene they are a breed in themselves.The thing that all Bengalis would agree without even a hint of an argument is their insatiable appetite.Everybody vending food right from Sourav Ganguly to the fruit-chat wallah on the pavement has people eating out of his hands at all times and all days of the week.Guess the above two observations are the reason why most of the stores seem to be selling either deos and perfumes or food and sweets.The Bengali's propensity to vend gyaan is I feel a result of his/her misplaced feeling of having inherited to some extent the genes of great intellectuals and artists of the yesteryears their land has produced.This combined with an aversion to physical activity of any kind accounts for the huge number of Bengalis ending up as academicians.

What would be interesting is to observe the pace and kind of change in Kolkata's architectural landscape in the years to come.Will the inevitable inhuman malls ,multiplexes and multistoreyed apartments ( a la Gurgaon) redefine the city or will the bastion of communism preserve what seem to be the key words in this city status quo.

Mother

As the kite glided into its ascent with increasing speed the sea of men and their dwellings were reduced to infinitesimal unrecognizable dots. In the larger realms of galactic space and time which us humans have deciphered (only partly though) through our faculties which separate us from other known life forms, we are but a blip, our existence, struggles and achievements as individuals and as a species are but a tick on the large clock of galactic time.

Seeing no other thought in sight my wandering mind directed my head to the other side. My mind heart and being were unprepared for the iridescent rays of early dawn that were spread across the horizon. Just above the clouds, at a distance that seemed so near and yet unreachably far a band of rays in an uplifting hue of orange filled my senses with an elevating spirit. The hop skip and jump of my heart beat led to a tilt in my line of vision and lo behold like a goddess bestowing bounty to her favorite devotee I was presented with the transformation of the uplifting orange into the distinct hues of the rainbow.

Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange and Red,
If only kids could see what I saw,
When, “These are the colors of the rainbow”, the teacher said.

After allowing me to have my fill of manna for my senses the sun decided it had other important things to do and rose higher and brighter the latter forcing me look away.

As I got off the kite and became inconspicuous in the crowd of my fellow humans, I knew that id never again be reluctant in getting out of bed for an early morning flight on a kite that would spread nature’s wonders before me.

Mumbai

A city differs from another in its ability to excite the different people inside you. A mild case of multiple personality disorder that everyone has. Nobody is monochrome. I have been in Mumbai for a week. Bangalore pampers the idler –who-hates- to-sweat kind of person in me. It’s always the right weather for sitting in your dad’s easy chair, watching the rain and smoking a cigarette while reading a book. Mumbai brings out the wild side, the animal of the party variety that stays out all night long .This is the fourth time I am visiting Mumbai and somehow I get the feeling I am not made for this city.

The first things that is in your face is the mad rush of people all around you, it’s like a fast paced football game. It is not just the speed at which they walk but also the sheer number of people. Travel is the word around which most people’s lives are built and it’s in the local trains that one sees people from all walks of life reduced to a common denominator. Friday dressed office goers jostle along side causal/casual laborers, while reeking Twisted Olivers with their elbows pressing into your ribs hang around the doors. The huge stratified sea of people rushing into and out of trains and stations, staring with blank expressions and chattering away on their mobiles makes you wonder,” Where is this sea of humanity rushing towards?”. The crowd at once seems to be a single entity rushing towards its destiny, its vocation and the very next instant at the next stop the sea gushes out.

As countries develop there will be more mega cities where the extremes of poverty and riches will stare simultaneously catching the attention of one eyeball each .The city will end up governing your life , your decisions , you will be just a cog in the wheel, but do you want to move in the direction the wheel is moving?

The Times in India

The last weekend was a very memorable one; I attended my first film festival. I was only used to reading about such things in newspapers during my 22 years in Vizag and two years in Lucknow. It was a festival called Yesterday, which was a collection of twelve films by great masters of the yesteryears.

Each auteur through his oeuvre depicted the life and times of a particular cross section of Indian society at particular time in the context of the existing social, economic and political atmosphere. M S Sathyu’s Garam Hawa was a film made in 1972 about the effects of partition. Balraj Sahni ‘s performance as a patriarch who doesn’t want to take his family to Pakistan is one of the best I have seen across Indian and world cinema. Satyajit Ray’s Devi captured conflict between religious orthodoxy and modernism in late nineteenth century Bengal. Others such as Ritwik Ghatak, Saeed Mirza, Adoor Gopalakrishnan and John Abraham also made movies that captured on screen for posterity the spirit of a particular era.

Movies like these are made for posterity. May be 50 years from now the Suprabhatam that usually plays in the background along with sunrise might become extinct in real life and our grandchildren would hear it only in the movies and not in their neighbourhood.

The question that I ask myself after the festival is “ What is the leitmotif of our times, and of our lives”. The spirit of the times is manifested through individual actions and choices. If I were to make a movie about the zeitgeist of life in India circa 2004 what it would be about. What is the dominating current, the tour de force in the lives of youngsters who constitute a majority of the population? Half a decade from now what would be the events which would be viewed as having shaped our entire generation. People would say it is different for different socio – economic strata, but still there would be one dominant theme or one dominant stratum whose needs, wants and lives have changed drastically from the past.

What is the zeitgeist of our times?

Tunnel Vision:It's a Sony

Date: 19/06/04
Day: Saturday
Time: 1800hrs
Place: Forum Shopping Mall, Bangalore

Spaghetti Straps, Tank Tops, Wrinkle Free Chinos, Low Waist Sand Blasted Denims and Attitudinal T-Shirts dot the retailscape. Everybody was undergoing his or her own session of “Retail Therapy”, the latter a word coined by the biggest peddlers of pop shit: The Times of India. These are the Times in India and this could quite easily be the scene from a mall in Tokyo, London or New York. Bangalore more than any other city is a representative of the world markets rather than Delhi or Mumbai because the latter have always had a huge business community and people who are rich as a matter of fact. Bangalore is different, the sea of people in the shopping malls are the white collared (or should I say Friday Collared, I could be fired on charges of blasphemy and disloyalty) cyber coolie couples. People who would have been categorised as middle-class a few years back. Jointly earning in excess of 60,000 per month, everybody is shopping and everybody is happy.

What’s the problem they’d say? The economy is growing, average incomes are rising and the standard of living is going up. Well consider this: Our wants are being controlled, what is happening is not Globalisation but the Globalisation of Wants. Consider this a decade ago there would have been huge difference between the metropolitan Indian teenager and a teenager in the west or rather a “developed”(pun intended) country. They would have looked, thought and acted differently. Fast forward, there is hardly any difference today; both wear low waist jeans and small tees, eat at fast food joints and trance pe dance on Saturday nights and work hard and party harder. Everybody wants the same thing.

The best meter to judge the signs of times that are changing according to me is the Malayalam film industry. When most of the states were churning out commercial potboilers, the Kerala film industry made movies that had no songs and dances. Songs were usually played out in the background to capture the mood of the scene and the lyrics were so rich that one couldn’t but help admire the complexity and nuances in the language. The actors, directors and movies regularly won accolades at the National awards, there was parallel cinema but even the mainstream was rooted in reality and simplicity. Its tough for a movie buff not be in mourning after looking at the current fare that is dished out. Songs and dances of the item variety are a must; most of the themes do not revolve around the complex interplay of human emotions but around college love stories. The heroes no longer wear the traditional mundu but jeans and vests. Things have fallen to such a level that the great Adoor Gopalakrishnan vented his grief at the sad state of affairs.

Why are such movies being made? Because they are the damned ones that sell, its what the youth wants and why does the youth want it because that is what they are being exposed to constantly, on the biggest bane of the modern day: The Idiot Box.

Around 8 months back Time magazine came out with a very important study. There was a biological link between how our senses evaluate things and what we are exposed to .The article was providing the basis for the huge rise in the number of plastic surgeries Chinese women were undergoing to replace their traditional features with the ideal western look. According to the study our definition of what is beautiful is defined by what we see around us. It would explain why my mother can never understand why Brad Pitt considered so hot and my North Indian friends cannot understand how people like Mohan Lal can become heroes down South. The primary reason for this change in our conception of what beauty is the fact that people are more than ever before exposed to the visual medium that is TV. The endless hours spent in front of the TV subliminally program our minds and alters our preferences. A case in point is the current fad for wearing violet shirts, five years ago this colour would have been associated with old South Indian film stars wearing psychedelic stuff in Eastman Colour movies but now thanks to the exposure on TV it’s a rage.

Where will all this end???? Well picture this:
Date: 09/06/2050
Time: 1800 hrs
Place: Anywhere in the world or should we call it Global Village

Multitudes of men and women are shopping for anything in bright yellow denim (the innest thingy), those taking a break are having food at the various eating joints. But mind you one no longer gets different cuisines (chopsticks, dosas, fajitas, pasta et al) that system died long ago. It’s like good ol’ Mother Russia way back in the 1950’s; everybody is eating fries, burgers and “downing coke”. Everybody wears the same colour (currently bright yellow denim) for a week (the fashion cycle), everybody and everything is the same. Might sound preposterous but then everybody wants what’s being shown on TV and a handful of companies have managed to take over the global economy. All of mankind is strutting down the ramp of the assembly line. Before I forget TV was re-christened Tunnel Vision much to the chagrin of the inhabitants of Global Village. The ones who renamed it were branded as heretics and crucified by the Villagers.

By the way all this is possible if Mr.Daft Prick, George W.Bush doesnt end the world before 2050 by plunging us into another war!!!

P.S: The author has just joined his first job with India’s biggest branded apparel company!!!! Amen

Books

Since Ayn Rand and Russell i was always looking for some profund philosophical thought to hit me while i was reading something.But the book i have just finished "Memoirs of a Geisha" along with "An Equal Music " and " The Golden Gate" have rekindled my love for fiction. "Memoirs .... creates and entire world of its own and i was transported into it....They say all good writers posses this ability..to create a world and then draw the reader into it..and when this is entwined with history and culture the makes for a heady mixture....

Just a couple of months more and my stay in what has been paradise for me would come to an end....and i hope i devour every moment in the coming months....books ...music..... movies

Lucknow

My first impression of this dilapidated relic of a city,passing off as an excuse of a state capital,evoked a mixture of claustrophobia and wonder.The sheeer number of people overwhelmed me.

The more interactions i had in the city the more i could undertsand the reason UP is part of the infamous BIMARU group.The most striking aspect about this place is the lack of intelligence/efficiency of the people who are part of the government machinery.Getting a ticket reserved in a railway station can be a pain for someone who is accustomed to doing the same in other parts of the country.

Usually the guy on the other side of the counter is more informed about the various rules and intricacies that lace the reservation system in the Indian Railways.On multiple occasions i found that in Lucknow the people in charge of this job do not know some basic features like a "break journey".I tried to attribute it to the low literacy levels,until i visited a dentist yesterday.

Impressed by decent exteriors and qualifications on the nameboard i entered into a dental clinic.It was house cum clinic.I asked the "maali" whether the doctor was in because i had arrived 5 mins earlier than the visitng time.Yes, im the doctor came the reply.Now i understood reel life does borrow from real life.

Upon being seated on the dentist's equivalent of a shrink;s couch, i realised that he had his son who was studying in a Dental Collge was moonlighting as an apprentice.The doctor himself was like the "Bada Imam Bara"- a relic.The father and son duo proceeded to work on me -the proverbial guinea pig,frog ..cockroach.The good dad giving his son fundaes at the expense of my "batthisi".

Then came the coup de grace,the apprentice who had just gone into the other room to snatch glimpses of the cricket match let out an exclamation in the aftermath of a Rahul Dravid six.

I couldnt believe my ears.I had bought a friend along who was watching the cricket match in the waiting room and i had told the doc that i study at the IIM and thereby hinting that do not butter me up with CRM coz im not a lifetime customer for a you.

Neways as soon as the ball landed beyond the boundary the apprentice/son exclaimed "By Jove, thats a shot".Now nothing could explain this expression.Colonial hangover, reading too much about butlers and royalty,PG Wodehouse..nothing could explain it...i wish i gave the doc and the son a piece of my mind...but then i had too much at stake- a tooth and decent sum of money....

I returned to the only heaven/haven i know in Lucknow ..campus...

Return to Innocence

Languages and their nuances always interested me and I feel I have a natural felicity in picking them up. France and the French language have always enchanted me. So I enrolled in the French classes which started from today on campus.

I entered late into the class and the teacher was a short, plump, loudly dressed, middle -aged woman .But she opened her and she took me to my younger days. Learning a language involves becoming a kid. Specially a language like French where there is lot of emphasis on getting the inflection right and the whole class has to shout out the words.

She handled the class with the tenderness of the most liked primary school teacher in school and the dignity of the head of the Institution. She brought out the innocence in most of the class. The same innocence that we had as kids and lost during growing up.

Words can’t describe the feeling that she evoked in me...Teachers have a great power to influence a child’s and an adult's mindalike. At IIML we have great, average and mediocre professors. The truly good ones make you feel the worth of the place you r studying in. But after school I have rarely found teachers of the same caliber who command respect just by the way they conduct themselves.

Whenever I ponder upon my future I’m terrified. I know I’m not cut out for the regular MBA job which would entail meeting sales targets and other stupid things. I want lead a life where each and everyday Ill be getting up and going off to do things that really excite me and would be an outlet for my skills. If I could turn back time, I would have taken up literature....Alas I can’t....I want to take up teaching. I taught for a year and it was satisfying. I think twud gimme time for pursuing my other interests...

Maxim Gorky: There is no lack of opportunity for making money out of something you like, what lacks is resolve....


Hopefully twenty years from now I won’t be regretting that should have taken the road not taken


Ill put down one of my favorite poems by Robert Frost -"The Road Not Taken” which was made even special by my teacher who was the one who initiated me to the world of reading ...


TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 20


Ages hence ppl hvaent been able to undertstand the nature of the sigh the poet mentions in the last stanza..is it a sigh of relief or despair???????

What I did this summer

This summer was as i said earlier a paid vacation.read quite a few books .The best one i have read over the last few months is "Golden Gate " by Vikram Seth. Its absolutely lucid and just flows through. Read another of Seth's after coming back to campus "An Equal Music", twas good too. The wonderful thing about Seth is his absolutely unassuming style of writing ,diametrically opposite to the Salman superstar Rushdie.Read his "Fury" recently twas like a great writer , writing jus for the heck of it ....flashes of brilliance were undoubtedly there.

After 45 days of absolute joblessness followed by 15 days of absolute hell(thats what is guaranteed by not working from the beginning)i went home for almost a fornight. Twas a fortnight again of ..doing nothing but eating ,reading..fooling around with my bros and watching movies...

Saw an old mallu movie which was really touching, again coz of its simplicity.An old man ,a retired government official is staying his native village- a quaint picturesque town which like many parts of kerala looks virginal(those places where tourists have never set foot).the old man is leading a calm life with ahelper around .He spends most of his time reading, he has a library in his large ancestral house that houses everything from shakespeare to schopenhaur.

One summer his twenty two year old grandson comes visiting for a fortnight with four friends from his college .The old man's son(his son had married against his wishes) is already dead .Grandpa and grandson have been close and in touch thru letter ever since the latter came visiting last ,6 years ago.

The whole house lights up.the screenlay is a wonder in the way it depicts bliss.The grandson is delighted to meet his childhood crush who stays in the same town -an intelligent and extremely well read girl; who is his grandpa's colleagues's daughter.She visits the old man's place regularly to borrow books and stuff. the two have been in regular touch over the years, since he last came .Love blossoms against the beautiful backdrop.. while boy falls in love girl the audience falls in love with the mother nature.Their similar pasts of being bought up by a single parent and their common small town are the threads that bind them together.

One day on one of their walks she shows him a photo of his shez been carrying thru the years. An eight year old naked boy. she says that she still finds that innocence in his eyes somewhere(which the actor manages to potray..he is a big star now but those were the days when there was innocnece in his acting).They dont even talk marriage its as if its understood . Even the grandparents are happy for them.

A few days before the guys leave they go out swimming to the sea.After some time the hero is missing.The closest friend of his screams his name out to the sea ..when it dawns on him that his freind has drowned...he just screams louder and louder at the sea...The way twas picturised and the way twas acted out-the memory remains.

The boy is dead..but the body isnt to be found. They inform the mother that something is amiss ,who upon finding out that her son is dead ...breaks down totally. The old man finally goes to his daughter -in -law and says " you havent sinned so much that you have to watch both ur son and husband die at such an early age".

The girl who fell in love with boy is listless.. On the third morning the body is found and the last rites performed....... The friends leave and the movie ends.

The thing that set me thinking me about the movie was how the director got the idea . It must have been a newspaper article that spoke about aa boy dying swimming.im from vizag and i have read many reports of young boys dying while swimming in the beach....May be it was one such newspaper artcile that inspired the director to weave a touching story....

I read somewhere that truly grat works of art are utterly simple in form and at the same time extremely profound in thought .I cudnt possibly agree more.. Lennon 's later songs ..Russell's later books all have that unmistakable stamp of simplicity