The Parting Shot

     The other day, Rekha Srivastav, our Psychology teacher, told us during a usually boring lecture, "It is one of my last lectures with you people this year." This year, she said with a bit of deception, and I saw almost through it. Sharvari told me today that Rekha expressed her sadness at her not being our teacher for the next year. And apparently, Sharvari 'appeared' to be sad. Did she see through Sharvari, too?
     Sometimes, I am the I-hate-psycho-with-a-vengeance person. And for things she has done, she is rightly being cast off like snake-skin. But sometimes, I, like Devansh, tend to want to think a bit differently. Think of her as a human. An erring human, but a human nevertheless. She could not teach properly most of the time. She had a really high-pitched voice, almost like a squeak. She would throw killing glances of youdidit at random people. And she taught us the steddy of Psychology. And she said 'yays' for a 'yes'. And she was, indeed, very nosy.
     But be as it is, I will miss her once she is gone. The irritating way she taught in; the dabbas of nuts and brownies and pastries we've had in her lectures; the 'chwenchy-choo's and 'chwenchy-three's. And I won't be missing her because she was the person who selected me for the Obama rendezvous. Who knows, now there is going to be a change. But for good or for worse, we don't know. The next year, we could as well think about what a huge waste 11th Psychology had been, or contrastingly, how much of a worse teacher we've got. And it is only human nature to miss things he/she has lived with, amongst.

"When one lives in hell, and is offered the notion of heaven, nothing else petrifies that person more than the thought about how badly they'll miss hell."

A Bagful of a Year

     So, there are hardly fifteen days left for us FYJCs to call it a day  er  a year. And then, we shan't be students of FYJC. Neither will we be students of a long (read : short in comparison to what we've been through) vacation. Thanks to the virtue of having chosen the oft-ignored B-division, we students are immune to things like holidays (read : vacations without a thought on mind). And so   where was I   yeah, we will be students of SYJC. At least for Maths, or so Mansi tells me. Mansi is my just-SYJC-exams-given/giving friend. Awesome friends tell you fiendish things sometimes.
     And because I must do limits, derivatives and integration, and because I must bask under all the glory of Boo-something-mian algebra, and some other crappy things, and must have a complete set of books (used and preserved for further use for FYJCs or the raddiwala's inventory by Mansi). And so, I set out on a journey, a much-feared journey to Walkheshwar. (I am currently afraid of South Bombay because I might get lost. Again.) And so, I went by bus no. 41 to many places in South Bombay. And yes. Many places means I don't know which.
     That was till I was in front of the Chowpatty beach, which was a thing I had least expected but found anyway. After that, she picked me up and we went to her house and I did some gupshup about teachers' stupidness (and Pravin Sir's helpfulness). And then, with a heavy heart (I had to travel back to VT) that was heavy because of a heavy bag   the heavy bag, I left Mansi's home, bidding her really sweet mom adieu. And then, I realised, and pretty truly so, that I was carrying, practically, my 12th standard in my bag.
     On other days, it would have been a most absurd thing to think of   stuffing an entire year in a schoolbag. And yeah, it was a schoolbag. My sister's. Today, it seemed so easy, to transport months of scribbling-in-books, doodling-away-to-glory, cursing-teachers-and-the-system and things I can't possibly write within the limits of this post. And it was a life that stretched over about 9 months.

Holi Crap!

     Holi has immense meaning. The festival of colours   of breaking barriers of colour   the coming together of people of various colours and the forgetting of Fair & Lovely and Fair & Handsome for a day, if not forever.
     However, of late, the festival has assumed dangerous proportions   and dismally, in totally new dimensions. I wonder if whatever the dictionary says about the origin of the word 'hooliganism' is true. For me, 'hooliganism' came from 'Holi', obviously, not long after people forgot what the festival is about. And as I stood at my hall-window, looking at the hullabaloo-creating crowd on the road, my mind munching over a lot of food for thought, I realised how unholy Holi has come to be. Well, in time, the 'gagagoogoo'-screaming (I have no clue why they do that) crowd moved on, I was relieved.

     Interestingly, from the opposite side of the road, a dog, an uncoloured dog, came out of its hiding, looked right and left, and crossed the road. And I was convinced that the Creator hasn't created just morons. 

Where Any Change is Addition

 न चोरहार्यम् न च राजहार्यम् न भ्रातृभाज्यम् न च भारकारी ।

व्यये कृते वर्धत एव नित्यम् विद्याधनं सर्वधनप्रधानम् ||

( No thief can steal it; it is unconquerable for kings; it can't be divided among siblings; it gives no burden. Any change in it is its flourish   the wealth of knowledge is the best of all. )

     The other day, I wrote a paper, as a writer for a certain person. While writing the paper, I realised what the above subhashita means to say. I was writing while 'it' dictated. And when 'it' was not, I thought. And somewhere, in that paper, is a tiny little part of me. Somethings that 'it' had for 'its' portion in the paper was what I have studied on a very preliminary level. And yesterday, though during a period of 2 hours I mustn't have connected much to what I wrote, I know somewhere deep in my heart, that yesterday's paper has presented me with new horizons.

     I don't really know if what I want to express has come out well, but what I want to say is that whether we are in our house sipping tea, or dancing to the song on the TV, or playing video-games, or doing dishes, or writing papers, or doing absolutely nothing in the college foyer, we are gaining knowledge...when I get hurt by a stray cricket ball, I get to know that a cricket-ball can hurt. When I don't get attendance on account of not being attentive, I get to know that attentiveness is necessary, that no attendance sucks.

     All in all, knowing is fun; whether you like it or not, know what you are doing or not, you know. You may feel, you may think, you may sense, you may get intuitions. But out of every stimulus that comes your way, you become a little less ignorant of the giant vastness lying around you.

Pray to God. She's Powerful.

     A century and eight decades ago, a girl was born. Married away at 9. Started imparting education to a girl when she was my age. Started a school for girls when she was 17. Had people throw dung-balls and stones at her when she had the guts to go teach girls. Fought against child infanticide. Even after her supportive husband had died, when Pune was under a stupid Plague Control Board, she, with her adoptive son, attended to the affected. She contracted the disease herself while getting a child to a health-care centre, and died of the plague. She'd performed her husband's funeral rites, the onus of the supposed lion-son.
     Savitribai Phule. What makes her different from any other woman who lived when she did? I totally believe, that in Society (with a capital S to show its 'significance'), the cause of a woman's distress is oftentimes another woman. Consider 'another woman' to be a mother who buried her baby-girl because her husband asked her to; a woman who 'just chid' her daughter-in-law and left scald marks all over her body; a woman who sells her daughter so that 'the future bread-winner' of her family, her son, may live off all the drugs and bidis he covets; a woman who sees her daughter being repeatedly raped by her own sire and brothers (read-pimps); a woman who pushes that little angel to live the life of a devdasi or a courtesan.

    But I prefer to still call it a Happy Women's Day. It is not a day for those hags who kill their own species in an effort to make hay while the sun shines. It is for those women, who flowed against the current, fought with that pimp, rescued that daughter, made her a lady    it's for the Sitas of the world who, rightly, did not think their husbands worthy of their testimonies of purity; for the Mother Teresas    the saints of the gutters; for the Phoenix, that rose from her own ashes. The last part, I am very sure of. 

Being SPORTive

     It was today, after a long gap in between, that I realised that I don't hate every sport. I'm notoriously famous for having shunned every form of sport for a good part of the decade and a half I've lived on Earth (except chess, which I still love very much).
     I spotted some kids in my building compound playing badminton. And I can conveniently call them kids. The eldest was what...12? So, no, no. They were not all kids. My bad. They were   I don't know what. I was returning from my music classes and though I could've gone, paying no heed to my hidden desire of many years, I went and played with them, albeit for only around 10 mins. And the small child within me was out then. I played to my heart's content.
     Now, if that is what they call the fruition of one's past desires, this was that.

That Old Box Near the Arches

     One sees in the various phases that change ushers in, the old usually are not cast out. They are just cast off. Like when you pass out of your current grade, you don't just throw your books away. You just put them away. And today, of all days, I was walking towards the first quadrangle at college. And I walked past something. And then, I shrugged. I wondered if something would work, function well, if at all it did.
     And then, I realised it wouldn't. A thing that was covered in pigeon-poop wasn't supposed to work. It is that yellow coin-box telephone. It is that. After I had walked past it, I realised it deserved more than my walking past. It demanded a photograph. And so...

The bottle-holder-ex-phone-box-pigeon-poop-bearer

     We all have our walkie-talkies now. Our very, very own mobile phones. But seeing the phone-box in the appalling condition gave birth to a seed of thought. Now that our college has been 140 years, surely, there has passed a time when the cellular entities, that live and throb in our hands, did not exist. And at that time, students like me and my classmates and friends and college-mates must've fussed around that telephone. Father Frazer wouldn't have had to keep his eyes as open for mobile phones as he does now. Chits and chits after chits must have been what texting-in-class today is. And for once, that telephone must have felt like a ruler. (No pun intended.)

And then, on the streets of Mumbai,

Fisherpersons were all the people.

Warli was all the art.

Oil never flowed into the Great Arabian.

There were no fires.

What a time that was.

What a time, that was.   

Texting Away to Glory

I have added u as a contact on WAY2SMS.COM to send Free SMS. (to stop receiving SMS, email

unsub@way2sms.com) - Sent via WAY2SMS.COM

     That is how I had woken up. My alarm had incidentally been a message. Not now, long back. And that, I guess, was Virgil, my choir director who had added me on Way2Sms. What exactly is Way2Sms? It is a website that allows you to text for free. And I was sure of some catch somewhere, cynical that I always am. But I found none, except that you could type only 140 characters.
     As much as I might be sounding like an advertisement agent, it is a good alternative for people like me, who are  fed up of their mobile service-providers trying as much as they can, to burn a hole in our pockets.Well, my average monthly bill for the last four months is a four-digit-number. And not that I can afford it really. My texting allowance for the Rs.35 that my dad pays, allows me to text 350 SMSes per month. But when a textaholic teenager is at the SEND buttons, you never know how it is.

Can it get any teenier?

     They possibly make money through advertisements on their website(?) But anyway, better any day, than 160by2 or whatever. So, I've joined it. And my friends see the message I saw months ago.
     But I'll have to come online for that?! And I can't do that. Texting, is like a motive now (Psycho on my mind). Like feeling thirst or the need to use the washroom. So, how on earth do I text when I'm in the train?
       Way2Sms needs to work towards that. Ultimate satisfaction. But then, stupid Jai, wouldn't that be like zaqaat everyday? Whatever.

(For those whom it interests   this was a post I wrote only for the sake of trying to write like an INTJ, while I am actually an INFJ. Those who don't know what that is, and are interested in knowing, may visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INTJ )

Aaj Jaane Ki Zid Naa Karo...

     This is the first time I'm using a Hindi song, to be specific, a ghazal as a title to a post. I find the song from Monsoon Wedding to be of some relevance to what I am trying to convey here. Not sure what 'some' means. We have all listened to people narrating King Bruce's story an umpteen number of times. We saw the spider try each time it fell, to get to the ceiling   and many of us have done it in our English course-books and forgotten about it. What we saw (actually told to see) as the moral of the story was that one must try until one finds success. But look at the story from a different angle. It's that moment of realisation that makes or breaks things. As long as the fish is in water (and it indeed is only in water), it does not acknowledge that water is what it covets, craves for, lives by   each day, every moment.
     Fr. Terence, our college counsellor, tells us, you can learn a lot in this world. It isn't necessary that you learn morals from a morally correct  source. It could be a drug-addict telling you how not to ruin your life. The moment you realise, your upward journey (to what, I don't know, but it still is upward) begins. So, how do I not re-commit the errors I already have? Yesterday, I learned from someone, that you don't go and draw from history   from what wrong you have done. Just chalk out a brand new today. Like a new page in a book. I must have hurt I-don't-know-how-many people. I must have sent chills down many people's spine sometime. And perhaps, many of those hurt have distanced themselves from me. A select few have perhaps stayed back, with hope   that what I did was just a bad dream after all. And thus, now, all I can do, the best I can do, is not let that hope be proved false.
     And thus, like fish out of water; like an oasis without trees; like Yudhisthir without his brothers, wife and family; like a drunk without his ability to stay conscious; like a bird without wings; like a planner without any way to bring to reality his/her awesome plans, I begin. Not introspecting. Not retrospective of my faults. Just in view of the fact that I must not lose what I have at hand, before it all disappears, when it will. 

गाण्याच्या शोधात - In Search Of Music

The following poem is a translation of a Marathi poem by the above Marathi name, whose poet's name I still am searching. I have made a few additions and a bit of editing which I thought were necessary. I shall soon upload the name of the original poet.

The union of notes leads to music born.

And music is the support of life   of living.

And like a stream, life flows to its destination,

When there's music.

And when there's a lull in that music,

The stream encounters a path

Of stone. Of rock. Of thorns. And pains.

Ask the legion of people

That's been going on and on,

Since the Wake of Life,

Where they've set out to.

And you'll get your answer.

The Answer.

In search of Music.

And then, you'll soon know,

All of us mortals,

We're a part of the legion, that legion.

In search of Music.