life...and some more...

quote " If God gave me a wish I'd erase you from my mind " unquote

Life is an epitome of balance...It is a concoction of good and bad, birth and death, joy and pain,love and hatred...Life is a cycle of change...constant change...It turns and tosses us around like a salad in the make...Sometimes there are other salad leaves at the bottom of the bowl to cushion our fall...but at times we land hard on the cold steel...
The painful experiences in my life are innumerable...But I consider myself lucky to possess such a weak memory that does not let me recount these experiences even if I wish to do so...Maybe this isnt a stroke of luck, maybe its life's way of balancing...
Of all the things I've been through, I find hatred the most difficult to digest...and maybe rightly so...for which of us sensitive homo sapiens can accept the fact,not even possibilty mind you, of someone hating us...who among us can bear the burden of hatred when it comes crushing down heavily on us? Which of us can stand tall when the winds of hatred blow against us...heated words of hatred spiralling round and round...like a tornado trying with all its might to uproot us from the solid ground...and the final blow is not when we see the storm approaching...but when we see the sky darkening from the side where we expected the sun to shine...
We do not choose to love or hate...but we choose to show our love or hatred...Is it such a difficult choice to make...?
What could I have possibly done to elicit such words from you...

dark days...

The night was young and fresh. The rising moon couldn't see her face. But her face wasnt important. she was sitting by the window, her face hidden in the darkness,cradled in the void between her hands,wrapped around her bent knees. It wasnt so much about the darkness, as it was about the void,the hole. she hugged herself as hard as she could,minimized her volume as much as she could, so that she may fit inside the tiny hole that she was trying to bury herself deep into. by hiding her face, she hid herself...

her hunter had been seeking her for days,for nights...the love around the girl had provided the necessary protection. but today, it was gone. the love cruelly withdrawn, she laid bare and vulnerable. and like a shark smelling blood, the hunter raced through the night to her victim.

she knew she had to stop crying, but she couldnt. and her weakness made her cry even more. the tears made her face heavy, as they slowly slid down her cheeks and then dropped graciously into the infinity...incoherent thoughts made her mind heavy...they fought cruel battles in her mind...

the night gasped at the hunter's evilness, and it resisted her, in the hopes of saving the girl. but the hunter was too powerful...too evil...she cut through the night with her sharp talons and fuelled by her hunger for the girl, she gained further momentum...

the girl cried out silently as her nails dug into her skin,tiny drops of blood surfaced...they begged her to stop and rebuild the protection with trust and hope, now that love was gone...the girl knew she should, but she couldnt...

the night had aged...the street lights had retired, the roads were deserted,even the trees stood silent...they all seemed to be aware of the hunters coming...

the girl was shivering, she had lost all control of her body...she couldnt make any sense of anything anymore...she dint even know why she was crying anymore...her throat had knotted,refusing to swallow or spit out...a huge stone had replaced her heart...she felt heavy yet empty...the curious moon finally saw her face, as she lifted it...she wanted to rip her hair off...the burning rage in her wanted to tear the curtains apart...her hands itched to break all that was within her sight...she lost all hope of ever returning as she finally faced her hunter...only one question escaped her mind...but never made it to her lips...why me...

pain had arrived...

footsteps in the sand...

Birth and Death...who hasn't been mystified by these two inevitable elements...when the beginning and the end are so overpowering, how can we expect ourselves to understand the intricacies of life,the enigmatic journey we begin to invariably reach the end...?
We spend a lot of time contemplating the past, and planning the future...but when was the last time we took a break to take a look at what we are doing in the present? Have we ever tried to understand the implications of our actions? Am i talking about karma? No, i am talking about how our existence alters another,how a seemingly unimportant act of ours might alter the life of another.
Look at Mitch Albom's take on heaven in the five people you meet in heaven. He recounts the story of Eddie,who meets five people in heaven. These five people are those whose lives Eddie has altered in someway. Eddie doesn't even know the first man he meets. But as a kid, Eddie once ran into the street to retrieve his ball.This man swerves his car to avoid Eddie. He prevents this accident, but still reeling in shock from having almost hit Eddie, he meets with another,culminating in his death.
Makes you ponder about how many lives you have altered unknowingly, doesn't it?
These are incidents that most probably will never be brought to your notice, unless heaven really is a chance given by god to understand your life, as Albom puts it. But what about those that you are aware of?
When we hurt someone with our actions, we repent. If we can, we try to change our ways so that we don't hurt them further. But the damage has been done. Can we erase this damage? Or are our actions written indelibly into the cosmic sea, from which there can be no point of return? Is every action of ours making not just our life,but so many others, a deeper mess? Is there any true way of forgiving and forgetting?
As we run this journey, we invariably leave our footsteps in the sand...in a place already filled with many, we add our own,mis-shaping those we stamp on, cracking those nearby...the question is,will the sea ever advance enough to wash over them...?

Temptation - to give (in), or not to give (in)

"I can resist everything except temptation"
-Oscar Wilde

I start my post with this famous epigram, not 'coz it happens to contain the first word of my title, but 'coz these could have been my original words,had he not thought of it first. :) Ah well, who am i kidding! But i agree with him on those words.
We have all been slaves to this flirtatious evil, the weaker more often than the stronger. But temptation has many arms, many facets,many nets-the strong may elude this one,but turn weak in the next...
temptation seems to be omnipresent. Where ever we look, which ever way we turn,which ever path we trod on, there always seem to be mini traps laid around by her.And no matter how prudent we are,we just cant seem to save ourselves all the time. When we are busy exulting over having saved our right leg, she clutches on to the left.
Take me for example. As a connoisseur of shopping( and i use connoisseur,for shopping is indeed an art) the temptations I find are of the highest order, and the maximum in number. Just when i save myself from falling in love with the purple sequin top (ridiculously priced at Rs 950), my eyes fall on the adjacent dark blue lee cooper jacket, and while i struggle against two instead of one, it suddenly grows to four against poor me in the form of a pair of lovely earrings hanging a few feet away from me and the stunning pair of heels beckoning me through the glass display from the opposite store. All this happens so amazingly fast, that my mind has already lost the battle to my heart, and you ll see me walking out of the store with the jacket and earrings in hand, heading towards the stunning heels. such is the power of temptation.
If you have been ridiculing me while reading the above para, let me tell you,shopping might not be your pit fall.But something else definitely is. Maybe it's the Adidas sports jersey, or your street-corner panipuri,or mouth-watering rasgollas, or the latest barbie doll,or the PlayStation 3, or the cadbury's temptations! The truth is that we all have our unique Achilles heel and temptation holds that knowledge close to her heart.
But why does temptation always have a negative tinge to it? Who said it is wrong to give in to your temptations at times! If you end up in trouble 'coz of your wicked temptations, thats okay! Life lets you make mistakes right? After all, we have been taught to learn from our mistakes. If we dont make any, how else will we learn our lessons!! ;)

p.s. And for those who have been scratching your head over the sense of deja vu the title is giving you, here's a little help for you : to be, or not to be :D

Men may come and men may go, but i go on forever...

No,this ain't Tennyson's Brook talking. This is the harsh abrasive scorching star flaring his fiery tongue at me.
If the sun reminds you of warm California beaches and chilled lemonades, let me take you on a 10 minute walk at 8 30 am out in the Muscat city streets.You will start to loathe the sun.
The sun isn't just a hot ball of gas as he pretends to be. He has a mind. A mind supremely capable of coming up with its gambits.He has ears. How many, I know not. But ears capable of listening sneakily to your silent curses and in perfect co-ordination with the mind, he lashes back at you all the more fiercely.And if he has a conscience somewhere within that impenetrable exterior,let me assure you,it is defunct.
Imagine yourself walking on a Muscat city street at 8 30 am for some reason,the reason being unimportant here.And the person responsible for placing you out in the streets(be it yourself, or your mother) was kind enough to provide you with an umbrella and a bottle of water.You think you are well protected against the sun and can make it unscathed to your destination within 10 minutes. Aha! But you,my poor fellow,have misjudged the true limit of his potential.
He sees you hiding from his glare under the umbrella.Instantly he strikes a deal with the wind. The wind blows its mightiest blow. Whoooooosh...the umbrella flies out of your hand even as you desperately try to clutch onto it...you try to run behind it, But aha! the wind and the sand shake hands( yes they all are successful businessmen) and the sand whirls around you, lifts into the air and the dust particles irritate your eyes...and while you are left standing there scratching your eyes furiously wishing the sand out of them,your umbrella disappears into eternity. Well not really into eternity,but well out of your sight.And this is how,ladies and gentlemen and my poor friend stranded out in the sun,in cahoots with the wind and the sand,he snatches away your first weapon.
He knows the bottle of water is no great weapon. But he is a misanthrope. Seeing man suffer alone with not even water to give him a moral boost is what fuels him. You can feel his hot breath on you. You find your skin breaking out into perspiration.Millions of tiny droplets of sweat.Your body cries out for water and as you gulp down every drop that the bottle holds, he mercilessly continues to suck it all through his straw till the very last drop.And a bit more for pure unabashed pleasure.
And there you are, at the end of ten torturous minutes,dragging your defeated feet which can barely support your withered body and your mind which has ungraciously conceded defeat,to the gates of your destination,the sight of which ameliorate your spirits. And he? He sits high up in his abode,grinning at you,a mere mortal, nefariously, and the above described sight having fueled his fire instead of satisfying his hunger,he spans the earth,searching for his next victim...

inspired by a true incident.

This day ,That age

A year back isn't exactly anyones idea of "that age" but i just wanted to know how it would feel to violate The Hindu 's copyright laws. Anyways, here goes nothing...
It was definitely a time when the world should have seemed like a gilt. The JEE results has just been announced and I was almost done packing for the Singapore-Malaysia trip my dad had planned in recompense for the two years of pressure. I was just months away from college(read freedom) and school had imparted to me all that it felt obliged to(read no more caviling about uniforms and homework),and whether i had actually grasped them is immaterial. But it certainly didn't feel that way.
Change is the hardest thing to cope with. I could see it giving me a baleful sneering grin and the present situation seemed like a respite it was offering me. I hated having to leave my friends and family behind, to shift to a village devoid of the hustle-bustle of the city,to no longer be in a class that bursts into boisterous laughter every 15 minutes and that offers you solace from boring theories in the form of cross-bench comments,to no longer have the company of my best friend and another...
Looking back on the by-gone year...
More often than not, its just the idea of change that is more painful than the change itself, but here the change won hands down. It is expected of humans to adapt to changes,but though i have adapted myself to it, i haven't accepted it and i continue to remonstrate against it to this day.
It is not like i am languishing in college, but school life is a world of its own,incomparable and singular.It will never have to concede defeat,for it has no competitors,for it never will enter the battlefield.

The creme-de-la-creme of Coffee

The seductive aroma twists and twirls around your nostrils playing games with your senses...and your taste buds, a slave to this strong caffeine drink,find it irresistible and beckoning.
But mine are not and so, try however hard I may, and trust me I’ve tried hard, I just can't get myself to like the bitter taste of the drink relished by so many. So why am I writing about my this particular bete noire??

'coz this isn’t about just any ordinary coffee, I’m about to introduce u to the King of the Beans, the Ultimate Coffee, the world's most expensive coffee - Kopi Luwak!!

It’s intense flavour is devoid of any bitterness, but this isn’t the sole reason for its insane pricing. Demand-supply inequality that affects every commodity spares no king either. With just 400 to 450 kgs produced every year, the price remains as high as Rs 2000 for a cup!

So what makes this coffee so special?!? If I were to tell you the reason before you had already sold your taste buds to this out-of-the-world experience, you would probably refuse to even take a sip!! Believe it or not, these beans are sifted out of the Asian Palm Civet excreta! The beans pass through undigested;then why the hassle!?! It is believed that the enzymes in the digestive tract of the Civets break down certain proteins thereby enhancing its flavour and eliminating the bitterness.

The other side of the coin: researchers say that there is nothing special about the famous Kopi Luwak, but that it is just a gimmick to sell the ludicrously priced beans. They call it the "placebo effect" wherein a more expensive item is enjoyed better by the consumer!

Take your pick between these irreconcilable differences of opinion, but as a true coffee lover,you might want to travel to Japan or America(primary Kopi Luwak producing countries) to get your shot of Kopi Luwak. But hurry,for very few customers get this privileged opportunity!

As for me, I have acquiesced to the inability of my taste buds to ever appreciate the taste of coffee!!

photo courtesy: BT