If Only

Out beyond ideas

of wrongdoing and rightdoing,

there is a field.

I'll meet you there.

- Jelaluddin Rumi

(from "And The Mountains Echoed" by Khaled Hosseini)

Dreams Of You

My dreams of you are great fantasies

Epic operas washed in golden lights

Marble steps, elaborate chandeliers

and dainty feet on shiny granites

Mysterious evenings that fade

into rich promising nights

Anticipation, ardour and excitement.

The air of my dreams of you is perpetually

thick with passion and emotion.

A grand promise of some great

divinity occurring in the undercurrents.

And when you come into sight, the air, it crackles.

And I rush down those steps and rush into you.

Your arms poised to receive as you lift me up.

And passionate kisses follow

oblivious to the eyes around.

I look into your eyes and ask, "Why love me so?"

And your eyes seem to answer simply,

"Because that is what I do."

I rub into your stubble because I like to

And it dawns on me again, that all these years along

You have wordlessly, unconditionally, continually

showered me with your gestures of love

when I had been seeking mere words.

And yet you never stopped,

acts of affection coming forth.

Corazon. You honour me. I love you.

Why I Love My Lotto Shoes

I dearly love my Lotto shoes

because they are big and black

Neither tight and nor too loose

And all girly glitterings they lack.

My big black Lotto shoes have a fiery red

lining, about which in lore and legends is said

would make fully grown men themselves wet

and whimper back to their mothers in a sweat.

My shoes have a spacious front

Some of my weight they bear and grunt

That place is so palatial, that my toes

sneer and bare their imaginary butts to foes.

My toes dance the ballet and remain unchaffed

Play and make merry, and in an orgy are wrapped

There are no cuts, ahoy, or holes at the heels!

No contact with rain water, thus my skin never peels.

Ah yes, I recall, there is a hole at the toe indeed

The one I acquired while learning to weld metal sheets

But now is plugged with a mysterious mochi material

Ah mighty shoes! You withstood the heat of molten aluminium!

Sometimes when they bite my fair ankle

They are easily repaired, after leaving a sore spot

Bitey encounters that leave me rankled

But then what are creams and lotions for?

Most importantly, when filthy people stare at me

I look at my shoes and feel strong and mighty

And I think "Come on chap, dare you touch a hair on me,

These shoes will crack your nuts and make you flighty"

When Strangers Meet.. : A Review

When "When Strangers Meet.." reached me, I tucked into the familiar smell of new books, and was surprised by its weightlessness. A compact and light book, easy to hide behind practical files in exam time to hide from mum ;)

The story begins with Jai, a rebellious Gurgaon teenager who wants to be an animator and an actor, and is oppressed by an ambitious father, a mathematics professor himself, who wants him to become an engineer, despite Jai's lousy grades. The first part of the novel reveals the strained relationship shared by Jai and his father, the volatile verbal volleys, and the weak peace-maker mother. Jai's retorts are hot and stingy, with a mouthful of swears and characerized by the typical urban teen "lingo". The father's behavior borders on crazy, with his obsession over Jai's engineering, and speeding up on the highways to make Jai bow down. The reader feels sympathetic to the boy. And when Jai decides to tun away, it's almost understandable.

But then fate has something else in store. The Delhi Metro plays a capricious goddess and hinders Jai's first phase of his escape to Mumbai, the city of struggling actors. Stranded on the station, he meets a "stranger", a good-natured, pot-bellied, and slightly irritating Madrasi by the name of Iyer, who is intent on striking up a conversation and narrates his own life story, which is the second part of the novel.

The story has now shifted from the Delhi-Gurgaon urban landscape to the warm, humid and sandy environs of Chennai and Tuticorin. This is when the the story picks up a good pace, and the reader nestles into the comfortable breezes that are Iyer's life story. K Hari Kumar's writing in this part of the novel is indeed delicious, as the reader becomes Iyer through out the narrative, experiencing the highs of the teen years, nursing impossible dreams and fantasies, taking on a mathematician father in a very public tiff, swearing to only return to burn the father's dead body, running away from home to make a name for himself, with a touch of a sweet romance that once was. Tears of sadness were shed when Iyer's dreams crash, and then tears of joy for him when he rebuilds his life. Iyer's longing for home, his new found love and respect for his father, and the fear of returning lest the death curse uttered during their fight come true... it's almost heart breaking.

Jai realizes that his story and circumstances are exactly the same as Iyer's, whose father went on a downward spiral ever since he ran away, and is now lying on his death bed. Jai is jolted back into reality and begins understanding his own father, along with the realization that he still has a chance to go back home and prevent the worst from coming. However, Jai's return back home and Iyer's disappearance from Jai's life was surprising, and contained an "unworldly" element, which gives the story an interesting turn at the end. The last of the three characters, the humble and poor Pathan, did not prove to be integral to the story. I wish the treatment of this particular character was far more detailed as he had seemed very promising in the beginning and would have given the novel a whole new dimension indeed.

"When Strangers Meet.." by K Hari Kumar, is a light hearted drama with a bit of suspense in the end. Priced at Rs 100, it's a warm hearted coming-of-age story. The title not only stresses the turn Jai's life takes when he meets a stanger, but also how Jai and his father, who were till now strangers to each other, finally "meet" and begin understanding each other. Spiced up with details of city life of Delhi and Chennai, with the characters spending a lot of time in our beloved Metro, the good pace of the story and the weightlessness of the book makes it an ideal read while commuting in the Metro ;)

Title : When Strangers Meet..  

Pages: 216      

Price: 100/-

Publisher: Srishti Publishers & Distributors

 Published: May 2013   

Language: English 

 ISBN:9789380349930 

 Category: Fiction

Adoration

देखते थे चुपके चुपके तुझको 

देखता है प्यार प्यार को जैसे 

जो छू गुज़रती तो लगता ऐसा 

सनम को मिली वफ़ा हो जैसे 

दुआ को दी दुआएं तेरी 

मेरी ही तुम रिदा हो जैसे 

जाती हुई हवाओं में हों 

ताबीज़ों की रवायें जैसे 

रेगिस्तान की रेतों में हैं 

सूफी के गीत समाए जैसे 

मिल जाऊं तुझ में भी मैं 

मुहब्बत में हो इबादत जैसे 

Me During Exams

Yaar...February Ki Spelling??

There is this awesome friend of mine called Whizkid. We met on the third day of college, and thankfully have been together since. Before I begin with my tiny story, let me tell you a bit about my college and my brilliant friend. Indira Gandhi Institute of Technology, IPU Delhi, the mythical haven of technical minded nymphs, and in our own words, "the fairer tech"; the engineering equivalent of the lost Atlantis where women rule; and the abode of beauty and brains; THE place to source girlfriends from. Before the readers go into orgasmic euphoria, let me tell you clearly and crisply, HALT. Please halt. We may not be geeks, but we are not supermodels either. Only 3 in 10 take the pains of being presentable, 2 in 10 succeed, and 1 in 10 is truly beautiful.

But girls they still are. So what do people like me (cold-hearted) do when confronted with such a scenario? Naturally, we seek the likes of each other, and this is what drew me to Whizkid.

Whizkid is a brilliant person, is the topper of my mechanical batch, very sharp and observant, analytical, conclusive and foresighted. Also, she is a tech freak. You can see the divine light of a screen in her bright eyes, the current running through her skin when she touches a button; you can almost hear her brain whirring maniacally when confronted with a new gadget. The more complicated the better.

She is the proud owner of a macbook, the legend behind it being: when her dad asked her why she needed it, she simply replied she didn't need it at all; pure lust draws her to it.

IGIT Delhi is holding the SAE NIS CONVENTION this year. And we being in the SAE-IGIT Council, are working hard to make it a success. And mine being a government college, is working even more hard to make everything hard :p We have to move a file to take permission for moving a file :p Yes, really :p But we have now honed the skill of writing formal applications :/

Now imagine my surprise when one day while writing a letter, Whizkid says, "Yaar February ki spelling bataiyo! Its Febuary? Februrary?"  I told her the correct one, and we moved on. Next day again, "Archika, February?" Again with a raised eyebrow I dictated her the correct one. And the same thing happened later that day. Needless to say, I did this the whole of Feb :p "Whizkid, its F-E-B-R-U-A-R-Y".

In March, the replacements have been the words "inaugural", "competition", "solicited", "competent", "receipt", "received", so on and so forth :p One day she confessed, "Yaar laptop toh apne aap theek kardeta hai na, paper itna backward I tell you, no autocorrection!"

Pentium wise, pen and paper foolish!