barren

कुछ खाली सा लगा मन
तो बरस गईं आँखें
कुछ भर सा आया है मन
पर भरती कहाँ चाहें

आंसू भी अब शायद
कहीं थक से गए होंगे
ठहरे से कुछ किस्से
कहीं गुम से गए होंगे

सिराहने पड़ा पत्ता भी अब
कुछ सूखा सा लगता है
टूटे शाखों का दरख्त
अधमरा सा लगता है

तुम गए तो अब न आना
कि अब मौसम सब नए हैं
तुम पहचान भी न पाओगे
हम इतने बदल गए हैं

घर के बाहर वाले पेड़ की
शाखें सूख सी गई हैं
घर तो अब नही रहा
दीवारें रह गई हैं

आज खाली सा है मन
पर तुम मत आना
मैं नही चाहता तुमसे
मिले कोई अनजाना

good morning...

जब सूरज पंख पसारे
धूमिल कर देता सब तारे
जब अधजगी आंखों को मीचे
आँखें छुपाती हथेली के पीछे
तुम खिड़की के परदे हटाती हो
और सूरज को देख मुस्काती हो
उजाले का सफर वहीँ शुरू होता है
तुम से ही बस सवेरा होता है

essay assay

in school, i was pushed by my teachers to take part in various essay contests (i would never have gone on my own. come to think of it, almost all the co-curricular activities i did in school were forced on me in some way, but let's not digress :P). and some essays i wrote have stuck with me, some because of content, some because of the circumstances surrounding them, and some because i was praised for them (vanity, thy name isn't always woman :D)

->in std 7, we had to write this hindi essay in some class test. and end it with ' and i woke up'. or something like that. now telling me to write an essay on a dream was almost like giving me the license to kill [:P]! so i did exactly that. saved the entire school from a bunch of goons who had taken the students hostage. there were a lot of bullets and still more blood ( all on the thugs' side, of course!]. dunno what my ma'm liked - the sheer audacity of it all or the craziness - but i got pretty good marks in that, i think :)

->in std 8, we had to write an essay as part of some intra-school essay competition - some memorial prize, i think. it was voluntary but i made the mistake of telling my mother about it. and i was woken up at the unearthly hour of 4 pm to go for that ! [yes, 4 pm is an unearthly hour for me because 2-5 in the afternoon is my prime sleeping time!] i went and wrote something random. the results weren't declared until the annual day of the school and it was a big surprise to hear my name as the winner. but more pleasing was the prize of 300 rupees :D! i pooled that money with some other prizes i got, added some more of my saved pocket money, and bought my first scientific calculator and my first 'big' dictionary. [until that time, i only had my pocket oxford, which, if you've seen it, isn't really pocket-sized]

->in std 1, we had to write an essay in hindi on 'my mother'. well, not an essay exactly. more like five full sentences :P! and i could write only 3! i rejected most of my ideas coz they were too obvious! i wanted to write something extraordinary and ended up writing two less! so i went home with the question paper and my mother asked me if i had written the five sentences. and, like the good boy i am, i said that i had. but what i didn't know was that this school returned the answer scripts :D :D! what happened when i brought that home is better not said here !

-> then, there were the two times i figured in the top 15 of an essay competition that was held for ICSE schools all over india for students in class 9-12. and i won them at the beginning and end, in classes 9 and 12 :P! one because i started it with a stupid joke and the other because i ended it with a stupid poem! the stupid-joke-essay was really crappy and i think the evaluator must really have been out of his right senses when he chose that. but being nominated from the school was a bigger prize than the final selection for that one because it was chosen ahead of the works of other bigwigs of the school, all of whom were senior to me :).

->the intra-school essay competition i won in std 8, it was held for std 8 and 12 students. and i won it again in std 12. but more interesting than the essay was the circumstances in which it was written. we used to have a 'contact program' for brilliant tutorials' students in the city, where professors from the coaching institute came down to clear doubts. a date was decided for the essay competition but we requested our english ma'm to get it shifted because it clashed with the contact program. the good teacher that she was, she agreed to it. but we went and watched 'fizaa' instead, having informed our parents that we were going to the contact program :D [four contact programs and we watched four movies - kaho na pyar hai, josh, fiza and mohabbatein. more about mohabbatein later :)]. and some kind soul in the school leaked this news to ma'm. consider my discomfort the next day, when i was subjected to a lot of cold stares from ma'm, maybe because i had been the most vociferous of the group that wanted the thing postponed. but i made it up by winning it, i think :P!

->a school in our city conducted an inter-school competition (where they never played fair and always came first). an essay competition was part of the various events and i came first every time i went there, 3-4 times i think. i had figured out (and it was well-known) that this school wasn't particularly good in the english department. so i mugged up lots of quotes and peppered my essays with as many as i could :P! and this impressed them enough to give me the first prize every time :D!

->but the real gem was the time when we had to write an essay in hindi on 'my favorite movie' in std 12. i wrote on mohabbatein. and ma'm, after giving the marks, left a comment: kitne baar dekhi hai movie? :D :D that it raised my mother's suspicions, is another story altogether :P!

exaggeration

the figure is 937, actually [:P]

a search without the quotes also gives only 2,570,000 results.

[comic from the fullpage comics gadget in igoogle]

the best of me??

why should you be the best
ahead, the first one, on the top
why all this mad rush
this jostling and pushing
why can't we let things be

why should everything be judged
compared to something
given a value
ranked on a scale
reduced to a statistic
one of a hundred billion

why should anyone try
to decide who's the better
you or me
and then extol the better
and condemn the worse

what's all this 'success' thing
if i am happy
being what i am
being mediocre, if you say
why should you call me names
a coward, a failure
and anyway, who decides
what is mediocre
and what's not

i never asked anyone
for help, to lend me a hand
i never bothered you
why should you be bothered then
why should you see me
in your light

but then, it's human nature
to clamber atop corpses
even if it entails
creating the corpses first

[something i wrote ages ago. a discussion with a friend reminded me of it]

iff = if and only if

वक्त ने की थी शायद साजिश
लगा था की है बहुत वक्त
तुम्हे देखने को, सुनने को
तुमसे बातें करने को
बहुत बातें थीं कहने को
बहुत सपने थे देखने को

वक्त था ठहरा सा कहीं
लगा यूँ ही रहेगा हमेशा
खुशनुमा सा, उजला सा
तेरी मीठी हँसी सा
मिलेंगे पल अनगिनत कहीं
ज़िन्दगी जीने को

पर हुआ वो ही जो होना था
वो वक़्त कहीं छूट गया
रात आई और सपने खो गए
बातें सारी रह गयीं कहने को
पल में ही कितने सारे पल
हासिल हो गए यादों को

तुम गए की बस
एक जहाँ चला गया
तुम थे तो घडियां
रुकी सी रहती थीं
तुम गए तो साथ
वक़्त भी चला गया

[lifted a bit from sam's speech after the rock 'n' roll soniye song in KANK - the only good thing in that stupid movie.]

my search series

no of days = 83
mean = 32.75
stdev = 24.78

does anyone have any use for this useless statistic ? [:P]

superman returns

i'll hide you beneath my cape
when you want to be alone
and you could hold it and fly
when you wish a home in the sky

and you'll be the one i choose
when i want to cry my tears
coz the world mustn't know
a mass of steel can sometimes weep

and we'll be the kids that we are
flying kites and flying with them
and i'll try to draw some pictures
with colors i borrow from you

i'll be superman for you

grass roots

you could fly high
and touch the clouds
but you'll have to hold
someone rooted to earth
-----X-----
and then, you could be rooted
and still spread your arms wide
stay here and fly afar
and touch your favorite star

[i think i'm getting a bit too much into the sun-moon-star thing. image drawn in sales and distribution class]

dunno

HAPPY CHILDREN'S DAY !!

[image drawn in a managerial ethics class]

light at the end of the tunnel

startling colors that break out
from behind a dark drab veil
fireworks in the night sky
lighting up my glistening cheeks
and there are puddles of color
i can dip my hands into
and give color to all my dreams
and not worry if they'll come true

there isn't much of a change actually
the demons still wait outside
baying for some more blood
waiting for anger/despair to bleed me
but i now have a hand to hold onto
someone to hold me close
and tell me it's okay
to cry and be afraid

and i know i'll see the sunshine
now that she's there
my hope fairy
flying on wings of faith

is there really a difference between hope and faith?

yippee !

and .. gmail voice and video chat is here .. :)

more details here.

and SMS from gmail is coming soon :)

premeditated countermoves

i love you.

not the first time i've heard that sentence.

can't i say it whenever i wish to?

you can. you can say whatever you want to.

then?

it makes me wonder...

if i actually love you?

no, not that. but i wonder why you need to say it again and again.

coz i want to!!!

still, i wonder if you are trying to convince someone.

you think i'm trying to convince you??

naah!! i think you are trying to convince yourself.

and you think that after all this time i still need to do it?

i'm just thinking aloud.

what if i just want to see the twinkle in your eye every time i say it?

really?

what if i told you i've never been more sure of anything?

ohkk!

what if i just like saying that with you close to me?

what if i knew it all along and was just checking?

oh!

now you know why i love you.

and why is that?

coz you are so stupid!

i love you.

i love you too!

...

आधा अधूरा, बिखरा सा
अपने टुकडों को समेटता
कहीं किसी पल में अटका
टूटे सपनों को जकडे
खाली हथेली निहारता
हँसी को तरसता
भारी बादल सा
मन तुमको सोचता है

बातों की बातें

कुछ बातें कहने में हमेशा
कुछ बातें बीच में आ जाती हैं
कुछ बातों की जंग में हमेशा
कुछ बातें अनकही रह जाती हैं

कुछ बातें हैं तस्वीरों के रंगों सी
कुछ बातें हैं तितली के पंखों सी
कुछ बातें पर काजल सी काली हैं
कुछ बातें बस सूनी सी, खाली हैं

कुछ बातें बस लग कर गले
कुछ बातों को रोती रहती हैं
कुछ बातों की चादर तले
कुछ बातें सोती रहती हैं

कहता हूँ इतनी सारी बातें
पर कुछ बातें रह जाती हैं
जगता हूँ इतनी सारी रातें
पर कुछ बातें रह जाती हैं
सारी यादें धुंधली हो जाती हैं
पर कुछ बातें रह जाती हैं
वो सारी बातें बटोरे चली जाती है
पर कुछ बातें रह जाती हैं

haha!

reminds me of the joke involving the sardarji and the taxi driver.

comic source: gocomics.com

gaon waalon...

every time i look at the reliance and airtel towers on the roof of one of the hostels, i feel an urge to climb one of them.

and the song jii karta hai tv tower pe main chadh jaoon from rock on doesn't help matters a bit.

and i have acrophobia.