Whispering Shadow

To gate crash at your home on every birthday, getting spare cakes so that you can do more than just eat them. To expect you to listen to them even when they are at their worst and you are not at your best.  To turn tell you how monstrous you looked in that flouroscent shirt. "You should have instead worn the floral one! " To confide in you how cute they found that girl who just passed by to be which was exactly what you were going to tell them. To give you advice, free and unlimited, sometimes unnecessary.   To wish you luck a million times, saying "You will be just fine" before you put yourself to a real test in this cruel world. You even get "Good Luck" surprise parties. To ask you for treats on every occassion. Your birthday. Treat! You won a prize. Treat! You shaved. Treat! To reinstate faith when you think you are being sucked in a black hole. "No it's ok. They won't touch your arm. They will only chop your finger" To fuel your imagi...

On one rainy day, I remember I had taken cover under the natural umbrella one of them formed. It served me well. I managed to come out, not half as soaked as I would have otherwise been. The rains in Mumbai are ruthless on its inhabitants and the trees are the only saviours.  I was indebted.  The trinity used to stand there, majestically, at the turn down the road. I had seen them in their full glory with their brown barks and thick blanket of leaves. Many creatures lived in them - crows and sparrows, pigeons and squirrels, and many more insects and creepie-crawlies. It was a micro-habitat in itself.   Today, it felt different. The shade the trees provided was gone. The chirping of the birds was absent. In fact there were no birds.  As I walked back home, I had hoped to find them watching over the road that leads to the hospital. But all I saw were three stubs, as if they had been prosecuted and sentenced to death - beheading was the chosen method.   The walk didn't feel the same. ...

A good friend told me, “If you are stressed out, sing out loud.” I told her I always did, especially when I had my music on. How often I have seen random people staring at my face and presumably mumbling to themselves, “What’s wrong with this guy?” while I have been humming along my favourite tunes. Oblivious to their remarks, I enjoy living in a world of my songs. My playlist is barely 48 hours long, but I rarely mind listening to the songs on it, over and over and over again.  They can help me change my frame of mind and refocus. There is a song for every mood, a mood for every song. There are few lines that are so close to me that they deserve a mention on my blog:   Song : Yellow / Artist : Cold Play  "I came along I wrote a song for you And all the things you do And it was called yellow   So then I took my turn Oh all the things I've done And it was all yellow"   Song: Carnival of Rust/ Artist: Poet of the Fall  "It's all a game, avoid...

There are movies and then there are great movies - the ones in which you come out feeling different about the life you live, the world you see. You ask yourself questions which you never asked. You wonder if you already knew the answers to those questions but were not willing to accept them. Your mirage of knowing how relationships function is broken, the age barrier shatterred. You wish you can recreate that magic in your life when the chips are down. You give yourself a fighting chance, for salvation, absolvence from sins of every nature. You feel pain. You cry. You learn how to save a life. You believe. You live the moment.  Gran Torino is not a movie, it's a fun lesson in philosophy. Clint Eastwood is both the learned teacher and the enlightened student. PS: Thank you Mr.Iyer for recommending it. I think you should watch it too in case you haven't so far. 

Wake up. Go to office. Check e-mails. Work.  Eat. Check e-mails. Work. Eat again sometimes. Work more. Return home.  Check e-mails (personal). Sleep.  And this happens six days a week from 7AM to 11PM. Not that there is too much of work, there is too little of everything else.