Never mine but i felt the loss!

I remember the times as a toddler when I used to play with my doll and have tea parties with my friend. The doll was mine and the tea set was hers. We used to make lovely pink juice by smushing bougainvilla flowers and green juice with leaves from the garden and serving it out in the small cups and saucers. We would then fake as though we were drinking it and make more. So many giggles, dirty fingers and fun. And then my friend's family decided to move to a new neighbourhood. I watched her leave. The tea set went with her and I did not make bougainvilla juice for a long time. It was never mine but I felt the loss.


I remember watching the boy in the house across ours from my window. They had just moved in recently. I was in my teens and he must have just joined college. I had this huge crush over him and would make appearances outside just in time to catch his eye. He would barely acknowlege me but that did not deter me. One day, I was returning home from school in my bi-cycle, when I saw him on his motorbike. He had a girl in his pillion seat, clinging to him affectionately. He was never mine but I felt the loss.


The above accounts are true and I can perhaps smile at how I grew through my losses of things not mine!




Today, I watch news about children being abused. Be it a boy who is waiting to be executed in Iran because he killed a man trying to molest him, be it a toddler who has been maimed so that he can be a beggar, be it a girl who dies in childbirth because her body is just 13 years old, be it a child who is abandoned by parents who cannot afford to feed her... These children are not mine, but I feel the loss.

An Awesome song!

कागज़ के फूल

वक़्त ने किया,
क्या हसीन सितम,
तुम रहे न तुम,
हम रहे न हम,
वक़्त ने किया....

बेक़रार दिल इस तरह मिले
जिस तरह कभी हम जुदा न थे
तुम भी खो गए
हम भी खो गए
एक राह पर
चलके दो कदम
वक़्त ने किया .....

जायेंगे कहाँ
सूझता नहीं
चल पड़े मगर
रास्ता नहीं
क्या तलाश है
कुछ पता नहीं
बुन्न रहे है दिल
ख्वाब दम बा दम

वक़्त ने  किया........

Maine dil se kaha dhoondh lana khushi.......

Sometimes you just tend to forgive people because their presence means life to you, because u still want them in your life. So forgive and forget.....
i did :) :)

On Another Valentine’s Day

The jogging tracks of the Sports Complex were deserted in the morning, except for a few die-hard morning walkers who braved it out in the particularly foggy morning and a Sunday....off and on a silhouette would emerge from out of nowhere.... It was quite cold today, brrrr.... who would have thought that in the middle of February it would be so cold and foggy.......a fellow morning walker taking the anti-clockwise route as I trudge along clock-wise....few familiar faces... hint of a smile or a nod in acknowledgement......my hands deep in the wind-cheater pockets that I wore over my jogging suit...




I try to walk faster...chilly wind against my face... but my gaits are small... my steps not fast enough, reflective of my general laid back attitude...in no particular hurry to reach a destination or to compete......people overtake me invariably and casually in my clock-wise track......people who don’t seem to really try very hard to walk fast...they walk normally, sometimes in two’s and three’s, talking amongst themselves....people walk with the earphones glued to ears listening to music...or they talk incessantly over the cell... totally engrossed....I wonder always what is it they talk about?



I prefer to walk alone, at my pace, it is my only me-time. As I walk, I think about life, future, country, people, ....random stray thoughts criss-cross my mind in no particular pattern... Today’s Valentine’s day? What’s so great? Rose Day, Teddy day, Hugs day ... eeks....rampant commercialisation of a tender emotion....yet how the people lap it up... creates stress among the youth who do not have a special someone....they are made to feel inadequate, is it fair?.......just exhibitionism.........scratch the surface of the professed love....hollow inside... like those heart shaped balloons..........shey!!!


I hear soft voices ahead of me...have seen this rather odd couple off and on...they walk anti clock-wise... the man, salt and pepper hair, tall and stately..with the characteristic military moustache, and a woman ,diminutive, salt and pepper cropped head, in a Salwar suit and a sweater...walking unsteadily, swaying from side to side with her affected gait......head bobbling a little...eyes not totally focussed... the man was speaking to the woman very tenderly in hindi..... ‘see you have walked 100 meters already, you can do it.... , just another 100 meters, dear.....I am with you... think you feel cold?...as you walk, you will feel warm”,
 .......then I hear a shout of laughter...a young girl with loads of spotted bangles, that characterise a newly married girl, jogging with her new husband... they were racing with each other in the jogging track in fog...teasing each other and laughing all the while... had no eyes for anyone else but for each other...they kind of brushed past the older couple...the woman almost fell, but the man was very quick to hold her fall, ‘nothing to worry dear’, he said, ‘I am here’ ever so softly....and then I had crossed them...



I had a sudden lump in my throat...... two distinct phases of love that I saw unfold in the course of one morning during a routine morning walk...on a Valentine’s day....a Sunday....

Heard of any good news lately????

"I have stopped eating. I have stopped drinking. I rarely breathe any longer because I'm going to hear something on television telling me that I've done something that's about to kill myself,”

                                        - Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center, USA

Reporting facts is fair enough but making sweeping statements on the whole society or nation based on one-in-a-million incident is negative. It is also negative to highlight only the worst and shameful of incidents and not the ones where people do good to others.

Taking it positively, one might say that bad news is comparatively occasional and good news too many to qualify for a special mention. But then how many take it that way? Not many because the bad news is often sensationalized and repeated over and over again to imprint a lasting negative reflection of the society in the collective minds of the society.

It is no wonder that the average Indian (especially in blogosphere) is a cynic. People do not believe good news when it does come or are always looking for excuses that diminish the good news. That’s the effect of watching the 24x7 bad news splashed in our living rooms.

So why is the media so negative? Why does the focus have to be on the doom and gloom? As an answer, here are some more quotes from Brent Bozell.

"We seek to entertain an audience rather than enlighten an audience,"

"There is the old song that says that good news is no news. Bad news is great news. In the final analysis, it is all about ratings."

So ratings are important but how much of all of this is fact or fiction? Is the world such a dangerous and depressing place?

Well, the answer is: not really. On closer inspection, we see that what passes for a crisis in the media is really not a crisis at all.

A few years ago, I remember one Hindi TV news correspondent going about the city of Delhi after a bomb blast claiming that Dahshak (terror or fear) has taken over the city. To prove it, she interviewed a constable on duty at India Gate. From the casual attitude and body language of the constable, he might as well been munching peanuts. In answer to a question, he said, “So what? It’s a usual day.”

The reporter continued undeterred, “As you can see, dahshak is everywhere.” One wonders if there was so much dahshak, why is she roaming around freely in the city, why not give up the job and sit at home trembling in anticipation of the inevitable end.

But she doesn’t do it; in fact, everybody goes about his or her daily routine firstly because there are more than 100 crores of us in this country. Even if 100 people die in a bomb blast, your chance of dying in a bomb blast is roughly one in a crore.

News reporters have started using superlatives like dahshak and fear at the drop of a hat. What used to be merely ‘concern’ at one point of time has now become ‘fear’. All this is leading us to worry needlessly about things that are most rare. And this is because these rare incidents are sensationalised, personalised, and repeated in various versions of “breaking news”.

The dahshak actually sets in when we have seen stories often enough, especially crime and victim stories, and then we start to change our lifestyle, our opinions. We don't go out as much. We don’t interact with certain types of people. We'll choose more society flats with gates, security booths, high walls, no windows. Sales of pistols and security systems increase. In short, we start to believe we live in a world where things are "out of control." Have you noticed that many have started asking “What is the world coming to?”

You really see fear most in crime stories. Just watch your local news channel for a few minutes and you may think that crime is everywhere.

Next time you start thinking in these lines, just keep this in mind - Covering crime is cheap, fast and efficient so you see more of it. Ask any news reporter, he will agree.

The mainstream media is in fact trying to generate audiences and profits more than providing solid information. Solid information is made up of statistics, facts, experience, professional language rather than speculation, criticism, hysterics and flowery language.

Speaking of solid information, no one seems to figure out global warming. All I have noticed is that summers have become wetter in Bangalore, and winters have become chillier. Remember the Time magazine coverage: "Be worried. Be very worried." But what about 30 years ago, when some in the western media said there was an impending ice age?

If it is any consolation, Americans are as much unnecessarily worried as we are. In the 1990s, the American murder rate fell by 20 percent. But the number of murder stories on their network newscasts rose roughly 600 percent. Well, I am sure the situation in India is more or less the same.

Some people argue about the right to know. But are people ready for this kind of knowledge especially when presented in this imbalanced perspective? Many of us still live sheltered and protected lives. News that shock us also make us feel above the society and the first ones that we start suspecting and mistrusting are those who don’t belong to ‘us’ – implying those who don’t belong to our family, region, religion, social status and so on.

Thus the problem aggravates. Which brings to mind the idea of responsibility: to whom much is given, much is expected.

Any ideas on how the media can be made more responsible? Here’s what I thought of for a start.

1. With the exponential growth of media, lack of good analysts has resulted in several inexperienced people making it a free-for-all. Media houses should give proper training to the highly visible correspondents and news script writers on how not to sensationalize and dramatize but report matter-of-factly.

2. Write to press about each sweeping statement they make. Ask them to give proper statistics backing these claims.

3. Spread awareness about the sensationalist and shock value of news.

4. Learn to see through news without the drama and frills. Learn to separate facts from fiction.

5. Make judgements based on own analysis.

i thought that the new year will bring some good things in my life... some pleasant changes...but i think i will just have to wait and wait and wait!

The dreadful four letter word!

Ok first things first. STOP!( all you dirty minds its not what you are thinking!!!). The thing about which i intend to write is the thing which some say makes their world go round (chakkar aate hai kya? :P ).. some say brings a smile on their face and a twinkle in their eyes.... some say it makes you forget everything else going on around you (amnesia???) so on and so forth. In simple words they call it LOVE! Here's a statutory warning to all the readers (if there are any) please do not read further if you are one of the patients of this disease. And NO i am not talking about the love for parents, friends, dogs, chocolates, food, clothes.... it is the "loooooooove" i am talking about. 

I would like to quickly categorise as to who can actually read ahead....

a) people who donot believe in the very concept itself  (falling in love.... being in love... whatever it is)  and havent ever  thought of trying it even once as the word is "scary".

b) people who have "tried" their hand and burnt their fingers once or twice.

c) people who have burnt their entire hand.

d) people who dont care a damn as long as they can kill some time ( jobless basically)

So categorise categorise yourself and go ahead....

The dictionary defines this word as ( i have selected the meanings as per  reference to the context)

i) a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person.

ii) a person toward whom love is felt; beloved person; sweetheart

iii) a love affair; an intensely amorous incident; amour.

As a kid one fails to understand what exactly this word means. For me it was a word which was a "bad" word. Dont know why.... it sounds very silly now but when the word used to come up in some way or the other all i did was giggle...look at my friends and pretend i am scandalised! later as i grew up i discovered the other meanings also...mom, dad love me... i love them... i love spark (my dog)... i love music... i love singing... i love writing... etc etc... yes i knew the other usage of that as well... but it wasnt of much importance. It was the age of making friends..have a few crushes once in a while... writing about them in your diaries ( which ultimately some way or the other your mom found out!!!! ) and then realising after a week or two that person about whom you spent some considerable amount of time writing about was a JERK!!!! This was during my high school days. The whole idea of looooove! Influenced by our very own 'Kuch Kuch Hota hai' , 'Dilwale Dulhania Le jayenge' ( remember andekha anjaana koi aane laga khayalon mein and pyaar dosti hai!?!?! ) No offense i guess... we all learn from our mistakes ( and what I learnt here was to NEVER EVER mention the guy's name in the diary... use code words instead!!!! ;) ) and I still enjoy those movies...only difference is that i dont take them seriously anymore.

Then i grew up... and there was an extention to the concept... that it was skin deep( cliched i know! ) ... that it doesnt matter how the person looks ( really ?? :P ) and all that mattered is that the person knew you fully well and liked you for what you are... as it is... ( fat, thin, dumb, smart, funny, senti whatever!) and yes one major thing... it happens just once! And I am still in that phase. I firmly believe that its something that happens just once and even if someway it happens second time..its always difficult to be completely over the first one. Things change with time and i am hoping if my first stint with the whole thing ( why am I avoiding using the "word" i dunno ) is not that great it keeps happenning again and again just like the first time. Oh yeah!! one more thing... the idea that it just "happens" is absurd i feel ( apologies if ppl dont agree/get offended)... It doesnt happen if you dont let it to!  But how many people have turned their first gf's/bf's into their life partners?!?! I wish there were as many as the speed breakers on the Bangalore-Mysore road.

Why do things do not work as they say??? If you know the person... the real one... and like him/her and give sometime before plunging into the whole thing then it really shouldnt be a problem. Being loyal/faithful I think comes with it.... crushes (physical attraction...as in liking the way the person looks THTS IT) happen...but thats ok! Blame it on the hormones! :P. Committment issues ( I LOVE Chandler but by inducing this concept into the guys he has done a very very wrong thing! damn u Chandler!), Long distance ralationships! ( Why the hell are we aping the west?!!) are somethings which are beyond my understanding. Just in case anyone happens to read this... explain maadi paaa! pls!!!

After seeing some shows on television ( ohk ohk i know its the "idiot box" ) ... reading magazines... and with the globalization, industrialization, modernization ( hi-fi words eh?! :P )  Farhanitrate Prerajularization ( i loved 3 idiots!! :P)  i feel there is one more word that needs to be attached to this word... consumerism! One is never enough! ( well i dont really agree with it... but the whole world seems to be practicing that) and personally i feel that the very sanctity, pureness of the word is lost :(. It no more comes with a "forever" tag attached and thats really sad. We need to change this attitude and stick to the fact that it happens just once.. and we need to work our butts off to make it work... or if you are my type (lazy!) then stay single. Right now with the current status of my mind I think the only person worth falling in love is I ME MYSELF! So that way i dont get dumped (vice versa) , i dont get hurt and i stay happy... for now... for always!

I hope this post becomes an instant hit and tomorrow i am flooded with the offers to write a rom-com flick! ( yes yes yes i live in my own world!! :) ). For now i am signing off! Would love to hear what you think!

cheers!

a new beginning......

i have made a start to something from today... what why etc will write when things start materialising... but as they say a long journey begins with a small step.. i hope i succeed. touchwood!

My first post on my new blog... will write more and i really like the name of my blog!