Sounds of Silence

It’s strange how one finds comfort in the sounds that he grows up with. To explain what I mean, I shall tell you about what I went through precisely an hour ago.

I read a story from ‘Collection of short stories’ by Roald Dahl. The story was titled PIG. The story freaked me completely. It gave me goosebumps. It’s the kind of story after which you can’t read any further; you just keep the book down, stare at the wall in front of you like a zombie, and just say – ‘WTF!!’

Well, anyway, after I slightly got to my senses, I wanted to talk to someone. But sadly my roommate was asleep and I did not want to call someone in the middle of the night.
I was lying on my bed, which is near the window, I pull the curtain and a nice cool wind comes gushing through it. Now I decide that I have to take a walk. One has to walk when the weather is good.

So, I go outside, around 1AM in the morning, to the concrete road right in front of our apartment. I stand there for a minute. The florescent yellow lamps gave the street a very eerie look at this hour. I could hear someone playing the radio in a very low volume nearby. There were dogs running around, they were not barking or howling-just running, so you could hear the sound of their feet against the ground. In the background a breeze kept blowing .You could hear the rustling of the branches of the coconut trees near our place.

I, then, keep walking towards the chaiwala who sells chai till 2AM. The road leading there was peacefully silent. I could see the main old airport road in the distance. I rush down there, take the tea and sit on the footpath. My mind was still not calm.

I took one sip of chai and then started looking at the road. Cars were coming and going past me at a great speed. The only sound you could hear was that of the rubber of the tires rubbing against the road. I paid the guy and started walking back towards our apartment. The sound of the cars and bikes kept diminishing as I walked away from it. Then I reached a place where the sound reached a certain level. It felt familiar. The place where I stopped also had these flowers planted which were very fragrant; sadly I don’t know the name of it. As I stood there listening to the diminished sound of the cars/bikes along with that of the breeze blowing and the other sounds in the background, I just found some kind of right balance in these sounds, I was calmed.

I walked back to my place wondering what calmed me suddenly. Then in my mind I was teleported too my place in Pune. A very beautiful one it is, away from the hustle-bustle of the city. I remembered myself sitting on our swing sometime around midnight during that horrid JEE preparations. I remember asking myself why the fuck am I studying for this exam and then when will it get over. Then I remember me drinking coffee and sitting peacefully in my garden. Similar sounds were there in the background. I do not pay attention to them.

Subconsciously the sound grew on me. God knows how many nights I might have spent sitting in my garden at night? I lived there for close to 20 years. The sound did surely have some effect on me.
Since this incident I have been trying to recollect sounds that I grew up on and that go on around me. It is quite fascinating if you ask me. Everyone has a history of sound around them. Most of us are also privileged enough to hear. So all we got to do is concentrate and listen.

Anyway, hope you find peace in your sounds of silence.

Get Real

The water balloons and snowballs are stacked by the Buckeye tree,
The snowman has stopped giving the evil look to me.
All the tiger’s, space-travelers, superheroes and my usual company,
Decided one fine day, that its time I set them free.
The reality sucks but they say it’s true,
Reality was imaginary with you.
Susie where are you?


P.S: My first attempt at a poem. Have mercy. :)

Answer Man

A long time ago, in the same year when the light from a supernova in the outskirts of the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud appeared on Earth, a hero was born.
He shared his birthday with another lesser known hero called N Pai(together with Palass, they were known as: Ass Pain). N Pai had no powers of great consequence, but was known to have a pure heart, thus enabling him perceive any movie in 3-D.
Anyway, our hero in focus is the Answer Man. Like Batman, he was not born with his powers, he had a traumatic experience as a kid, which changed his perception of life, the universe and everything.
When we think of the Answer Man, we think of a person who has the answers to everything, the answers may be difficult to comprehend or might not make any sense at all, but still are answers nonetheless.
To come up with answers to questions like 'How much wood could a woodchuck chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck wood?'would take a microsecond for the Answer Man to answer. It is also tipped that Answer Man provided Douglas Adams with the answer 42.
If he does not have an answer, he might just say-'OK.', which would leave the people perplexed and they would reconsider the question, but never doubt the Answer Man, for he is mighty,wise and all-knowing. He is even known to have given answers in his sleep, these answers cannot not comprehended by simple beings, for in his sleep he ascends to a realm of randomness and picks out words from here and there to match the question's context.
If the people didn't understand any answer by our Hero,then he would give them a certain substance which would make them happy and they would forget about the question itself.
Like any other super hero, the answer man has a mortal enemy,he is called Kamina Triam. Our hero has a weakness,he cannot bear sound of a certain frequency, this frequency happens to be the same as Kamina speaks in. So basically whenever Kamina Speaks, Answer Man struggles to be sane. Also the fact that Kamina lives next door , watches sitcoms till late night and keeps on giggling like a girl does not help.
Anyway in the next few posts we shall study about the origins of Answer Man. What made him the way he is today.

Lovely Poem: Square root of three.

For those of you who have seen Harold and Kumar escape from Guantanamo Bay, you should remember this awesome poem delivered by Kumar Patel.
For the rest, watch the movie, though it is totally whacked out at times it is pure entertainment nonetheless.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I’m sure that I will always be
A lonely number like root three

The three is all that’s good and right,
Why must my three keep out of sight
Beneath the vicious square root sign,
I wish instead I were a nine

For nine could thwart this evil trick,
with just some quick arithmetic

I know I’ll never see the sun, as 1.7321
Such is my reality, a sad irrationality

When hark! What is this I see,
Another square root of a three

As quietly co-waltzing by,
Together now we multiply
To form a number we prefer,
Rejoicing as an integer

We break free from our mortal bonds
With the wave of magic wands

Our square root signs become unglued
Your love for me has been renewed

Smile, an everlasting smile.

A few days back, while I was going to my guitar class, I passed through an extremely crowded intersection. People walking on the road and the vehicles trying to avoid running over them. A typical scene at a few areas in Pune. Somewhere right in the middle was, a small, really cute Parsi girl riding her bicycle. She was initially riding at peace, but then suddenly she realized that she needed to take a right at the intersection. Now, changing direction in a crowded place is something that even I sometimes get freaked about.

Her first attempt was terribly frightening. As soon as she tried moving rightwards, an auto cut through her way, which made her take the bike back in the forward direction. The second was even scarier. She had, by now, nearly crossed the intersection, so to go to the right; she tried something only a fool or a child could do- take a u-turn and then a left. She somehow managed to take the u turn, surprisingly, but as soon as she was about to take the left, was where I entered the scene.

I had noticed the girl earlier, but, did not figure out that she wanted to take a right. So following her first attempt, after which she started going in the forward direction again, I never noticed anything wrong and assumed that she wanted to go straight. So I accelerated to move forward, when suddenly, the girl after taking a u-turn showed up right in front of my bike. I hit the breaks really hard. My bike kind of skidded before coming to a halt a few meters in front of the girl. She was freaked and so was I. I just about caught my breath and looked ahead, the girl had suddenly disappeared. I looked towards the right, and there she was! She just waved, smiled and said thank you. I was too freaked out by the incident and also was right in between the intersection, so I don't really remember my reaction.

But her smile and her wave is still fresh in my memory.

Hey, Hey!!

There is no excuse for why i did not post anything for more than a month, well, i guess being lazy does not count as an excuse.

I'll sum up the things that have been going on with me of late, i list them out in points, after seeing lotta people do that now-a-days.

1. Nashik trip.Stayed at subho's place. Was awesome, went to Anjaneri and Trimbakeshwar temple. We would have done the Bramhagiri trek the same day, but it takes 3hrs to reach to the top and it was already 4, so chucked it. The next day we went to Sula, tried different types of wines, can't remember the names though.After that we took a long drive to Manas valley via Igatpuri and then back to Nashik.
2. Guitar Classes. I joined a guitar class to learn and play by notations. Its pretty easy, but the only way i would get to learning it, was if I enrolled myself for classes, sit and practice over there, otherwise its shit boring if u try it on your own. Am playing pieces from a book called Hall Leonard Guitar Method Book 1&2. The songs are totally unknown, the only one i've known so far is Greensleeves. The only thing bothering me is timing in some pieces, i tried using a metronome but prefer tapping my feet. But its ok, i guess i'll get used to it in time.
3. Moosik. Have been listening to lot of blues of late. I am a big blues fan, but did not listen to loads of blues artists earlier. My source of blues had been Clapton, SRV, Muddy Waters and few covers by CCR, The Allman Brothers Band.I've started listening to Albert King, Johnny and Edgar Winter, Robert Cray, BB King and some compilations viz. Living Chicago blues and Best of Blues guitar. Btw there are loads of classifications in the blues also, there is Delta blues, Chicago blues, Texas Blues- amongst the ones i've heard of. Delta blues is more of the raw blues, i mean Robert Johnson was the king of delta blues, and if u heard any of his songs then u would know what i'm talking about. Chicago Blues is more a combination of a variety of instruments. Acoustic and electric guitars, piano, Harp, sax. Here every instrument would share the lead. Muddy Waters was the most famous guy in this category(Watch the movie Cadillac Records based on the legendary Chess Records, a must watch if you are a blues fan).Don't know a lot about Texas blues but i read somewhere that ZZ Top belongs to this category, so i'm guessing basic blues rhythm combined with heavy riffs.
4. TV. Waching anything and everything on TV. I still remember Miss America's answer to the question on Are you smarter than a Fifth grader- which heavenly body contains 99% mass of our solar system...uhh the universe??LOL.
5. Snake park: Had gone to Katraj Snake park recently. Saw the Saw Scaled, Russels and the Great King Cobra amongst many others. My mom had got a snakebite about 8 yrs back by either a fully grown saw scaled viper or a young russels viper in my garden. I just wanted to get the fear of snakes out of my system, so read a lot of material about snake and snakebites online. Plus i love trekking so i guess knowledge of snakes would always help.
6. Joining date Blues: I still have not recieved joining from Mu-Sigma, though there seems to be lot of optimism on the joining being preponed. Hope thats true and keeping my fingers crossed.

I guess that sums up about everything that going on with me at the present. Plan to go out on a trek soon, looking for company, so if anyone is interested plz contact.

Bye Bye.

Hello world.

I will begin my blog with a big wasssssssup.

Anyway, the boredom at home really got to me, so i thought i could start blogging as an alternative to taking random facebook quizzes while lurking on the net.

Am back in Pune after 4 years of college life. Man!!it still seems like its not yet ended.These 4 years will easily be the best 4 years in my life. Right now am still in the college--->normal life transition stage, like i cannot go to sleep before 3 A.M., getting used to not turning on speakers on full volume(My neighbours threatened to call police a long time back when i did the same!!) and so on.

Anyway, will try to update my blog regularly, it will give me some activity for now.

Right ho!! I'll sign out for now...hoping for good blogging days ahead.