This is not a test message!

My inbox told me, a couple of minutes back, that I had a new message. I opened it in great anticipation to find a new e-group mail from one of our PS mates snugly seated in my inbox. The subject line said, 'Hi all!' It is not customary for people in our PS to send non-business introductory mails. So I sat up to welcome the change in culture with open arms. I opened the mail. It read, 'This is a test message'. The message, apart from disappointing my derelict soul, left me thoroughly befuddled. Firstly, the remark went completely unintelligible to my rather dull faculties. After a heavy lunch, my drowsy cerebrum simply couldn't figure out what the gentleman was trying to test: whether he was trying to test if his mail client worked; whether he was trying to test if the net worked; whether he was trying to test if his computer was connected to the network. Or, probably the poor fellow was trying to test whether his keyboard actually worked. Or whether his poor fingers could type. Well, I shouldn't arrantly go on lampooning a soul in the gravest of doubts. For all my ridicule, the tortured soul was probably trying to test on the altar of Truth whether he could indite a mail at all. How encouraging it would have been for his dented morale. A ray of hope for his tenebrous clime! I felt happy for him for the instant. But unrelentingly my lonely mind leafed out to me its parable of woe. It coldly put out all the embers of altruistic happiness. And I replied, "Test failed".

- posted by Dileepan @ 4:40:00 am

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There have been many charming and intelligent women that have crossed paths with me and have really captured my imagination. I shall write about them someday at greater leisure.

- posted by Dileepan @ 2:32:00 am

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Something in Me...

When the scent of jasmine suffused the air
And innocence straggled into the realms of naiveté;
When a strain as earnest as melodic resonated within;
When at once in her I thought I saw
Narrations of my mother’s childhood a second time,
Re-chiselling themselves out as realities of the present;
When I thought her lips bore my name for three seconds,
I strained to hear the flutter in my heart,
But I knew…
Something inside me was lost.

When I saw her cuddled by blossoms of youth;
And that the squadrons of admirers doubled with the day
And when I saw she laughed her twinkling laugh
With them, like with me in our momentous hours
I tried to smile like in a normal day,
But I knew…
Something inside me seethed.

When my heart refused that my mind believed;
When I saw the furtive glances exchanged;
When their silence spoke louder than words;
When their warmth permeated the chill;
When I felt I was the third of the three;
When my heart froze that cold night
And I thought I should never want to see her again;
When I saw her softly clutch his hand,
I knew…
Something inside me had died.

When the tumultuous rustle in my ears whispered
That she was soon to a mother be;
When I languished in pangs of desire
And wished that her child be mine;
I threw it all a dispassionate askance,
But I knew…
Something inside me yearned.

When before mist and fresh mounds of damp earth covered,
I last glimpsed her cherubic countenance just as fresh;
When I saw quiet prayers wreathed upon her grave
From countless wistful thralls of her vibrancy;
When she went beneath feet half a dozen;
When I lifted her daughter of as many years
And the jasmines she wore smelt the same
As a score and a half years ago;
I strained to shed that inadvertent tear,
But I knew…
It was me that had died.

- posted by Dileepan @ 1:46:00 am

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Fall from (G)Race

Wednesday witnessed i2's Annual Bash of 2004. Reams of annual report were read, the achievers were lauded and solemn pledges of betterment were made. The event culminated with songs, dances, spirit and hortatory goodwill speeches. Heavily bedecked matronly women sang passionately, sometimes vying with each other for the solitary microphone. And zealous overweight dancers put up on display all their enthusiasm for dance. Aspiring shayars grabbed the stage to regale the inebriated audience, which laughed readily as soon as it sensed a joke coming.

When i2's bus service dropped us in the place, we sat down and waited patiently for the speeches to begin. And, once the speeches began, we slunk out slowly and proceeded to the Karting track. It was after some tactful bargaining that the person in charge agreed to give us a complimentary ticket if we purchased five. We licked our lips, pleased with a reduction of Rs. 25 per head; something that we thought our bargaining skills and our skills alone had been able to entail. And we fondly mused about the deal for around five minutes, standing around in a group. Bugs went and sat on the wall. I suddenly realised that my legs were whining in languor. The rogues, they just had to see their neighbouring pair lift themselves off the ground. They threw a convulsive fit. And they wouldn't stand it anymore. And so I couldn't stand anymore! Anyway, parapet walls were meant to be sat upon. Young boys usually sat gleefully on them while they did not stand on them to pluck mangoes from the nearby trees and while they were not driven away with a birch by the old bespectacled watchman. And when the short-sighted old man shooed them away, they usually went and ascended the wall at the other end of the house and placed themselves regally there and mused over their victory with pride. And so I perched myself on the wall.

We continued to chat excitedly about our karting prospects and the finer nuances that one had to bear in mind to be a good karter. And I cracked a rotten PJ. My PJ cracking abilities, and that PJ in particular, must have captured my imagination greatly; so much that I leaned back and laughed a pompous resounding laugh. And suddenly my seat found only thin air where the wall was supposed to have been. I guess the PJ, whatever it was, captured my imagination so much that I had leant a bit too much! And before I knew, the wall seemed to be climbing on me! And then I realised that I was the one plummeting into the ground behind me. I was a frog falling on its back. It actually felt good to be falling; it gave you a proper perspective of height. And fright! People in roller coasters were deprived of this thrill. After all what is the use of falling if you know you will not eventually fall! This interesting reverie was cut short be a thud like sound I thought I heard (Yes, I was never completely sure). I realised, after a couple of seconds, that I had reached the ground, and was for a moment thankful that the ground had finally come. It felt good to have your feet back on the ground! I then realised that ground actually felt so good because squashed under me were the bushes growing by the wall and my shoulder bag! I was cosily resting in my newfound shanty when I saw faces popping from over the wall and eyes popping out from the faces in absolute mortification! And I was stuck to the ground like a frog lying on its back! The whole situation seemed so comical to me then that I began to smirk. (Bugs later said that he thought it was an attack paralytic smirk!) Then a sudden realisation drove panic up my spine. My mobile phone was inside my shoulder bag that was beneath me, crushed under my weight! A mobile phone is the most important thing in a person's life. Without one, you cannot hope to contact your list of prospective girlfriends, you cannot contact your house-broker, and you cannot even send a "Where are you" SMS to your friend who is a couple of rows behind in the cinema hall! Why, even cadgers have it these days for speedier begging and better coordinated ambushing of an unexpecting docile plausible customer! I started to panic for it. At which point, I still cannot figure out, I did not know what was happening. A pair of sinewy arms grabbed me from behind and shoved my out of my haunt, and a daft girl lifted my legs up and above everything! I was now almost upside down! For a moment I was almost sure that I was going to be landed with a series of 'bumps'. 'Bumps' have been something that have petrified me. They are only meant to be generously given. Never to be taken. At that point, I threw a tantrum, shook away my legs, and slowly made the effort to get rid of my inertia! I slowly got up. Once people made sure I was not hurt, they made sure I was a fool! There were disgusting, indecent guffaws all over the place. This is one reason why I always fake injuries and create a sympathy wave. For, when one is not sympathised with one is always made the butt of all ridicule. That is the rule of the mob. I regretted that I had not been such a good actor for that instant and had given away the shocking truth that I was not injured at all! And to save myself the embarrassment, I also reluctantly laughed! And then, I checked my mobile in extreme apprehension for possible damages. The Godmother had sent me an SMS: Where are you? And I replied, "Amidst a few kindly bushes"! If there is one thing that I savour about the whole thing, it is the sadistic pleasure I had felt because Providence had made sure that the Godmother was denied the fortune of witnessing the incident! Poetic justice!

That incident left the others with indecent guffaws and grins, and left me with a stiff neck and a sore head. I have been feeling sick in the head for the past two days (the pun is not intended. But cynics are those who spot puns where they are least intended.) And I slept for fourteen hours to forget the stiff neck and to stiffen vivid images of their grinning faces.

- posted by Dileepan @ 2:40:00 am

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Godmotherly Music!

I had thought Practice School would be an intellectually stimulating and elevating experience. In fact, I am feeling quite pig-headed about myself for having believed so. Practice School cannot elevate a cow! I can count on my fingers the effective number of hours I have worked in the past month and a half! And now, i2 is supposed to be having what they call the i2 Bash. And it seems to have quite captured the imagination of the Vedas Godmother. And she is quite excited about her pivotal role in the Bash. She claims that she is going to sing in it! She disappears for quite a major part of the day and attributes her disappearance to intense practice and choreography! And, in the time that she does not disappear, she makes us all disappear! She has only to pick up traces of sounds vaguely sounding like music within her earshot. First, her face contorts and her head convulses into a hysterical rhythm. When the momentum is gathered she begins to intone what she claims to be a deep appreciation of the piece - a classical pastiche. And my ears begin to twitch, usually an anticipation of an ensuing catastrophe. But it surely cannot be, I tell my ears. I make a reinforced attempt and wait intently to capture the beauty of the music that will follow. And out of the many contortions of her face emerge series of piercing sounds very alien to her voice - some kind of alternating shrill shrieks and baritone bellows. By the time the pattern fulminates into a throaty crescendo my ear-drums have resigned themselves to their fate. And then, a sense of accomplishment writ large on her face, she beams at me. The beaming look gradually segues into one of philosophical retrospection, and she ruminates, "Most of the members cannot sing at all. Ugh! Quite an unbearable din they create. Luckily, for them I am there." My ear-drums permit me to muster a weak smile. Well, I do admit I am not much of a music cognoscente. In fact, most of the songs appear irreparably similar to my tympanum. And, I thought that day it was my ignorance that was causing my indifference to it. And I tried to follow the pitch more closely and appreciate the musical expatiation. It is high time I stopped being sceptical towards music, I thought. I still do not know what came upon me then, for me to so brazenly challenge my sensibilities! The gratuitous perseverance stayed to haunt me for the whole of the night! Haunting sounds woke me up thrice and left me amidst my gasps for air! Even a full One litre Pepsi bottle of water did not alleviate the situation much. My life will never be the same again. These days I am a madman, haunted by all kinds of non-existent eerie noises and pulling out all the hair on my head one by one. At this stage, I must mention that I am generally of a tolerant and peaceable disposition. Until circumstance absolutely circumvents me and confronts me baring its ugliest face, causing me to lose all traces of sanity. And these days, my head has quite been splitting with all kinds of unintelligible sounds from all directions; all figments of my imagination I'm sure, though they seem louder to my bombarded ear-drum when the Godmother is around! These days I am frequently reminiscing of the days when my room abutted Ratanji's redi; when his 40 W contraption blared out Hindi songs of the 50s, deliberately speeded up for a 'kick'; when I tossed and turned in bed every morning and thought I was in a moffusul lorry! As people say, your past never fails to come back to haunt you!

- posted by Dileepan @ 8:48:00 pm

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Jerome K Jerome wrote:

How delicious it was to tell her that you loved her, that you lived for her, that you would die for her! How you did rave, to be sure, what floods of extravagant nonsense you poured forth, and oh, how cruel it was of her to pretend not to believe you! In what awe you stood of her! How miserable you were when you had offended her! And yet, how pleasant to be bullied by her and to sue for pardon without having the slightest notion of what your fault was! How dark the world was when she snubbed you, as she often did, the little rogue, just to see you look wretched; how sunny when she smiled!How jealous you were of every one about her! How you hated every man she shook hands with, every woman she kissed--the maid that did her hair, the boy that cleaned her shoes, the dog she nursed--though you had to be respectful to the last-named! How you looked forward to seeing her, how stupid you were when you did see her, staring at her without saying a word! How impossible it was for you to go out at any time of the day or night without finding yourself eventually opposite her windows! You hadn't pluck enough to go in, but you hung about the corner and gazed at the outside. Oh, if the house had only caught fire--it was insured, so it wouldn't have mattered--and you could have rushed in and saved her at the risk of your life, and have been terribly burned and injured! Anything to serve her. Even in little things that was so sweet. How you would watch her, spaniel-like, to anticipate her slightest wish! How proud you were to do her bidding! How delightful it was to be ordered about by her! To devote your whole life to her and to never think of yourself seemed such a simple thing. You would go without a holiday to lay a humble offering at her shrine, and felt more than repaid if she only deigned to accept it. How precious to you was everything that she had hallowed by her touch--her little glove, the ribbon she had worn, the rose that had nestled in her hair and whose withered leaves still mark the poems you never care to look at now.

And oh, how beautiful she was, how wondrous beautiful! It was as some angel entering the room, and all else became plain and earthly. She was too sacred to be touched. It seemed almost presumption to gaze at her. You would as soon have thought of kissing her as of singing comic songs in a cathedral. It was desecration enough to kneel and timidly raise the gracious little hand to your lips. Ah, those foolish days, those foolish days when we were unselfish and pure-minded; those foolish days when our simple hearts were full of truth, and faith, and reverence! Ah, those foolish days of noble longings and of noble strivings! And oh, these wise, clever days when we know that money is the only prize worth striving for, when we believe in nothing else but meanness and lies, when we care for no living creature but ourselves!

- posted by Dileepan @ 7:39:00 pm

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I loved the last post for it's childish innocence and profound triviality. The cognitive abandon in me effervesced out. The five year old child in me surfaced.

- posted by Dileepan @ 5:39:00 am

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Wet-er?

Is water wet? Any object (tangible or intangible) which contains molecules of water (superficially or otherwise) is deemed wet. Well, that I guess is almost a truism. Well, extrapolating it a little further, a molecule of water is surrounded by molecules of water! Will that mean water is wet?! Something that causes wetness is wet itself? Something to ponder about over a glass of water!

- posted by Dileepan @ 5:35:00 am

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I am on the verge of getting enrolled in a course in Spanish in Instituto Hispaniola! Am I thrilled! Adios!

- posted by Dileepan @ 5:02:00 am

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Strangers

When strangers knock on the doors of life.
A few minutes.
And then the visitors leave,
No longer strangers.
They cascade into your life like the tumultuous brook.
And leave, ending a sojourn when it began.
When has the brook stopped for his creator!
And the brook flows
Sucking your heart into its whirlpool
And then spitting it onto the wayside rocks.
Wringing your heart of all emotion.
But leaving etched all its vibrancy and tumult
And a few seconds that last many eons.
Unfinished pastiches.
Truncated Elysiums.
Strangers loved and estranged.
And you leave them as they leave you.
Like moving scenes you witness
Out of the window of a speeding train;
Drifting flotsams of wrecked hearts,
And they remain in your mind; unevanescent brilliant flashes.
The moments all frozen into a crystalline time form,
The warmth of emotion betwixt them flowing
Through the unmeltable ice
Percolating into your heart.
Depositing three teary drops of pearls
In a corner of your eye.
…Making you cry.

- posted by Dileepan @ 1:37:00 am

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I reckon that fiction is potentially most dangerous when it is not easily distinguishable from fact. Let me warn all my readers (if any!) that approximately half of my posts are fictitiously contrived and well interspersed between the factual narrations and it would be a grave blunder to fall prey to the irresistible paparazzi-like temptation to deliberately misconstrue them for facts and to try to evaluate me and my thoughts based on them.

- posted by Dileepan @ 10:40:00 pm

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The Mother of Vedas

I have a really good time here pulling the leg of my PS (Practice School) mate, a bucolic South Indian girl from Nanganallur - gangling, a little nerdy and a little nice. She comes to office everyday from quite some distance. When I enquired about why she did not choose an accommodation nearer to the office, she whined in a wistful dole that her Chitti (Aunt) mothers her, much like her counterpart in the much talked about Tamil Mega serial! When she plangently whimpered that she was upset because she was unfairly (apparently) christened Mami, I had to restrain my urge to gift her my new coined appellation - Nanganallur Mangamma - for I have not been slapped by a girl in the past! She backs away in a crimson blush and rebukes me mockingly when I take up the name of a certain discipline-mate, but both of us know that she enjoys the banter. I really enjoy myself at her expense. Just the other day, one of our other PS mates had a problem with his computer and needed badly to get his issue resolved when our girl blurted out, "I will raise the issue for you." I am sure she butted in with the best of intentions, but I did not need anything more than this one line to dissect her to shreds that day! But frankly my double entendre was not much of a hit, for she was actually daft enough not to realise it till I repeated the line for about five times! She repealed in shamed bashfulness when she actually got the entendre in the innocuous sounding remark. But she took it well and laughed along in the end. I am pretty sure she thinks of me as a perverse misogynist after reading my blog, and I have not done much to taint that image either! And I have ended up admonishing myself for it! For, despite all the ridicule, she is one of the nicest and friendlier girls that I have met. Unpretentious and unassuming (I will get one more of her rebukes when I say, a little naive as well) , of a jovial and endearing disposition, and extremely straightforward; a perfect South-Indian antithesis of my South-Indian woman. And, not the most common of occurrences, my sub-conscious has begun to wish her truly well - The Vedas Godmother!

- posted by Dileepan @ 8:35:00 pm

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An exoneration of myself!

At this juncture, I would like to clarify that I am not some kind of a psychopathic sadist or a misogynist. My writings end up as extremely vehement for all kinds of odd reasons. Majorly, I write during my moments of cognitive frenzies. Before my volitiional abilities and ratiocination can take over. Sometimes I grow vehement because I myself get sucked into the whirlpool of words that is forming. Rather, you could say my vehemence grows on me and in turn makes me fiercer! A vicious cycle! At times, I choose a piquant remark merely for my sardonic piece to evince a smirk from the reader. Or merely, I yield to languish in my inability to fetter my munificence towards verbosity and end up sounding inaptly grandiose. There are times when I drop in a tart sounding expletive to simply pander to my whim to be resoundingly bombastic. Or sometimes a stingingly acerbic remark merely to create an effect!

As a result, most of my writings, instead of truthfully reflecting my thoughts, end up mirroring my flippancy and my tendancy to give in to these moments of mental abstraction. In fact, the posts are few after which I have not execrated myself for having posted them! I adjure all the readers (if any at all) to continue to read my blog, and to skim through all my comments merely at face value and not to value all my reactions against my face!

- posted by Dileepan @ 2:02:00 am

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When all of us are Schizophrenics!

The last line of 'The Misconductor' post caught my eye today. There is nothing pejorative in admitting to the hypocrisy every man lives. Let me unequivocally state that there is this pressure, societal if not anything more, on every individual to conform to set stereotypes. The society does not take much time to pull out the straggling black sheep. Nobody will need to be told that the bigotry in the society, should I say the bigotry of the society, is something that every human seeks to be fettered to. At a sub-conscious level. Sometimes at a conscious level. It is more of a pre-emptive bid for the security that, say, a sheep finds in a flock. It is not very tough to build proof to the fact that everyone lives a hypocrisy. To varying degrees, I would further qualify.

The reason for people truly living a hypocrisy may be attributed to the fact that most times we do not speak what we think. We begin to subconsciously think and believe after we have spoken. In fact, I have developed this theory that speech sometimes, in fact most of the time, begins to influence thoughts. It is in fact most natural for one to get caught in one's own eloquence and start exhibiting topical convictions that never existed before. Why, I have conceded earlier in my blog that the vehemence in my writings was starting to percolate within me. In fact, man's attempt to stay behind a politically correct facade is an attempt to harbour only parliamentary thoughts so that he truly begins to refrain from sexist thoughts or language. Extrapolating this thread of thought a little further, it is not difficult to see that that the so called 'confidence within', or the 'believe-in-yourself' gimmicks are efforts to pretentiously think repeatedly that you are the best when your cerebrum knows quite well that you may never be. But still the repeated thinking helps you actually believe for the split-second of your ordeal that you are truly the best and you end up transcending yourself. In fact, I think and believe that this may be a very effective way to baffle lie detectors. A lie detector only tracks your pulse and/or nerve impulses and by effectively deluding yourself to believe whatever you say, you would have quite fooled the lie detector!

Now you realise why True Lies are the best of them all!

- posted by Dileepan @ 1:28:00 am

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I am right now working on a poem titled 'Revenge'! I hope it comes out with all the vengeance!

- posted by Dileepan @ 9:31:00 pm

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