Trips and Nostalgia ... and moving on

Today i got back from a trip to the Smokey Mountains. The Mountains were beautiful and the trip was nice too. Other than the glitches that have to be, on every trip, it was good and the only bad part is that i have a mid-term tomorrow, and have to study for it right now. And that is precisely what i am not doing. Wasting time becomes a pretty delicious preoccupation if you are on an incredibly tight schedule. And the easiest way to get me to spend time is pull out old memories. For being the nostalgic person that i am, I can pull out old photos and get lost for hours. As I am right now, when i should be studying for that exam instead.
But this is delicious and this is now and i get lost in it anyway. Looking that these photos i realize that i have come a traveled a long way in my life. Until now i thought that i can easily list the trips i had been on and the people with whom i went . There are the trips which i am going on now. There were those that i went on earlier in college. The friends who were together for a brief period of time, and when we were really getting close, college ended and we had to leave. Now we would just be aquantainces and after five years just names. Just like those in my junior college. I can barely remember the names of all the people i used to spend so much time with. And this list of trips and names would go on, but it would be an incredibly long and boring ... probably even for me ! Maybe, that just means that i am not as young as i would like to think.
But looking at all these photos helped me realise something. That life is moving rather fast now.
And that all the notions that i have about it are slowly falling apart. I generally accept change but now i find that while i am still living the same life i used to , all my friends have already moved on. Everyone else is leading a different life. And though there are intersections, they are just that. Brief meetings having a good time. Just like in दिल चाहता हॆ. Those three did have that one trip together at the end. And maybe they might have one after five more years. But they were different people. And so am i now. A different person than i was in college.
My life as a whole and I in the center of it all have changed in ways that i cannot come to terms with just as yet.

Which LOTR character are you ?

So finally, i did fall into the which charater are you trap. And of course Lord of the Rings is the only meaningful book to choose a character from :-) Besides, it also gave me the character i most fancy in the book, so here i am !

You are most like Aragorn. You have strong convictions and you stick to them. Although you are more of a recluse, you are extremely loyal to the few friends that you have. You are very serious about things, but you like having fun. Fame and fortune mean little to you, and you aren't concerned with being popular. Good for you!

What LoTR Character Are You?

Konitari Sodwa He Koda

Pan ek gosta lakshat thev Raja. Tuzha atacha yuddha manachya raNanganat honar ahe. Ani swatacha maan jinkna ek jug jinknya itka sopa nasta.
Yayatila he vakya sadhya mazya dokyat ghumat rahila ahe. Kharach aavghad asta manat kay ahe te olakhana. Ani sarwat awaghad tevha jeva te swatahacha maan asta. Kahitari upay aselach na hyachyavar ? Kaay chalu ahe mazya maanat, kay hawa ahe mala, khara tar kaLaayla hava na mala tari lagech ? Mag ka nahi disat ahe mala pudhcha rasta saraLsot , sangel ka konitari mala he ...

Analysing two superstars

There are two big superstars in bollywood. Aamir Khan and Shahrukh Khan. Two people who came into limelight at around the same time. And who waltzed their way to superstardom like no other. People generally like one much better than the other. And depending on the person, you can make a fair estimate who it is going to be. Aamir Khan is most certainly the better actor. And his pursuit is meaningful cimena. People who like him better vote for substance over style. Shahrukh Khan on the other hand is a bigger star. And his pursuit is better entertainment. People who like him vote for charisma. Both have succeeded in their pursuits in reel life. But what about in real life ? Ten years before i would have bet that Aamir would have a nice stable marriage. Shahrukh was the obvious philanderer. But i was never more wrong. As it turned out, Shahrukh is the one leading a nice settled life and Aamir is still searching for answers. He has handled it very gracefully indeed, but that doesn't change the basic fact.

So where did my intution go wrong ? I empathize with Aamir. Porbably, thats why i gave him better chances. Today, i can glimpse at what could have gone wrong. The problem is with the uncompromising attitude. In your work and profession it will yield rich benefits. Should it be carried over to your personal life ? I believed that the answer was yes. But perhaps, it is time to take a lesson from a failed master.

V

The last flight i came by had a pretty nice selection of movies on their in flight entertainment program. I ended up watching two of them. V for Vendetta and Kinky Boots, which is a nice movie really, though i must confess that i was not very enthusiastic about watching just from knowing its name. A classic case of judging a movie by its name. Its about a shoe factory owner who decides that instead of going down tamely, he will fight it out. That the factory work for a niche market : making shoes for transvestites. The movie has its moments, but this post is about the other movie. Specifically its about this one sentence that V says when someone rather close to him wants to get his mask off. V never appears without the mask in the movie. This is what he has to say about taking the mask off:

"There is a face behind this mask. And that face belongs to a person. But V is not that person. V is the ideas behind the mask."
Rings rather true. The person behind the mask would never have measured up to ideals set up by the mask. I wonder if that is true of bloggers too ? The blog , the ideas in the posts are just the mask. Can the person behind the mask measure upto the ideals set by its masked identity ?

Can you judge motives from actions ?

Kaal mayha ajun ek pustak zahla vachun. He post lihila ahe te fakta pustakacha review denyasathi. Kaal ratri vachun sampla te 3 vajta. I was quite tempted to switch on the computer ani tevach lehaycha vichar hota. Pan mazhi bhacchi sakali sakali uthavte mala. So mhantla zop nahi honar udya , mhanun mag sakali lihu. The French Lieutenants Woman, he tya pustacha naav. Tasa me net var baghun somehow he pustak choose kela hota. Farach nirala ahe he. Veglach ekdum ... Mhanje khara tar me tashi barich pustaka vachli ahet. Pan he writing stzle kadich navti pahili aadhi. Aapli naatka astat na, tasa kahitari ahe he. Mhanje natkat jasa ... hmmm i forgot what you call him. Damn , this is so stupid. Mhanje jo natakacha part nasto pan he gives background ani commentry. Hope you got who ... waste ahe ani me. Tar tasach lihila ahe he pustak pan. The author talks to us. Ani farach veglya ritine bolto. Mhanje to author mhanun ach bolto. Sahi vatta te ani. Ani this is probably the first book je mala story baddal vichar nahi kela tari aavadla. Mhanje story madhe je kay hot hota te hot hota. Pan the way the sentences were constructed was a treat to read. Pahilandya thoda klishta vatta, pan its like a cheewat pan refreshingly juicy fruit. Barach vel ek ach ghasavar munch karta yeta ani te masta pan vatta. Ani mayza sathi it was surprising. Tasa proper marathi novel me pahila vachal te Yayati. Ani te aalankarik bhashet lihila ahe. Pan after reading a thousand english books now i stumble across this one. Ani hyachi bhaasha aalankarik english mhanayla havi. Tasa comparision would be unfair, pan tari i would say ki fakta bhashechya babtit ani sentence construction ani vividness chya babtit, this would beat any other book, including Yeyati, that i have read hands down. So the book is set in the victorian era. The author wanted to write a victorian novel ani has come out tops. Ajun ek veglich gosta hya novel baddal mhanje he provides alternate endings :-) Ani ka te pan to sangto . The characters are very nice too. Ani very real. Sadhza i like books and movies and stuff where the characters are all gray. Khara baghayla gela tar aayusha tasach asta na. Hi jaaniv pan eka pustakacha review vachtanach zahla mala. Pan now i totally subscribe to it. Black ani White kahich nasta. Every person is some shade of gray. Ani tyamulech mala novels madhe pan ashish loka astil tar te sadhya avadayla lagli ahet. Hya novel madhe te tar ahech. Pan if we take one particular ending, then he has gone a step further ani introduced one more thing. One character is actually of an indeterminate shade. It ( i dont want to tell if its a male or female) can be absolutely anything .... Mhanje it is not gray. It can be dazzeling white or dark black. Anything ...uncertain. And not because the author does not tell you stuff. Uncertain even if you look into that persons mind. The question then becomes, can you attribute labels of good and evil to actions, when the motives are not understood. The author invites you to dwell on the motives and come up with your own anwers. Totally mindblowing. This concept probably is not out of the blue. I suppose i liked it more cause i relate to it, so its certainly not ingenious or anything. Pan being able to actually carry it off in a novel. That is mindboggling. Ata vel milala ani naveen novel vachnar ashshil ani tyat thoda effort lavazchi tazari asel tar i totally recommend this. Go all out and read it, its a treat. Pan thoda effort lagto. Jasta nahi pan tari. Mhanje even mala especially pahilanda pahilanda sentences deconstruct karayla lagli. Ki nakki kay mhanto ahe te. Pan even that process is delicious and not tedious so go right ahead and read it. The book is The French Lieutenants Woman. Author John Fowles. Juna ahe pustak. Hyacha movie pan ahe. Pan dont see it. I have not seen it pan tari. Normally pustak vachlya nantar i feel like watching the movie to see how it is done. Even though i know, and correctly, that the movie will not measure up to the book. But this once i know that however good, it be totally unfair to the book. Just cause of the way the book is written.

Reluctance - II

The Poem is quite apt i must say about what happened yesterday night and my subsequent reactions. It was more like a series of stupid decisions and fortunate events. At almost every point i took a wrong turn and at every wrong turn i took, i was lucky and found the correct directions .... fortune does favour the brave even if the brave are incomprehensibly stupid !!

It had been snowing hard for two days, and though i didnt know it at that time it was the most snowfall received by that region in a few years, when i started out on my journey from a small town called MiddleTown to go to New Jersey. To tell you the truth, i was rather against the idea of starting out that evening. And the snow was only half the reason. And since it was just half the reason i made doubly sure that i should go. That was the first mistake. I was taking a ride till the station with a friend. We did lose our way to the station but when you are in a car, you tend to feel safe. And ironically I felt rather afraid not when we lost the way but when we actually found the station. The station was closed and deserted except for a group of people chatting there. I had almost and hour before the train and since the station was closed i was stuck outside in the snow. The saving grace of course were the people and I took heart from that group thinking that they were also waiting for the same train. But i was quite wrong. They were waiting for a cab which came along, soon enough. That left me with another person who was waiting for his taxi to come along. He didnt seem quite as fortunate as the other people who had just left.
His cab didnt arrive almost till i left which was around an hour after. I am not one to strike up a conversation, but here i found myself talking to him. And it was from him that i realised that things could go really wrong. He had arrived on a train which was running 5 hours late, he said ! Here was when i made the first phone call to Mukta and asked her to get me info about the schedules. But she was out and would only reach office after 10 mins. I decided to wait till
she called back, but my patience soon ran out and after waiting for some time, i went into a frenzy calling up people to look this up. But as luck would have it, no one was at their phones. It was also at this point that i realised that i was low on battery. Conversation and song
are two things , i had realised a long time back, that easily and unfailingly lift the heart. But on that night, i didnt have either luxury. But everyone did call back and almost at the same time too. So for the first time i required the phone to actually have three levels of call waiting ... which apparently it does not support.
In any case i found that the train from Meriden to New Haven to NY was on time but that some trains from NY to NJ were cancelled. And this info i got at the moment when the train i thought was entering the station. This was not my train, but the next one which arrived barely
a minute later was. Here is where i made the second wrong decision. I should have headed back, and i desperately wanted to head back, but i ploughed on. The thought was the there was another train back in 40 minutes if things really were wrong in NY. But once on that train
there was no turning back. On the train i found i didnt have enough money for a ticket to NY so
bought one till New Haven. And my plans of withdrawin money from the ATM on the station and getting back on the train were very much shattered, since the train was running late, it just shortened the halt at New Haven and i saw it chugging out of the station just as i located
the ATM on the station. Here i felt totally mad at myself since the train back which was supposed to run 45 min later was scheduled to be 3 hours late. So i was stuck for a long time. But as luck had it there was a train which Mukta had missed when she looked up the schedule.
The next MTA train was to grand central and it left at 9:55 and thats what i took. And in the train i followed your example. I went to sleep , lying on the seat with my feet hanging down :-) It was as well that i did for the night was to be longer than i had anticipated. The plan
was to reach Grand Central at 11:30 , walk down to Penn Station before 12 and take that train and be home by 1:30. A decent time after all.
By this time i had pestered Sagar into looking up the train numbers on the NJ Transit website and matching them with the schedule numbers and getting to know exactly which trains had been cancelled. And the 12:00 train was not on that list. And after this i switched off my phone and went to sleep. So far so good.
I kept getting up intermittently at stations but I finally woke up when we were at Harlem. The station and the area outside it looked beautiful. The fresh snow bathing in neons was a sight i had not seen.
And it was beautiful. That and the lanes and the houses. Supposedly Harlem one of the worst areas in the country. I cant quite reconcile the image i saw there with whats supposed to be the truth. And i pushed myself out of sleep as we entered Grand Central. Since my cell phone was off i didnt know the time. For the record , i have stopped wearing a watch a long time back. I supposed that it was 11:30.
When i got out on grand central and checked the clock it read 00:45.
The station was deserted except for a few homeless people and the ones who arrived with me in the train.

FEAR is the most general term and implies anxiety and usually loss of
courage. DREAD usually adds the idea of intense reluctance to face or
meet a person or situation and suggests aversion as well as anxiety.
TREPIDATION adds to DREAD the implications of timidity, trembling, and
hesitation.
-- Merriam Webster

What i felt on seeing the time was fear, that was when i lost courage. After that my mind didnt quite stay in my control. While getting out Grand Central i saw a sign which changed the fear to dread. The sign gave timings of the station. The station closed at 1:30. And as i walked and lost my way around NYC what i felt was trepidation. The roadsigns which read the street and avenue numbers were covered with snow and as i walked down four avenues i could still not read if i was
walking in the right direction or the wrong one. I needed to go to 7th Ave 34th Street. Thats Penn Station. And that was where my train was waiting for me, i hoped. I remembered something like 1:20 being the last train. Which left me with only 40 minutes to get there and which i was spending like an idiot getting lost in the frosted city, as the first sign i could read told me that i was now on third aveune. It seems i had walked quite a bit in the wrong direction. Why i didnt take a cab of which plenty were available i dont know. Its not that i didnt think of
taking one. I did. I just didnt take it. When you get afraid, you just do everything wrong. Walking around manhatten at 8 or even 11 is one thing. Walking around at 1 is something else. Suddenly everything becomes desolate and the seemingly shady characters hanging around the streets are the only people on the streets. I half walked half trot through those alleys jumping and sometime splashing into puddles of icy water and snow all the time trying to shut out the stories that one associates with the city and the cold numbness in my feet.
Penn Station was perhaps never a more welcome sight. But as i ran down the step i saw the NJ Transit sections curtained off and people leaving the station. The time was 1:15 and i raced to the screens announcing the schedule of trains. The relief on seeing the train at 1:41 palpable. Cause even if the train was late , i could spend the night in the station without a problem.
The train didnt leave till a long time later, but at that point i couldnt have cared less about delays. As i sat in the train i started my phone again, i got a call from my roommate. Apparently, the situation back was rather bad, with no busses running, the Late Night Shuttle closed and the sidewalks full of snow to dash any hopes of walking. Then he called up a dozen taxi numbers but none of them picked up. Finally after 15 minutes he finally got to one who was willing to operate a taxi. In spite of being a jerk myself, i seem to have been able to surround myself with friends who are real good. This is something that i myself would have been unable to do for someone else. But he was not i and i got the phone number of perhaps the only operating taxi at that time. As fate had it however another fortunate event awaited me. The Late Night Shuttle did start operating as i neared my station and in the end the last leg of the journey went off rather nicely.
I did finally reach home at 4 !!

A nice and interesting story, but when even after i reached home the trepidition had not left me. I attributed it to the nights adventure and went to sleep.

I believe i know why i am writing this mail. Some part is of course vanity. You need to tell a good nights adventures to someone. But that not the main reason. The main reason is this. After waking up today and even now in the evening i am for some reason feeling very uneasy , a melancholy whose source i cant make out. Writing this post, hopefully, gets me to the source hidden within.