Monthly Archives: March 2011

Nocturnal Talks

What’s the time? Late night? Good. Stop everything you are doing. Go to your terrace. Pity you don’t have one. If you have, forget whatever you were doing. Go to your terrace. Take one bed sheet, one pillow with you. Also, the most important thing: one transistor. Also, don’t take your mobile with you. So go with only one electronic instrument. The Radio.

Clean the roof with a broom. Sprinkle some water so that the heat of the day is soaked up and vaporises into the sky. The sky which has stars. Dark night but shining stars. The word romantic is for gays. The night with stars is just breathtaking. Look at the sky. Give a sigh. Smile. Lay out the bed sheet. Now lie down. Adjust the pillow so that you can see direct up. Settled? Good. Now turn on the transistor. It will be #win if the transistor is old and held up using rubber bands. Now start searching for Vividh Bharti. Don’t rush. Enjoy the noise in between the stations. What a lovely sound it is! The dials doing something electronically, the turning spring inside, searching for the right frequency, with sudden loudness trying to say something to you.

Tuned? Nice. Now listen to old Hindi songs. And imagine. From Devanand and Nootan coming down from the once open Qutub Minar, to older Talat Mahmood songs. From Hemant Kumar’s ‘Tum Pukaar Lo’ via Lata Mangeshkar’s ‘Lag Ja Gale K fir yeh haseen raat ho na ho’ or ‘Rasik balma’ to Kishore Kumar’s ‘Woh sham kuchh ajeeb thi, yeh shaam bhi ajeeb hai…’ Keep staring the beauty of the stars of the coldish silent night. Try to hear some sine-wave horn sound in the distance away. Smile. Relive old memories with the brilliant lyrics. Keep looking at the stars. They move. They say a lot to you. Those starry nights. Amazing.

Now savour these moments. I’ll be silent for some time.

Now while its getting further late, close your eyes. Keep the music on though. Smile more. Try to remember her. Smile again. Don’t regret what you didn’t do. Don’t think what you will do. Just stay silent, keeping your eyes closed. And sleep.

Now if you are in a saner city, around 5 AM in the morning, you will hear some Aarti (not RT) going on nearby. Smile. Ruffle your hair and get up. Try to hear from where this sound is coming. Smile. Stay there for some time, yawning.

Enough. Smile. New Day has arrived. Back to life.

Hope is a good thing, in fact the best thing ever

On 27th February when India tied with England, @VenkatAnanath tweeted that he was about to write an article on “Why India is not going to win this World Cup!”. As a knee jerk reaction, I unfollowed him instantly. Although following and unfollowing is not a big deal in Twitdays world but what I didn’t like was the pessimistic journalism. No doubt, these journos/authors/writers are meant to present the truth to the people in the most crude way possible but I have a philosophy that they have a big role to play when it comes to uplift or degrade people’s morale and mood.

It is not only about Cricket, lets talk about optimism in general. As Indians, we people are very optimistic. Since birth, we have been taught to be optimistic. If there is no water from the tap, we assume that one day will come where our Municipality Department will fix everything. If there are more potholes on the road than road, we believe that one day in future we are going to get roads as smooth as Hema Malini’s cheeks or Deepika Padokone’s leg, if you prefer that. A kid when dreams of becoming a Civil servant, try telling him that he cannot be unless he is some reserved category.

These journos need to understand one thing. India as a nation which is held with the adhesive of ‘Hope’. Their job is to find out the flaws in the current system or point of the flaws in the plans laid out for future. When they start giving their opinions, they put into their bias with emotions which result in something demoralizing.

There was a dialogue in the movie ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ where Red (Morgan Freeman) says, “Hope is a good thing, in fact the best thing ever. And no good thing ever dies.”