22 degree Celsius

This is the order of the seasons in my area-

Summers-> Rain-> Winters-> Good weather-> Summers.

I love summers and I loath Rain. There is no particular reason for this. The precise reason for this is that in summers I do not have to wear layers of clothes and my favorite fruit (watermelon) can be enjoyed in full glory.

I hate rain because it has the potential to ruin my electronic gadgets. So, it is possible that if everything I own becomes water proof, my dislike might reduce but that will happen when it will happen.

Now, this post is in September which is after rainy season of July and August. This effectively means that the temperature should be slowly falling down and weather should approach winters. No Sir! But the memo did not reach the weather gods and the temperature is still maintaining to level-sweat. Now don’t get me wrong. I am not upset that winters are (not) coming. My gripe is that why was the rain there if winters are just getting postponed.

My AC is still running on 22 degree celsius. And if for some reason it is switched off then I will start feeling the heat that is prevailing outside.

And mind you- Watermelon season is gone! Now I have to face the heat of the sun without cherishing the sweet nectar that oozes out of a bright red half cut plump piece of heaven.

Bottomline- Dearest God, please restore the balance and bring the tasty fruit back to me.

Underprepared

Any of you who have read fantasy novels must know this word thoroughly. Our Hero has to fight the main antagonist while the whole world is at stake. This is the basic theme of any fantasy novel. A regular companion in this journey of the hero is his growing up and learning things that he thought were his imagination.

There is one more important theme if anyone has noticed. It is of being underprepared. The hero never has time to finish his training. You have to be half-baked to fight the war. I always wonder why are the odds stacked against the hero? Why is it that hero can never complete his training and be ready for the villain. I guess the logical answer to this is that if there is no possibility of them losing then it would not make an exciting ending.

My experience has added one more reason for this. In life, we are rarely prepared 100% for anything. Even if we have 365 days to prepare for something that needs 300 days to prepare, after 365 days no one would say that I am completely ready for it.

I don’t know why but I guess its only winning when there might be losing.

Tick Tock! Tick Tock!

Anticipation is one of the most intense emotions a person can feel. There are many emotions that guides a person. Hate, Anger, Fear are all present in a person and while almost every emotion has the strength of reducing the reasoning faculties of a person to naught, each one is an experience of deep motivation for action, this one stands out.

While other emotions are due to an experience. You find yourself in peril, you feel fear; someone hurts you, the Hate emotion comes into place. You get this horrible feeling inside of yourself towards a situation you can’t do anything else about, feel free to experience Hate.

But what if nothing has happened yet. You are waiting. A bead of sweat forms on your forehead, wets your brow and crossing the whole face carries towards your neck. You have not been running or jumping or even walking. You were sitting on a chair, probably tapping your left foot unconsciously. That is anticipation. It consists of all the emotions in one- Fear of what might happen, happiness of what should happen, anger at what could happen. All the emotions staggering together in one bundle of joy called anticipation.

Mind you, unlike other emotions it cannot be found every now and then. To get a piece of this emotion you need to do something big. Something worth the wait. And then it will come!

The mother of all Schrodinger’s cat. Go feel it!

Baat un dino ki hai ye

Baat un dino ki hai ye.
Ki ye dil mere paas tha.

Baat un dino ki hai ye.
Na koi lamha udaas tha.

Baat un dino ki hai ye.
Tumhe mujhpe aitbaar tha.

Baat un dino ki hai ye.
Mujhko bhi to pyar tha.

Ab ye kya batayein kise.
Dil ka mere kya haal tha.

Tum jo gaye rooth kar.
Takhleeq(1) ya Ikhtitam(2) tha.

Ab jo tanhayee hai meri.
Iska bhi kya kaam tha.

Par ab jo pi hi liya.
Kal ye bas ek jaam tha.

Baat un dino ki hai ye.
Humko jeene ka maan tha.

Baat un dino ki hai ye.
Ki ye dil mere paas tha.

 

1- Creation 2-End

It is one of those rare poems of mine that I have not thought in prose but have sung it all through. Even while writing I was singing it and not narrating it to myself.

Sonnet 141- William Shakespeare

In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes,
For they in thee a thousand errors note,
But 'tis my heart that loves what they despise,
Who in despite of view is pleased to dote.
Nor are mine ears with thy tongue's tune delighted,
Nor tender feeling to base touches prone,
Nor taste, nor smell, desire to be invited
To any sensual feast with thee alone;
But my five wits nor my five senses can
Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee,
Who leaves unswayed the likeness of a man,
Thy proud heart's slave and vassal wretch to be.
Only my plague thus far I count my gain,
That she that makes me sin awards me pain.

 

I should probably write something with it. Why would I chose a sonnet of the hundreds that are written? Why would I post it at all? But there are some questions that have no answers. Some questions should be left alone. Some things should be left to fate and believed with simple faith.

Two games and a Nexus!

Let me admit it first- I am a gamer. And not the kind of gamer that played once and forgot twice- No sir! I started playing when there was NES and now own a PS3 at home and now Age of Empires by its nickname- AOE. Yes! I am that kind of gamer. And when Android came I obviously jumped to the games it had to offer. But the journey was arduous and tiresome for me. To the extent that I dispelled the thought of playing on mobile ever. Why you might ask?

My first Android- Samsung Galaxy Ace!

Now, while this is was an excellent phone for beginning the journey into the heart of Android, it had two severe debilitating issues-

1. The RAM and processors were just not up to the gaming mark.

2. Internal memory hated you!

While the first became an issue in the later period of its life (after ICS came to life), the second one was always an issue. It posed two problems- One that I could not add too many apps to my quiver and second I could not add many heavy apps. Despite having an external option, after Google Maps is done with you there is not much space left for anything. Later I rooted the phone and did some changes that did help me getting extra space but by that time my zeal to play games on that phone had gone. Also, I was due a new phone anyways.

The second son- Sony Xperia S

Built to play, this phone had everything I needed- A gorgeous screed with Bravia display, a dual core processor with GPU, 1 GB RAM and 32 GB of mammoth space. I could install any app I wanted without worrying about whether it might fill any space in my phone. And it was Playstation certified! Turns out, something was still missing. Infact, looking back Xperia S was the phone that made me feel that I am not made for gaming on phones or maybe gaming isn’t made for phones. I had not played any games on my Xperia S for so long that eventually I started deleting them, not for want of space but because keeping them made my app drawer lengthy.

The prodigy- Nexus 4.

Of course, no story is complete unless  there is a happy ending somewhere. I, very recently, bought Nexus 4. This phone blew me away. It has a quad-core processor to start with and a whopping 2 GB RAM. This effectively means that anything thrown at it will go out of the park. A 4.7” screen proved to be perfect to do anything really. Be it watching an odd video or just reading a novel. Most importantly, I suddenly found myself playing games again. The games haven’t changed much. They were present even when I was using Xperia S. They all can be played on that phone as well. So, I kept wondering what changed.

It came to me just now that the factor that changed the whole equation was ergonomics. Nexus 4 is symmetrical and is held like a joystick while playing games while Xperia S is longer on one side by quite a degree. The symmetry suits my joystick loving hands and because the screen is wider than Xperia S it also gives me enough estate to see even after my thumbs are on the screen.

Now, how much you might ask I have started playing games?

Here enter the two games that have practically brought gaming back to me- Auralux and Stick cricket.

The first one is a RTS in its purest form and Stick cricket is well… a sport game. I practically am playing both the games everyday spending over an hour overall on gaming. And this time is not coming fro commute or anything but full blown dedicated time to the two games. I have also paid for these two games for the extra packs and the removal of ads so that they do not disturb me while playing,

The overall impact has been such that while I paid zilch on gaming during my Xperia days, in less than a month I have spend on four games (In Android!) and might spend more in future.

I never considered the impact of ergonomics as much as I am seeing now before my eyes.

Carpe Diem! Should I?

A lot of times it is said that life should be large and not long. It is a famous dialogue in a movie and I think the most famous quote that has the same theme must be Carpe Diem.
Seize the day! is the meaning of this statement. I want to talk about what it means? How does one seize a day? Especially the condition when and if seizing the day might make me lose the week? What should I do in such a case. It can always be maintained that the completely condensed form of the writing comes out to these two words and can be interpreted in more ways than one. Then again, if something can be interpreted in more than once then people will always do so. The biggest examples for this should be religious scriptures which somehow preach peace and harmony while allowing large scale massacres and allow molesting young children while hating Gays.
Maybe, Carpe Diem was a cheer word of some team during the Latin era. Something like "Chak De" has become for India. While the word itself means leave it in English the phrase somehow has turned into a war cry for Indians. The movie helped of course. I believe something similar happened with Carpe Diem. People loved the phrase so much it lost its literal meaning and gained a phrasal meaning so as to say.
Anyways, lets go along with the phrasal meaning then. Seize the day as it comes. Now, there are two doubts in my mind regarding this.
One- How does one save oneself from doing long lasting harms in attempt to 'seize the day'? Or maybe the term means that we stop caring about long lasting harms. Then it becomes a lot like the teachings of Gita. Your actions should be without the concern of results. It becomes quite shady considering it can be taken in a negative way as well. People might stop doing anything substantial or may resort to doing evil things thinking they should not be concerned with its results.
I personally believe there is no right or wrong. My motto is Actions have Consequences and if you are ready to do something be ready to face the results as well.
In this regard, seize the day actually sounds the work of devil himself. Maybe Carpe Diem was what the snake told Eve. Seize the day or the apple as in her case. Again, maybe I am interpreting it wrong but then if a man can interpret it wrong so can some other man which means people might be living by the wrong philosophy all this time.
In my opinion, either you are following it (which itself might be wrong) and if you are taking caution then you are not following it at all.

Now comes the second doubt I have. I feel like doing nothing. So, I ended my day on my bed lazing around. Did I seize this day or let it pass. I enjoyed the whole event a lot so I can't say that it was bad for me but I did nothing productive. What does this day means? Is the phrase Carpe Diem a way to take people out of bed and to work. Was it invented to force-guilt people into believing that if they have not done anything productive in the day then they have not seized the day. Was it a way to commercialize the society. Maybe initially the phrase was created by people to force their employees to work instead of chilling about. Come on people- What did you do today? Did you Carpe Diem? Did you do something productive?
Maybe Carpe Diem is something Google's 20% allotted time. You can do anything personal but you should do something productive. Maybe everything comes down to this only. If society feels that you are being productive then you are Carpe Dieming the hell out of life.
Maybe this Carpe Diem thing is all about a person's personal list-fulfillment. If you are doing everything I like then you are seizing the day.
That includes being happy. For example, parents always without fail want their children to be happy. This does not mean happiness as the child wants it. It is more like happiness in the boundaries set by the parents. These boundaries might be anything including expectations or even the norms of the society. While not all parents might have the same rules they do exist.
So, Carpe Diem might be the same for friends and everyone else in our life. It is how they see the meaning of the phrase that defines whether you are doing it right or not.
I also means that a person can define it as he feels. He can setup long term goals with each day breakups and if he does that then he is seizing the day. But then isn't it something called time-management.
And if I am right most people with impeccable time management are considered weird and are told to come out of all this and seize the day. They are considered losing out on life. These people who are actually utilizing the time perfectly are often considered not Carpe Dieming the life.
It has been often depicted in the movies (both Hollywood and Bollywood) and is also part of the stories. This again brings up the topic of what means Carpe Diem.
I guess we are back to square one. This is always the case with me. Round and round and I still do not know what is the meaning of Carpe Diem or is it just a phrase used to fool people into believing that whatever life they are living it is not good enough. If you are working towards a life it might go away in the past and if you enjoy it right now then you screw your past. A balance of course is the key to everything but then again, a balance is something that is either a miracle or an illusion!

Twitter has shortened my capacity of emotions.

I never thought this day would come but twitter has captured me. And no it has not captivated me but made me a captive. Yes, there is a difference. The problem is that I can’t explain it in more than 140 characters anymore. Something similar has happened to my emotions as well. Where once I could narrate the simplest of emotions with a story that is not just over a thousand words but consisted of words that were complete and grammatically correct. While I am still trying to maintain the grammar of everything (with the customary changes that I have been doing since ever) but writing more than 140 characters to express any emotion seems not just difficult but unnecessary.

And I am all out today. Maybe will write something somber and sophisticated but as said in Game of Thrones-

Will you, my precious moment, die for me?

It was not supposed to happen like this.

With everything going around,

God was supposed to help me.

Alas! The truth hurts me now.

The pain of that moment still troubles me now.

The moment I kissed you my love.

The moment our eyes met.

As my heartbeat slowly rose from its slumber.

I felt your breath on mine.

The moment I met you for the first time.

The moment I fell in love.

If only, that moment would vanish.

If only, I could tear that memory away.

Will you, my precious moment, die for me?

Let me free of all these troubles, all these emotions.

Its a sacrifice I ask.

But the choice is not mine to make.

Its between you and me.

One of us has to die.

I can’t live on with such pain stuck in me.

I can’t anymore, look back at me.

Your absence, might, just might save me.

Will you make this sacrifice for me?

Will you, my precious moment, die for me?

I let you decide.

How many stories a week will not kill me?

I am a writer who does not write much making me unemployed in my mind. I have a hobby where I analyze large amount of data in big excel sheets but what good is a hobby if you are not doing your job. My job is writing. I am coming to terms with this hard core fact. Writing is not my hobby. Writing is far too close to heart and far more rewarding to me than I care to accept. The problem is that I am so busy consuming everything the internet has to offer that I cannot offer anything back in return.

This April was my fourth failed NaNoWriMo. I am ashamed, more than anything else. I have more than one novel in pipeline. The problem is that the pipeline is highly clogged. Also, a revelation has dawned upon me. I am apparently a very slow writer. I usually write at a measly pace of 30 words per minute. While this may seem OK to a regular eye, as a writer people are all above 50 wpm and some are even over 100 wpm. This means that they can write thrice as much as me in the same time.

In fact, they can finish off a story in an hour and move on to something else. The same story will need 3 from me. This causes me leave the writing at all or write very short stories. But now its high time and I must write as much as I can. Maybe this will automatically increase my speed. So, the question is- With my hobbies and everything, and of course my giant ambition to write a novel how many stories can I still write in a week. All these stories will go online obviously to Wattpad most probably. Also, I have to start writing my blog again. This time, it will consist of regular mumblings and sometimes links to my stories (if they materialize) and probably poetry. Its time! :D

I think I should try for 3 stories a week (I know am being very conservative here but what the hell..  I have yet to write 1 a month).

In the mist, some dewdrops

In the mist, some dew drops.

Quenched my thirst while my eyes.

Unable to see anything far beyond.

Left me to hope.

Hope of an ending, hope of a new beginning.

There was a day back.

In the clear blue sky.

With sun shining all over.

I could have won the world.

Of course I could have.

And thus began a journey.

A journey that still lingers.

Yearn for home, I.

For the bed that my mother made.

Alas, the mist is at work.

Showing me things I need.

Clouding my head from what I want.

I must move on.

From the sweet nectar of my beloved.

To the dew drops of this vicious mist.

The lips can’t be enchanted by the wines of the world.

Time is ripe for them to crack.

Time is for me to snap.

Time is for the mist.

And some dewdrops.

Why is there so much expectation!

Expectations are the worst! If someone expects something from you and bugs you then it creates friction between you and them. As they meet you all they can talk about is- “Did you do what I expected of you?” And boy that is a turn-off.

Then there is the round about kick in the ass when you start expecting something from some one. It is very difficult to realise at that time that they are feeling the same thing you feel when someone expect something.

And when you do realise it, you also get the feeling the people whose expectations you crushed must have felt.

Of course, I am completely discounting the random expectations of random people that we might be blowing away all the time. Right now, I am feeling every bit of each of these feelings and there is only one thought that comes to my mind- “Why is there so much expectation in the world?”

Well Well Well!

 

Look who’s back!