The Rollercoaster ride

Do you remember when we used to run away as if our lives depended on it after pointlessly ringing the neighbor's doorbell The faint remembrance of hurt still lingers when you forgot to search for me while playing hide and seek And the only thing we used to fight about was who gets the remote during dinners Why, I just got hold of that scrap of paper with your art which looked a lot like me And you thought it would be capital fun to pass around among people and guess its resemblance How we ran to the door in the evening when dad came home And on rainy days, our outlasting paper boats outside our window was what made us heroes Oh the merriment in not having electricity staring at stars on terrace and someone having a ghost story Not a day passed by without having you play a prank on me Hiding the pieces of broken vase or china used to be our little conspiracy Saving for birthday presents Acting forgetful to tease How we dreamt of growing up to do as we please I wish sometimes we coul...

Today was laundry day Clothes were strewn around like hay I sieved through and came across my happy clothes And those that resemble rainy day cloaks Closet full of different myselfs Once a while,we get acquainted over some hot chocolate I wonder about the divine inspiration To buy this exuberant color Oh look! the melting blueberry ice-cream left me a stainy souvenir Clothes that see me regularly And those special forlorn ones Every time I see them They brief me how I've been

I don't think that I believe so much in fate. I believe we are masters of our own free will, which is what sets us apart from all the other living species on earth. We are given a choice and a higher power wants us to believe and only then do these choices come to life and become fate. When we do not choose and leave everything to fate, it means that we have left that belief and faith somewhere behind so instead we try to complacently live with a laggardish assurance without taking charge of our own fate. Given a choice to give up the cream on a superb cup of coffee which can make it taste infinitely better, how many of us would opt out of it assuming you love coffee as much as I do ? The faculty of free will and choice is that cream of life that can add that peculiar flavor and unparalleled zing that makes the initial pain and suffering all worthwhile.

Patching up a crack in the wall I came across the place Where we used to hang our picture frame Neatly tidied space it was allotted to memories To stare us over the years as time passed All smiles gazed at me in amazement Like strangers usually do when they ephemerally look In the eyes of a forlorn unknown person The genuine pleasantness in the picture people Took me aback to yore When things seemed complex to a simpleton life And how this novel life has had the roles reversed I took my time nice and easy to do the deed All the while remembering the welcome creases Mirth created in those fresh faces

I traveled the dungeons without light Smelled the sourness of the air Felt hurt not in skin Spoke not of hope Devoured the coldness Cried silent turbulent rivers Tasted wine not of grapes Seethed joy in pain Dreamt helplessly in despair Accepted there is nowhere but here Wondered, if life was so; what can the afterlife be ? But revelations seek the un-seeking Hope the hopeless Finally from tumult of shaking faith, and ashes of a thousand dreams Rises the phoenix stronger than ever

Today, on the fine start of a saturday morning, I went for the second time for the local Toastmaster's club meeting. Its a good group of people who happened to share the common interest of self improvement in the aspect of public speaking. It usually shares the common routine of designated speakers, sharing the podium first which is then followed by something called "Table topics" where everyone present, including visitors like yours truly are given an impromptu topic and they are required to speak for a minute. For a second timer, today's table topics were quite interesting and thought provoking. It was concerning the various aspects of " Passion ". Passion, the incredible feeling I mostly associate with red color. No reason, its just one of things that plays in the screen of the mind whenever this word comes along. If someone asked you, what is your passion, how long do you think you would take to answer that? Surprisingly most people would actually immers...

" Nothing we ever do is going to matter, but it is very important that we do it" - M.K. Gandhi Mental note: I'm going to remember this. I will need it over the next couple of months!!

Have you ever felt as if you are all alone in the whole of universe and you have so much to say and even if there are many people around you who would like to hear you out, you don’t want to say anything, anything at all. You don’t want to be in that place and there is no other place to go? I don’t know if there is anything worth in this world to be alive for. People say that love can make you feel complete and it gives a meaning to the life we live. I wonder if I am devoid of loving. I think that this state is like a vacuum, it is not that there isn’t anything happening but at the same time the things that are happening don’t even matter. How can there be pain and yet no sight of suffering? How can there be so much wonder and yet so little acceptance? How can there be so much passion and yet so much serenity on the surface? How can there be so much want and yet none of the need? How can there be so much courage and yet fear prevailing? How can there be so many dreams and none of the ...

A few days back, I sat down to fill out a job application after reading about refreshing your resumes from a book. You know the feeling when sometimes you try to elevate from your body and imagine how you would look from up ? It doesn't matter if you don't get what I'm talking about. Well that's what happens to me occasionally. I picture myself how I would be looking from right above me were I able to float, with one of me below and the other of me magically able to float above. I digress, so as I look from above and I see myself, crossed legged, peeping intensely into my computer from my nerdy not-yet-broken specs, frantically referring this book I so artificially was trying to believe it would really help and in trying to say the right things or rather market myself and suddenly I imagine a bubble like that of cartoons clouds above me and I'm thinking. "What if I die ?" " I haven't yet done anything. There is that hike to Himalayas pending oh! a...

A small voice says, just follow your heart and everything will fall into places. A stable job, another degree to fulfill the dream of becoming a corporate honcho, drive that sleek BMW. That darn voice mocks, you're just another brick in the wall !! P.S: I think the love for melodrama & over-thinking is proportional to time in one's life

If you keep looking on the brighter side, you won't see the shadows - Hellen Keller This, now is life. It won't wait for you to stand on your feet. There's a song of exactly that name by Houston Calls which goes by " Life won't wait" That's a good thought to start my day with.

What makes a man, man..is it his origins, the way he started ? Its the choices he makes and the way he ends things.. - From Hellboy Okay, the movie wasn't really top notch but only the above phrases were. Come to think of it, there is again that omnipresent focus on "choices" again, no wonder the first birth control pill advertisement I can remember was something called "Choice".

May be for a little while, people look at that and say "hey, at least I'm not that bad" and try to think better of themselves despite whatever shortcomings.

You know the feeling .. where it seems really difficult from far but then when it becomes " been there done that" after wards It kind of makes sense why people want to keep doing new things Because once a new thing is done, to feel that way again you have to do something newer P.S: Oh BTW, I passed my defense and I'm happy I can also sleep like normal people( at least today)

3: 50 am In less than 6 hrs will get done with the marketing aka defense of my thesis... The bizarre thing is I have more questions about the results than probably what my committee is going to ask. But it will not be the end, rather the beginning of new phase and more questions to be answered. Most of them I haven't a clue about. My thesis looks pretty good thinking of those questions !!

Necessity is the mother of invention, WHY ???.. because the story goes like this For some bizarre reason my roomie bought Ching's 2 minute noodles instead of Maggi. While trying everything once is good, somethings should be left alone like Ching's 2 min noodles (It smells like something that comes out of our body's dis-grunts) So after the first trial I vouched never ever to eat it even if it means wastage of a resource. But when there is a game on in your stomach with hunger doing rounds after a day's hard work you will leave your convictions for some other day. And so starts the scavenge hunt for leftovers and edibles (not requiring to cook food). And there it was staring from the shelf Ching's !!!! After doing the whole who will give in first deal with it; I gave in but I remembered my promise not to use the damn powder which will stink the whole apartment floor for an hour. Went back to Indian wisdom in a whole "gurujee, mujhe apne sharan mein le lo" s...

Was discussing about train tragedy in west bengal. If people would listen to their heart instead of their minds all the time, no one would do things that would harm anyone on purpose.

Being in your twenties .. What's great about it ? You keep having flashes of that " I'm going to change the world" !! Then you have a constant companion confusion that makes you doubt and redoubt and doubt your doubts (get the drift) A few years back just freshly out of my first college degree, I thought its about survival. I say adios to a few years and again back to square one. So whats great about the twenties ? The ever continuing search for cheap apartments. Even collaboration governments are working but not the deal with you and your room-mate. Somehow the day for your paycheck never comes but the day for moving does so quickly, how can time be slow and fast at the same time ? So whats so great about being in your twenties really ?? The endless castles in the air, and the discussions about someday this that and everything but from this stand point it looks farther than anything else.

On few occasions there is that time when you have a mental debate about what you have to do and why and what it means. I like to call it "heart vs brains". But this is frequenting me more and more.

Today it came to my knowledge that these current days, when a job is posted online in one day around two thousand applicants try for the position. Something's incredibly wrong with this. Are there really so many desperate people out there waiting for things to happen for them ? I shudder at the thought of being one of them where I can't seem to have control over this situation on most accounts. I find it amusing when there is an elephant in the room scenario and people will try to pass the buck to see who is the first to mention " uhmm well by the way did you notice this huge elephant in the room .. dunno just seems odd its sitting there taking all our attention and yet we are jabbering about everything else on the planet " . However one of those elephants I keep bumping into is (drum rolls sound, ladies and gentlemen) " the job " scenario. I got to prepare to face it .. (darn !!)

Have you ever thought about the two sides of you ? Not like suffering from a mental disorder kind of way but the contradictory or complimentary sides. The Chinese call it the Yin ( accepting side) and Yang ( the giving - passionate side). It seems, to have a beautiful life one has to balance them. In nerd terms balance your right and left brain aspects of your living form. Since, I'm bizarrely interested in everything on planet; face reading happens to be one of them. And supposedly a face with symmetry is hard to find. Rather as we grow up one aspect dominates all the rest and therefore our body and face as an extension becomes asymmetrical. I call Brain vs Heart the yin-yang. No relations. One wins over the other. Either we can call in our yin (heart) and follow a path of unknown journeys and jump in for a roller-coaster ride or call in our yang (brain) and plan out the path focus and micro-control everything. The challenging part is balancing and how do you do that by your choic...

There's something about social media, that I have to make fun of though at present, I have accounts in a dozen of them right now. I have my cynic hat on and I am going through status messages of people. Most of the people are twenty somethings and every one has an outlook on life and saying life is this, you have to have this, that and etc and blah blah blah. I don't know who is more bizarre, newbies in the real world writing "in life" stuff, or people reading them or people like me who are doing both and asking for validation. How long have I lived that I can actually make an opinion about stuff like that. Or how long is long enough ??

Since a last few days I stopped reading on the bus and listening to inane radio stations. Music is the only non-interfering activity that allows us to do what we want to and yet be a part of the whole process. Can't really say that the breath taking beauty of Allegheny and Girard avenues keep me mesmerized on the commute; that I keep aside my fiction book and just lose myself to the moment but though every place in my memory is attached to a song, these places have if I may say so 'thinkings' attached to them. Usually when I cross Girard, I pack all the things I've removed and ponder for a while and today while doing that, I started comparing life to a bus ride. Have you noticed how on bus people do different things ? Some read, some talk on the phone all the while, some listen to music, some just sit there waiting impatiently for their stops while some sit there relaxed enjoying the view or looking into space of memories or their own thoughts. Is really life all that s...

I don't know whether I'm being ungrateful, hypocritical, confused or just plain myself by surrounding myself with all these questions. But where else can I write what I exactly think right? There comes a point in every person's life where one has to choose. And when we are all excited and packing our bags to move to a country 'saat samandar paar' translated 'across the world' we forget to take notice of the small details that become so important once we step into Uncle Sam's land. I'm talking about none other than the motive, the actual one and not the one we write in our statements to make the grad schools believe in us by saying exactly what they want to hear. Since I stepped here, I've been surrounded by the debauchery of all these unanswered questions which are now coming down onto me like unforeseen rains of Mumbai; drenching me in their sheer intensity and urgency leaving me to feel like a naive person setting out in a thunder storm without...

Apart from the bad weather today the thing that’s driving me crazy is the realization that corporate America with the doom it brought about in the world is now pushing people towards extroversion. By far it is now turning its back to the silver lining it provided to people like me about being a “Supporter of Individualism” and making the probability of you surviving a job search or career advancement battle directly proportional to your EQ – Extroversion Quotient. At a recent discussion, with an alumnus it was brought to my notice that the way to make your-self irreplaceable anywhere has always been “Relationships”, now moreover so, it stares at us with all dreary eyes. For someone with limited expertise in this area, my obvious question is how do you do that? There is no definite answer of course and being kind enough she politely said “Connect to them, may be make a little small talk. Ask about their kids, sports and stuff. Give it a personal touch. People want to know all about you...

Dear Fellow Snow Boarder, Let me tell you what happened after our collision on the snow clad steps of the museum. I desperately ignored the bleeding hand and prayed with all my devotion that it needed no medical attention what so ever. But apparently, ignorance is only bliss because it takes us far away from reality. And then it hit me and I dragged my lazy scared ass to hospital, where its no pleasure to be at all. I now board five stitches on my once (let me go beyond my modesty here) pretty fingers. No offense but I think its time, people like you and me took a look in the mirror and saw what we have become. You.. hefty for your age, Me..someone with embarrassing muscle strength and stamina. Its just so plainly apparent a desperate change is needed in the way we have been pursuing our physical well being. I also owe an apology for the sadistic pleasure of seeing in the view of recent moderation of my bmi index that I was now healthy. And its crystal clear about what nerds like yours...

An essential thing about reading something besides from your career stuff is, its like making a conscious choice of what one would like to inculcate in our systems. Its most wonderful part being that it does become a part of our lives in some way. Recently I completed reading " Breakfast with Buddha" by Roland Merullo. The main character Otto Ringling, I found much like me, beaten up by the big questions, searching for answers. At the juncture of the story where he meets Rinpoche (a spiritual person) and he asks Otto " Why so angry ??" I found myself asking the same question and couldn't find a justifiable answer on any grounds. Before that I used to make myself believe that, it was a driving factor of the kind of person I am with highs of its own kind. I don't think I did fool myself that well because then it wouldn't have struck a cord. I find that mostly due to scripting from a culture that says being busy all the time is the kind of living important ...

One of the things East Coast of United States is blessed with is the diversity of weather. I remember in India I used to think there's just one season i.e Raummer (Rain+ Summer..) I was amazed to experience the changes in color when I came to Philadelphia. I actually had this thought that the nature here is so damn hard working, busy all around the year with the business of four seasons to take care of. The most vivid scene from Mumbai that I remember of, is the day I was going to the US consulate for my Visa interview. That was the day it flooded yet another time and my amateur skills as a swimmer were put to test. Now, I'm not a very tall person and when it comes to having me walking in water, this particular day I was wading through a water column to my waist height. God knows how I kept my documents dry in midst of all that splashing, murky coffee like swimming pool all around me. There's just no way we were ever prepared for the rain. If the weather forecasts rain, tha...

Of late I have come to an observation (not that it ever stops or anything), about the way people end conversations . They have this anecdote " Stay in Touch". I have nothing against people who use them, but I guess due to genetic scripting and engineering education, I tend to wonder HOW ? I just think that its a way to avoid further conversation or blatantly avoiding to tell the person " Stop harrasing me now, do it when Im not around or something". Now with technology's awsomeness there are so many ways to communicate like chat, fb, sms, call, email and then some. I usually want to play the Q&A game with the person who says that : a) I call you (then we can be in different time zones subjected call charges and one's "busy" life" there is an impediment ) b) I buzz you ol (thats subjected to constraints of not being there, just plainly acting multi-tasker and not answering) c) FB .. yes lets make all conversations public so everyone kno...

Yes, this month I’m celebrating the anniversary of writing SOPs. I guess, the first I had written was back when I was a novice and was helping my sister write one, just a rough draft nothing concrete. What has surely changed over the years is customization of the SOPs. As much as the academia loves their ego being stroked now and then, the subtlety with which you can do it is the real cache here. Oh dear GradSchool Of course I’m totally into your stuff, the prim labs, the exquisite library where I vouch to spend a lot of time(breathing, sleeping, living whatever) in the next few years and mostly my dear profs whose research and data will come before my food (yes it will mean that much to me). Why else on earth would I make my anxiety curve fluctuate like Philly’s temperature (and god knows if you live here it changes more than women’s mood swings). On an ending note, how could I start an assignment without commenting on its conundrum? So off I go (though a few people say I’m a bit t...

I'm sitting under a starry sky. One of those where the moonlight is enough to see everything around me on a mountain. Cool breeze is flowing and I just concentrate on the stars in the sky, twinkling in their charming way; lost in thoughts of nothing in particular. Suddenly there is a pat on my back and I turn around. Obviously there's no one around and I try to put it behind as if it was just a thought not real. Again the pat, this time I can't let it go and talk to myself in the way I usually do. "I better not imagine this for a second time" I sit there transfixed, a bit with apprehension and a lot with anxiousness. Then a voice comes " Did you find the answer yet then?". Something about the quality of the voice makes me relax and find it silly that I was scared of it in the first place. " Oh, well I'm trying. The search is going well though. I'm happy about what I found till now." I answer. " I'm glad you figured out the way ...

What a weird day it was .. I usually have this kind of tradition that has grown over the years to read things I have written in past days in a year or so on special days like my birthday to see if I've grown up or not and ending days of december where I officially close my books as if its the year ending of one more year of my life's business. What have I learnt ? Am I a better me than last I've known? Am I going somewhere with a view in mind or just wasting time and energy in thinking and thinking some more. Let me take a breath ... Things have changed and then they haven't too. I still have the habit of thinking of those embarrassing things I did which comes to my mind and for a flash moment I wish I should have done something else and talk to myself as in really say "shut up salma" hmm.. so much for neurotism. The day dreaming self remains intact. Like a flash of a camera I can make a castle in air to raise and feel so happy its there, then come back to rea...