An Ode to Mystery called Women

The following is dedicated to all those women without whom our existence has no meaning

HAPPY WOMEN'S DAY

First time when I opened my eyes and saw so many strangers around
In those unaccustomed body, I was afraid and started crying
Then I could me feel His presence beside me
Someone was there to protect me as He has earlier promised

She took me in her arms and hold me close to her heart
I was not afraid anymore and I knew God is there
It felt like heaven, when she whispered those words
That I am her star, the light of her world

She was the warmth that comforted me in the cold night
An omnipresent protector, my guiding light
Her voice has the resemblance with that I had heard before (I was born)
And when I learn to utter my first words , I called her my mother

There came another day, when God sent another angel
To assist me in my childhood adventure
She was my secret keeper, my shield from any punishment
My punch bag when I was angry and best friend for merriment

Whether I play in dirt with marbles or miss school to catch fish
She was there everytime, my partner in crime
I forgot the number of times I have hurt her
But she forgave me and called me her brother

I grew up to became a rebel, as usually everbody does when they grow up
With those teenage confusions, I started reconstructing the world
Then one day I saw her, the most beautiful dream I had ever dreamt
The end of all those early confusions

She had those beautiful eyes which can look deep into your soul
And her face was like a joyous melody, which makes you happy
She became my best friend and later consented to be my wife
She vowed to save me all through my life and kept her promise

After some years I got another lucky charm from above
It felt like God to have created such a beautiful life
When I hold her first time in my arms, and she gave me a toothless smile
I knew I was so lucky to be alive

I taught her to walk and ride her first bicycle
I used to tell her all the made up ‘prince and princess’ stories
And when she grew up to be the finest person I have ever known
I felt proud that she was my daughter

And today when Time has come for me to return
I know the reason I was born
So that I can understand love in its various form
Here in this world, those forms are named as women

This Post has been Published as a part of

HAPPINESS

The number of articles , books which have been written or going to be written on the subject 'Happiness'
is so vast that one doesn't feel happy to have to read all those to know what happiness is

And I don't think there was ever a single human being or ever going to be , who has not thought about
this subject. May be he/she was intelligent or lazy enough not to write books or songs on the issue.

So without any pretension to lift the veil from the mystery subject , here are some thoughts which was
result of a discussion during lunch hours.
During lunch hour yesterday , one senior colleague suddenly put down the question 'What is happiness' .
After seeing so many english movies (yeah yeah of course with subtitles) , I thought I had enough
intelligence and experience to answer the question. But I couldn't. Because I believe that no definition
is good enough to define such a term.



He was making a good point on how are desires for materiliastic things makes us unhappy . And how
by not worrying about the result of our actions or efforts , can keep us from being unhappy. And to
attain that state of mind where there is no difference between pain and pleasure , knowledge of
life is must.

Another colleague told a very beautiful thing , how strange is that God created this marvellous world
for us to be happy and how come we always find ourselves to be unhappy. How each person , no
matter how successful or accomplished he/she has become , seems to be unhappy. Each has to deal
with his/her own demons.

Both of them were right in their own ways. However I have difficulty in acknowledging the fact former
has said that knowledge makes us free.

I may be wrong but I think once you have enough knowledge you are no longer part of this world.
You will just become a observer. You will start to see good and bad in people and in such case
it is difficult to have pure faith in anything. As you will have the understanding to question everything
even the things that you believe to be true. That is numbness and not happiness. However I cannot
prove this  as I lack that knowledge.

You may not be remembering first time you saw the face of the person who you call your mother,
that moment you may not have the knowledge of understanding or recognition but still you were
truly happy. The first time you learnt to walk without the knowledge of gravity or your first time on
your bicycle. The first time you won a prize and saw your family proudly standing there. The
first time you fall in love and each moment when you have glance of her/him , the happiness
you felt inside is without any knowledge or reason. The first time you kissed . That may lasted
for few moments only but for you it was a eternity. The first time you hold the tiny tiny fingers
of your new born baby and found yourself to be born again. The first time when worshipping
your God , whoever may be, you were aware that you are part of that light.

The problem is that we cannot hold those moments forever.

In between those moments comes a thousand twists , turns , heartbreaks , rejections , failures
of life and we are left unhappy and sad.

I think we are unhappy because at those moments of our life we chose to be unhappy. Or may
be happiness is just a word , a futile word to lure us and kept us attached to this world.

The following are  the memorebale lines from movie 'In pursuit of Happiness' (Will Smith starrer)
'It was right then that I started thinking about Thomas Jefferson on the Declaration of Independence and the part about our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And I remember thinking how did he know to put the pursuit part in there? That maybe happiness is something that we can only pursue and maybe we can actually never have it. No matter what. How did he know that?'

MAY BE ABOVE IS CORRECT. WE ARE ALWAYS IN PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS AND
THAT IS WHY WE WILL BE NEVER HAPPY.

I hope you listen to what I do not say

I don't know whether I see something less or something more
when I try hard to look deep into those eyes of your
In one moment I find my salvation and in next it is gone
And I oscillate between those moments of pleasure and pain


I want to say so many things , but words die midway
And then I hope you listen to what I do not say
It seems I have a blindfold on my eyes
And I seem to ignore what is true and what is false

Am I jealous of your freedom or angry for my prison term
I don't know the reason behind the numbness
When I try to listen for your heartbeats hoping to listen my name
All I can hear is deafening silence


I try to make sense out of all these uncertain moments ,
But I fail to understand that unknown language
in which destiny has paid my sufferings a homage
We stand close but yet too far from each other

Tear of an angel

Today I saw an angel crying , hiding her face in her hands
I wished I could comfort her , shield her from all fears
To hold her in my arms , and wipe her tears

But I am a prisoner of time , lost in the dark side
Ever pervading darkness that permeates my myth
I did not want to desecrate her light

As a skeptic of both good and evil
I stood there at a distance , afraid to go near
so that my shadow did not touch her halo

I hoped for the existence of light
For the first time , I prayed to make things all right
But no one came to rescue her from her heart's plight

I was a witness to cruelty of circumstance
I wanted to fight the moments; to defy gods and devil at same time
But I dare not to touch the sacredness of her life

Though I wanted to feel her pain , but I could not in my heart so numb
I wished for one of her smile
Waited there for that rescurer of soul

Reason of those reasons

Today morning I received a SMS from close friend , which in the end  read as follows

"Everything happens for a reason. But the hardest part is still finding out what the reason is"

In the early morning rush to go to the office , I didn't think about it. But as the day progressed
I realised how true the message in every one's life.

We take some decisions , chose some way , neglect some and always hope that everything will
end fine. We walk , we see , we fall in love , we laugh , we get separated , we cry , we fight with
each other , we do mistake , we run , we realise our mistakes, we hide , we laugh , we cry , we
wander , we fall,  we get up, we run , we lie down and so on life goes on. And with all these
things  we  come to believe that our life follows a grand plan may be unknown to us , but it is
still there. All those things that we could not understand in the past , cannot understand now and
will not be able to understand in the future will work out to be have a  good reason. All those
eccentricities  of life will make sense at the end. Our lives are for a purpose.

But as time fly by , with certain disappointment  in our heart , most of us realise that nothing
makes sense at all. With a single life to live , we cannot compare what we did with our life
was the best thing to do or not.

You remember those story magazines in childhood days , where you have to connect the dots
in a sequence so as a figure of some animal or face will emerge.

I was never able to complete that unless some sequence number are given for the dots. Otherwise
I always used to end up with random lines criss-crossing others. And I was always jealous of my
sister who could complete those in no time. So to make her think that I did better than her , in
those days I used to look at those meaningless lines and imagine some figures to prove that I
solved the  puzzle better than her

And it seems , with life we all have to do the same. In the end we just have to connect the dots
in a way to have a correct plan  emerge out of that randomness of our life. In case we fail to
do that, we just have to imagine some good plan that our life followed and put the events
of our life in that imaginary plan. As they say the end should be good otherwise it is not a end.

So how hard it may seem , to have good ending , we have to believe earnestly that our life did
not go waste , without a purpose. In the end it meant something

 In the movie 'Hitch' , last scene while trying to stop his lady love , Alex Hitchens (Will Smith)
jumps into her moving car , falls down and when she protests why did he jump , he says

"Because that's what people do. They leap, and hope to God they can fly, because
otherwise you just drop like a rock, wondering the whole way down, why in the *hell* did
I jump? But here I am, Sarah, falling, and the only one that makes me feel like I can fly... is you."

To live life fully , without worrying about reasons , sometimes we have to take some blind jumps
and hope that someday somewhere someone will come to rescue us , to save us from falling as a rock

Yeh Saali Zindegi

Yesterday evening , half an hour into the movie (Yeh Saali Zindegi), one of my friend told me that  I am definitely going to write a blog on this movie. I tried hard to prove him wrong.

But anyhow I am here writing this.

To start with , this is a hindi movie which I enjoyed to watch full length ,after longtime. This is a not
movie to watch with your girlfriend (of course , if she is not a admirer of swearing words on love ,
women & sex) . This is a movie to watch with your friends.

I am not going to be a killjoy by revealing the plot. I will just limit myself to the characters and some
of the dialogues which i think i remember

Arun ( Irrafan Khan ) : I was thinking who could have donned the role of Arun better than Irrfan Khan.
I thought about top actors in present bollywood ,  five khans , one kapoor , one kumar , one roshan even
thought about bachhan (junior one) . None of them could have come close. (nothing personal here )
May be ajay devgan could have done justice to the role. But Irrfan Khan was perfect.

The most important aspect of acting is when your audience forgets that you are acting. (Did somebody
has already said this. If no , please copyright the saying on my name.). Irrfan Khan could acheive that in
the role of Arun , the person with a good heart working for a bad guy , falling for wrong girl who in the
end become the right one.

When his lady love Priti (Chitrangad Singh) says she didn't know that he is in love with her and he says
' So what did you think , I was jogging around you all this time'. This is the dialogue any guy in love will
tell when informed by the girl he loves that she didn't know it .

(A fundamental lesson into way of thinking. Most of the guys think that girls have sixth sense of knowing
who is in love with them. And most of the girls expect guys to profess their love like teary-eyed characters
that SRK used to do in 90's. And both are wrong in their way of thinking . And result being ,in real life
most of the guys do not get the girls they love and most of the girls do not get the guys they deserve)

Or the way he says to her , 'What do you know by doing nothing what you have done to me' . ( I don't remember the exact words)

Or says to his boss mehta ( Saurabh Shulka) , ' I will send the invitation card for marriage , please don't
come.

Kuldeep (Arunoday Singh) : First time I watched this guy. But one of my friend was telling Arunoday singh was there in movie Aisha. His character is also like arun , a man honest in love but not in honest job. He was lucky to have a lot of kiss scenes and he performed well , so it seems

Priti (Chitrangada Singh ) : The girl with the guitar and singing 'ye saali zindegi' . After watching her first
time in Hazarhon Khawishen Aishi , my heart soared like a kite and get cut when I learnt that she is married.
Nevertheless she was good in the role. However I expected her to be great. But may be , the role was not enough to give her the opportunity for that.

Shanti ( Aditi Rao Hydiri ) : After coming to my room from movie hall and heavy dinner , first thing
I did to download wallpaper of her and put it in my desktop background. And this blog in a sense
is a  declaration to let my friends know that I am thinking to include her in my list. So guys back off.

All night long till I slept ( I don't remember whether I saw her in dreams or not) I was thinking where
I have seen her before.  She looked so familiar that I was thinking to have seen her in real life.  But
unfortunately in the morning paper movie review it says that she was there in 'Delhi 6' . Yeah , then
I remember and my hope sanked down. But not bad Ms (is she a Ms or Mrs , I have to check. I
don't want another chitrangada episode) Aditi , from a homely girl in Delhi 6 to potraying sexy kissing
scenes in this movie , not bad. Who's complaining.

But in one scene , when kuldeep (her husband) confronts her in the house of a stranger. And she clarifies
that she had come to sell pickles only . But the way she wore that saree did not indicate that she had gone
to sell pickles. And where are those pickles which she had to sell.

May be I did miss the conversation or a scene. Or as the next scene was a steamy one , director may
have told her to wear the same saree and shoot the scenes in one go.

Apart from the above characters , Shushant Singh in a role of inspector , Saurabh Shukla in role of
Mehta (boss of arun) , Yashpal Sharama (boss of Kuldeep)  were good in their characters.

A lot of twist and turns in the movie : turns of events , twist in characters , even the director managed to
end the movie in a funny note with twisting trajectory of bullets.

Over and all a good movie to watch , music to listen . Though it had a typical bollywood movie ending
with good getting all the goodies ,  Kudos to director Sudhir Mishra for not trying hard to highlight it.
He just showed what life is it is , like the song in the movie goes 'zindagi pe tera mera, kis ka na zor hai
hum sochte hai kuch ,yeh sochti kuch aur hai Yeh zindagi, yeh saali zindagi'

I Hate myself to be in Love with You

Remember the full moon night , when you came with a smile of hoping-to-be-bride
I was standing on that bridge playing a song on my guitar and smoking a cigarette
You asked me , when am I going to ask for your hand
And I replied with a uninterested tone , may be after I have my own music band

You thought it as one of my not-so-funny joke
And asked innocently whether I love you or not
In my unusually calm self , told you I will have to think about that
As I am not sure whether you make me happy or sad

You left me in the smoke filled air
Hiding all those tears in your sad black eyes
Did not stop to listen the song I was strumming in that heart-broken guitar
And you never once looked back

I used to stand in front of your house , hiding behind the tree
All day long , hoping to have a glance of you
Used to follow you to college and wait at the gate till you are free
And followed you on till you reach home

When you found a job and left to work in a distant place
I complained to God all night long and next morning I board the train on your chase
I roamed all through searching your known face in the unknown town
After two days , my starved body gave up and I fell down

Remember the day you found me on road sleeping in front of your place
You saw the guitar and asked me whether I can play
I forgot all my pain and kept on playing all the happy songs I knew
I was so happy to have at last found you

Remember all those moments , how we became friends and went further ahead
The first time I touched your face, the first kiss , and the first time we made love
How we used to lay awake beside each other
and count the stars with alternate number

You made me free , took all my pain away, the answer for all that I prayed
But then I realised in return I have nothing to offer except the broken promises
Done nothing for you except wrote you few songs
And tried to make you laugh ,when you seemed sad, with my not-so-funny jokes

I hated myself to be in love with you
I hated the way I became a burden on you
That night on that bridge I was searching for a reason so that I can hate you
I found none and that made me to hate myself more

Now when you have gone never again to return
I write this song to remind me of all that time
when I was yours and your were mine
And I  did not hate myself to be in love with you

(Have you ever had an unforgettably magical moment when you felt two strongly opposite emotions? Love/Hate? Elation/Sadness? Anger/Sympathy? . The following story is for a contest sponsered by

Close Up with collaboration from Indiblogger 'The Close Up "Fire-Freeze" Challenge - what's your story?') You may post your own experiences at  http://www.facebook.com/closeupindia?v=info