Am I Back??

I dunno wat I would be writing about... it’s strange getting back... I had to break the initial resistance u feel of going back to a thing of past... there’s been a barrier built by time... something u could have broken at anytime u wanted to... u wished to... u wished and still were reluctant.... each moment u thought u had to... u realised how far it was... then the moment went by... and farther it went...
It’s been a long journey of six months... long enough to know the people around me like I have known them for ages... long enough for the happenings of six months to fade the rest of my life’s memories as though they have never been... long enough to wipe out feelings of nostalgia that I thought I always had... long enough to realise that I am total disconnect in the world I have once been in... long enough to know that my world changed but my people didn’t...I changed but my soul didn’t... my feelings changed but my heart didn’t ...and change changed ...for its own sake...

Sahana Saral Thoovutho...

I dunno what's enticing in this song...but yeah...right now addicted to it.As the song and its lovely picturisation still haunt me...I feel great to have made the decision to go for "Shivaji"...after a long contemplation.
ARR's magic and the lilting tamil lyrics do make a great combination sometimes. Tamil lyrics never fail to mesmerise me...probably it's the charm of the unknown.
As I scare people here with my obesession...it goes in a loop in my mind..."Sahana Saral Thoovutho..."

In the 'K'ampus...

It's just been four days now at IIMK but the feelings and the familiarity make it seem otherwise. The academic atmosphere has set in quite early...Each night the notice boards at the mess and the hostel are crowded. Curious students wondering what's in for the next day...who's addressing us to which material to collect at what time...I've probably never seen notice boards get such attention.
Academic discipline and efforts are stressed in almost every address during the three day induction.
First day of our classes began today. A class that is supposedly the introduction to case study analysis...apparently didn't seem to be an introductory class. We were up until 1.30 -2, the previous night analysing the case scheduled for the today.
Motivation, I realised could come from any source...sometimes from someone you'd least prefer. But I was lucky enough that though the realisation came in later, the cue was taken much earlier.The effect was that the confidence levels rose to wipe out the insecurities.To be put simply, it got me the attention of one of the toughest-to-be-pleased prof.It brings in an urge to do better.
And as learning takes off formally from Monday, there would be lesser periods of inactivity. Library would still be my address at K...but probably "Two Alone and Two Together" would have to give way to MA, OB and stuff...
One thing that I've realised is ...Time here never flies by...we are made to live and remember each moment's learning.

The First Few Impressions...

Where would you find a large family room at a hotel in the commercial heart of the city...for Rs 370/- a day... Welcome to Kozhikode...
Honesty, Simplicity and Hospitality...are not anymore rare virtues here... they are a part of life...
I realised probably for the first time...how people could live a contented life at enviable standards...gluttony and commercialism are unheard of...people charge aptly for the sevices they offer...and quality of the service is unquestionable...They embrace their duty with responsibility and a smile on their face...
Work here is worship...it's not a routine chore to go through...right from the bus driver to the hotel attendant...there is a willingness to help people out...
Traditions are taken pride in...there are still movies made with a soul...and language is no barrier there(I watched one such movie on our way to Guruvayur)...
Strangely abundance doesn't make them overtly complacent...the value of the resources is always respected...
Far from the hustle of the metros...a land where virtues still hold ground...serenity and peace still rule the roost...truly it is the God's own country...

On Route to Kozhikode...

Din't know when the day turned 17th of June and my journey started to Kozhikode. It was a trip with the family after a long time. The train journey was lot fun...we found lot of time for each other...and sometimes silence brought in more togetherness. Momma, Bro and I were taking turns sitting by the window and staring out into the vast streches musingly.
There were times of activity...We would waitin for all those eatables (that Momma packed for our journey) to be put before us. Momma once seriously was peeling an mosambi and Dadda in an attempt to drive the a fly away...tossed the mosambi for a sixer...and lo! out it landed into bushes ...We couldn't stop laughing for minutes after watching it live...each came out with an instance of the projectory they got to see :)
Slowly we traversed through the brown patches of AP...into kerala... clustered with trees...sadly couldn't get a glimpse of gool old chennai...we passed it in the midnight.

Then with all our luggage (that we shared between ourselves to carry)...we find ourselves waiting for the train to Kozhikode on the platform at Shoranur junction. First glimpses of Kerala...persistant rains and inundate greenery and handsome Ticket collectors :) (always knew TCs as burly old men with inflated bellies)...
The journey to Kozhikode which as we were told would take an hour and a half...stretched to 3 hours and it was a ride through the greenery all along...Green was so glaring at times that I started longing for brown and black stretches of Hyderabad already...
Kozhikode welcomed us with heavy showers...as I set foot on the land that would be my home for another two years...

Lines that Linger...

I have been reading The Hindu Literary Review for the past two days and I chanced upon an article of Navtej Sarna..."past two days" and "chanced upon"...sounds contradictory???...yeah... such fleeting is my relationship of late with the stuff I read...
But that left aside... I am lucky to have encountered this particular article of Sarna.I knew Sarna only as the articulate foreign office spokesperson of Indian Government, but his article "Reluctant Writers" unveiled the avid and the exquisite reader in him. Probably I have been grossly disconnected from the Hindu to have this taken such a long time to dawn upon me. (I have earlier read a travelogue of his, which seemed quite natural of an official from the foreign office.)
The essence of all this is that I am in for some great read... from the "writer’s writers", Somerset Maugham and Graham Greene and “a writer’s writer’s writer", Henry Green.

Towards the close I quote Sarna's favorite lines of Henry Green...
"Prose is not to be read aloud but to oneself at night, and it is not quick as poetry, but rather a gathering web of insinuation…Prose should be a long intimacy between strangers…It should slowly appeal to feelings unexpressed, it should in the end draw tears out of stone"

Another piece of news is Sarna's debut novel "We Weren't Lovers Like That" is just out...

It's Curtains...for OHB...

"I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex."... I wud love to have the Oscar Wilde lines summing up the closing pages of OHB ("Of Human Bondage"). I wonder if these Wilde lines had any relevance to the "complex" characters with equally "complex" pleasures of "The picture of Dorian Gray"; but to a life rich with diverse experiences, shaped by relationships... some inadvertently entangled to and others willingly alienated from, driven by passion to explore distant lands...a life that chose to surpass the tortuous trail of relationships... to captivate itself in creations that the inferior intellects are unfortunate enough to comprehend...eventually embracing stability and yielding to the simple pleasures of human bonding...couldn't make the otherwise a charming novel more charming. It would be very unlikely of Maugham if it had been a short story... but for a journey of over six hundred odd pages...a life that is tossed to the extremes throughout...willing to take more...the solace that stability had brought in, is still intriguing. Would he never yearn for those cryptic lands, those revelations of solitary explorations...does the power of human bonding encompass all the practical and impractical...yearnings, fascinations and ambitions of the life lived...???

A New Found Energy...

...Or should I call it regaining lost energy. As I put down the feelings on my notepad, sitting by the window in FL5...my hand shivers...a sign of playing throwball after a long time. It feels great. It just revealed..."I am me"...whatever life takes me through, however distraught I am... "I will be me". A game of Throwball brought out the child-like enthusiasm in me again...

I was playing it after a long time...I was excited...I was nervous...will the ball slip through??...and it did sometimes...but didn't the other times. That little fascination to be middle one of the forwards...concentrating on the ball flying past the net...the dejection at the ball slipping through...that feeling of importance when u've won a point for the team...the arguments with the refree...It was like re-living old days...

If you still find it a little ambiguous...this is about a throwball match conducted by the "Back 2 school" club at CTS. I really felt I was back at school. It was an electric atmosphere... and my call "taken" got lost out almost everytime. Celebrating on scoring "winners"... reassuring each other on our faults...we sailed through. We lost the match...but playing itself freaked me out with joy that I can't imagine what a win would have made me. Nothing mattered...it was the first time I took a loss in my stride. I was free from all thoughts for few moments...a part of my soul was all animated...it was leaping across the rails unmindful of the approaching train as I watched it over the platform...I was happy for myself...

A Tussle Within...

Sometimes I strangely find myself in a disturbed state and today is one such day. I call it strange because I know not the reason that's affecting me. It irks me that I should depend on something as unreliable as time to get myself back to normalcy. Sigh...today, as most of the days in the past few weeks, I have nothing to talk about except of "Of Human Bondage" and the music classes. It makes me feel if I am restricting myself to things that seem to narrow down my thought process... or are they diversifying it in a way to question me on various things...I seem to myself lacking perfection in, clarity on and devotion to anything in life. With no ideas or thoughts of my own, I seem to be living vicariously. Down to the fourth music class, where's the initial excitement... where's the promise I made to myself to spend my time after the tedious interviews "njoyin" music...even as I post this "navaraaagamaalika" sweeps past my ears...but never manages to stir the soul...
If music should spurt from the soul, should I care to differentiate between M1 of "Sankarabharanam" and M2 of "Kalyani"... It's N3 in both but it still is different...phew...I don't seem to make out the difference...my heart yearns for instrumental music...the yearnings went thru keyboard, violin and now it's veena...I don't trust myself anymore now...I have always been an enthusiastic starter and then a reluctant learner...
I reconcile myself that it's just a matter of time...time!!!...how I hate this uncertainity...What do I have in store for me at the end of this wait...
I have ruined one to build another...One seems Norah and the other Mildred...I just hope my Mildred doesn't turn out to be as bad as the original one...Damn...It's "OHB" again...

With Maugham In FL5...

Maugham and FL5 form a perfect setting for my musings, on my daily travel to and from office. If you are just wondering what FL5 is...it is the local train that I travel by. I would write more on the FL5 journeys in my later posts...but it'd be Maugham who'd grace this post...

Philip has just discovered a true relationship and I wonder if I put up a display on my face as I sail with him through every emotion of his…coz the girl sitting opposite to me in the train gave me a curious look. I haven't read anyone who could depict relationships so well. The story takes you through all kinds of relationships...wierd, fleeting,touching and even some that you would despise...and the rest are simply unexplainable.I haven't read Dostoevsky yet...Maugham to me is undoubtedly a Master though. As I try introspecting and discovering myself...I couldn't come across this conversation at a better time...

From here on it's Maugham in his words....

Hayward talked beautifully of Plato.
'I should have thought you'd got through with Plato by now,' said Philip impatiently.
'Would you?' he asked, raising his eyebrows.
He was not inclined to pursue the subject.He had discovered of late the effective dignity of silence.
'I don't see the use of reading the same thing over and over again,' said Philip.'That's only a laborious form of idleness.'
'But are you under the impression that you have so great a mind that you can understand the most profound writer at a first reading?'
'I don't want to understand him, I'm not a critic. I'm not interested in him for his sake but for mine.'
'Why d'you read then?'
'Partly for pleasure, beacause it's a habit and I'm just as uncomfortable if I don't read as if I don't smoke, and partly to know myself.When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only,but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me; I've got out of the book all that's any use to me, and I can't get anything more if I read it a dozen times.You see, it seems to me, one's like a closed bud, and most of what one reads and does has no effect at all;but there are certain things that have a peculiar significance for one, and they open a petal; and the petals open one by one; and at last the flower is there. '

Before I Start Off...

I was so excited about the blog, that I wanted to start off with the posts right away with some thoughts that were popping up…but first I wanted to explore as to what makes me so anxious to put them all in here.

There have been lots of thoughts in me at different points of time, that went by un-captured…

On the path of my self-discovery…when I reach the confines of my capabilities…when I would like to retrace the long winding path (Don’t ask me how I know it’d be one…a woman’s intuition I would say, also, a great confidence in my potential, to get into things that are tortuous enough to make my short journey long) that I've tread and reflect on it…this would be where I would like to come back to…