The Holiday

It has been an exhilarating holiday. I will recapitulate the incidents of those days in as exact a manner as possible. First, I went to Vrindavan, where my mother was at that time. The next day along with all the Iskon people, we went to Jaipur and came back on the same day on an appalling bus, which flattened my posterior. Then I was at Vrindavan again. It was lots of fun waking up at 3 am in the morning and taking a not so warm bath to attend some ‘mangal arti’. And that was nothing compared to the excellent 22 km barefoot walk for the Vrindavan Parikrama and the following 24 km barefoot walk for the Govardhan Parikrama the day after. The sole of my feet is never the same after that. The next day, a visit to all the important temples took all the time for sun up to sundown, and by the time we reach back to where we were lodging, I was surprised that I still have my feet with me. Since my feet are intact the following morning, we again set out to conquer the intricate labyrinth that was the market of Vrindavan. As expected, it took us all the daylight out of us when we returned. My mother was not to be put down with such minor things as physical exhaustion, so we again set out for a tour to the city of Taj, where awaits the romantic Taj Mahal. I never understood what is so romantic about big scrapes of marble on a tomb. Ofcourse when we were returning we could not skip the beauty of the city of Mathura. Those were my days during the first half of the Holidays.

On the day after returning from Agra, we left for delhi. And that day, my mother left for home, and I stayed behind at my brother’s place. For 3 straight days I sleep and eat and sleep again. But I came to know that it was the season for fest in the colleges of delhi university. So, promptly, I went to my friend’s place, who is a student of a DU college and together we went to many college fest. The first one was at SRCC( Sri Ram College of Commerce ). On the first day they called Bombay Vikings. It was good but not that much good. Next day we went to Ramjas and just absorbed the college spirit. It was fun. And yes, the Jam session was quite rocking. The next day, Aryans performed at Ramjas and Band of Boys at Daulat Ram at the same time. We chose Aryans. Later, we went to SRCC and enjoyed live Rock from ‘Them Clones" and another band called something like ‘Helgas Fungus’. After all those, I again came back to my brother’s place and took up sleeping and eating again. And with that my holidays came to an end.

Holiday season again!!

Quite a winter it has been. And since the exam is all done and well, I am off to another holiday now. I am going first to Vrindavan, then to Jaipur, then to Delhi, and whither then? I do not know.

Bilbo once said, "It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door," he used to say. "You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to. Do you realize that this is the very path that goes through Mirkwood, and that if you let it, it might take you to the Lonely Mountain or even further and to worse places?" He used to say that on the path outside the front door at Bag End, especially after he had been out for a long walk.

And after that he used to sing softly to himself,

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with weary feet,
Until it joins some larger way,
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

And whither then? I cannot say too. But I am sure the road will sweep me for another 20 or so days.

Von Voyage to me.

I am the Mask

Being truely alive is an art. And everyone hopes to live life to the fullest. And me being an ordinary person, hopes the same. Many are my friends at many places and most of them tells me that my face is so spontaneous and so very easy to decipher. But the closest of them also tells me that the spontaneity itself is the mask to hide the mask I am putting on. What a terrible thing!! I am being accused of wearing a mask to hide the mask which is masking me?!! That sounds ridiculous.

Many have this notion that our eyes never lies. Even masks have an openning especially for the eyes saying that the mask cannot hide the eyes. But how wrong they are. For the greatest lies were concieved by the eyes.

"Being scarcely cognisant of my movements, and solicitious only to appear calm; and, above all, to control the working muscles of my face-- which I feel rebel insolently against my will, and struggle to express what I had resolved to conceal. Fortunately, I have a viel, the eye-- and it is down." - Jane Eyre.
The eye succeeds where the mask fails.

The mask does not hide the eyes because the eye itself is a conjuror of all lies.

I did not felt any necessity to hide behind any mask. What people failed to understand is that I am not the person who is beneath the mask, I am the Mask they think I am wearing. People are so desperate to discover the person behind the mask that they forgot all about the mask and dismissed it just as a mere mask.

Ordinary person makes ordinary mistakes. And I like many others does the same. I should have hidden behind some mask so people would take off my mask and know me. But I did not. I chose bareness, and people took my bareness as the viel, and the viel as the mask.

But in the end, I end up being a Mask.

In Dreams

It had seemed to me almost impossible at first to feel reality in dreams. But now, I know fully well that the realm of Morpheus is as real and as alive as the world of reality.

Tel 'aran rhiod, as Robert Jordan puts it in his 'Wheel of Time' series, where we are manifested alive in the Dream World. One may almost put it in a more definitive term as 'Living in Dreams'.

I know I sound bizare. We cannot live in the Dreams. It sounds absolutely bizare even to think about accomplishing something in dreams, for it is only a dream.

In the Book 'Intrepretation of Dreams' by Dr. Sigmund Freud, Mr. Freud lucidy explained why we dream, what we dream and how we dream. And Mr. Freud was of the opinion that we dream so as to fulfil the wishes of our waking life. Which can be interpreted as we almost live a life in our dreams, and making accomplishments which we can only dream of in the waking world!!

After much practice and perseveration, I atlast have learn how to weave dreams and continue with a life which is so different from the life that I pursue in wakefulness. I am not saying that I have abandon the habit of living in the real world. I am saying that it is possible to live in another world where we can experience things that we can only dream of.

In the Land of Morpheus where the shadows lie.

Her Tristan

Manish Tagged me to write a story that starts along these line ...

She ran her hands over his face, his hair, tears streaming down her face all the while...

A vulture cried from afar but she was quite oblivious to that. Her Tristan was lying on the ground, his eyes closed, and arrows sticking out at odd angles from his body. Her Tristan.

He promised he would come back. Fighting her tears to see him clearly, running her hands over and over on his handsome face… that face… she hasn’t forgotten the first time she saw this handsome face. The smile that stole her heart, she still remembers.

He promised he would come back. Her Tristan. Fighting back memories and flinging them aside, she picked his head up on her lap, in hopeless hope of giving him some comfort. And she sang to him ever so softly

When the cold of winter comes
Starless night will cover day
In the veiling of the sun
We will walk in bitter rain

But in dreams
I can hear your name
And in dreams
We will meet again

When the seas and mountains fall
And we come, to end of days
In the dark I hear a call
Calling me there,
I will go there
And back again

When she finished the song, silence filled the battlefield, and her Tristan lay motionless. And lo! Her eyes no longer accused him for breaking the promise. Putting his back on the merciless ground she stood up and looked down at his beautiful face. Her Tristan. A horn blew somewhere but she no longer cared.

“I am coming”, she murmured softly to the wind .

A life ordinarily ordinary

Being Ordinary is like being in love; you just know you are ordinary only when you are ordinary. And like love, it has the most intoxicating element : contentment.

And I love being ordinary and I want everything normal, thank you very much. But I am not so much ordinary as to come close to being extraordinarily ordinary. That would be against being ordinary. I am ordinary only to the limit of being ordinarily ordinary. I do not want to relinquish the idea of ordinary by being extraordinary in it.

Life is beautiful when one sees it from an ordinary point of view. If we contort ourselves and try to fit into something less ordinary, we contort ourselves and in turn produce irregularities to the view we see. And sometime the irregularities is so much that it often mislead us. People who sees life as frustrating are those who are tired of being ordinary, who have become less ordinary and no longer percieve life through ordinary eyes but through less ordinary eyes.

Being Ordinary is like being in love. The difference being, in being ordinary, you are in love with yourself, in a most narcissistic way.

Caught Unaware

Tagged by Dhruv

I have been caught unaware by Dhruv and it seems I have disclosed much in the following. I am in a ‘no nonsense’ mood today so I will try to be brief

1. I am what I am and I do what I want
2. I am also slightly mental
3. It is my dear ambition to retire to a farm house when I am old. I would love to watch the chickens on the courtyard and see the sun set, sitting at the front porch with a smoke pike on one hand and the evening news on the other.
4. I am a perfectly ordinary guy and I am happy being ordinary, thank you very much
5. I roll my eyes when I get exasperated. I know it is not a good thing but my eyes go up automatically. It is an involuntary thing.
6. I like Harry Potter books.
7. I don’t like ice-cream.
8. I like my mother more than my father.
9. In case you have not noticed yet, I use the word ‘I’ too much. I guess that makes me egotistical.
10. I consider Chicken soup as the best food in the entire universe.
11. I truly believe that life is beautiful
12. I wanted to be doctor but after reading a book called ‘Doctors” by Dr. Eric Seagal, I decided that it is not my type.
13. I like reading Fantasy Books. I am reading The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan.
14. It is very hard for me to get bored. I can stare at a stone for a whole day and fine interesting thing about it to last me another extra whole day.
15. I like to be pampered. I think having a hair wash at the saloon is a good way to pamper myself.
16. My friends told me that I sleep with my eyes open. But they also told me that I look so vulnerable when I am asleep.
17. I think I am anorexic. I am narcissistic too. But luckily I am not Masochistic and not Sadistic.
18. It always was my way, by instinct--ever to meet the brief with brevity, the direct with plainness.
19. I don’t like sweets. Maybe it is an after effect of Anorexia.
20. I shall remain a bachelor my whole life. I will adopt two children and will grow old.

I think that is it. My ‘No nonsense’ mood is still there so I will just say that it was not easy being tagged.

Bad is not Bad

Is there no good left in this world? Has evil finally taken over in the guise of goodness? I think this is the case. For in this world that we live, bad things are not bad and good things are no longer good anymore.

A thing which is bad must be so inherently evil that every manifestation of it should always reek of vileness.

And a thing which is good must be so inherently divine that every manifestation of it should be virtuous in every sense.

But alas it is not so. For some may think thieving is a bad thing, but to the thief who sustains his life from it, it is a mortally blessed thing, for he would go hungry if he does not do that. To him it is not bad.

We may punish the thief taking it is a good thing to do, but is it really good to punish someone who did what he did only to sustain himself?

I personally have no compassion for thieves or robbers or anything conventionally bad, but sometimes, I wonder what is really bad and what is really good. Is cheating on someone bad? What if I have a good intention for it? What is bad is not bad and what is not good is not good.

My mind is in dilemma. Are we truly that far from being a righteous being, have we all become the minions of evil, where bad things are not bad and good thing are not good? Have we altogether lost the true path of the goodness?

Every being on this world believe that whatever he does, its ultimate goal is goodness. If he cheats in the exam, it is to get good marks so that he gets a good result which in turn helps him get him a good job which in turn will sustain his family in a good way. Doing a good thing which has ‘cheating’ as the base of it, is it really good, or is bad? It is neither, for what is bad is not bad and what is good is not good.

Holiday

I am back from my long deserved holiday and it was ...Fabulous. That's the only thing I can say. Me, my cousins and siblings decided to go for a short holiday. We planned to meet at Delhi. First we went to dehra dun, which is a place of botanical miracle. People were very friendly. Then we went to Mussorie ( I hope the spelling is correct ). Such a cool place. Pity it was not winter or we would have had snow there. Still, the weather was very cold. We all suffered from acute coldness during the whole of the trip there. The wind was dead chilly. Two of my cousins freaked out when we went over the tram. The tram stuck for about 5 minutes in midair. I suspect it was a power failure but, two of my cousins freaked out, they refuse to talk about anything for 5 whole minutes. When they regained the power of speech, which was miraculously lost some time back, both of them sweared they would never climb on another tram in there entire combined life. I didn't take them seriously; you know girls can be so silly. They will say one thing and another moment they will say the opposite. Why? These cousins of mine made me steal a flower from the protected garden and at the same time gave me a full fledge lecture on how flowers should not be plucked unnecessarily. And they made me go to the side of a hill, just to take a rhizobium( modified stem ) of a plant so that they can take it to their own garden!! Girls are so silly. I don't know why they like flowers so much.

We all came back to Delhi and transfigured ourselves into vampire bats; we haunted the night life in Delhi and devoured in the flesh of humanity. Being with girls are lot safer in Delhi then in Mussorie, I learned with painful experience. In Delhi, they do not asked for crazy stuffs like plucking exotic flowers from the wild side of the hill, where you are half scared of falling down the crevices and half jubilant for coming back unscathed. Whew, Girls are plain silly, especially my cousins. Why? They should ask their bfs to do all those things, not their plain old cousin me. But ofcourse there were no bfs there so the silly things are dumped on me. Poor me.

A Long Expected Holiday

Finally I decided to go on a Holiday. It is a long needed one. Too much stress and too much about yourself can kill you so one needs to spend some time away from himself. Some may think, this is a kind of running away from self, but one must concur that running away is quite different from distancing oneself. By distancing oneself, he can view at his life from another's point of view. Anyway, I will not be in the blogworld for about a week now. I know it is not a long holiday but this is the best I can afford, timewise. There are exams to give, books to read, assignments to complete, people to convince and blogs to read and write. So, I have only a week! Fair Deal. See you guys.

The onset of Autumn

September faded into nothingness, leaving behind only a fleeting shadow of cherished dreams. And here now is October, with her long flowing autumn raiment. The warm glow of the autumn evening is seducing the leaves to leave their tree and fall blissfully into the void. And the evening star shone so bright as to give hope and endurance to last through the cold and harsh coming winter.

But it is not only the lovely Venus; Mars have come forth with all its fiery and loomed in the sky with alarming brightness. It could only mean on thing. Mars have never been a good lier: War is at hand, Violence is near, Listen for the cry of the battle and be prepared, it says. Mars, the god of War.

And wise old Jupiter sat quite dim never flashing it's multihued brilliance. Waiting for something. He has been more careful while dealing out Luck this time. He only imparts wisdom and intelligence freely but seldom luck, which is unusual for a planet,the luckiest of them all.

To the mundane eyes they are just a piece of light hangling in the sky. But for those who have the Eye to see, they reveals a lot. The movements of the planets and the mysterious portents they reveal only to those who understand the steps of the Celestial Dance.

Giving Advice

Have you ever got advice unasked for? Have you given advice to your close and dear ones, without their asking for it? We all have done this, and sometimes, we may regret upon it. We take advice only from those who are superior to us; and who indeed are superior to each of ourselves?

I often say to my friends, “Come not to me for counsel, for I will say both no and yes”. I seldom give unguarded advice, for advice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise, and all courses may run ill.How can I give advice to another when he has not told me all concerning himself. Who knows better than him about himself; and how then shall I choose better than him? And seldom do I heed to other’s advice, for advice is taken only from those who are superior. And who is more superior to me? Vain, am I not?

But counsel I give and counsel I take. For counsel means the act of exchanging ideas and thought, without acting superior to the other person. Isn’t it wonderful?! It is.

Pandora's Box

It is a compulsion that I should write a blog about Pandora now, for a promised was made. I believe that most of you might have heard about Pandora’s Box. The legend goes like this:

The king of gods, Zeus(Jupiter) blessed (cursed?) humankind by giving him the first woman, and called her Pandora. The gods gifted her a Jar as a wedding present, into which every god had put some blessing (and curses). It was told to Pandora that the Box should never be opened, and as long as the contents are in the Jar, they will work for good.

But unwittingly she, overcame with curiosity, opened it and all the contents flew out. Pandora hastened to replace the lid! But, alas! The whole contents of the jar had escaped except one tiny little thing, which lay at the bottom, and that was hope.

So we see to this day, whatever evils are abroad, hope never entirely leaves us; and while we have that, no amount of other ills can make us completely wretched. For a person is not so wretched as the one who has lost al hope.

Why Indeed?

Why is the world round? Why did the chicken cross the road? Why is Daffy on the show? Why did Fred marry Wilma? Why are we on this earth? Why, why, why?The question is ‘why?’ Why do people always ask, why? Why do they always want a Reason? Is it necessary to always consult Her (Reason)? And why does Miss-goody-two-shoes Conscience always back Her up? Can’t we just believe something without asking why? It was so easy when we were children, we believe in ghost and didn’t ask why, we believed in Angels and didn’t ask why.

Only this evening, just after the sun set, I witnessed the bright star of Earendil (actually planet Venus), most beloved of the elves, in its high tide. So bright it was that my figure cast a dim shadow on the ground (Maybe that was because of the bulbs around me, but that is beside the point). I was remarking to some of my friends, that such moments are one of those which people remark ‘A thing of beauty is a joy forever’ with dreamy eyes. And without so much as noticing the bright star beckoning him to her beauty, he asked of me, “WHY SO?”

Surprised I was not, for human folly is not new to me. But I didn't give him an answer, for some things are better to be left unsaid. How can I explain why the Star of Earendil is so bright and beautiful? How can I explain him Why Fred married Wilma? There are some things which are to be taken for granted and burden not the fragile Reason. She is already too tired of herself. Life is too short to indulge in the whims and caprices of Curiosity.

Morning without Sunrise?

So many things I pondered upon, yet I come no nearer the truth. Is a morning complete without a sunrise? Is an evening beautiful without a sunset? Is the night beautiful without a twinkling star?

I say no, for it is the sunrise that makes the morning, it is the sunset that completes the evening, it is the stars that give serenity to the night. Without them the rest are just void.

What is a man without a virtue, what is a person without an aim? A void. It is rightly said, “An idle mind is Devil’s workshop”, for what is mind without a question? A void.

Verily, it is the virtue that purifies the man. It is the aim that leads the person; it is the question that awakes the mind.

What is life without a quest? What is love without a feeling? What is kindness without giving? What is forgiveness without accepting? A void.

It is the quest that makes life. It is the feeling that conquers love. It is giving that shows kindness. It is the acceptance that renders forgiveness.

And I came no nearer the truth.

Tyranny

I hated it when there is a war inside me. I hate it most when Conscience, with her usual poised calm, turns her harsh gaze at Passion in a disapproving fashion, speaking clearly with her eyes that if she befreind the vile man called Lust she would thrust her down to unsounded depths of agony.
Reason, with her usual composed self, sided with Conscience, and told Passion, in a warm and less harsh tone, that Lust with his cousin, Desire, are to be looked upon only from a safe distance, for they are subtle and quick to degrade others.
It is a good thing that concience is so pure and reason so right. Without them I would not be where I am right now and my passion would have run wild away with lust and desire.

Till you are here resting with me

By a slight glance at the entries below, one would almost be forced to believe that the person he is dealing with has a heart of stone and a passion of a dead tree; and I am sure that they might be almost right. Why, the very important subject of love is not even grazed or touched upon in any of the 7 entries below. Such heartlessness, such cruelty, such inhuman behavior.

But alas! that is not so, how much I try to be or try not to be inhuman, I cannot escape from the very clutches of the most powerful force in the universe; love. No matter how far I run from it, it continues to haunt me day and night.

How lucky it is to be a human and be able to experience love. Life is beautiful, as I always maintain and the reason behind it is love. The kind and patient smile of a mother to her child; The heartburns of a boy, when he missed his beloved; The friend who would gave up his live for the sake of friendship. That is love.

The above passage reveals the very ignorance of me in this matter. I know so little yet feel a lot. How strange it is. I am what I am, I do what I want, but I can't breath till you are resting here with me.

Hospital Delirium

Good Great God! How terrible were the days in hospital. There were whole days in which I wanted to die instead of bearing the infernal pains. Whenever the doctor is there, every thing is fine, the worst is during the night, when all souls slumbers, except the one who is in pain. I writhed and coil between the sheets hoping the pains will go away if I keep doing that. How wrong I was! The pain never goes away. It is etched deep within me. Even as I sit here now, writing this, some vague presence of it remains, haunting me. I don't know if I could be wholly cured out of this. The medicaton is still going on but will it help? Only time will tell. And as such, let us have patience.

Interest Lost?

Long has been the time since I wrote something in my blog page. And that is not because, though one may be misled to believe, I have lost interest in blogging. Becasue of the highly time demanding internship we had, writing blogs almost become impossible. But now since I am back in hostel, expect this page to be updated quite frequently. Till then, contant vigilance. Oh! and by the way you can check another of my blogpage at
http://360.yahoo.com/njohneyadamson.

The END is near!

March died a slow death, and April sprang forth with all its naivete and unlike March, without a trace of cunning wile. But here I am down with life almost as if it has wasted unto the fragments of half remembered dreams. At such times, the heart desires to break the laws and forget the principles. But conscience, turned tyrant, held Passion by the throat, told her tauntingly, she had yet but dipped her dainty foot in the slough, and swore that with that arm of iron he
would thrust her down to unsounded depths of agony. He reasoned : laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. And as such, I acceptted my conscience and agreed to continue with this ever going life.

Good times

The swan-song of the last winter chill swept over barren wild moors of Gwalior, leaving a dry and seasoned IIITM. In the midst of it, an unsignificant being, known as Johney among his friends, is relishing every bit of melancholy and beauty of the dying winter. Only a few days back, he were at an entirely different locale, Delhi. The same cold zephyr wraped the entire belt with its cold icy fingers, which have become brittle due to the long exposure to its cold self. And there, he wraped himself up as snug as he could and experienced the wild drives in the frenzy traffic of frenetic delhi. And now, he is sitting in his room in the ever vain Gwalior, reminiscing the good times he had over the past few weeks. Life must be truly beautiful for such simple persons, who took pleasures out of such simple things.

Oh! Time, Please wait for me

The cold and windy january blew itself out in a wild frenzy, leaving behind only a pale imprint on our lives. The clear and beautiful february came bringing with herself all the cheerfulness she could muster from the chillsome place she calls home.

The minor exams passes by without even bothering to say a 'Hi' or 'Hello'. Still life goes on as if it is only yesterday that the long holidays started. Classes are a far off dreams, which comes as nightmares in an increasingly alarming frequency.

The unremitting lectures of the visiting professors have turn out to be a plethora of feckless tutelage. Often I wonder whether if life could get any more interesting than this.

Big test == Exam

First of all, I would like to impress upon all that Exam == a big test. If Exam is only testing, then why not call it a bigtest?? That should have been a proper word and it would have make things less confusing.
I think I should bang myself first before writing such useless things. Well, off for some more banging! ;-)

Late for class

I am here, wasting my time, instead of having my life bored out of me listening to the lectures of the teacher, writing a blog. In truth, I only wanted to make a new account so that I can comment on a blog that one of my friend wrote.
Well, what I am waiting for? Off with the comment........