While my guitar gently weeps..

While half the world falls in love and half wakes up to get going for work, my heart wanders in search of free days and free nights and indulges in wishful thinking again, as usual....And all I manage is coax it, but the thoughts emerge like a volcano, all over again.

A scorching night and some cold air and I long to hold that hand. And I don’t even know if that hand wants to hold mine.

On a cold wintery evening, on a little hilltop, I want to listen to the silence. I want my eyes to well up looking at you. But I don’t even know if you want to look back.

I don’t know where is this world? I am not even sure if it will ever exist.
And while my guitar gently weeps, I want to lie in possible ambiguity, in the scorching night and the cold wintery night and go across the universe holding that hand, without that hand even knowing about it.

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The title has been taken from one of the very beautiful tracks by Beatles

Go Kiss the World

It is raining cats and dogs at an hour when I should not be out. Or may be I should be. Who cares? Do I? Anybody else does? I am running as fast as possible in small but still big pools of water, looking for shelter which is to be found nowhere.

I am all drenched up till the skin and may be far inside too, water dripping constantly from my nose, running like a penguin amid a small heard of people and going where all of them are. But a strong urge to not go with all of them and I suddenly take a back turn. Suddenly? No I thought about it for around ten seconds!

I try looking for a shelter on my own in a different direction on a way that looks bizarre, deserted and totally out of place. Well totally out of being a rebel without a cause. But still there is no regret, no guilt mounting up as it used to.

I find a place to stand for a while, one or two people passing by occasionally, somebody even making a pass. I give a bad stare and he shoves of for a while.
I pick up all my bags and finally rush into this Madame shop I had been looking for. The shutter would have gone down in another 5 minutes. Well made it just on time!!!!
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Is shopping a woman’s prerogative? Well not all the time. But its therapy for sure. Try it to believe it!! The title of the post has been taken from Subroto Bagchi’s new book

Singing it Right

TEST DRIVE

Battling butterflies in her stomach, our correspondent dons the avatar of a ghazal singer for an evening

I have always loved singing, and this led to my parents getting me trained in classical music as a kid. It did come to good use as I opted to spend an evening at the InterContinental Eros in Delhi as a ghazal singer. I met the team of musicians with whom I was going to perform at the the Singh Sahib restaurant in the hotel. This is where our audience of diners would sit. I met my team of musicians for the evening. We greeted each other with the customary aadaab. Our small team consists of Raja Ali on the harmonium who is also the head musician, Mohammad Mobeen Ahmed on the sitar and Shaqeel Ahmad on the tabla. The tehzeeb is unmistakable with these seasoned musicians. Priya Wankhade, the lead female singer of the group, was given an off today because yours truly was taking centrestage!

Becoming a ghazal singer for an evening sounds quite exciting but performing in front of an audience is no easy task. While we waited for people to enter the restaurant we tuned the instruments and kept our copies of ghazal lyrics handy.
It was soon 8.30 pm and here I was all set to start off my first song for the evening. That is when the butterflies in my stomach went into a tizzy. I should have had the pineapple juice offered to me when I entered the hotel. My polite refusal, with “Mera gala kharaab ho jayega” was not a wise decision especially now all I could say pleading for water was “Mera gala sookh raha hai!”

The word ghazal means, ‘to converse with the beloved’ in Arabic. Here the beloved were a group of hungry diners. Raja Ali knew it was difficult for me to begin, so he sang the customary traditional ‘vandana’. It did help me relax a bit, I then took a deep breath and began with Jagjit Singh’s ghazal Jhuki Jhuki si nazar bekaraar hai ke nahi. A few people from the audience seemed tickled by the choice of song, and smiled at me, I smiled back, but couldn’t linger on the attention. I had to look back at the diary for the lyrics.

While orders for tandoori chicken and paneer korma made their way to the kitchen and liquor made an appearance on the tables, I started on the second song, again a Jagjit Singh number— Hoton se choo lo tum, mera geet amar kar do. Now with their orders arriving at the table, few people were interested in the music. It felt a bit discouraging and I remembered what the food and beverage manager said to me before we began, “You can perform as long as my guests don’t run away!”

I tried to get my audience back with the popular Bollywood ghazal sung by Lata Mangeshkar, Aapki nazron ne samjha, pyar ke qabil mujhe. And well, this time I did get a few approving nods. Then I tried to touch on something more unconventional. I sang a Sufi number, Mere Maula karam ho karam, which was planned to be the last number of the evening. Half way through the song I realized that there was absolute silence around me, no clatter of fork and knives, no din of conversations. I sang this one with my eyes shut. I don’t know who was looking and who wasn’t and this time I did not care. I ended the evening with a Ghalib couplet: Hazaro khwahishe aisi ki har khwahish pe dum nikle, bahut nikle mere armaan phir bhi kam nikle ( A myriad desires were ours, for each we’d life forego. Many longings were fulfilled but too few even so.)

The crowd then finally applauded and there were a few song requests too! The evening was finally a success.
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One of my stories in Indian Express where passion and profession was merged into one

Hi

Hi people

I havent forgotten my blog. A lot of you have been complaining but I am just a little too occupied with my work. I am going to be back with a story soon. Thank you all of you for being concerned. Its a lovely feeling when people want you back.

Desire

Want is a terrible thing.
The desire, so difficult to tackle
that it is almost on the verge of breaking the complete inner self
The strange thing is that this desire is so strong that it is ready to overpower your completeness and rise like a deamon, all set to make life more messy. It hurts, hurts really hard in the abdomen somewhere.
Is it love?
Is it fear?
When am I going to feel the air that has the whiff of the bougainvillea (it does not have a whiff)
Its getting difficult by the day
I am going to do something about it soon
What exactly?
Well I will do what i want to
God! Want again!
But the pain has to stop before sleep overtakes me

The Balloon Man

Different shapes, different sizes, different colours and more colours and my heart surmises.

Looking at those wonderous stuff on the cart, the actual non fiction things that can ride the air and take my messages across layers, wriggling its way higher and higher, with the sun still glinting the effervescent colour, the feeling is incredibly overwhelming.

But mommy tells me to stay away from him. Even Anne’s mommy does. They say he will kidnap us one day. She never lets me buy the balloon myself.

My heart weakens when he isn’t there everyday as he never misses, come what may. The everyday shout, “Balloons.. different shapes, different sizes, different colours and more colours…”

Mouse shape is my darling. And the yellow doll that I get for one shilling

As he huffs and puffs, as his lips touch the balloons and they get ready to touch the moon, I have never seen an iota of ‘its difficult’ on his visage which is not smiling, neither angry, nor upset. The gas ones are the best and cost two shillings but are definitely worth it.

The Balloon man didn’t come today.

There is no wind either.

As I climb up the tree to let go off the balloon that is stuck in one of the branches I am able to stare across the wall.

He sits there with his back towards the wall, looking deep into the emptiness of the air, occasionally staring at a picture in deep reverie.

Our eyes meet and he signals me to enter.

I enter the open houseless porch and he smiles at me. At this point I definitely hope to get one of the yellow doll balloons for free.

He grabs me from my hand, puts me into his sack and all I can feel next is suffocation and two feet that are running hard. All I do is shout for my mommy!
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I trust people. But it doesn’t always go my way!

Nothingman's Birthday

If given a choice Nothingman would say this- "I don't like celebrating my birthday. Frankly, I don't know what the significance of birthdays is anymore. It's not like I don't want to be reminded that I am old. I grow older every day. I mean I am only one day older than yesterday, not one year. To me, time is a relative thing. It is an arbitrary unit created by quantifying events that happen. Why does an hour have 60 minutes? Why 24 hours in one day? If the people who created the units on Mars, would we get the same results? Mass and length do.

Back to birthdays, I just don't like it because I don't know how to feel on that day. Happy and grateful that I've survived another year? Sad and depressed that I've grown older but not wiser? Angry that no one remembers or cares about it? I sometimes feel alone and I want to be alone. Sometimes I even want to forget that day even. Every year I plan to hide and not be known. But every year I will go through those feelings and I hate that uncomfortable feeling the whole day.

I feel like I want a celebration, but I don’t like telling others my birthday. It is like there isn’t a point in giving out that information because I am not going to get anything. Even with loved ones, good friends, they all don’t remember. I don’t want to be reminding them; that is just blunt.

Others celebrate their birthdays by throwing a party and inviting a lot of people. I don’t do that anymore. I used to give out sweets to everyone in class and close friends on my birthday because that is the thing to do. My last biggest celebration was when I was 10 when even my father’s friends came. I have no idea why. As I grew older, the parties got smaller, even to a point of just a wish from my family. We used to be able to pick our own presents and nothing was ever a big surprise. From the kiddie toys to the story books, everything was what I wanted. In my teenage years, my gifts became more like everything I needed, practical items. This, was always given by my sister. In the end, whenever I get gifts or receive any, I would prefer something more lasting. I don’t like perishable goods, like chocolates or candy.

For the past few years now, I didn’t get any presents for my birthday. I am just getting used to that. Then it hit me as to why… it is just another day.

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Sourced from the Internet. But this time Nothingman gets this on his birthday as somewhere he feels some part of this (That's what i think) But anyways Many Happy returns of the day