for it is the deep blue ocean, river, lake, estuary or sea,
of which we always fear of land and miss of what our eyes do see

as there lies the sky of yesterday
the rain of today

the water, for us mortals, come tomorrow
words diverse but of the same root they borrow

and its to be discovered this disguise of form,
states of matter which we choose to name as a norm

life is does support varied and huge,
across its realms nestled in gentle refuge

be it from bird to bee,
or beast of land that crawls to those that bleat

to those that swim and float,
its one big Ark of a boat

dive deeper and you will know,
that familiar azure lively sky-ish glow

pODU

Which is one of the reasons why I plotted to maximze my 3 day working week when September morphed into an October and warned of the spares time left in 2008 (Gandhi Jayanti being one of the holidays!) 

Past many a google search and wiki page diegstion not to forget the Lonely Planet samplers online and I had some adventure sandwiched in between the original terminal September weekend plan of being a part of the historic night spectacle called the Singaporean F1 race! 

The iternerary read like this:

Sept 26th: Bangalore – Singapore

Sept 27&28th : Singapore – F1 & laze with long lost friends in SG & Shop for a camera

Sept 29th: Head off to KL to catch up with more friends and rest (laze!)

Sept 30th: Laze alone in Kota Kinabalu, snorkel in Tunku Abdul Rahman park

Oct 1st: Climb Mount Kinabalu

Oct 2nd: Summit Mt. Kinabalu as the sun lights the sky & head to Sandakan

Oct 3rd: Monkey business trying to ape other tourists in Sepilok Oran Gutan park … head back to KL

Oct 4th: Laze in KL and head back to SG as the sun dips into the West

Oct 5th: Adieu myself back to Bangalore from SG

This was the plan but there were ‘experiences’ one to many that resulted in a Bollywood-ish twist to the plot … to be waxed elequent over the next few posts for sure ; )

An impromptu trip to Chennai on work on the very day that I was to leave for SG all but pronounced my penchant with many a U turn and sudden plug-in to my waking hours.

I smelt a celestial conspiracy but calmed myself with the sheer familiarity with these ‘typical’ scenarios, trust me I’m one who deeply suspects that the person (lawyer) who wrote the disclaimers in our works of fiction “All characters, persons, incidents, events … lalalala ….. is unintentional and is purely a coincidence” wrote that with a mischievious smile on ; ) 

Having said that … looking back I muse to myself that,

the journey starts not when the date arrives,

neither that time beyond which a holiday is born & survives

nor that place that one calls as the destination,

or that period of time called a holiday or a vacation

but that very moment when a feeling of joy erupts,

on discovering an emotion that ‘escape’ and ‘freedom’ stirs up

the people, the place, the memories, the experience, the time,

is nothing but a rediscovery of oneself … true, wild, natural, human and sublime

Some discount that with the usual caveat of what you buy you keep ~ sorry no exchanges during the discount period as what more do you want???? Freeorwhat???? kinda deal….

reminded me of how I nearly settled into a pair of low cut denim that I eventually realised was meant for women!!! : ( phew that was close … nearly snipped off the labels (strict NO-NO) for many a retailer…

talking of retailers I wonder what caused the logo change in Shopper Stop? It looks more like a shirt label on the inside of the shirt below the collar! Funny I dunno how much the agency must have been paid for something that’s just a format change!!!

These Romans are crazy ….. does that ring a bell??!? : >

1. Ok, for starts my barber sorry hair dresser!
2. The newspaper/s ~ the Mumbai Times TOI habit is long forgotten!!
3. The TV channel numbers eg. 22 for NDTV, 55 for VH1, 60 for Asianet (Mellu tendencies die hard!!)
4. The doctor/dentist combine and comfort zones that they provide
5. The restaurant habit especially the home delivery story
6. The Mumbai/erstwhile city routine of wake up at 7-8am, laze, vanity check/fix that includes shower/s@#t/Shave et al…
7. The vernacular accent depending on the region and level of ease of passing off as a local/alien who masquerades as a person who spills a few words!
8. and of the people that make a place what it is to me …

Now this was close to a year ago when I rounded up a 20+ two-day long training session with the last Delhi session which was after a Pune session when my back got streeeeeeeeeeeetched bad courtesy a Pune-Mumbai bus ride (which isn’t too comfy for tall (6 feet plus) frames such as moi is!

A prat fall in my bathroom and I thought hey that was close to have not gotten into deeper !@#$ … was in the bathroom after all wasn’t Oi!! To make things worse I sneezed hard as I bent over to pick up my morning read ( a.k.a. newspaper!) and viola … there was that Lord reminding pain in the lower back!!!!

Kingdom Ouch as I’d call it later : (

I thought to myself that anyways I’m close to a week away from an ayurvedic session that should massage, grease and sauna my back into sync!

Funny thought that as I visited my local Ayurveda (Siddha Vaidya to be precise!) doc and spelt out the symptoms hopin for him to pass on a cliche – sauna, oil massage, rest on the flat bed minus the mattress therapy …. but … ahem …. did he just say MRI scan?

True he’s a qualified MBBS (nope not a swear word acronymn) and he knew as well what it meant ~ somethin more than the usual black and white see through photograph of your skeleton that an Xray is but a clearer cross section thingy … that costs … gulp … 6000 one rupee smiling Gandhi notes : <

‘super shit’ me thought back then as I literally picked up my jaw from the mosaic floor and clung onto my white mundu … whatsallthatsupposedtomean??? …. in exactly that format without the spaces!!!

consultations with other docs and I realised that I’m part of the select many (oxymoron filter is set to OFF) of the urbane lifestyle ill who ‘toil our bones off’ and wake up into conditions that techincally would set in a decade or two later … guess that what they meant when I worked over 2 man years in one : (

anyways its quite an objective (and objectionable!) feeling whenever one’s patiently undergoes a diagnostic check of sorts … the MRI scan in my case …

for starts they dress you like a lab mouse – soft blue is the prefered color and yes they do make you strip into nothingness besides your MRI penetrable garb … sitting outside for your turn makes one listen hard .. to oneself .. to whatamIdoinghere kinda fleetin thoughts .. to whatdidIdotodeservethisKrsnaGuruvayoorappaVausdeva?!?! .. to the strange noises that escape the fortified walls that scream Danger:Radioactive that you start trusting others (builders and contractors) who build the place .. hopefully safe!!!

Noises … the MRI machine’s more like a food factory miller (the same stuff that your non vegetarian friend’s mothers/fathers/guardians would shove chunks of meat into to get noodles of minced meat!) okokok for the benefit of the vegans and non non-vegetarians its like how you shove rice balls (kozhaikatta) to get sevai (rice noodles) North Indians and other non-Indians please google for kheema making or … well kozhaikatta!

so MRI machines (am I’m seriously annoyed at my tangents of late!!!) and the noises they make … its like a speaker amplifies the control room operators instructions behind a screen … almost makes you feel like a music directors nudgin you to sing into a well … and you prop yourself into the flat bed .. cold by the way and I think it isn’t the A/c but more about the analysis to be ..

they belt you velcro hard and then wrap a white sheet on top .. I always wanna ask them for instructions as nearly 85% of the common folks get what’s to be done in many a situation .. like get into a plane and seat-belt thyself up, keep left as you drive in India, et al … & I am part of the uncommon 15% : (

so uncommon that I felt like being in a plastic tunnel with speakerless headphones (yes they had cotton on them instead!) … and that’s when the computer game noises started ….. you tend to think if these noises have any sensational effect on your skin other then … the noise ie. … and then after a while one feels like its more or less boring to listen to the computer game-ish space ship noises of the machine and start playin the machine …

…ok lets lateral the subject … engage … disengage …

frontal view .. focus … lock .. engage .. disengage … engage again (ah! this is fun) .. disengage … engage … magnify … (is this for real!) … engage … engage again … disengage … ok (that’s enough visceral stuff for one day!) phew ok next …

… and that my friends, in case I kept you .. engaged till here is what explains the picture .. of how a small bump out of the white disc tickles the nerve loud in the traffic jam of a situation in the lower exterimities of one’s spine!

L5 S1 for the docs … yell5 Yes1 for me : )

those tickles that makes one think that life isn’t fair for the young … why me? why now? and all that spunk

but its that moment when one look with wonder call this archetecture that supports life … at the design of one deep within and of the many systems that literally support you alive … enduring every bounce on the road, every moment when you jumped high in euphoria … every moment when one felt alone .. there are parts of us that make Me into We

… and that we need such reminders that there’s a moment in life when we can choose to life in shock, anger and pain or to enjoy what’s ahead in plain fun, happiness and joy ; )

… that moment visited me on this anniversary week for L5 S1 to have entered my vocabulary of words and experiences … and I choose again to look at life surviving yesterday & today with a smile ahead, ready and enthusiastic of what tomorrow holds for us all ; >

I’ll heal but I’ll ne’er forget the wonderful lessons yearning to be discovered in each fold of what we call as ‘Bad News’ : >

Its funny when the increase in pace of the loops of daily routine events that you do define your concept of time … which in turn controls your body clock/age/ stubble growth/gene translation … et al

in short that’s what’s causing the fatigue as I adopt my adaptation into another 1 BHK format in south Central India … reason the puff pant … or was it the impromptu games of badminton (the shuttle format not the ball one!) over the weekend @ Manori??? me thinks … anyways did doze off my muscle curls over the past 2 days after another day on UPS last Ugadi monday

another city another time,

perhaps a new leaf to turn this, soft and sublime

today’s fast a memory as tomorrow sleep walks in,

time’s more like a glacier thawing its self into a river … warmin the ice thin

familar faces frozen in pictures yet alive in the mind,

for one to rejoice on as and when one chooses to rewind

new places, new faces in an ancient land,

relationship to forge, friendships to rekindle of what was once thought of as ‘canned’!

my eyelids droop and shelter my eyes from the truth called reality,

and opens up another land of dreams, memories and plain idiosyncratic confetti

hours and minutes to wear out before the clock ages the day into the past,

for then the darkness of the twlight shall on this earth cast

and friend’s and family might remember me,

as they sip their beverage warm ~ be it tea or coffee

one more opportunity for me to adopt the adapt routine,

its a familiar city with a strange neo cultural sheen

could take some this for me to call this part of the globe a home,

& hope that by then it isn’t time to pack up & leave a house for a home 

… with furniture and all alone

Just survived a transit karma in the MG Road-u neighbourhood where my bread’s winner role’s gonna shift soon post a meeting with my client and fate had it that I belt out my accented Kannada … “err…. solpa straight hogi … aaaah… stop madthene” (confident smile!)

the “aaah” is to be imagined in its Malluesque best (try listening in to a Mallu conversing with another Mallu and you’d understand the twang intended here!!!)

Accented Kannada one might thing …. soori … think … accented as its exactly what my recent language skills are skewin towards and screwing up to … I can pick accents well but my vernacular vocab is seriously limited ~ much alike a 4 MB mp3 song or an sms limit of 160 characters!

 So I do shy away from scribbling Kannada into my Languages spoken section in my resume that is about … ummmm… lesse 3.6 years olde! Some loyalty thou might question … will save that for another post that : )

 In case you noticed that was my first smiley after eons and alphabets … something to cheer about the reverse loop tangent (I’ve got no idea of what that’s supposed to mean ~ just in the mode of decamping all the words I picked up over this week!)

so that’s the current at the moment from Bengaluru where …

the twilight’s almost nudged into the dawn,

many a TV flicks as the audience flips channels on and on…

decibels scream as the employed head back home,

some choose family to return to … some choose to get plain blown

entertainment’s the flavor as the light glimmers artificial and bright,

we’ve discovered every way to simulate reality ~ bringin the day out of the night

… miles and centimeters to head to a borrowed bed,

warm with its welcome and comforting dreams to audience ahead

home’s a moving target as the day’s week past a month,

there’s new things to discover and many a memory to forget plain and blunt!

… adieus to bid, names, birthdays & anniversaries to remember,

of those beloved annually from January to December

alas the clock’s ticked into a worrisome yogic pose,

its time to trudge homewards, Kannada myself pretty and slip into a doze!

 oh and not to mention the flyin alarms a.k.a. mosquitoes that whisper our dreams into semi-sleep ambushes … funny I counted 3 dead ones against my skin and one against the bedlinen (thankfully Male bedsheets don’t give away any telltale signs do they … besides I was alone ) … sorry ’bout that tangent … where were we now .. ah…. on how skillful each one of us are when it comes to semi-sleep stealth retailiation on mosquitoes! Some neandrathal vestige me thinks …

so there I was watchin and walkin the sleep in me away as I SantaCruzed myself away into Andheri briefly stoppin to spot the tailwing of many a Titanium bird … Qatar Airways … Some big huge bellied and bison humped Jumbo (I was right under it hence the lack of classification!)

the Qatar airways flight made me work my mental math into action with a slice of geography included here to estimate if the pax onboard the bird to let say Doha would actually not miss hours as they might get in within 2.5 hours which is close to the GMT difference between Mumbai and Doha! Someday we might travel that fast that we feel less guilty of the loss of time! Imagine if we finally got rid of that phrase ‘You’re such a waste of time!’

thought as much about how to weather work for the day as my batteries dried on and the caffiene in my cola (nah I won’t tell which one … u guess!) didn’t help all to much but free some gastro state of matter … that really does not matter!!!

Its strange how mini power naps help to choke oneself up … what’s more amazing is how our consciousness merges with liquid finesse whenever one drifts off into siesta land … its more like how the train shifts from one track to another as it leaves a station …

guess that’s enough that one can key in for the day in my current state of consciousness … ta for now civilised folks … there’s many a dream to catch up with and a lot more winks and sheep to count off ….. zzzzzzzz off dear eyeballs … rest soon in another smaller post perhaps! brevity virtues can be bettered someotherday!

Anyways I hope that I get over my ‘blog-fright’ and start posting interesting anecdotes from my many observations of life in the near future.

Its kind of a dress rehersal of sort for me to see how folks like my writing and how many e-smiles/Chuckles I manage to inspire with my etch and long borne itch to …well.. write and (more importantly) be read

 Lastly I shall try in any humanely possible way to summarize myself … please do ‘pardonne moi’ when it comes to the occassional slip though … mercy be with you ; )

great … the ice has begun to thaw : >

Warning: Smileys and Tangents Ahead!!!