Congrats TRAI

Dear TRAI,
I just want to congratulate your absolutely foolproof brilliant plan to stop spam messages!
Who cares about people who are unable to console their friends about a broken dream or breakup because their hundred messages for the day are over and they have only ten paise balance!
Apart from spam messages, you have also efficiently put a stop to all those random forwards we send to those “friends” (…;)) with whom we desperately wanted to start a conversation! But hey, don’t bother about us! You need to block SPAM messages!
You have given us greater excuses to not stay in touch with friends who we rarely talk to but want to often and can’t because of difficulty in balancing our balance! But hey! Congrats! You have successfully demolished one of the main reasons why messaging was so convenient! (And as a friend points out you have shift+delete -d all the possibilities of eligible kadalai over sms  )
And Mr. Zuckerberg must be totally happy with you because now, thanks to you, all those desperate “i want to make a conversation” messages are flowing in the form of facebook chat windows! I’m surprised he hasn’t announced his special respect for you yet!
Also, you have outdone all management lessons by teaching us three things – the value of each message, how to be more active on the internet and hating you! My heart goes out to all those poor “class representatives”, and “club presidents” who have to move themselves to an internet lab where many computers don’t work to send those group messages about a class or a meeting getting cancelled and to those students who turn up for the meeting or class because their class rep or presi couldn’t send them those group messages!
And you want to know the reason why I’m writing this letter to you now? I just taught my mother to text because she was getting worried that I was too busy to pick her calls! And bingo, you come along and I anyways, have to pick her calls now (or get her worried) because my hundred messages usually don’t last for more than a couple of hours!
And you see, multiple sim cards don’t work for many of us as we have gazillions of contacts to text, all of whose numbers we are unable to transfer as we have a life to live! And not all of us have dual sim phones! And thanks to you, the sale of multiple sim phones is going to increase!
You have proved that the answer to a problem is not an efficient solution but another huge problem! But hey! Congrats on solving the problem of spam smses most of which we still receive and almost all of which never bothered us anyway! And thanks A LOT!

Regards,
Troubled people

REVERIE.

   When the skies prepared for the showers, my mind was filled with memories of my childhood, penetrating so deep that, the scents of those dragged me into a state of reminiscence.

   Then I realised how beautiful these scents were; the scents that brood in me with obligations, which even shape my life. The smells which tend to bloom into a philosophical poem, influencing my thoughts. Smells of love, passion, agony, mischief, disaster, warmth, care, etc., which sometimes intoxicate me or sometimes make  me to gloom and solitude. They sometimes cover my ego with their selfless wings or sometimes abandon me at once.

   Back in the days…

   I remember how beautiful the rains were in my childhood. When the first showers of monsoon intruded into the earth, disturbing the stagnant smells, which at once jumped up majestically everywhere, I ran out in rain, closed my eyes and inhaled. It gave me a state of exhilarant, and suddenly I felt nothing, but only the rain and the joy delivering me from all thoughts, worries, parting me from the other part of the world. These smells were my constant companions, with whom I mused, I played, I dreamed and I lived. 

    Thankfully, there are still traces of these scents. OK, back to Nostalgia.

Orange flower

Go Confidently in the direction of your dreams, live the life you have imagined. A quote by Henry David Thoreau with a purple zinnia and a garden full of colorful flowers.

 

"To Write."

Writing is a craft, and in the hands of a writer it turns into an art.

   

Pencil vs Pen

   I will not talk about pen here. I prefer using pencil, even now. Some-many-people ask me why don't you use pen for everything.
 
  Even some teachers give notes in my school books to use pens completely and to shun pencils.

  Sometimes I asked myself, "Why should I use pen when I like pencil more than pen?"
  

     Then I got an answer: Because you're a SENIOR now." 

    Is this it?

Okay, I’ll ask again then, “Why Senior High School students HAVE TO USE pen?”

Look, pencil is classic. If you make a mistake while you writing, you can use the eraser. If you use pen, it’s permanent. You can use something like a “corrector”, but it makes your paper dirty—I think.

I have another reasons why I love pencil.

1. You can tuck your pencil behind your ear.
2. You can sharpen your pencil.
3. Pencil is cheap.
4. If your pencil is wet, you can dry it. But for pen, you must think about the ink.
5. Pencil is durable.

See? Please, I love pencil more than pen. I remember when my teacher said to me, “Your writing is not clear if you use pencil.” Then, I think, the problem is my writing, not my pencil. Though I use pen, my writing will be as ugly as USUAL.

Please, don’t force me.

Thank you.

That Character

    I’ve been reading a lot of mystery fiction lately: Eoin Colfer, , etc.

    Aside from the fact that they’re all about mysteries and  to detect aforementioned mysteries, they’re also some of the  more depressing books I’ve read. These writers have crafted worlds populated with brainless thugs,subtle plots and smart detectives.

There is horror here, and it ain't too cheerful too, but it gives me lots of ideas, ideas for writing, ideas for stories and beyond.

  Could this be me as a prelude?

Fair *warning*- Words Ahead

     There are so many nearly-born blog posts floating around in my head. None of them worth their pixels to anyone but me. As they lie there in increasingly dark and dusty corners, the spiders of oblivion making them cobwebby and obscure, they decay. Bits of them break off and grow legs and begin to scuttle around, making scratching noises and muttering resentfully. Frankly, the racket is starting to get on my nerves.

    And so. Therefore. Prepare yourself, dear reader, for a barrage of (or, at least, several) meaningless posts aimed at little more than reducing the noise in my head. It’s all just words, really, but it’s the words that I love, after all. But I do love giving surprises. So there could be nothing too.

   Well. It is the last day of September and I am a brooding a bit for that. I love September. It’s my favorite month and it’s almost over. A whole year of waiting for it again . . . it feels kind of like finishing a favorite book. Satisfying, except you’re not ready to be done with it yet. (This is of course referring back to the days when I read books.)
 
  

"Hope."

"Instilling hope."

  'Cause hope is important.

"Books."

     

Melody of the beckoning Golden

GOLDEN REALMS

  I had been at the Port Blair airport recently, and I got this lucky opportunity. Of course, I didn't miss this shot.
 

      Here's a snap of a beach at Havelock Island, a part of Andaman and Nicobar Islands:

Sunset...., one of natural phenomenon, it relate with sun, sky, afternoon and evening moment..just so natural, suddenly sky will change it colors..like a rainbow and sometime its like red n brown beyond the dark yellow.

 

Writing again

    I find that I am able to write again. Not saying what I’ve been writing is good. Just that I have not written my next writing project (a fantasy novel) in many months, and now it's back. What a pleasant surprise.

    Thankful to the project I started a year ago. Voila.

EXAMINATION BLUES

   

   The sun weighs down upon my soul.

   It's a few hundred degrees as soon it's safe to call it a morning. I would've said it felt cold and dark because that's what it's like on the inside, but this holy Sun of ours has left me with no choice.

   It had been many days and I couldn't write right. there was this lack of concentration feeling again. I was bottling up my thoughts, waiting for them leak or erupt out anytime. The brutal school life had been taking its toll- as if taking time to catch up there wasn't enough, there were these cumbersome unusually useless files, lost pens and emotional overloads. 

  Of course, I need to stop talking crazy, but hey, issues come strangle me by the neck. With ink-spotted shirts and parched throats, I make my way towards the semester examination hall. Not to forget the fire-eyed invigilators, waiting for someone to peek around. And of course, the silence of a friend in the examination hall, which sometimes brings tears.

   All factors of examination blues, in my case.

 

  

A title of titles, like, to end them.

    Writing entries is by and large a breeze for me. The words tend to flow readily, as if they’ve been scrabbling at the gate that is my fingertips and waiting to be set free.
 
    Clicking “Publish” is another matter. By contrast to the writing, that seemingly small step can take me days to complete.

      Somewhere between these two tasks on the effort-required spectrum is titling my posts. It wasn’t always something I thought about. At the beginning, oh so many months ago*, I’d slap on the first accurate title that sprang to mind. Happily, these mostly didn’t result in titles like “Today is Thursday” or “Rocks are Pretty.”

     There have occasional lame titles, but nothing too bad to rant about here.

      And yes, i must add that this post had been sitting in the draft folder for six weeks! Like Monday's email cleanup, i had let go of this one.

      And yes, recently I have been active on Twitter, and mastered the ability to condense thoughts into 140 characters. And hence, the title.

RIP Tiger Pataudi

Like all Indian cricket fans of my generation, I have never seen MAK in action. All that we have are old newspaper clippings, stories passed on to us by glorified media platforms of today.

So, I’m not in the best position to comment on his contributions to Indian cricket; but the common thread which runs through most of the eulogies is the fact that he was the first Indian captain who made the team and an entire nation believe that they can win and not just be satisfied with honorable draws.

A timely reminder to the present Indian team, a month after losing the Pataudi Trophy.

Rest in peace, Tiger.

Where has that music disappeared?

     One of the biggest amusing things about technology is that it can act as your good friend as well as a ruthless enemy. Recently I came across a website looking for someone deserving  to buy their used yet impressive collection of music cassettes.
  
    Of course, I didn't go for the offer, although this did set a thought process in my mind. Who would, in this digital era, understand their worth and preserve them?

    I hurried to my store cupboard and ran a quick glance through the shelf of unused dust-coated cassettes. There must have been a fifty of them, hiding in the cupboard. As I ran my fingers through their spines, memories gushed up.

  "Oh, this one I got one day lying in my room!"

  "That's the evergreen song my grandfather sings!"

   "Can that be my classic favourite?"

  In a matter of minutes, each of those cassettes got accounted for, with regard with their personal history associated with me, or better still, my childhood.

Today you can build an impressive collection of music by spending just one night on the computer. Not only that: you can even carry around those hundreds of songs in a device smaller than your thumb.

Those days, it would take you years to build a collection of music of your choice. There were so many procedures involved. And so you built your collection, brick by brick. Simultaneously, you also invested in ‘head cleaners' and in cassette holders, and paid visits to shops that recorded songs of your choice on blank cassettes for two rupees a song. Not to forget those distressing moments when the tape had to be rewound.

Music, in short, was sweat and blood: you had to earn it and work hard to preserve it. But technology intervened one fine morning. Today, even an 8GB pen drive or iPod can hold more music than you would ever want to listen to in your lifetime. But what do you do with the collection of cassettes you've painstakingly built over the years? Give them away? Doesn't that amount to giving away a chunk of your childhood or youth?

Are foreign influences killing Indian culture?

  This can be both a negative and a positive, and both, yes and a no.
  For the yes part of the topic post, let's get down to the various points. The institution of marriage is crumbling. Teenagers today, who are the most affected, do not respect our traditional values, and I, as a teen, feel this. Explicit exhibitionism in entertainment, TV cables, communication follow western trends. The focus is now on selfish, instant gratification, while the traditional values of humanity, service and patience are mocked.
    Of course, the western influence and the English language bind nations together. Learning English has given us the ability to communicate and socialize with the world, and thus this is a part of actively embracing globalization. So let's take the positives and leave the negatives, for God's sake.

My entry into Social Media

     Last week I got to know about wikiToday, an online free and open content magazine-cum- newspaper. I took to its threshold, for it would be a powerful platform for young enthusiastic bloggers and writers to express their opinion, analysis on any topic/ issue anywhere in the world.
     With the advent of electronic social media platforms, blogging for writers is like a necessity. So I submitted my article for evaluation and consent: "Are revolutions always good?"
   And much to my delight, I got a reply from the student owners of the website, saying that my post had been accepted and was now put up on the website under the 'Featured' Section. I feel pleased and will submit  further articles and posts for this wonderful website.
  And yes, by the way, here's the link to the post on WikiToday:  http://wikitoday.org/2011/world/is-revolution-always-good/
     Looking forward to more and more stupendous success with WikiToday.
 

Mokka- The Word, or shall we say, more than a word?

    Even though I have spent only four (long ones, I must say), I have learnt enough of the slang and the popular teen culture. Of course, the first word that comes to my mind is "mokkai."
     It is 7.30 in the evening.. I’m cycling alongside my friend on a narrow street. We spot a streetlight blinking on the roadside… (Thanks to the care taken by estate maintenance office). 'Oh, Mokka street.'
     MOKKA has become the most popular used word in teen culture of South India. Boring class, flopped movie, bad jokes, are all said as 'mokka.'
    Mokka initally referred to something boring. But the student community has definitely changed it. It even refers to word puns or indigestable jokes among the students and college-goers.
Every hour facebook walls and mobile texting screens are filled with these all over India and the world perhaps. “Mokka”s on corruption charges, court cases, movie stars, cricket, IPL, celebrities, exams and many more issues, things and people are being circulated as you read.
  With revised editions of dictionary words coming out often, let's hope Mokka makes it into the limelight too.

      
      

9/11

No one can fix it

Its been ten years

and no explanation

the price of life

the price of truth

the presence of terror and fear

yet lodged in our consciousness

Night Photography shots

 

Power sentence for every year of my life

  A Crazy blog title, I know! But it would inspiring to look back at those long 13 years.
  
 Arrived at the world, with a twin brother. Life must have been a bit easier in the second year. Began trusting parents in the few later years..
     Nomad life began..School and home shifted.
     The fifth year saw me joining up for Nursery or pre-primary or whatever. I remember it used to be much of a mess when I joined the Kindergarten grade in the seventh year. Shifted again and found myself landed up in Chennai. Ninth sentence: the ninth year, I took up sports for bodily exercises, and, which I find very much of a good decision. Tenth year i started writing my novel, and studies began pacing up.
      In the eleventh year of my life I changed my school again and rediscovered joy for life. Twelfth year life became real good, I was getting a bit more successful and life more purposeful, my first novel came out. Thirteenth year, here I am.....waiting for the fourteenth year.........

Is revolution always good?

   There have been an amazing number of revolutions and uprisings in the world this year. Are they always good events? What makes a revolution a progressive or regressive event? 
    Whether a revolution is “good” or “bad” depends on your perspective. Same with whether it is progressive or regressive. Most importantly, to be a revolution, there must be a radical change in the government which affects society – how people live, work, their rights, privileges and responsibilities.

I think most people here in the West would agree that the nascent revolutions in Egypt, Libya and other Middle Eastern countries are good and hopefully progressive, although it is too early to tell. If they end up being just a change of authority with no real change for the people, then they are not revolutions.

I would consider “progressive” any revolution that expands human rights and the development of a civic society. Iran’s revolution of 1979, for example, for me (and I think many Iranians) was regressive, in that it restricted the right of free speech and especially the rights of women. It will take a long time for the Iranian people to be free of these restrictions. On the other hand, the government that existed prior to that in Iran was worth breaking free from.

Actually, from a broader point of view, revolution can be both helpful and destructive at the same time. I think that people that abuse power should be brought to justice and sometimes it needs to be by any means necessary when you have not been left a choice. Yet, insinuating chaos after you have defeated your target does not make you look any better then the person committing the abuses to begin with.

We will have to take a wait and see attitude toward developments in newly “freed” Middle Eastern countries. I have hope.

      

Thursday Challenge-"FIRE" (Flame, Burning, Hot Things, Matches, Lighters,...)

However dark life may be, happiness always prevails.

  As soon go kindle fire with snow, as seek to quench the fire of love with words....

THE EARTH AT STAKE>>>>

                   

  

Lessons from a Boring Day

  It was yet another leisure time of mine in which I was getting bored. I decided to switch on the Television(something which i hardly do, and thus, did that on the boring day) to while away time.
    Little did I know that the Idiot Box would, much to my own amusement, many things I'd never know if not fir it.
    Every hour spent watching TV puts a toddler seven words behind TV-free babies, researchers say. But still, I must admit children who watch TV are, to some extent, way smarter. Perhaps TV does educate you.
      For example you learn a medical fact: A person who has been shot b a bullet always speaks a partial sentence before he dies. 'The killer was..he was..' (dies). You also get useful information like all architectural buildings have air vents big enough to crawl through and investigate.
     The most important learning being "Life Skills." Bad things happen under special circumstances such as dark and stormy nights. Once a person is emotionally broken, it causes him/her to wander out alone in the stormy night without umbrellas. And contrary to this scientists say the crack of lightning and flash happen simultaneously, wherever you are.
  Police officers can also learn from TV. Whenever your boss says 'You cannot work on this case,' that's when you solve the case.
    Hmm, The page is finished. Let's get outta here!

the ignored monkey

   I was actually searching google pages for a tattoo that would fit to my liking and then I saw one which had the famous ‘3 wise monkeys’ – just that the monkeys were replaced with frogs. 

As far as I remember I always thought these rules depicted by this sculpture (it supposedly came from a Japanese folk religion) were brilliant, but yesterday, I had a different take on it.

I thought, if I were to build a fresh sculpture of these monkeys, I would have kept only one and fired the other two. They are not required and you will see why. :-)

The monkey that I would have kept would have his hands placed on his heart depicting acts of love – with a meaning that ‘DO NO EVIL’. If people don’t do evil things then no one would have had to shut their eyes, ears or mouth. :-)

As I was writing this post I was trying to find out if these ‘wise-monkeys’ had any specific name. I did not find any name, however I found out that there indeed was a fourth monkey which had his hands crossed depicting the same idea – and hence I decided to title this post as The ‘Ignored’ Monkey.

Just for a laugh: Maybe the artists of the sculpture were hard core communists, they could not allow 1 monkey to take away the job of 3 others, so instead they chose to omit him and keep the other 3!

..and time goes by..

The Chase

I can never know what I want. Maybe someday things will be different. 

Monday Morning blues-recounting one of my Monday morning experience- occurring repeatedly

   Monday morning. I was reluctant to open my eyes. I consider Monday, as a rule, an especially unpleasant day in my calender. After the delicious freedom of Saturday and Sunday (yeah, must admit it's not so delicious these days), it was difficult to get in the Monday mood of work and discipline.
    I shuddered at the very thought of school; that dismal red building, the fire eyed teachers...
     Still lying on bed, I finally realized that it was yet another Monday. It looked as though only a moment ago the last period of Friday had ended. I sincerely prayed that an earthquake would reduce the school into dust and rubles, but the good school had withstood hundreds of such prayers as yet.

To Sleep

  Am I the only one who finds it impossible to live with myself while I'm sleep-deprived?

  No shut-eye, a bleak view. I even resent the smallest sound, of the critters of the birds.

  Coming to the beauty of good sleep, after a good night's rest, I go about my business in a cheerful sort of way. Impossible takes the form of the possible. Almost everything becomes downright charming.

It's just something

  Just to stir debate

controversy

argument

a bit of give

and take

I shall name my opinions of

"most influential..."

in these categories:

 Movie: Inception

Artist: Eminem

TV show ever: Kaun Banega Crorepati ( I mean, if it's gonna run ever!)

Band: Jonas Brothers

DISCLAIMER: These are not my favourites

just my opinions, but they are the only

one's that matter, unless you wish to

insert yours below, by way of comment

otherwise I win and so does my shouting

Making sense

  It seems that once I have stopped cycling and have settled down into a more "normal" state of being that the words dry up.

There is nothing more to say, there are no issues that I need to work out loud, so there is merely silence on the blog front. Who knows when next I shall need this space.

Until next moment...