Author: Swati Sani

CHAPTER II – REQUIEM

Eternity is a long long time. And I could feel my temporal resolve weakening as I waited for her response on the Facebook.

It is surprising how life can obsessively revolve around waiting for a single response on the Facebook. My Blackberry had the account, the office computer had the site opened and minimized as also the PC at home. Every moment spent in waiting. Hope and anticipation waxing and waning everyday! Bouts of intense despair where the air seemed poisonously heavy and the lungs incapable of drawing it in. Disinterested and divorced from the mundane happenings of everyday life. Hope is all I lived with, hope which was increasingly giving way to dark, dull despondency.

The temporal self is weak; Eternity a vast chasm for the temporal to bridge. To wait for Eternity, I needed to divorce the temporal and take an ethereal avatar. Maybe time as we know ceases to exist on the ethereal plane. Maybe, the astral self could cross the oceans and watch her sojourn in the temporal till it was over and we were united. The idea slowly began to take root.

I had always been a sybarite – loved the good things of earthly life. But those were means to an end and without her presence in my life, meaningless. I followed elaborate rites for my passage from the temporal to the ethereal. No loose ends to be left behind, no other attachments except for my singular goal – Her.

I sit in the bathtub – soaking luxuriously in warm water with a bottle of Elizabeth Arden’s Mediterranean poured into it. I sit surrounded and immersed in her smell as I remember her. A mellifluous voice renders a popular composition of Ghalib, romantic nuances float in the background. The crystal glass on edge of the tub is filled with my favourite single malt on the rocks – the temporal savouring the last pleasures of the physical world. My laptop runs a slide show of all the images I have stored of her and my brain makes those nostalgic moments come alive. And I watch the white foamy perfumed water change colour – from innocent virgin white to a promising irrevocable red. My sights are dimming as I concentrate on the slide show – locking the last vestiges of her physical image, imprinting them on my soul. I have started feeling cozy and lightheaded when there is a tong from the laptop.

I peer through the gathering haze into my laptop to read my last message.  It’s from her and reads ‘ Hi Nadeem, Howz life treating you?’

CHAPTER I – Till Eternity Do Us Part

The Facebook account had been freshly made and a smiling face overshadowed the iconic architecture in the background. My long wait of 31536000 seconds had been finally rewarded. Obviously, she was alive and well and once again had access to the internet. ‘ Howz life treating you?’ I quickly typed a message to commence the  second phase of my agonizing wait.

She was an ex army officer from the northern part of the country – rustic but with a tremendous zest for life. Five years in the army had not separated her from her penchant for loud lipstick, garish colour combinations of synthetic clothes, loud make up and the hard twang of rural accented English. But she had guts and an attitude which showed promising potential.

I was the sophisticate by Indian standards who could differentiate between Chenin Blanc and Shiraz, Gucci and Armani, between Poison and Opium. I loved my Mozart and Bach while she liked hindi pop, I read Orhan Pamuk while she enjoyed Chetan Bhagat, I played golf while she jogged to keep herself fit. We were as different as cheese to chalk; add an age difference and you have a well nigh impossible situation. But the opposites sought each other desperately. I taught her to be a sophisticate while she taught me how to be alive. I explained etiquettes and learnt the joys of breaking rules from her. We were soulmates – she and I.

Love sneaks in your life only once. That is the time when each joyful pore of your body feels alive, each breath intoxicating. It is a phase when societal laws, familial ties and peer pressure cease to have a meaning. Each moment is exhilarating, pleasurable and filled with immense happiness. And when you make love, stars twinkle, bells jingle, lights explode, there’s the crescendo of Bach in the background. You loose your identity, your souls merge, each day is better than the previous day. You live just to be with her, to see her, to smell her, to allow her to fill up your senses. Obviously, such happiness and love is not meant to last. Human beings in such love would be liberated from the bonds of hate, social norms, religion – disrupting the harsh real world we know.

She went off to distant lands to join her husband exactly a year ago and we lost contact. The intervening year was spent in pining for her, in hoping she was happy, in agonizing over a thousand what-if scenarios, in being caged in the rationality of worldly rules. One year of non-existence until she popped up again on the Facebook.

It has been two months since I have sent the Facebook message to her. She has not replied. I wait patiently. After all, eternity is a long long time……

Hypnotizing Maria and the rest of the world.

Richard Bach's latest

Perhaps some people will not understand it as much as some others and then there would be some who won’t get a word, but we do hope to find some with clean slates who do. We are all teachers and students alike.

What Donald Shimoda was to Richard, Jamie Forbes realizes, he is to Maria and his other advance flying students. More than 20 years back Illusions molded our mind that thinks the way it does today. Messiah? Hypnotist? What difference does it make? We are all we think ourselves to be. Continue reading Hypnotizing Maria and the rest of the world.

The Banni Grasslands of Kutch.

After a complete SWOT analysis, we selected to visit The Rann of Kutch (greater as well as little) as our holiday destination and I must say it was a decision well made. The place is a must see not just for its avi-fauna but also for its cultural and geological importance.

Featureless plains of Banni
The Featureless plains of Banni Grassland

Gujarat is a colorful state, and perhaps Kutch still retains most color. People here are simple, helpful and very courteous, their attire enticing, their language sweet despite the hardships they face.

Our first destination was the Greater Rann of Kutch. We stayed at CEDO, Moti Virani Village. CEDO, the Center for Desert and Ocean is a trust run by one of the most knowledgeable persons about the region, Mr. Jugal Kishore Tiwari.  Nearest to CEDO is the Banni Grassland where we spent a lot of time.

Continue reading The Banni Grasslands of Kutch.

The Zeroth Law of Robotics!

I am mortally scared of delusional intellects who root for the good of mankind! The pages of history are soaked with the blood of people who have been slaughtered, maimed and tortured at the altar of the super ego of great people who claimed to be working for the larger interest of mankind. The world today is comparatively civilised place; which is to say that we don’t burn our heretics piecemeal but butcher them en masse using modern technology. Unfortunately, while physical violence still manages to grab international attention, the financial and societal persecution of people in the interest of greater good continues unabated and does not draw much attention. Intellectuals pass off such persecution in the guise of various esoteric ‘isms’ which pervade the globe today. Communism is the first such philosophy which comes to my mind. Let us not overlook the harsh fact that in most instances, pursuit of larger good has made the pursuer rich and powerful while doing precious little for the mankind in the long run.

Such examples are abundant in our daily life also. For example, the teacher who lowers the standard of question paper for the lowest rung of student to pass is guilty of this act too!  Recently, I came across an interesting explanation of working for the interest of larger group. The proponent quoted Asimov’s Zeroth Law of Robotics.  Now there was a phase in my life when the world was divided in two distinct halves – people who read Asimov and people who did not! People who read Asimov had the capacity for creative and lateral thinking whereas people who did not were plain wimps. For the uninitiated     (and I no longer consider non Asimov readers to be wimps) the Zeroth Law was laid down after a particular robot faces the million dollar dilemma – whether to obey the extant law and prevent harm to an individual or to use his positronic brains innovatively and prevent harm to humanity by sacrificing the individual. The Zeroth Law empowers the robot to act for the greater good of humanity. So, the proponent said, if Asimov could propagate the Zeroth law, there obviously is nothing wrong in acting for the greater good of humanity at the expense of a few individuals. I have only one observation – the last time an individual seriously sacrificed himself at the altar of greater good, it was 2010 years ago. And frankly speaking it wasn’t a bad deal – a few days of torture and crucification in exchange for immortality!

Me – I believe in good old fashioned capitalist value sans hypocrisy and the need to hide behind wimpy excuses. If we all work for our individual good, we – by and large- work for collective good also. And I am not eager to donate my hard work and intelligence for the sake of the undeserving indolent.

Ekum Janwari hai, naya saal hai.

Looking forward to 2010
Pregnant with a new promise

What set 2009 apart from other years I have lived so far is the experiences I  had and the lessons I learnt. I evolved through  2009, grew and I can say that the process is not an easy one.

2010 started on a new  note, went for a walk this morning and came back enriched. I hope to write more this year, read more than I did last year, continue on my weight loss goal, and do something that I have never done before.

How 2010 enfolds, is to be seen. The only thing I am sure of is that I’ll make the best of it.

Continue reading Ekum Janwari hai, naya saal hai.

Moving Thunderbird mails from Linux to Mac

The most important thing to me in office are my emails, I need to keep years of records. So while shifting to another Linux machine has never been a problem to me, I encountered it when I decided to shift to an Mac for my main machine in the office.

My original plan was to copy the .thunderbird file from my old hard-disk to the mac as I have been doing over the years. However, I was totally taken aback when realized that there was no apparent way to view hidden files in the Finder. Continue reading Moving Thunderbird mails from Linux to Mac

Tanha

This aazad nazm is from a very old television serial “Tanha” I remember switching on the TV set just to listen to the beautiful title song written by Javed Akhtar. After a long search I finally found it on youtube.

देखिये तो लगता है
ज़िन्दगी की राहों में
एक भीड़ चलती है
सोचिये तो लगता है
भीड़ में हैं सब तन्हा

जितने भी ये रिश्ते हैं
काँच के खिलौने है
पल में टूट सकते है
एक पल में हो जाये
कोई जाने कब तन्हा

देखिये तो लगता है
जैसे ये जो दुनिया है
कितनी रंगी महफिल है
सोचिये तो लगता है
कितना ग़म हैं दुनिया में
कितना ज़ख्मी हर दिल है

वो जो मुस्कुराते थे
जो किसी को ख्वाबों में
अपने पास पाते थे
उनकी नींद टूटी है
और हैं वो अब तन्हा