No. 34

Like most people, when I'm bored while in a bus or basically just sitting around, I use my cell phone to play random games or listen to songs on my iPod. Once, I got bored with the games and didn't have my iPod, so I was just going through the apps installed on my phone and realized that I had this really cool app- Aldiko Book Reader. I had forgotten all about it after it's installation, telling myself that I had no patience to read a book on a cell phone. Well, on this fateful day, I found a book that I had downloaded from the internet- Arthur Conan Doyle's Round the Red Lamp and started reading it for want of anything better to do and found myself hooked from page 1!

It's an amazing book really, took me back to my school days where we would read (or be forced to read, rather!), English from the early part of the twentieth century. There are words used in the book which we would know the meaning of, but rarely use on a daily basis. I'm a huge fan of Dan Brown, David Baldacci, and other such similar thriller writers, and had gotten used to a fairly straightforward way of writing, so Arthur Conan Doyle was completely different... But in an enjoyable way. There are no twists or edge of the seat suspense, but a classic is always a classic!

So I find myself these days reading a few older books, yes, on my cell phone. It's wonderful how technology helps discover something you love! Right now, I skip all the games on my phone and directly open the book reader app and start reading Jack London's Call of the Wild when I'm bored.

For those interested classics can be downloaded legally and for free on- www.gutenberg.org

"Why this Kolaveri, kolaveri di?", sings my Maharashtrian friend who has no idea what it means. I did not know either what the word 'Kolaveri' meant, before I looked it up on the net, but the song has gone so viral that it has gotten every alternate person I meet humming it. For every 99 people that love the song there is that 1 person that hates it. I am, unfortunately, that 'one' person. 

Now, being 'one of a kind' is special but the amount of bashing that I've received over the past few weeks for hating the song is compelling me to write this post. What's wrong with hating a song? It doesn't mean that I'm anti Tamilian or I'm too 'uppity' to enjoy a very colloquial kind of a song! I know that I shouldn't be judging it by it's lyrical quality, but it just doesn't sound pleasant to my ears so I HATE it! 

I feel that someone should be able to like or hate something without others getting too judgmental about it. Come on guys, it is a democracy after all! Let us respect each other's opinions and not get into heated arguments every time one's views are different from the other's :).

Hot air balloon

Sailing through the cotton clouds

Watching how raindrops are made

Sunlight streaming in my face

Golden yellow heat 

But I yearn for no shade.

In the abode of the stars and the rainbow

I drift mindlessly on a breezy afternoon..

No honking of the cars, no trilling of the phone

Yes, of course, I am in a hot air balloon!

I see nothing but vast landscapes

I hear nothing but the gushing wind

I feel nothing but the slanting sun rays

I taste nothing but the freedom to think!

Though I'm as alone as a pearl

in an oyster

I feel a connection, an unearthly bond

With every living being in this world

This is how it must feel like to be God!

Picture Courtesy: Google

Dusk

She peered out of the dusty window. The sun was still a rusty orange. A couple more hours till he returned. She touched her face lightly where he had struck her, the pain made her wince. It was not the physicality of the pain that hurt her. She had travelled too far for that. Her spirit that once soared as high as the brightly coloured kites on a beautiful afternoon was now soaked with desolation and misery. There seemed to be no end in sight. She made a feeble attempt at pushing out the thoughts that had taken over her mind. Thoughts that had replaced emotion, practicality and reason. She visualized a world where she could smile, a world where she could hold her head up, a world where her tormentor did not exist... Yes, she wanted to die.


At the corner of the room, there suddenly was a movement. Her daughter, all of two years had woken up from her nap. She rubbed her eyes sleepily and looked at her mother. The older woman shook out of her reverie. Life was never a bed of roses. Dawn was never far away from the black night. She realized that the spark still alive in her daughter's eyes must never be extinguished. For her daughter, she must live.

Forgotten city

Once remembered, now forgotten

Lies buried an ancient civilization.

Surrounded by the water so aquamarine blue

Unseen by most, glanced by a few

A golden yellow fish darts in and out

of a mammoth building once sitting proud

atop the streets of a bustling city

Drowned by water and then by history..

Cruel are the hands of fate,

though the angry floods did abate.

Death pervaded in its awakening,

No hope left for any living being.

And so she lies this ancient civilization,

Craving to be found, this proud nation!

She yearns to tell all her story

of people from her land and all their glory.

Her wish is again in the dreaded grasp of fate

Sighing, her moment she anticipates....

Picture Courtesy: Google