Ping!!

2010! More than a month has gone by already, & life seems to be hurtling along at breakneck speed. Time is whizzing by faster than ever. Of course, it doesn't help that the comparisons are with a four year long undergrad spent in serious lethargy, or a two year long post grad spent intoxicated! While then, there was time enough for everything that could be of the slightest interest, & then something more. Today, I struggle to keep up with the precious few interests of mine namely reading, reading & oh, reading again. It's been exactly nine months since corporate life begun. And its been up & down, here & there. From beginning as an MT, working on an intrinsic strategic problem (which the regular people had no time to spare a thought for), probing for that elusive effective solution, to the uncertainty regarding department/role, the weeks spent twiddling thumbs-playing NFS-watching movies in office-hoping things would become clearer (yea,i got paid for playing NFS in office, beat that!), the "temp" shift into international sales, which meta-morphed into a permanent one, the over enthusiastic moves taking up more & more work to compensate for the time "lost" (heck, i still regret that!), and ultimately, getting sucked into the routine of home-work-more work-home - iv seen a lot already.

Insulated in Society

The following is an extract from "The Doors of perception" by Alduos Huxley. Its claim to fame is in being the philosophical inspiration behind Jim Morisson, Ray Manzarek , Robby Krieger & John Densmore christening themselves as "The Doors"... A commentary which put my thoughts to words so accurately & aptly that I have copy pasted it verbatim.

We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies - all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes. Most island universes are sufficiently like one another to Permit of inferential understanding or even of mutual empathy or "feeling into." Thus, remembering our own bereavements and humiliations, we can condole with others in analogous circumstances, can put ourselves (always, of course, in a slightly Pickwickian sense) in their places. But in certain cases communication between universes is incomplete or even nonexistent. The mind is its own place, and the Places inhabited by the insane and the exceptionally gifted are so different from the places where ordinary men and women live, that there is little or no common ground of memory to serve as a basis for understanding or fellow feeling. Words are uttered, but fail to enlighten. The things and events to which the symbols refer belong to mutually exclusive realms of experience.

From the editor's desk...after an eternity

Here I am ... back ... yet again :)

a string of peer-blog-revivals & the consequent blogrolling activities have put on an enormous societal pressure on me to return... & adhere to the bold title of this blog <> .. ofcourse, a slight modification is that the small print under the title is now accompanied by an asterix, since the realization has dawned upon me that there could be myriad reasons perpetuating such a long absence. For instance, I had not accounted for eurotrip planning activities, the numerous farewells & the consequent reunions, the actual eurotrip itself, the great recession, the ensuing placement doldrums, major/minor tiffs in human bondages & the carefree bliss of neither-here-nor-there during the out-of-mdi & not-yet-joined-the-job days. I had not considered the enormous toll on time these seemingly rare events would take before putting up that bold declaration. So, I emerge wiser out of all these, & shall make no promises that I can't keep.

Music for the ears

Beautiful song-soothing music... melancholy lyrics... a must hear

I won't shiver in the cold
I won't let the shadows take their toll
I won't cover my head in the dark
And I won't forget you when we part
Collapse the Light Into Earth
I won't heal given time
I won't try to change your mind
I won't feel better in the cold light of day
But I wouldn't stop you if you wanted to stay
Collapse the Light Into Earth
- Porcupine Tree Collapse The Light Into Earth

Rudderless Ship

There are times when you feel like nothing is in your control. Its like a divine conspiracy against you. Best laid plans get screwed. The agitated ocean of life renders your ship rudderless. You are tossed & churned in the angry waters, sucked into the eye of the storm.

What does one do in such a case? Keep trying to hold on to the wheel, making desperate attempts to stick to the course that was charted? Stand firm at the helm & try to take the storms head on, hoping against hope to emerge victorious against nature's fury? Or simply realize the enormous, unrivalled power of the storm, take shelter, hold on & wait for the waters to calm down
before setting sail once again?

When the path you were travelling along seems hazy, do you stick to that path, submitting to a blind hope that it would lead you to the very end you had in mind? Or do you start looking out for alternate paths, where every further step is crystal clear?