music and lyrics

June 25 11 : 30 pm somewhere in modern India


i am at writers Valhalla(Nordic for hall of slain heroes....gods) no special symbolism here...:) just parading whatever scant knowledge of European myths entered my brains....

an alluringly beautiful night,bedecked in the silver of stars. clouds lightening up like huge bulbs, first intermittently and then almost continuously. the roar is symptomatic of the coming storm..and rain.

an entire leafy avenue was glittering with its greens reflecting the streams of light from multiple balconies.

solitude, music, and then drops of manna. nirvana.

i bet Zeus himself sitting on his pretty perch on mount Olympus would have felt a tinge of jealousy....hard luck god dear (history dragged in, for no purpose...lol)

i remember being chided by the women in life about getting too happy about these otherwise "normal" events/objects like weather or a natural formation..or an old building, or a coffee at 6 in the morning.
probably they were right.
and yet I'm happy i never listened.it may be childish stubbornness without logic or reason, but I'm not convinced that maturity is the best solution.

my literature heroes remain man-boy and love and are loved by women-girl. this may or may not find a real world counterpart..but what is life without a little dream at attempting a cherished idea.

i continue being amazed at little marvels of nature, ingenuity of kids, even at the Internet and how it works down to its chips. amazement morphs into curiosity and a learning curve is established:)

relationships sometimes veer towards inevitable compromises. mainly around all that's material in life. i was too smittened by the intangibles to even take note of the tangibles....lol....there's always a rainbow to hold onto if everything else deserts you.

anyhow that's enough dust off closed books. they may spring to life....:)

to swing the mood to manna droplets i put on a song from fanna, "mere haath main",

it starts with


aag suraj main hoti hai,
tapna jamee ko parta hai,
mohabbat dil main hoti hai,
tarasna nigaho ko parta hai.

an air packet hits me as if to express its assertion on my choice of music for the moment.
good, i'll make a mental note to recite that to a pretty lady on a cool rainy evening on a future date:)

thought belts shifted gears to remind me of the last time the three came together. rains poetry and a pretty woman.

it was a nusrat fateh ali khan couplet.

ye raat fir nahi hogi
ye mulakaat fir nahi hogi
aise badal to fir ayenge
ye barsaat fir nahi hogi

another nusrat line comes to my mind.

har kisi ko mukkamal jahan nahi milta
kisi ko jamee kisis ko asma nahin milta

rains are such an equalizer. the neat packets that our world is rich/poor good/bad disappear to become a seamless tossed salad. from my breezy balcony i survey the beautiful acres that lay ahead.
clumps of trees,some lighted by the shimmering white light (due to the intervening droplets), their leaf veins sucking up the rainwater to quench and quell the memories of a parched mid summer.

from the inside i hear guns and roses "November rain"...did they write it in south hemisphere? it generally rains in November in most of southern hemisphere. again they could have been in one of the med climate regions which experiences winter rains

at a distance i can see the dome of sriram college of commerce, my Alma mater. stunningly white bathed in the light and music of crashing droplets , shining among the greens , embellished by a dash of pink.

what a strange fate this building has. in the day it has so many takers that high 90 per centers are turned away and yet, lonely by the night. the buildings days are so much like the days of our lives. those inevitable days with more people/objects/themes/ideas to handle than humanly possible and then the other slack ones..which stretch on to almost forever.

bob dylan is singing "like a rolling stone"

i wonder if we are ever going to have 24 hour colleges , something where every day is devoted to a particular art/science/anything. which is 100 percent safe with total on campus accommodation and a crackling intellectual atmosphere.

maybe like Greek philosophers of the yore we can debate for days amongst ourselves rejuvenated by canteen food and short naps:)
daily commuting and incursion of other lives muddle the young academics life like nothing else.

or maybe a weekly literature all nighter. 3 novels in a night or something....a group, half with specs,half without sitting along a round table like king aurthurs knights with a few bean bags thrown in here or there for the lazier ones:)

there's something about words and nights.in the day characters are too attentive to let carefully cultivated facades drop, times are too hurried to analyse and break down motives and daily possibilities continue remaining pregnant.

everything settles down at the night.

shielded by my coffee coloured umbrella i got down for a cup of tea and some potential chit chat with the tea shop regulars.

suddenly there was a leap of faith,change in hearts desires.

i return to home, my world of certainties.

the clock struck 12.

the music was john denver 'country roads take me home'
just as in 1000 oaks , pune.

i ripped open the heart of a golden-yellow malda mango .

rains , mango,music..i was transported to a bihari homeland[:)]

Back to its innocent days when the spear of materialism had not shredded the body armour of a self sustaining village economy.

The next song was shahrukh khan in “swades” “ye jo des hai mera”. My black ink merged into the black of the night.