Space out Time out

You can listen to my songs non-stop here

why hate? the

What do I seek? Is it a fleeting shadow or the lingering aftertaste of a nostalgia Is it some old played tunes in my head or the thrill of meeting a stranger Iv met before is it being consumed by the portraits of a landscape or the feeling of falling down the rabbit's hole is it the longing to see those eyes or to melt by the touch of some fingers Is it the depth of a voice? Or a thousand words in that glance Is it feeling alive in a moment or the sweet pain of anguish Is it the meaning of this existence or the thrill of a fantastic day Is it the happiness from that smile Or the buoyancy of those tears Is it I? Or am I an illusion?

The Vagabond effects When my friend asked me to go to this show I didnt even think twice to find out if it was an opera concert or a band or

This song makes my heart ache.. A beautiful rendition of raaga Madhuvanti. One of my favourites :) Album/Film : Dil Ki Raahen Release Year : 1975 Producer : Majeeda Movies Production : Majeeda Movies Director : B.R. Ishara Film Actors : Amrit Lakhan Pal, Dileep Datt, Jony Walker, Rakesh Pandey, Rehana Sultan, Sulochana Lyrics : Naksh Layalpuri Singer : Lata Mangeshkar OnScreen Actors : Rehana Sultan Music Director : Madan Mohan

One of my most favorite songs from Mughl-e-Azam. Madhubala at her gorgeous self.

Album/Film : Mausam Release Year : 1975 Producer : P. Mallikarjun Rao Production : Sunandini Pictures. Director : Gulzar Film Actors : Agha, Deena Pathak, Lili Chakrabvarti, Om Prakash, Pinchu Kapoor, Sanjeev Kumar, Satyen Kappu, Sharmila Taigore Lyrics : Gulzar Singer : Lata Mangeshkar OnScreen Actors : Sharmila Taigore Music Director : Madan Mohan

Ramblings.. Its been too long since I wrote. I have been preoccupied with the life's journey.. The ecstatic waves of possession and renunciations. I am on this journey to discover myself. And its been full of revelations. I am more than certain now that if we somehow tuned out the antennas in our head to the frequency of the universe, we will be able to make sense of all its vibrations. We will be able to surmount the barrier of mass and be able to understand every thing in terms of energy waves and perhaps communicate our thoughts telepathically to everything that is in tune with that frequency. Speaking of which my last book has shed light on so many dark caves inside my head that I never ventured into. What are we in our core? Is everything that exists a manifestation of the metaphysical energy third power that made this. We exist. But if we do, then something must have facilitated our coming into existence. What is that? Is it ether? How does one cross this barrier of manifesta...

I sung this drunk :) I guess I put in a lot of feel like that ;)

What Next? I have been having these unnerving thoughts about the impending future. What is it that I have been placed here for? What is the bigger picture? Where do I fit in. I can almost feel that I am not here to do what I am doing right now. Wake up, smile, go to work, be physically present and spiritually absent there for 8 some hours, get out, try and find ways to keep my mind occupied. It seems a very long life for me to be able to keep doing this everyday. I will soon go mad if it continues. I keep looking for signs. I try to identify them and then bring them to fruition. I have been meaning to go places. So many places. But I need a travel companion. Someone with whom I will be able to share my experiences, interpret them and learn form them. This unrest, I don't know if everyone possess it. I have met people who are perfectly happy with their current state of existence. Who can carry on doing what they are forever and not complain. I on the other hand find it hard to breat...

What are they thinking? When they go drop a bomb on a market street? Or put a burning tyre onto someone? Or to rape and mutilate someone? IS it the way to win your vengeance or a way to get closer to god or just a sheer lack of direction. Who is the enmity directed towards? A sect or mankind? OR is it just an implosion that manipulates itself in a much perceivable way? What were we before we were born? What will we be after we are gone? We get to choose how we live for at most 50 years of our lives. The rest, we are incapacitated in some form, either too young or too old, out of which we sleep for a third of the time.. Why do we then need to take that little spec of time from someone in this vast realm of the existence of things that we can't even come to fathom? Our lives are what we make of it. Why then take away the very right that we cant give anyone else but ourselves? To Live! Is it a high that transcends all other highs? Is it just a lack of having things to do? What is it?

Listening to Abida Parveen's rendition of Ghalib poems. Its beautiful.. Her music is soulful. It makes you feel content in your heart despite all the thoughts in your mind. It drops lyou right into your heart. It lets you be. It stills you. And even before I realize Im in a trance and I'm hoping it never stops playing. Its a sweet nostalgia of the times lived. I'm so grateful to have been brought up around a place where so much imbibed from a lot of people from different walks of life. It's nourishing to be associated with the festivities of so many, listening to varied genres of music, celebrating in so many styles together year after year.. It becomes your own.. All of it. GHALIB's genius.. Har ek baat pe kehte ho, tum ki tu kya hai? Tumhi kaho ke yeh andaaze guftagu kya hai? Jala hai jism jahan dil bhi jal gaya hoga Khuredto ho jo ab raakh justujoo kya hai? Hazaron khwahishen aisi ke har khwahish pe dum nikle Bohot nikle mere armaan lekin fir b...

Kasol Highs I am able to blog on this topic, courtesy Javesh Gaju, my friend from Mauritius who did his master's in Informatics with me in Delhi University. He opened the enchanting world of Kasol to me. Please do not confuse it with Kasuli or Kasuni or any other hill station. Speaking of hill stations, I have not yet mentioned that personally I think that Himachal Pradesh is the best state in India. It cradles the foothills of the Himalayas and stores so many pristine places in its nooks that it will take me a lifetime to unravel them. Kasol is this small village situated by the banks of river Parbati. The closest well known place near it is Manikaran with its famous warm sulphuric springs. For all the rest they go straight to Manali bypassing this village. now for Kasol. It is a Hippie heaven. There are numerous Israelis here during the summer months and they have these amazing matted hair which general cleanliness seeking public loathe. I am still trying to find out a way of hav...

Bain and Boon of being a Palakkad-i And for those who wonder who a Palakkad-i is, well we are people who hail from a village(Palakkad) in the south of the Indian peninsula that lies on the border of Tamil Nadu and Kerala. It was initially owned by the government of Tamil Nadu but now in the hands of Kerala. So my ancestors were Tamil but now we are successfully confused. My friends often ask me which state am I from, and I vacillate between the two. C'mon guys its hard on me. Cut me some slack, I am a Palakkad-i born and brought up in the North which makes it even more eclectic. I grew up speaking a language that perhaps no-one other than a fellow Palakkad-i would understand. I have trouble understanding a perfectly pure Tamil movie or a Malayalam movie, or news readers, or people or songs. I never felt that void up until now when my interaction levels with neighbors from the east and west has increased in magnitude and there is a pressing need to be able to speak one pure language...

Call of the Tribes I have been most mystified by this intangible relationship between Asian lounge music and the hills, vast open spaces. I am consumed by it right now as I listen to Karunesh and watch some of most amazing pics of Tibet, the monks, the prayer flags. It makes me forget my purpose, puts a void in the center of my stomach and makes me want to run looking for that place, that perfect place, with that perfect company of that I don't know of.. Its a Pandora's box for me, it opens many incidents that I may have not witnessed in my life but seem to have lived through them somehow. Its like having traveled through a pipe eons away and reached a perfect place. I cant navigate there myself, it can only be reached perhaps through the will of universe. It will never be as perfect if I try to venture it myself in my complete conscience. I can only be and be taken there as often as I am, vicariously, through music. It would be bliss, like having attained Nirvana. I could give...

~~MAYA~~ Who is she? I often wonder. She is many people in a single moment yet many people are her as well. She could just be a mere figment of my imagination that peeps through my eyes gazing at my world the way she finds fit and manipulates my brain, my heart, my soul. She is a loner yet seeks a presence of her choice. She’s unsettling, demanding, flitting, dreaming, hopeful, lovesick, needy, caring, possessive, giving, empathizing yet not all these and something else, seeking, something beyond her reach, racing her imagination and touching horizons and returning to make me restless and always wanting something more. Her actions are guided by her heart and her heart befuddles her brain, her senses. She desires a million things all at once. Like someone aptly put to describe her; her life is full of test tubes with a ratio of love from those she seeks and things she wants and some others are empty for the things she would fill in later as and when she discovers them to be an inevitabl...

Paint a Patch Party!! Best part about painting walls - You get the choose the color, texture and pattern of the most bizzare idea in your head and see it materialize slowly! - You feel you are in control of every stroke, every sloppy patch - Or you could just get dead drunk and see a creamy white wall being hidden by your brush strokes guided by the workings of a disjoint yet cohesive mind! - You get the privilege to skip a bath and look as ugly and colorful as you can inspite of it not being holi! - Your adrenaline rush climaxes when those tapes come off the wall - You could spend hours gazing at the slight contours, pondering over your mistakes, thinking of improvisations and dreaming of how to make it even more gorgeous - Have loads of visitors to come and appreciate your nest!

The Tall and the Mighty Calling! This has by far been the most compulsive topic that I wanted to blog about and somehow I have been procrastinating it. Rather I have been waiting for that one high after which I would be thrown into writing about hikes. I know a lot of us have that as a usual hobby. Almost every other Desi soul on orkut has hiking as his interest. I may be in the same pool coz I don’t know their exact frame of mind when they hike. But for me its an elixir. I developed this ardent love for the hills somewhere in my adolescence. Since then I long to run to them. Mountain View offered me ample scope to quench my appetite. The copious trials have their own flavor and my friends and I pick one every week. My last cake was Half dome in Yosemite National Park . We had been there earlier in May 2006 to conquer it, hardly having trained for it. We almost made it.. ALMOST and that hit us bad coz it stood there high up mocking at those who thought it was undemand...

My new MINI I cant quite describe the feeling of owning something you've wanted for so long. But I am in those moments right now. After so many speculations and misgivings, I finally drove home my dream car. But just a day before that I felt like I was in the wrong side of the higway with everything charging at me for the decision I made, for instance: Why not a car that is the most common, most practical and most affordable? Nuances like loans and retail values and brands hounded me. Thanks to that I feel I have achieved supreme knowledge in number details like interest rates, milage and moolah ;) But then again, this is the quintessential question for picking between surviving now/saving later and living.. Do I want to live the way I planned or do I want to walk the line. I opt for the former any day, hence the choice :)