The contest

Hey people! I've come to know of THE BLOG CONTEST from a friend's blog. It's been organised by The Colors Magazine. You've to submit your best blog entry that you made in the month of January and submit it according to the simple procedure that is mentioned in the site. For exact details just click on the link. I hope you all take part in it. It'll be fun! :)

The unforgettable

ONCE UPON A NIGHT…

A cool ethereal beautifully pleasant night

Calls me to its irresistible velvety embrace

The lone, yet mighty, moon reflects serene light

Casting a silvery glow on my face

Under the moonlit, cloudless, starless sky

Everything seems to be so quiet and calm

Only the night-birds hurriedly fly by

Their silver wings weaving through silvery charm

A soothing wind blows, Oh! So gently

Afraid even to rustle leaves that greet its way

As if, in its stealth, it is listening intently

To what this particular silent night has to say

I close my eyes and savour this breeze

That caresses my skin and teases through my hair

Undaunted by darkness, unhindered by trees

Regardless of the moon that still shines on with flair

As the minutes and hours melt into this enigmatic night

And the blackest shadows get bathed in a silver haze

The darkest of corners are rendered bright

The sinister figures diminish as if in a daze

Witnessing this sight my soul is comforted

As the wonders of the night never intend to cease

Soon, day will arrive, reminding decisions regretted

For now, nonetheless, I’m strangely wonderfully at peace

The Incorrigible Smart Card

What the hell is their problem? Smart cards?! I’m on the verge of freeing myself from this godforsaken place; a matter of a mere few months. What on earth am I going to do with a “smart card”? Frame it and hang it on my bedroom wall? And strip the wall bare of everything else, even the paint, because now I’m going to have the oh-so-awesomely-cool smart card on it. I mean, of what use will it be to me anyway after I leave this screwed up college? All year we’ve been requesting for better food in the canteen and, quite recently, an academic subject of our choice (since that’s the whole point of having ELECTIVE subjects). We’ve begged for mirrors in the restroom for crying out loud!! But nooooo!! Who cares if a few hundred students are writhing in pain because of food poisoning or if your future is bright enough with the detailed knowledge about milking cows (that was pretty much the main content of our ‘elective subject’)? All that matters is that now you can strut around with the stupid smart card stuck to your forehead. It’s the ULTIMATE solution to every problem you’ve every faced or going to. Why? Because now you can check attendance status and find out your internal marks with the help of the incredible smart card. Ooooo...!!! let my best friend, who’s puking her guts out because she had canteen food, go to hell for I’m on my way to salvation with the sacred knowledge of my divine internal marks.

The Deterioration

This place with all its power and bounty was given to the human kind. We lived up to our sentient quality by exploiting it and creating a world where one has to hunt lest he becomes the hunted, or tumbles unless he brings his own down and finally when he thinks he has gained success he has lost himself. This ruthless world is his own creation and he is now struggling, repenting, regretting, and trying desperately to find a way out. Evil and material power comes easy to him and he cowers behind their merciless prowess.

The deceitful and cunning are the ones who are the most afraid; people who use the evil facade and thrive by holding onto their paranoia.

The weak hearted are the ones who have realised their purpose, have separated good from evil but do not have the will to stand up to any kind of tyranny. They simply fade away under the sheer number and power of the ruthless rulers.

And the lost are the ones who have realised that any evil can be beaten by their faith, morality, virtues, patience and hope, but they also know that they were too late. They are the wise ones who weren’t wise enough. Humanity has been clobbered to death by humans and the wise have lost themselves in this irony.

The ramifications of an addled mind.

It’s absurd to see how man has evolved from one civilisation to the other throughout the centuries, kept the world running on an instilled philosophy, among many others, of never giving up; of striving hard until a goal is reached. A lot of success, achievement and a drive to move onward in the most trying of situations that demand for extreme adaptabilities have been possible due to the implementation of this deep rooted philosophy. It has made human beings live up to their uniqueness of being the only ingenious species in the world, possibly the whole universe. But sometimes one wonders if this never-giving-up trait of man is the only solution to grab whatever he desires but is just out of his reach. The seemingly undauntable concept does prevail because of the existence of its opposite, doesn’t it? Just as there’s good because there’s evil. It exists as an alternate option that a person can wilfully choose. Yet, that choice is always his last resort and in some instances he doesn’t allow any ground for that choice at all. In general he would resort to it only after a long, painful struggle that leaves him with nothing instead of getting him what he wanted. I wonder, then, what would happen if we could just give up once in a while...

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I know this feeling; the feeling of desolation, hopelessness and sorrow. The feeling when you’re desperately trying to find answers in the intricate maze of mind and end up running into blank walls, dead ends, every time. And the fact that this feeling is so familiar makes it even more painful to bear, more tangible, more lasting. I find it easy to succumb to it, drown in agony, and lose myself never to be found again. The pain it inflicts on my heart, mind and soul is enormous, worse than the worst battering a body can take and still continue to breathe. For the physical torture could eventually stop and the body could slowly heal or it could all end in a blissful darkness of death. This feeling, however, would never cease to exist and it would never allow any other feeling to prevail. It feeds on my strengths and thrives with my weaknesses. It makes me surrender to it readily lest I resort to the path of self destruction.

The night journey of 9th december, 2009

2141 hours. The long winding road stretches endlessly. I look out my window and witness the scenes unfolding on one side of the road. The night is cool, dry and silent. There are no streetlights and I’m certain that this part of the world has neither seen any kind of technology nor will it any sooner. The roads are full of potholes: a result of what looks like long neglect or half-hearted attempts to make them traversable by journey-by-night trucks, long-travelling buses and the occasional smaller vehicles. The road snakes its way through hills and rugged plains that were long ago wounded, blasted away and razed to a level ground in order to lay down long, black and tar reptilian routes. Now, with their holes, humps and bumps and tortures surfaces they seem overwhelmed by the plethora of still untouched nature on either sides. The trees, plants and vines closest to the road are caked with mud and dust and look sinister and ghostly, illuminated only by the car headlights. Apart from the trees and vines, there are walls of sliced up earth where I can see dead roots of mighty trees thrusting out of the mud in the most bizarre angles, whose lives were cruelly cut short when great elaborate machines sliced away the earth. Undisturbed, these roots would have spread far and wide below the earth to their full glory. Now these skeletal roots with their dead trees lie grotesquely displaying a gory image of man’s activities. Now and again the headlights sweep over breaks in the seemingly infinite train of jutting vines and looming trees. Dark gorges and foreboding chasms, carved out by waterfalls that had gushed, gurgled and teemed with life and there was lush greenery and heavy water laden clouds to complete the picture, now lie painfully bare with only memories of lively springs and ghosts of tiny streams trickling down the slick and mossy rock faces. We move ahead seemingly uncaring: our car whipping up dust clouds and adding another layer of dirt on the trees by the side of the road. I gaze listlessly at the milestones and my mind vaguely registers the changing figures under the names of places known and unknown; each stone showing a couple or three miles swallowed up by our robotic, indifferent, relentless need to move onwards. I lie inside the car but my thoughts run amok, treading the perpetuity of nature. Sometimes they fade to a blur like the ground below, sometimes they surface and make their presence felt like the stars suddenly appearing through stray clouds and silhouetted canopy, sometimes meandering warily like our precarious journey on these serpentine roads to imminent destination and finally merging with the mysterious shadows and overwhelming darkness beyond the reach of the meagre headlights. After attempting vainly to bridle my thoughts, I sigh and resume gazing out my window, at the mourning forests and at the long winding road that stretches endlessly...

The nostalgia

12 years ago I was about 10 years old; young, innocent and carefree.

Things were blissfully simpler and the most worrisome problem was my little sister getting a bigger share of chocolates and sweets because she was “just a baby”.

The 6 year old rascal was my arch enemy.

The pinnacle of humiliation was my own sister calling me by name without a trace of respect.

The thing that shortened my 8-hour sleep to 7-hours was the frightening possibility of getting 9 out of 10 marks in my Kannada dictation.

I was a content soul and ignorance was my prerogative.

The most delightful idea of fun was playing hopscotch with all the neighbourhood girls who were more or less of my age. It meant I could leave my cheat of a sister at home and not worry about her going to Mother bawling, when I don’t let her have her way in hopscotch.

I used to experience a feeling of warm humility when those girls looked up to me to take any decisions and solve any complicated problem that we faced regarding a particular hopscotch rule.

My heart used to soar with joy whenever I realised we were not getting on the city bus to the boring market but the express one that would take us to Mangalore, the enormous city of wonders.

I adored the sly smile on Father’s face when this trick of his worked every time before we got on that express bus.

I used to do my chores with great enthusiasm when guests were to come over. With great effort and concentration I used to make myself presentable for the guests and wait for their arrival with barely contained excitement.

On my 10^th birthday I glided around in my new dress proudly showing it off to the monotonous crowd of the apparently awestruck students in uniforms. Wearing “colour dress” on your birthday was an accepted rule then.

Whenever I fell and scraped my knees badly, it was heartening to see almost all of my classmates running around to get cotton, gauze and Dettol, even when I knew what would follow were a couple of painful stings.

The bitterest fights were over getting window seat in the school van.

The momentous day was when Mother told me she had a baby in her tummy and soon I’d have a tiny baby brother or sister.

The most mind boggling challenge was choosing a name when, eventually, my little baby sister was born.

The biggest dilemma I faced was when I was dying to hold her, yet didn’t want to; afraid I would hurt her soft fragile body.

I first felt cheap thrill when Mother admonished my rogue sister one day, to be more considerate towards our little sister as she was “just a baby”!