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Where the mind is without fear

I first came across this writing by Tagore when I was in class 6. Since then I have somehow managed to remember most of the lines. The first three lines have especially haunted me for long. For a long time I had been thinking of turning this thought into a wallpaper but lacked concrete ideas. Then I saw this sketch of Tagore by Satyajit Ray. So here is my dedication to Tagore. Nothing special ... but I hope it looks good on your wallpaper. Where the mind is without fear by ~ ritwik-mango on deviant ART Here is the link to the download page.

I Smell Gold

Disclaimer: I am not a sportsman. I am slightly obese and overweight and I couldn't probably walk 5 kms on a stretch. Still my dream is having a 70inch (not cms) LCD TV in my home and watching India win the Cricket World Cup some day, again! There is a certain charm in getting up at 1300 Hrs on a Monday. Primarily that means not being bugged by the so called Monday-morning-blues. So I wake up one such Monday "morning" and misty eyed as I am, I log on for my daily dose of news online. Usually that means something like – "9 Blasts 14 Injures", "Dhoni pulls out of test series", "Shilpa ready to rock Big Boss" and "Nothing can stop me from becoming PM : Maya". It is not everyday that an ordinary Indian like me [here] , wakes to the headline "IT'S A GOLD: BINDRA BAGS INDIA'S FIRST". I cannot even begin to imagine what an Olympic gold would mean to a sportsman, and there are not many Indians alive to tell you that eithe...

Guys will be Guys

What is it guys and their idea of expression? No wonder cell phone and greeting card companies have to turn to women when they want to say, “Express yourself.” The older a boy gets the more he becomes aware of the fact that other humans of the same gender are not to be spoken of in an affectionate way. There were times when we too had best friends . These were the boys like us with whom we shared our lunch at school. These were the boys who helped us with our homework, and these were the very same boys who picked up fights for you in the playground when you were not strong enough to stand for yourself. As we got to our early teens, these boys were the confidantes who were the first to learn of our secret crushes. And at times these boys were the pigeons carrying mush-infested paper balls to and from these secret crushes. They were our best friends. Then through some freak of nature these boys became men. And then somehow there were no best friends . Girls still have their best fr...

Love Actually?

You watch a movie like Love Actually and it makes you wonder. We, here in our country, need a celebration like Christmas – we really do. After all, what other occasion do we get to profess our love for our best friend’s wives (not girlfriends – wives). And then that very wife ends up kissing you. We really need a Christmas of our own. And not something like the Valentine’s Day – something more local, closer to our heart. Just imagine how wonderful it would be to be able to cheat on your wife of 20 years and say, “Hey It’s Diwali!!!” This movie also puts a few things in perspective. If you grow up in a conservative environment watching classic Indian romantic movies (like I did), there are a few notions you have about the phrase true love . Now I never say it has to be platonic and/or metaphysical. But I had a few notions corrected anyway. Like: to fall in love with your exotic foreigner girl (read Portuguese) you need to see her in her bare minimums. Surely, beauty lies in the eye o...

The Moo Point

Firstly, please ask me: why a new blog? Because if you don’t then this whole blog becomes pointless as I don’t get a chance to explain my point of view. Given how opinionated I am and the range of topics I can list under my expertise, I needed a mouthpiece to voice some of those remark, brickbats, and concerns of national, environmental and individual interests. Also it would give some leeway to my friends who are usually bombarded with my rumblings. And the fact that I rumble is easily exhibited here, since I haven’t yet answered the primary question: why a new blog? Well that’s because I consider my first/original blog very chaste and cultured. Even if you don’t give a shit for what’s posted there, I believe them to be literary and graphic masterpieces. (Some of them really are, really!!) I have a very reasonable dream of having an anthology of poems published someday. So I decided that let me rumble at a separate address. Now please be cordial enough to ask me the second questio...

For You (The Girl In Purple)

Dear Girl in Purple, Let me start at the bottom-line itself: I don’t like you. I don’t like you because you brought to the surface the very facet of my being that I dreaded the most – that being: acute paranoia, extreme wariness of public embarrassment, and of course my utter discomfort in the mere presence of a girl. Remember this – I have tried all my life to shield these aspects from public knowledge. For me these are more covert than perhaps the existence of the Holy Grail. Alas, though, as all this is now a thing of the past. You make me feel pathetic and miserable. I mean, how difficult is it to walk up to a cute girl in a coffee shop and say “hello” or whatever else might be fitting. What is the risk I am playing against? No probable solution of the Schrödinger’s equation will make my saying “hello” lead to a nuclear holocaust. Life is not like the Butterfly Effect. But my utterly female-terrorised brain makes me believe otherwise. Or maybe, it’s just that guys who talk of...