Till death do us part

There are no more questions
No answers requested
No debates left
No arguments

This is not yours
And that is not mine
In a flat field
Our bodies lie
Indistinguishable
Where your hand was in mine

An ancient spirit

There is an ancient spirit
It speaks the sound of wood
It rises at wake of dawn
Walks the land it stood

You have come and gone
Oh you new soul
Your questions unanswered
Never found, never looked

The ancient spirit,
It lingers on still
Answer in its palm,
Be the question, what would?

Inconsequential star-dust

You and me - we are just the same

Little balls of silver, gold and dust.

Just because you dressed Red,

And I in Pink,

We never spoke to each other again!

Just saying...

I am not someone to burn bridges, but good fences make good neighbors!

If you can't do it on your own, don't make a career out of it!

Be assertive.

If you have any doubt about doing anything, don't do it.

If you think you'll regret not doing something, do it right away.

Take a stand. No point confusing your own self.

East Coast Snippets

Went to a scientific conference in US last week and picked up a snippet or two from here and there.....

1. "You can only go as far as your least strippy tyre."

2. "You don't get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate."

3. Step one block out of your comfort zone and discover a world you didn't even imagine.

4. "Nose down, tail up"

5. Find your coffee shop, find your city.

6. "Learn what works by observing what doesn't work."

7. Move from the best to the most useful. - Will expand on this one one day.

8. Walk into the common man.

9. Never underestimate the value of people who care for you.

10. The search for the answer can be more rewarding than the answer itself.

11. "Relationship hysteresis" - nice phrase!

12. Don't spend your life twisting and turning trying to fill in pitholes left by others, make a gap that only you can fit!

13. If you smell pride, you know you are around a fool!

14. Don't fight with a person's pride. Pride is the enemy of it's own bearer.

15. Don't gain knowledge at the cost of losing curiosity. Hold on to that gaze and wonder!

Rainy day thoughts...

ये जो धीमे धीमे से दस्तक दे रहा है सावन,
तेरे प्यार की सलामी दे रहा होगा,

हमारे दिल में जो सेलाब है,
उसकी बनक तो अभी हवाओ को लगी ही नहीं।

Dichotomy of love

Pain.
My body writhes,
An undulating motion inside.
I lie on a bed of roses,
And the petals of silk hurt me.

A fever, a fury.
Rages a fire within.
All you see from outside
Is a trickle of water,
That melts from my icy exterior.

Philosophizing...

When the times are lean, fight.

When the times are fat, give.

At no time, be tempted to ask, expect, beg, borrow or steal!

When you give, people take. When you ask, people take even more.

What people often misinterpret as my desire to "stand out" is nothing but my inability to "belong in". :)

Skin-deep

I just realized something, based on the comments and post-views of my blog posts, that people don't like advice. People love fiction. Fiction always gives people like me a choice to see themselves in the story, even if it is completely unrelated to their lives. At the same time, giving people a choice to just read an anecdote without relating to it in any way. Distance makes them feel safe I guess. "It's something happening to someone else, at some other time, at some other place. This can never happen to me!" Ha! Guess what? :)

There was a guest in our women's group lunch this week - who mentioned: " People always think that good is something "up" there, or "down" there. You either look up to someone or try to look deep down inside. Why can't we restrict ourselves to just surface, why are we trying to find something above or below the surface! Why do we read in between the lines and not just read the lines. Someone like me actually, not only reads between the line, I even write between the lines only! :P Can't tell the truth! Truth is much much stranger than fiction but sometimes not so much fun to say!

This Valentine's day - Try telling someone - I don't like you from the bottom of my heart or the depth of my soul. My love for you is only skin-deep.

Sunny day thoughts

There is no good or bad in this world.

There is only fear or lack there of.

Be unafraid.

Do your fucking self a favor - Be unafraid.

Of both the good and the bad. Be unafraid of both success and failure. Be unafraid of this dichotomy.

As Suma remarked, there is no problem that can't be fixed, except death.

As long as you are alive, be unafraid. Accept yourself. Accept others.

Things will ultimately fall into place. It may not be the place you wanted them to fall into.

Be unafraid.

Fish them out. Let them fall again. Have fun.

In any case, be unafraid.

Pearls of wisdom from the lab

Tough days build character. But it's not always the character that you want to build.

Mike Manno

The Princess and the Tiger - Part 1

After watching the movie "The Life of Pi", I have been meaning to write a small story about a Princess who has a tiger as a pet. One of the finest kinds, a real Bengal tiger, with his magnificent stripes, his deep soulful eyes, his small tiger mane, a tail high up in pride that follows him around, and that carefree gait of a tiger that walks around as if he owns the jungle. The princess is a spirited creature of desires, whimsical, wishful, impatient, energetic, easily amused, easily disheartened. They are inseparable during the day. The tiger follows her around everywhere. She frolics with the winds, while he strolls majestically, basking in the sun, lazily gulping in the wind she breathes, none losing the sight of other. But they part ways at night. 

While she retires to her chambers to sum up the victories and disappointments of the day, praying for another wonderful day, he gets down to business. The carefree, nonchalant, sluggish pet changes colors at night. He is a tiger after all. He is but an animal of prey. His deep, soulful, daytime eyes burn as bright green lights in the midnight forest.

One fine day, they are having the time of their lives. Time just flies in their games and neither one realizes how dark it's getting. She had never imagined how much fun it could be to be with him. Suddenly, the night doesn't seem so dark anymore. She still has some amount of energy and enthusiasm left in her. She doesn't have to call it a day quite yet. But she is out of her daylight ideas. Night is his play-field. They slowly move away from her royal gardens and walk into the forest in search of new games. Night is not the same color everywhere. The same forest that brings out his strengths also reveals her fears. It's an hour of the day she has never seen before, just as it is a part of the woods she hasn't been before. While she talks all day of what goes on in the palace, he has never mentioned what his world is like. In the thick of the forest, he is not the pet anymore, she is not the princess. She is just a young girl, he is an animal of prey. She can hear his deliberate footsteps, she can feel his breath on her hands, he places his paw on her shoulder, something he has done many a times before, except it's the first time she grasps the sharpness of his nails. 

They look into each others eyes. Usually, all she sees in them is her own reflection, her bright and shiny smile, her confident moves, her hopes, her dreams, her future self, her magnificent future self, her pride is as deep as his eyes. She always thought that they shared those hopes and dreams. They were as much his as hers. But the night reveals objects that sunlight fails to reach. The depth of his eyes has changed to a sharpness which is ruthless in it's judgement. Unlike depth, sharpness has nothing more to it, except the point it's making. There is no future or hope or dreams in those sharp green eyes of his. They are plainly a mirror of the present. And, in the present, she is only a young girl. Defenseless, doubtful, dependent, incompetent. How did she ever think that she could tame a beast of his form. She feels a wetness follow the path his claws trace on her body. She gets bruised everyday that they play together, but this is her first scar. Something tells her that this one's to stay for a while. Just kisses and rubs are not going to erase a wound so deep.

Maybe she should turn around and run and never look back. Or maybe, just maybe, she should look into his eyes one more time, last or not, just one more time, stay there with him while he whiffs around and then follow him in his quest of the night. He might just have something to show, something she has never seen before.

Coming up soon: What does a girl need two tigers for?

Simple realizations go a long way

You can always DO whatever you want.

You can always SAY whatever you want.

You can always LEARN whatever you want.

You can always EAT whatever you want.

You just CAN'T always GET what you want!

Keys to organization

A quote I had heard from a friend long ago:

First do what is necessary,
Then do what is possible,
And soon you'd find yourself,
Doing the impossible.

My post is on somewhat similar lines. These, I think, are the keys to organization:

1. Identify what's important.

2. Figure out how much time would that take.

3. Then, find out what would you like to do with the time that's left.

Do not break the sequence! :)

How to do it right?

Revel in your sorrow to create art.

Grieve in your joy to learn science.