'Wake up..'

The sun is up,
The stars are gone
The beckoning night
Has given way to dawn.

Come out and
See the shining light
Open the windows..
Welcome the day bright..

Reprocess the halting thoughts
Re-engineer the tangled knots
Dream and think and plan lots
Give today your best shots

Wake up...

--- Deepti Ramakrishna

Moments meant to last...

Sparkling eyes

Glittering smiles

Lost in moments

That once upon a time...

Once upon a time not so long ago when Miss Nostalgia (alias me) lived right across the Hudson and haunted NYC at every possible pretext, also haunting 'The City's' 'the landmark'- Times Square was Lexus group.

It was a perfect example of 'reason meets reasoning'. Our reason for being in the city was to introduce our friend (4th from left) to the charm and lights of the city that never sleeps.

And Lexus true to their " We pursue perfection, so you can pursue living" reasoning were having a fun advertising session. They were randomly asking groups to pose for their personalized advertisement, uploading the photographs alternating between slides of their latest cars. (No wonder these Marketing and Business Gurus are minting green bills).

Well, whatever reasoning their feel good about Lexus strategy was created for, being on the billboard of Times Square, NYC, with few of the best friends I ever had definitely was the perfect Canon moment. A moment meant to last and relive every time i look at this photo :)

Tagged by Priya

It had been quite a while since Priya had tagged me to write some completely weird lines about myself. But as you already know, I call myself an egocentric philantropist. And since when did egocentric people start finding faults/ weirdness about oneself!!

But life is a harsh teacher and mind is a funny student. When life tosses a completely unexpected day at an often startling, funny brain, it definitely goes haywire. And then perfection shunned mind presents its completely weird self.

Like everyday i left for work, a sleepy cheerful me, ready to snap into dreamland as soon as i find a niche in the Bay Area Rapid Transit. But little past 30 minutes, just as BART entered the trans bay tunnel, it came to complete stop. Driver announced that there were problems with the breaks and will have to restart his system, meaning a brief moment of darkness.

The lights went off not for moment but almost a minute and set off the weirdness triggers in my brain. These were the highlights:

1. No telephone networks, how will you call anybody? What if something happens?

2. Trapped in a tunnel, somewhere in the bay, what if the wall breaks and water gushes in? Don't even know swimming!!!!

3. Lights off, how will the train behind us know we are here? Who knows if tracking system is working?!!!

4. Similarly, what if there is a head on collision?

5. What if the driver is a terrorist, has planted a bomb and deserted us?

6. Am i claustrophobic? Should i shout and try run...

And before i could complete my 6Th weird thought, the lights were back and so were my senses. And for the next half an hour, me and my egocentric mind, spent laughing at myself, fixing our stupid selves while waiting for the technician to fix the train.

On the festival of lights

"Diwali is the festival of lights" is unanimously the first line that strikes any 'thinking about Diwali' mind. Be it seven year olds writing their first essays or a Jhumpa Lahiri defined 'American - Indian' describing it to their American friends and colleagues. It is often followed by the description of little candles, lamps or their modern day counterparts - the electric lights, lit around the house with figurative descriptions of throwing darkness out of our lives. Grannies singing tales of epics Ramayana and Mahabharata with stories of Hindu God Rama returning to Ayodhya after 14 years of exile or Krishna's triumph over Narakasura still hum in our heads.

I cannot speak for all Indian's abroad, but this definitely is one of the days I would like to be at home in India with parents, relatives and friends. No matter how many times I might have run into the quieter sanctums of the house to escape the deafening noises of the bursting fireworks; or fought with my brother over his taunting remarks of my cowardly self, there is a charm about this day. coming from a 'non-orthodox but preserve your culture' South Indian family, I miss waking up at 5.30 in the morning, drawing Hibiscus rosa-sinensis next to mother's elaborate, delicate and exceedingly beautiful rangolis; juggling between salt and sugar bottles being the second-in-command chef of the day; sitting through the long hours of prayers; flaunting around the house in the new clothes; complaining about the wind, aligning the candles/lamps in beautiful shapes; lighting the flowerpots( a kind of fireworks) with sparklers.

In spite of all my successful experiments of cooking and haunts to the Mall and friends' places, the day feels incomplete.

Missing folks back home and wishing you all a very happy Diwali(aka Deepawali)!

~Deepti

Solitude..

A halt, a stop
Then dream away
A smile, a tear
And a thought astray
Cheerful note, confusion's bout
And nostalgia of yesterday!

Surmounting fears for near and dear
Miles apart yet a call away
Robust plans to sail clear
Anything eliciting dismay
Charming yet alarming are
Mundane ways of Solitude's disarray!!

Passing Clouds

Its been almost two months now since I moved into the Bay Area and spending the best parts of my days in San Francisco. Ever since then I have sung to at least a hundred new people I have met, how much I enjoy being here. Leering at my East Coast friends at least a thousand times (given the fiend that I am) about not having to wear heavy shoulder drooping coats or cocooning in the woolen accessories almost suffocating like a tightly tucked claustrophobic kid. Announcing temperatures more blasphemously then the ‘Weight Loss’ commercials announcing the numbers of pounds they help loose without dieting and being so completely eager and happy to hear the initially envied later indifferent ‘Lucky yous’.
  And all of a sudden on the fateful 4th October of 2006, waking up to an overcast damp sky minus the best friend of a stubborn May born – the Sun, struck me like a lightening bolt. It was like being woken from the best dream you ever had just before it ends. Hopes of being out in sunshine vained like the complaining flames of a dying candle. The huge drops of rain and the obvious suggestions to buy an umbrella only added to the agony. The next day seemed no different. Annoyed and late with no sunshine to tickle me awake, armed with a hooded jacket, angry with my best friend I set out to conquer my work-infested world.
After a religiously routine day as I walked out of my office in the evening, the warm sunrays swept my dullness away, making me look foolish in the bright red hooded jacket. The gliders sweeping across the blue sky, SouthWest airlines taking off from Oakland International airport, soft distant Cirrocumulus clouds seemed assurance enough that my life had returned to normalcy. These passing clouds are mere drizzlers waking the mourning gloomy sky with the softest and appealing hues of blues and oranges.

Sunrise: Across the window of a Boeing 737

Sunrises are often the most interesting parts of the day. People wake up at 5 and 6 in the morning to catch the rare sunrise across the lofty green mountains, the vast blue seas, the winter-frozen rivers and all probable nature’s paradise places. The sunrise I witnessed was also a rare one, from the window of a Boeing 737.
This was not the first time I flew in the ‘before the bird wakes’ morning hours. And there have also been times when I crossed the International Date Line; twisting my neck to catch a glimpse of the changing colors of the stretching horizon. But this was definitely my first 54-minute flight to an extremely interesting destination Los Angeles, CA, USA. The homeland to movie world paradise ‘Hollywood' and ‘Disneyland’, to the intellects of UCLA and USC, to the beautiful beaches of Santa Monica, Venice, Long Beach, to the art devotees at Getty Center and countless number of ‘tourist attractions’.
Just across the small window of the Boeing 737 was a dark sky just shy of the golden glow spreading across the distant end of the horizon. The low lying pseudo- wall shaped fluffy clouds turning from grey to golden like the mountains setting on fire giving in to the rage of the molten volcanoes. The sun was rising above these clouds spilling the first soft rays of his golden light. And before I know the 50 minutes was already over. The last four minutes busy with the landing preparations fighting the turbulence tossing the aircraft in and out of the airpockets with my mind singing to the tunes of ‘California Dreaming’ and ‘Californication’. And just after the clouds vanished and the aircraft turned to make the final descent, the eastern sky glowing with the nascent sunrise against the backdrop of the famous Hollywood sign perched on Mt. Lee welcomed my weekend at Los Angeles.

To the nameless jester...

A nameless jester adorns my heart
Like the dancing rays at day’s start
Minding his ways yet indulging in mine
Talking and yet never saying a line.

Warm like a friend, cold like a foe
Countless questions; answers that never show
Hidden in thoughts as if lost in a mine
And yet like gold somewhere the shine.

Playing peek-a-boo like sun and the cloud
And yet no name to call out aloud
Wonder where the routes shall meet
Like the winding roads with surprises greet.

Beyond...

To think beyond thoughts
To wait beyond time,
To talk beyond words
And let the days sublime.

To feel beyond emotions
Holding on to 'That is mine',
Walking into a casino
Gambling a dollar for a dime.

To earn beyond money
To worship beyond shrine,
To learn beyond knowledge
Talk beyond reason or rhyme.

To be sane beyond insanity
Synchronous beyond align,
What would I call this?
If not anything,A life that is mine!

Wonder if you agree?

Do I call it sophistication or craziness when a train not just arrives on the dot but is adjusted moving back and forth at the platform such that the doors open only in pre-assigned areas! By the way, I forgot to tell you, I am talking about one of the most organized countries in the world ‘Uncle Sam’s land’ better known, USA. Schedule is a rhythm hardly avoided. Organized, strict, punctual, or in my opinion its monotonous.
I am a totally spontaneous, driven more by instincts and impulsiveness, ‘late to bed and late to rise and yet healthy, wealthy and wise’ doctrine person. And these days I am almost surprised at myself:
Wake up at the harsh screech of a cell phone alarm at 6.00 am, get ready by 7, catch the 7.10 BART, office by 8.15 armed with a Star Bucks Cappuccino to fight the drooping eyelids. Stare into the bright eyes of your technology driven better half, the laptop. Lunch by 12.30, meetings, write reports, test the cases, and update status to all but yourself. Occasionally replenishing the dehydration with gallons of caffeine charged liquids ignoring the constraints and alarm triggers of health. Call it a day by 6, retard back to the niche by 7, enjoying an intermittent nap in the BART on the way back. Sneak in to board on the first available treadmill in the gym, rush back to satisfy the growling stomach by 9.30 and crash by 11 after scanning through and deleting hundreds of unread spam infesting the cyber space. And trriiiiiiiin…. it’s a new day!!
It’s beyond words to describe the mere loss of the good old days with absolute joy of doing nothing. Sleeping after sunrise and waking up with the noon sun. Living like frog in the well, unheard of commitments of the outside world and strictly living by somebody’s quote " A variety of nothing is better than the monotony of something". Exploring every new restaurant, movie or games. Living beyond fantasy, stepping across lines, dancing with the stars in the warmth of the cool moonlight.
And now all this has been reduced and so ironically capsuled into a two-day weekend program amidst the chores of laundry and cooking. No wonder people wait for Friday and have restaurants named after it.
This scheduled, organized, real-time week has infested my beautiful lazy ways of life and dragged me into the corporate black and white structure of outlooks and organizers. It has switched my featureless fancy phones to high profile PDAs with all possible mechanisms of ‘fun arrest’. And well, if I do not tow the ‘busy week’ line who would pay me for all my fancy dreams of a perfect weekend? Damn, I am already arrested by this cult called Work. All right, I need to stop complaining here and get back to meeting scheduled in 10 minutes. And dare tell my boss about my being lazy or calling this life monotonous! Pleeeease :).

To - Some time lost... some friends gained

It is kind of strange that I am writing this on a train filled with rimmed glasses lost in the paged world of unfinished books or silenced by the paradigm of engineered melody – iPods.
My first day on train should have been no surprise, but for my ‘untrained to San Francisco BART travel’ mind and ways. A fellow passenger surprised by the papyrus unarmed me, adjusted her glasses and settled in for a small conversation. By the end of a four or so minute discussion about the weather and work she finally asked if I was a New Yorker.
Surprised and suppressing the “Blessed, I am a Desi, is it still so obvious that I have migrated from the ‘East’” with a smiling nod and a soft “Yes, but how do you know?”
Her smile gave me no answers but the sudden toss of the question brought a strange joy, ripples of happy thoughts and silent smiles to my face. And then I was lost in the one and odd years of East Coast extravaganza.
Hailing form the Silicon Valley of India, the transition to the Western Culture or mingling with the new crowds had never been an unimaginable task. Columbus had come in search of spices to his ‘Conceptual India’ and I came in search of concepts to Columbus’s America.
As the BART scanned through the small stations zooming past some, halting at some, my mind scanned through the streets of Harrison, NJ. Pictures of friends, the not so friendly friends and the unknown faces smiling in false recognitions, all flashing past the screen of brain.
The school, the streets, the park, my home away from home, brought back some fond memories:
Walking in the moonlight on a hot summer night to the waterworks by the park; sitting by the pond listening to the geese talking in an incomprehensible language; holding hands promising eternal friendships rather pseudopromisingly; crying, fighting, eloping from the everyday monotonicity and madness or often from unexpressed sadness; driving away to the bliss of nature to the cold Pocono Mountains, to the shores by the vast Atlantic ocean be it NJ or VA; late night walks to the coffee shop (DD) and loosing count of time over hot and cold lattes….
Come winter and waiting for the weather channels to declare snowstorm warnings in hope of a workless/study less day; building snowman after a cold freezing night; clad in super warm clothes to walk by the Hudson and see the moon rise over the New York skyline; running to the boardwalk just before midnight to catch a glimpse of the Empire state building before the lights go off; meandering through the sprinklers of a sleeping lawn and searching for restrooms at the middle of a drunk night!!!!
“Now approaching Union City station”. Wait, isn’t that an announcement on BART???
And I am zapped back to reality, hating to be disturbed and yet waiting to be a ‘San Francisco girl’.
May be in a few years when I go back to East Coast…Let me get off the train today!! Dreaming is what I do the best. Let me leave it for my journey tomorrow.

BYE....

You came I smiled and welcomed
You went I never said bye
Lest you would never turn back
I always said a 'Hi'

Those unvapouring thoughts
Of innocence and fun
Leave me stranded and vacant
And tempers haywire run

When the wind blows like tempest
I remember the walk by the beach
Picking up the rounded pebbles
And the water at our feet

Walking by the alley Of 'Bygone' days
Looking into the mirror called life
Making sure not to miss the good old ways
Neither joy nor unbecoming strife

You came I smiled and welcomed
You want to go? I'll tell you Bye
Lest you would turn back
Dont worry I will ignore the Hi.

The Paradox called Compromise

Not thinking of water
Thinking of land
Not of the pebbles
Only of the sand
Not of the winding roads
Intersecting at unknown
But the usual trodden routes
Rotting like own
Not beyond the horizon
Limiting with thresholds
Not letting to fly
Bound by the holds
Usually saying yes
With a seldom no
Holding back tears
Smiling with sorrow