हज़ार लफ्ज़, सौ सवाल और कुछ लम्हे

कहने को हज़ारों लफ्ज़ हैं 

पर तुम जाते-जाते कुछ कह गए 

कि अब दूर रहते हुए, ये समझ न आए 

कि वो लफ्ज़ कहाँ ढह गये। 

पूछने को हैं सौ सवाल

पर पूछने से डर लगता है। 

पता नहीं जवाब आए या न आए,

और आए भी तो क्या हश्र कर जाए। 

कुछ लम्हें और ही माँगे थे। 

माँगा ज़्यादा नहीं था। 

शायद देने वाले ने पहचान लिया,

कि इस चाह का कोई अंत नहीं था। 

अब इसी बात को गाँठ बाँधकर रखना है,

कि किसी को इसका इल्म न पड़े। 

कि अब इसी एहसास को लेकर आगे बढ़ना है…

कहीं ये लफ्ज़, ये सवाल, ये लम्हें,

हमसे कोई चुरा न ले।

Wait till the end

We live in an oystered world,

Limiting ourselves to the vicinity,

Studying ourselves old,

But learning what we are told.

That the world isn't for the honest,

That criminals are set free;

That, one day, a prince charming

Will come to woo thee.

Morals hide in their Graves,

Values have been undone;

It's time to come out of the caves,

It's time to unlearn.

You will be jolted out of the slumber.

And you will experience failure.

There will be an unreasonable downfall,

And you'll have to go through it all.

Times will test your mettle,

There will be a kryptonite for you.

There will be a Great Canyon on your way,

You'll have to rock climb back to the top.

Because honestly, life is nothing

Without a little roll, pitch and yaw;

And a little turbulence to keep you alive.

'Coz life can't be just a VTOL.

Truth is, winter IS coming

And everybody dies in the end.

But after every Jellybean there is a Kitkat

and after 8.1 there is a direct 10.

The Bunk Bed Theory

My first time in the hostel and I get one of those new bunk bed rooms. I do not mean to complain but there was no bunk bed, though there was a roommate. And I don't mean to complain again but the bed didn't arrive for another month- so we had to share the bed in the hot Indian summer. It was finally set up in the middle of the night and there was quite a hullabaloo about it. I remember girls coming from different floors to see the new installation- like how the crowd of New York lined up to see Alex in Madagascar. As I was royally sitting and enjoying my very own space in the room, about 5 and a half feet above the ground, somebody piped up a question,

"So Naaz, how do you feel?"
To that my head-in-the-clouds-reply was, "On top of the world." Somebody also asked me if it felt like sitting on a train going back home. Since I hadn't gone back home since being sent away from it, I had no idea. Back then, I simply shrugged. But 2 months from then, on the train going back home I remember feeling like I was sitting on my bunk bed!

BUT, I must admit, it wasn't the top-of-the-world experience. I, for one, cannot stand a stink especially if it is that of unwashed clothes and "unbathed" human beings. And she brought in both. To make matters worse, in the 46 plus degrees of Noida heat she kept the door AND the window closed because she could not bear the noise. Pfft! And imagine how freaked out I got when I opened the door to see her lying in the dark with the curtains drawn and EYES WIDE OPEN!
Trust me, I am not the judgemental kind. I am fine with whatever you do, however unhygienic you are and whatever your habits are but if you have are living with me you have got to:
a) Stay clean (or at least not stink)
b) Learn to live with the windows wide open any time of the day, any time of the year.
c) Learn to live with my crazy ringtones.
d) Be happy or at least not gloomy to the extent of looking gloomy like the Grudge female.
How did I survive? I saw Shawshank Redemption! If that guy could crawl through some xyz feet of shit to freedom I could definitely bear this. And that's what I did. Sat through it. Cribbed. No doubt I cribbed and I am still cribbing about it. Then one glorious day she told me that she was moving out. I swear to God, I cannot remember another happier moment while I was in the hostel. I am terribly sorry for all the negativity/complaints/cribbing or whatever you would call this but to me this is the real struggle for Independence.

So, what is the Bunk Bed Theory?
Upar wala saba malik. (You see, I had the upper bunk) Because I am the one who stayed and got the room ultimately. *Evil laughter*

The Two Decade Effect

There has been a constant ebbed feeling that would tug at the prefrontal cortex of this two decade old homo sapien. And the tugging got a little more livid at the beeps of my cell phone. Turns out my beloved twin  (as per our twin theory) had been feeling the same. Marina, at 2:02 am, wanted to know what happened within a span of 2 years that reduced the rate of pictures uploaded on Facebook, reduced the amount of free time we have and considerably reduced the no. of times I had golgappa.

We'd become "more serious, less carefree, less funny, probably more mature".  The so instigated train of thoughts went on and on but since it was the wee hours of the morning I decided to not ponder over it much.

Enter Nikita. (9:49 am) Nikita: c on fb, i've commented on 1 of our pics frm 2 years back. v were so thin back then nd luk like kids. just 2 years nd kitna kuch badal gaya hai. Amity has been an eventful journey for me at least.
I promised to check once I'd gone through my morning routine- and I did. The change was evident and inevitable.





Speaking of the inevitable, I remembered a conversation with another friend of mine. "Life is a journey, we meet new ppl, some stay for less time some for longer. But everyone teaches you something new about this journey. And the best thing is it goes on... Everyone has his own way to walk past this journey. Nothing is wrong or right. And this is one of the journeys where the destination matters the least."
All of this within a day- so I came up with my contribution to the nostalgia that's been travelling around. It's probably a totally different aspect but it's something that's been staring at us from an inch of distance from our faces at us.
Just two decades on this planet and everybody feels like they've had had been duped into changing, being more careful, slightly cynical, less cheerful and older, by the thug- Time.
But what have we accomplished? Just the realization that time's slipped by.

We have a long way to go (hopefully) and a lot to accomplish. There's a lot to learn, a lot to create, a lot to think, lots of games to play, lots of things to see. We have changed but only for the better- seasoned with the changing times.
And we're still young! Let's not think how we've changed and think what has made us better- rather. We'll change, no doubt, but what's the point in staying the same always?

I'd quote two great minds I've met:

Marina: "life's all changed naa.. even as we look back to 1st year in Clg.. changed in a gud way.. i think i hv become more intellectually mature..maybe.. toooo many wrong ppl and now i can handle wrong."

"The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep."

-Robert Frost

Punctuation that

We're living in times where a misplaced emoticon can spell havoc, where a sentence without a smiley is plain rude, where a statement ending with full stops rather than cliffhangers is curt. One just cannot decide once and for all because the way everyone perceives these yellow circular faces is different. A devil to one is an angel to another- or more appropriately- one's shades-wearing-smiley is another's smiley-a-la-attitude. How am I supposed to know if your statement full of exclamations is full of anger, or eagerness, or adrenaline, or happiness or simply a lubricant-slick keypad?

We've started reading less and hearing more. We hear what we expect and what is pre-determinedly going on in our minds. A punctuation mark- a comma, a question mark and more importantly, a full stop is not shouting at you or abusing you or poking fun at you. It is simply saying that it is organizing the statement in the correct syntactical form- NOT putting an end to your relationship. It is not asking you to shut up or imagine the person insultingly shrugging shoulders at you.

So how about this? Let's not use a joint family of full stops, these things like to be left alone. Let's not hyperventilate and leave that one exclamation mark alone. Let's not over-imagine what the words are trying to say. Let's not read between the lines when there is nothing to be read. Let's not grow suspicious at the hideous-looking "Okay.", for all you know it could be a simple nod in the physical face-to-face world. Say what you want to say, as you want things to be told to you, because people out there are going paranoid scrutinizing what you say. And I am going mad writing one explanatory sentence for every previous sentence i wrote explaining myself.
Keep :-) ing

Mum ^_^

She wakes the alarm up, chemically manipulates the food and makes it taste good, gets a teenager to get up and get ready for school on time and makes her drink milk, stuffs the food it into her husband rushing out for work amidst a flurry of phone calls, makes sure the gym equipments don't get rusted out (in fact, at times she wears them out too), smoothes out the roads- jogging on them, ensures her sleep deprived daughter is up for college and this is just the beginning of her day.

Coordinating events, looking over dance performances, ensuring education and vocational training is delivered to EVERYONE within the radius of her awesomeness and she's just warming up.

Making 5 cups of tea a day for her hubby, looking amazingly beautiful, looking 20 years younger, prancing around and with a heart younger to her time on Earth by 30 years and the day is almost done but she can go on and on.

Her daughters' friends are her fans, she runs for more distances than both her daughters combined, sits with them while they study (makes coffee on demand), gives them her t-shirts away anytime, plays games with them, poses for pictures more than her daughters do, looks more like a sister to them and she's growing younger...

The wife of an Army doctor, a mom to an engineering student and a teenager. Somebody give her the Nobel Peace Prize for her birthday!

Been There, Said That

Much of our life is maneuvered by the conversations we have- with our friends, family, strangers, and ourselves. Admit it, those words flanged by double inverted commas- they are alot more than just words. You have played and replayed conversations in your head and tried to make sense out of nonsense, fished for compliments, "listened" between the lines and gloated over the flattery.
Casual utterances, debates, news, imaginary situations, complains- you've already been there and "said" that.
And then, there are those instances when you remember quirky things said. In my case I have:

"You don't need a jacket in Delhi? Pollution keeps you warm."

"Don't hate the game, hate the players."

"This is for your performance today."

"Okay, agreed you have Army blood running through you but you gotta watch where you;re going through a bus full of guys."

"You slapped him? Great!"

"Well done chicks! Congrats!"

"Your face is like an open book."

"We are Aerospace Engineers and it is rocket science!"

"What happened to your face? You look all girly today, you look good!"

"Achha beta bathao, ye Amity hai kya?"

"You're in college and you're seventeen!?"

"Your smile is important."

"You're the golden girl of our department."

"Have you seen yourself running? You run like an athlete." ("But I am an athlete.")

"You're an inspiration, Naaz."

"I was stalked!"

"How do you stay so positive about everything?"

"How about a new name like Naz?" (to be pronounced as Naeyz)

"Moti, Kumbhakaran."

"Promise me something? You'll write a book someday."

"If you go away to college, I'll beat you up 'coz then there'll be no one else to beat up."

"Naaz, that was good what you did there."

"Goodmorning! :) "

But the worst of them all, "k."

Funny, silly, annoying, admiring, flattering threads of conversations I had that I am rewinding back to now.