In a mad mad world

This is something so frustrating and i don't know who to vent my anger on...so as it should be, i am writing a post. For those in a mood to soak up some gyaan, and regurgitate it to me later...please stay away.

It so happened that i found out only today(i know i am a bit slow on technology and things like that) that now if you need to sign up for a new gmail account you have to furbish a mobile number...or else they wont give you an account(no no, dont believe me, try it out yourself). And on top of it, they have the guts to say they will give only a limited number of ids per mobile number. what the hell! if i need mail ids i need them, and if someone is being so snide about it of course i would rather shift to some other service provider.

its such a huge invasion on my privacy that i feel schocked even to react. and it freaks me out...i mean gmail has got it all interlinked...it has my mails, the friends i have, its linked to my orkut account, picassa and my blog. all this is njo unnerving till the time i know its only a virtual identity...giving a phone number means stamping it into my real world...which i dont like in anyway...the real and the virtual are different, and they cant and they are no supposed to meet.

for the heck, someone can misuse a mobile number...and giving it out means firmly existing in some database...and watching some weird english movies has made me believe its so easy to wreak havoc in anybody's life by simply cracking a password. what next? there will be police verifiction i a person creates a virtual personification...and so much incursion on my privacy for what? try reasoning it out for me.

what the F***K

i find it better to pay for something than have ads displaying on my personal page...i am waiting to shift to a webpage from blogger soon...if only i could have a day's time to finalise all the details. gmail is only providing a service...if at all it should make people pay for it, that makes sense for me and i dont mind. but i am very dissapointed by this medium. anyways of late i have been thinking books are the best way to express...so instead of spamming the cyber space may be i should focus more on writing a book and have it published. i will have less chance of someone indenting my privacy then. i don't know about anybody else, but i really am quite scared of the all knowing google.

i am even planning to shift to using yahoo mail again...however clumsy and disorganized and ugly the interface is...or maybe some other service that doesn't cost me my identity.

its a mad mad world we live in...after i die, the only place i want to be exist is in someones' memories, and not in google search. as one entity, may be fading out but definitely not in terabytes and gigabytes storage space online.

Technology makes it possible for people to gain control over everything, except over technology. - John Tudor

delhi...a bygone era

How some people leave a lasting imprint on your life, irrespective of the time they spent with you! How effortlessly they simply touch a moment and it gets imbibed in your very soul...for eternity. One is supposed to wipe away memories if they start to poison the present life but what can be done if its not so easy...if its next to impossible.

A bite of a forgone fruit brings back several memories of my beloved city, Delhi...it brings alive the summers, the sun, the dust, the smell of parched earth...it brings the joy of the first rains, the shared cup of coffee, the long walks on moonlit lonely roads with only fm radio for company.

A picture of purani delhi or india gate or qutab minar brings alive those pangs and I ache to go back to Delhi...I want to saunter on lonely roads, drive on roads leading to forgotten tombs, forts, mosques...feel the whiff of pakodas mixed with the smell of wet earth. Dusk cloaked in mist, airplanes over the highway, some friends to laugh with...some friends to bitch along...a song to sing at the top of my voice.

Unfurl a dupatta over the highest natural point...sit in the gentle waft of alternating hot and cold air, hear the peacock call, watch the parrots fly across the sky coloured by setting sun. Have biryani at tefla, sip the coffee at ganga dhaba...smile to see some memories walking along the road. walk down the length and breadth of the bylanes of JNU...watch longingly at the classrooms i will never be able to enter.

For me Delhi is alive as the best memories of my college days...the most tension free days i ever lived, the most happinesses i could buy in minumum pocket money...the most beautifull journeys that ever happened to me over a bus pass of DTC.

The thousands of times I have chatted with complete strangers, the rarest of times i have spent in a group i absolutely hated...the sidey policemen i came across in sojourns.

And burn and ache and long...
How I miss Delhi!

a song that makes love come alive

Notting Hill.mp3

a fabulous song from an awesome movie, Notting hill...some or other time any girl will identify with this song...i specially love the time when julia roberts says...at the end of the day i am only a girl who wants you to love her...or something like that.

listen to the song...it is really nice...and here are the lyrics.

She
May be the face I can't forget
The trace of pleasure or regret
May be my treasure or the price I have to pay
She
May be the song that summer sings
May be the chill that autumn brings
May be a hundred different things
Within the measure of a day

She
May be the beauty or the beast
May be the famine or the feast
May turn each day into a heaven or a hell
She may be the mirror of my dreams
The smile reflected in a stream
She may not be what she may seem
Inside her shell

She
Who always seems so happy in a crowd
Whose eyes can be so private and so proud
No one's allowed to see them when they cry
She
May be the love that cannot hope to last
May come to me from shadows of the past
That I'll remember till the day I die

She
May be the reason I survive
The why and wherefore I'm alive
The one I'll care for through the rough in ready years
Me
I'll take her laughter and her tears
And make them all my souvenirs
For where she goes I've got to be
The meaning of my life is

She
She, oh she

love

they are strangers, yet there is this cordiality between them that comes after years of knowing each other

the understanding that develops after seeing several quiet sunsets

she has never seen him before, yet she knows his smile is dimpled

the moment they met is frozen in time and they both love it again and again

its the same wind and the biting cold and her scarf remains unfaded

its love recognizing itself in as much as a first glance, first smile...first winter

its the point where they first meet and from here their paths become one

companions forever...

Fear analysis

what does it feel to be without fear?
nowdays i seem to envy people who dont have fear as a regular feature in their lives...and i tend to see freedom as being free from fear too.

i have no idea where and when did i start fearing things, i remember there was a time this word was mysterious to me, i used to think why do people feel afraid. and now i am, at the completely opposite end of the spectrum, wondering how do people go about in their daily lives without fearing something or the other.

to come to very material things, i never had a fear of heights, or darkness, or ghosts, or closed spaces, or crossing roads, or speedy biking...i never felt fear in anything. and in all these years the only thing that has changed drastically in my life is my close encounter with death. i lost my mother, and that i guess really brought upon the realization that death treads softly...and it affects me. i think that is the reason nowdays i am very upset by any attacks, any accidents any murders or such mishappenings.

i dont understand how a human being can be capable to causing so much pain to someone else, and the pain is irreversible. those who are dead cannot come back, the large lacuna can never be filled, there is no way to have any solace except to think of "buts and whys".

i see the current terror scenario and i wonder how can a person do such heinous crimes, are these people who have actually never lost someone near and close or are they such heartless people that they wouldnt feel anything. somehow i want to think it is the second reason...you tend to be insensitive towards something if you are exposed to it for long. when a medical student sees a dead body for a first time, he really hesitates but over a period of time he develops an immunity...a kind of emotional immunity. is it the case with these terrorists, have they actually seen and faced death or is it a first time experience for them?

but i guess life has to move on...and it is not because you are brave or something like that it is beacause after some time instinct takes on...you are routined to do your daily activites from childhood and the response of your emotional side also tends to take on autopilot for emergencies. i think i am in this state now...it will be some time before i begin to think, feel and start to live to myself.

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.

-Ambrose Redmoon