Untitled (deliberately!)

Poor me..
fractured leg...
my buddies...
alcohol, bootlegged...

feeling dejected...
and alone...
fighting devils...
like Mahone...

highly active...
suddenly inactive...
fortune twists...
I'm captive...

TV, Internet...
kill time...
Someone kill...
misery mine...

Sunday night...
just me, PC...
everyone says...
"take it easy"...

Mom calls...
"Everything's fine",
I tell her...
Standard line...

SMS recieved...
"Get well soon"...
If I could wish,...
would touch the moon!

Why it's me?
I wonder...
get no sunshine...
only the thunder...

Keep going?
No clue...
No more moaning...
Life's a flu!

Shine On!

There are numerous adjectives that mortals shower on men or groups possessing talent and then, there are some who rise aeons above such pettiness because of the sheer, everlasting quality of their work and more importantly, their absolute disregard for the concept of comparison. These men are so deeply involved in collating matter that flows out of their creative outlets that everything else automatically assumes secondary importance for them. This is where the highest principle of Objectivism, as stated in that God of books - "The Fountainhead" comes into the picture.

Pink Floyd is how you spell genius. This band from the UK was, is and will be the marquee name in Psychedelic Rock. I am no music connoisseur, I don't even come close to being called a dilettante. But to me, psychedelia unleashes its complete effect on the listener only when it fulfills two criteria - extraordinary poetry and unparalleled music.
If I start elaborating about the music (the absolute perfection over instruments, the tunes, the riffs, daredevil experimentation like Musique concrète et al), it would be like showing a candle to the Sun. The poetry was absolutely phenomenal too, with radicalism, surreality, allegory, philosophy, Onomatopoeia, imagery, simile and metaphor being the highlights of almost everything the band created.
But what stood out was that simplicity was never sacrificed and that vital connection with the listeners (the elixir for any band) was always established. And the back-to-the-basics idea behind the cover art lured audiences, no end!

Pessimists, critics and other related tribes have always got diatribe up their sleeves with respect to the controversies that Pink Floyd was involved in. But as they say, "Many men, many minds!".

Pink Floyd is definitely, the single most powerful source of inspiration for the novice writer, the poet in me.

I wrote this post as the words, "There's someone in my head but it's not me" reverberate in my ears through the headphone, along with the sado-masochistic laugh of a lunatic. No prizes for guessing what exactly I'm referring to - "Brain Damage" by Pink Floyd.

Of Compiler Design and a 4th grader

Are "parsing" and "purse-in" one and the same thing?
For everything that goes in, comes out sooner.
How can alphabets be non-elements?
No, please don't go back on primary education!
It befuddles me no end, I swear!

How do LR and SLR differ?
does SLR refer to "Sylar" from "Heroes"?
My God, save my soul, or rather brain from that evil man!

Why do we have languages for all levels - high, low and middle?
We got to have uniformity and equality, don't we?
That's not what they taught me at school
Is it not akin to fooling me? Answer me, O teacher!

Why do we need to transfer the innocuous dot to so many places?
Won't it get tired? Come on, think of it!

Who is going to explain to me what is happening out there, no; in there in the compiler?
Who is tending to what and whose ID are we constantly referring to?
Arithmetic tells me to open the brackets first,
but here the rules have been marauded!
I don't know when, don't even have a clue!

'I' referred to only me, that's what my English teacher told me
It was strictly singular, though plumpy she herself was,
good enough to be two! (hope she is not listening!)
Here there is a sea of 'I's', I saw eleven of them on the blackboard today
God, am I hallucinating or what?

Someone please come to my rescue,
this is a SOS call
My cute, little brain is not able to compile all of this arbit gyaan
The load is too much, this flood of symbols, arrows, elements and non-elements
I swear!

Readers, please empathise with me in my troubles with understanding Compiler Design.
Please pour in with your comments.

Euthanasia is what I seek!

Psychedelia strikes me
It's insanity for sure
I'm losing my grip on things
there seems to be no cure!

She has left me on the crossroads,
they have turned their backs.
What I thought of as an invincible wall,
hell, ya, it's got cracks!

They say it's a passing phase,
looks like the phase lasts a birth.
This is what they call a disaster,
I'm the last guy running in this mad race!

It's a monstrous tree,
Entangled I feel in the ghoulish branches,
The bark is so sticky that it hurts,
I just can't let go
Egregiously sour and laced with the choicest venom,
the leaves and fruits seek to destroy my cranium!

What do I do?
I've nowhere to go!
One look at myself in the mirror
"A decimated, good-for-nothing warrior",
howls from alter-ego from within.

There's been talk of a fairy-tale ending,
and also, every black cloud has a silver lining,
about light at the end of the tunnel and the like!
with me, it is sadistically different
the fairy has transformed into a witch,
The lightning camouflaged has stuck me too
the tunnel has become a funnel,
On which end am I is crystal clear,

It engulfs me all around, it's fear!
Euthanasia is what I seek!

Readers, please pour in with your comments.
Ciao!

DEATH

DEATH is a actually a Fender Stratocaster that starts playing a riff to elevate you to an all- new high even as the other sounds fade out

It's a melody that pleases you, to fill the heart with contentment, perhaps even a sense of confused bliss, never experienced before

It's the time when defeat and victory lose their meaning, because the realization sets in that ultimately, fate will lead everyone - the victor and the vanquished, on the same trail ...

Then, like a bolt from the blue, the ephemerality of this phase strikes you and the memories pertaining to your life, right from spring through to autumn, flood your soul

In the fleeting moments, you wish that all of this turns out to be dream, but deep inside you know that it is not!

And then, you don't breathe!

These lines by yours truly, show death in a different light.

Please post your comments.
Ciao!

Fundamental rules of Quizzing!!

I had a really bad quizzing experience on the 15th of September. I am not going to disclose the exact details because I don't want to start any controversies. Also, I don't want to wash dirty linen in public - no hard feelings towards the organisers at all. Lastly, I don't want this post of mine to be taken as a case of sour grapes. So, please keep these in mind before reading further.

Here, I would like to re-iterate some fundamental rules of quizzing that the organisers seemed to overlook, which I think, was a blatant error.

1. If you organise the contest in two rounds (the first being a written round for screening and the second being an audio-visual one), you don't make the top qualifier from the first round sit on the first table in the second round directly. That way, you are punishing it for standing first in the qualifying stage because most rounds are going to begin with that team. There must be a lottery system to introduce the element of luck, the quintessential feature of such contests.

2. You just don't begin all the rounds with the team that is sitting first. It's an alternate thing between the first and the last teams. You are not placing all the teams on the same pedestal because the first team will always be the first one to be in the line of fire. Ouch! It still hurts!

3. You have got to keep in mind that the questions in any one round, carrying the same weightage must be of the same difficulty level. For example, in a cricket-crazy nation like ours, you cannot ask the following two questions in the same round for the same number of points.

• What is the length of a cricket pitch? (even your kid brother knows that! Doesn't he?)
• What is the SI unit of thermal conductivity? (You have to agree that this is tough for mortals! I had to actually check out Wikipedia for this!)

4. You just don't ask the same question twice in the contest, and there's no way in hell you ask that to the same team, both times. That's egregious!

5. It's really good that you think of new ideas like a bid round in the end where in you have to place a bid in terms of points on the question that's going to be hurled at you, before hearing the question. If you get it right, you add that much to your score otherwise you lose that much. Two such questions will be there for each team. This is talked about as "The Make-or-Break Round". The idea - very nice indeed! The execution left a lot to be desired. As I have elaborated above, the first team had to face the music first. But the disappointing thing was that both the questions to a team were asked at one go, not one round of questions and then the other. That means, effectively the first team was playing blind. On the two questions, it just had to bid for points equal to or more than the deficit with respect to the leader to win. But the leader had its chance later. So, they could always come back. Therefore, you are minimizing the chances of the highly unfortunate team winning.

The post has already become very long...but I just couldn't control myself. I am waiting to go the Tata Crucible Corporate Quiz in Indore as a spectator. Hope to see some good quizzing there!

Readers, pour in with your comments

Ciao!

Keep climbing!

koi chamakta sitara nahi hoon main
naa koi mujhe seene se lagayega
shayad kismat ko bhi main pasand nahi hoon
par musibaton aur mushkilon ne sacchi wafa ki hai mere saath

main hoon kaun ? apne nishaan dekhta hoon ...
apne andar jhaankta hoon ...
apne wajood ki woh ek kambhakht wajah talaashta hoon ...

fir achanak ... badi lambi, gahan ... ya ... fir sirf upari jaanch ke baad ...
(lambi ... gahan ... upari ? kya ajeeb trikon hai ... )
mere mann main ek vichaar kaundha ...

ki shayad main himmat hoon ... rannkshetra main tikna meri aadat main
shumaar hai
main ... haan, main garv hoon ...
raahon main jo roke mujhe, un sthitiyon se mujhe kuch pyaar sa ho jaata hai,
na jaane kyun?

shayad isliye....shayad nahi, yakinan
kyunki ek din jab suraj purab se ugega
tab main unhi sthitiyon ki aankho main aankhe daal paaunga
aur mere mukh par hogi ek vijayi yodha ki santusht muskaan...
haan, woh ek din zaroor aayega ...
woh din ek punarjanam ki tarah hoga mere liye

kyunki us ek din se ...
kisi darr se nahin darrunga main
aur mujhe pasine ki mithas ka ekdum satik anumaan ho jaayega

fir main peeche mudunga ...
kuch pal apni raahon ke nikhar ko nihaarta rahoonga ...
aur fir, agle hi pal apne fefdon ka pura zor lagakar iss duniya se kahoonga

aakhir jeet meri hui ...
par zyaada mahatvpurna yeh hai ki ...
main nahi khela apni mannmaafik sharto par ...
aur apna raasta bhi maine khud banaaya ...

The above lines are an apt depiction of my thoughts in tough times - specifically, my resolve to emerge victorious.

I have been thinking on some issues, of late. Here are my thoughts -

1. There is a spate of turncoats in this world today. These are people who appear to be on your side, generally your friends, specifically from the opposite gender. Be wary of them. I have seen two people very close to me suffer hell due to such sandbaggers.

2. Another category of people includes those whom you care about, but in return they don't give a damn about you. That's bad enough. But as if the demons weren't satisfied, they go one step further - they don't even want to hear what you have got to say, but you have to bear with all the bullcrap they throw at you anywhere, anyhow, anytime. So most people who are at the receiving end, just close up themselves, their entropy goes down all of a sudden and that leads to dire consequences. They begin to resemble the insides of a pressure cooker which is just not being opened. And, every Tom, Dick or Harry knows what happens next - The inevitable blast which just exterminates everything in sight. You have got to put your intelligence agencies to work - they are the ones who will tell you the hidden details about this blast. (Are RAW and IB listening?) And then when you get the cues, you have got to foil these terrorist-like plans. Start loving yourself for a change and also, people who love you selflessly (i.e. your parents). Just focus on the activities that will make this set of human-beings happy. Believe me, it works wonders!

3. Now, what to do of those hypocrites? My advice : forgive them! For today, they will not realise the value of your forgiveness when they indulge in merry-making without having a figment of concern for your state of mind. But one day, when you whisk away the ghosts in your mind and conquer your self-doubts, they will hear a silent noise (silent noise - it rises from within) which has the power to de-stabilise their thought process completely. . Agreed, that wasn't and shouldn't be your primary motive, but that's when they begin to seek your forgiveness once more. For that's the exact time when the sad realization hits them like a bolt from the blue.

4. To my mind, the road that leads to sucess is an uphill one..and a very steep one, at that. So don't make your march towards success a rat-race. The tricks that no one is going to tell you are - to start early, to set periodic targets which you must achieve without fail and to reassess the circumstances after every target achieved and to never stop pushing yourself, come what may! Let every possible obstacle be unleashed in your path. You must not budge. You must not stop going up even if that ascent is at snail's pace. BUT you must never stop, NEVER! Because the steepness will cause you to drift or even slide downwards and then it will be back to square one.

Readers, please let me know about your thoughts.
Ciao.