A lot can happen over Coffee

Having screwed up my entire day at office, I felt I needed a break. I looked at my watch and it was already 9PM. I locked my pc with a lot of work left unsaved and left my cubicle, and went to the parking lot to get my bike. After a lot of security checks in my campus, I was finally out of it by 9:25PM. I rode towards Café Coffee Day, on the outskirts of Bangalore and nearly six kilometers from my campus. I reached there after a tiresome twenty minute ride, parked my bike and walked into the coffee shop.

I searched for an empty seat so that I could enjoy my solitude, but the coffee shop was crammed with couples or groups on all the tables, lost in their own worlds of fun and frolic. I waited for five whole minutes before I got a seat in the corner which was just vacated by a Chinese couple. I sat there lost in my own thoughts, undisturbed by the gambol around me. The words of my boss, ‘You are fit for nothing… You can’t do anything’ were reverberating in my mind like someone pounding with a sledge-hammer on my head. ‘Getting my butt fucked all these days in office, this is what I achieved’ – I said to myself. ‘What the hell is he expecting from me? Does he want me to worship his ass always?’ I thought. My head was overloaded with such thoughts until a voice interrupted saying, ‘Order Please, Sir!’

I ordered Mocha and the waiter left taking my order. I cursed him for the disturbance he caused, and started looking all around me. My eyes suddenly stopped wandering as I saw a girl walking towards the entrance door. She was pretty, clad in pink top and blue denims, and with dark goggles pulled over her head, like a hair band. The black eyeliner highlighted her perfectly grey eyes. She stood there searching for a seat but there wasn’t any. I watched her until our eyes met and I had to immediately take off my gaze from her.

As if God had showered his mercy on this poor soul, she walked towards my seat and said ‘Excuse me! Can I sit here?’ Only a fool would say NO at that moment. And I’m not a fool. She sat there and took out her mobile from her bag. And I sat there acting as if I was looking into the menu, lifting my head occasionally to see her. She didn’t look at me and was busy typing something on her mobile. I looked at the tag around her neck and found that she is a student of a reputed Business School.

The waiter arrived with my Mocha, placed it on the table and waited for her order. She ordered a cappuccino. After the waiter left, our eyes met again. I managed to give a smile and she smiled back. ‘Hi’ I said. And she replied back ‘Hello’. Silence crept in between us again after that. After a few sips of Mocha, I said ‘So you are a management grad.’ ‘Still under process’, she said and winked with an impish grin. I laughed and asked her name, even though I knew it from the bold letters printed on her id card. She gave me a why the fuck do you want it look. I was taken aback for a moment. ‘Priya Aggarwal’, she said and asked for my name, more for courtesy sake than being interested to know it. I told her my name. I even told her that I am working for India’s second largest software firm. This did not seem to impress her. She seemed to be more interested in pressing the buttons on her mobile than hearing to what I spoke. After a while she resumed the conversation asking about my job and what exactly I do. After that, we spoke quite a lot in a shorter time.

She seemed to be an interesting kind of character and I felt happy talking to her. I forgot all my day’s frustration as I spoke to her. I irritated her with my deadly PJ’s and loose talk. And believe me all this happened within one hour of our introduction. Highly unbelievable, Right!!! We became friends within one hour over a cup of coffee. We realized it’s time for us to leave and so we exchanged our numbers hoping to continue our friendship. And from then we have been talking to each other daily and eventually became best buddies.

As I told you, A lot can happen over Coffee…

The City of the Dead

Hi guys... Let's take a break from my usual not too boring stuff. As my creative mind is demanding some rest today, I am not able to pen down something here. But i would like you to read something which i liked the most and i don't remember how many times i read and re-read it...

The City of the Dead by Khalil Gibran
Yesterday I drew myself from the noisome throngs and proceeded into the field until I reached a knoll upon which Nature had spread her comely garments. Now I could breathe.
I looked back, and the city appeared with its magnificent mosques and stately residences veiled by the smoke of the shops.
I commenced analyzing man's mission, but could conclude only that most of his life was identified with struggle and hardship. Then I tried not to ponder over what the sons of Adam had done, and centered my eyes on the field which is the throne of God's glory. In one secluded corner of the field I observed a burying ground surrounded by poplar trees.
There, between the city of the dead and the city of the living, I meditated. I thought of the eternal silence in the first and the endless sorrow in the second.
In the city of the living I found hope and despair; love and hatred, joy and sorrow, wealth and poverty, faith and infidelity.
In the city of the dead there is buried earth in earth that Nature converts, in the night's silence, into vegetation, and then into animal, and then into man. As my mind wandered in this fashion, I saw a procession moving slowly and reverently, accompanied by pieces of music that filled the sky with sad melody. It was an elaborate funeral. The dead was followed by the living who wept and lamented his going. As the cortege reached the place of interment the priests commenced praying and burning incense, and musicians blowing and plucking their instruments, mourning the departed. Then the leaders came forward one after the other and recited their eulogies with fine choice of words.
At last the multitude departed, leaving the dead resting in a most spacious and beautiful vault, expertly designed in stone and iron, and surrounded by the most expensively-entwined wreaths of flowers.
The farewell-bidders returned to the city and I remained, watching them from a distance and speaking softly to myself while the sun was descending to the horizon and Nature was making her many preparations for slumber.
Then I saw two men laboring under the weight of a wooden casket, and behind them a shabby-appearing woman carrying an infant on her arms. Following last was a dog who, with heartbreaking eyes, stared first at the woman and then at the casket.
It was a poor funeral. This guest of Death left to cold society a miserable wife and an infant to share her sorrows and a faithful dog whose heart knew of his companion's departure.
As they reached the burial place they deposited the casket into a ditch away from the tended shrubs and marble stones, and retreated after a few simple words to God. The dog made one last turn to look at his friend's grave as the small group disappeared behind the trees.
I looked at the city of the living and said to myself, "That place belongs to the few." Then I looked upon the trim city of the dead and said, "That place, too, belongs to the few. Oh Lord, where is the haven of all the people?"
As I said this, I looked toward the clouds, mingled with the sun's longest and most beautiful golden rays. And I heard a voice within me saying, "Over there!"

What a beautiful composition right!!!

Of course ma'am!!! I still love you...

If you ask me how was my day today… well! I would say it was some-part better and some-part worse.

Better- because I got a chance to search my book shelf for an old book and accidentally stumbled upon a bundle of old photographs taken during the farewell months of my 12th standard (which we call college in our area).
Worse- because I sat down looking at the photos and got lost in my old memories that it took nearly thirty missed calls (though they claim they were longer rings) from my friends to get me out of those dreams, and I realized that it was already half past 12 and I had to run to office, but as bad luck played its role, my manager caught me and fed me well with his usual reprimands. I am not going to tell you what, as it’s not our subject of discussion and we have much better things to talk.

Coming back to my good old college days, just like everyone I had colorful dreams about college and thought it to be like what they show in movies. I spent two whole months of summer holidays in beauty salons and malls with expensive cloth stores, getting myself geared up for the fun (as I thought it would be as they showed in movies). Finally the d-day came. As I was about to enter the campus, I saw her near the gate clad in a parrot green salwar with silver colored earrings. Her hair was curled and she had no bindi on her face. She was just looking like the one in the fairness cream advertisement. Please don’t ask me which ad. Awesome!!! I thought and proceeded to my classroom. I took a corner seat and saw a plump guy with a round face sitting beside me. He was black as tar from head to toe. The only things visible on his face were two white teeth on either sides of his jaw protruding like elephant’s tusks, and three grey marks across his forehead. He seemed to be a stereotypical geeky stuff. I thought of changing my seat, but it was the only convenient place to watch around for chicks without getting caught as I could see what’s happening outside the class and check if the principal was on rounds. By the way did I tell you that I was lucky enough to join a co-educational institution?

Reluctantly I sat there and waited for the item beside me to lift his head and look at me so that I can introduce myself. But he was so occupied with his ‘Concepts of Physics’ textbook by H.C.Verma that he didn’t even care to wipe away the sweat dripping from his face. By the way why am I telling you so much about him – may be because he was the only one who stood by me till the last. See, i care a lot for my friends.

I sat there thinking about the girl in green and wished she was my classmate. To my utter surprise, I saw her walking towards our class and I was dumbfounded, just like everyone else in the class.

Days passed by and I felt I was getting closer to her (only me… and not she). But I never had the courage to express my love for her. I spent all the time staring at her, or dream about her if she wasn’t around me. One day as I was staring at her, my principal who was on his regular rounds of inspection caught me red-handed. Please don’t ask me what happened after that and I am not going to tell you that he made me kneel down under hot sun for two hours. Oops!!!Did I tell you something? Never mind… until it’s a secret between you and me. Even after this episode, the protagonist inside me never died and I kept on staring at her (this time with an extra level of caution) hoping she would acknowledge it.

If there was someone who knew about my secret crush, it was the geek beside me, who became my very close buddy eventually. He felt optimistic about only two things. One- He would get into IIT, and the other- I would never get that girl.

To prove him wrong, I struggled and struggled and finally gained courage to walk to the staff room and handed over the letter written and re-written spending many sleepless nights, to her. Wait… Did I hear you asking something? Oh… What was she doing in the staff room? Dude… She was my English teacher.

She read the letter and gave a big smile, enough to hypnotize thousand guys. And I ran away from there feeling a bit embarrassed. From then I never looked into her eyes and fortunately those were my final days in college.

She was the first one in my life on whom I had a crush and I still have the same feeling for her.

Of course Ma’am!!! I still love you….

The White Tiger

I have just finished reading the 2008 Man booker prize winning novel, ‘The White Tiger’, by Aravind Adiga. Believe me, this is one of the four best books by eastern writers I have read till date. The other three being ‘The Kite Runner’, ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ – both by Khaleid Hosseini, and ‘Moth Smoke’ by Mohsin Hamid (who also wrote ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’, short listed for the 2007 Man Booker).

Read them all to believe me!!!

The white tiger is a story set in the backdrop of contemporary India. It strikes the discord between two Indias. The brighter India, which belongs only to a few; And the darker India, where rest of the country lives. The story takes us through the life of Balram Halwai, the protagonist who is ‘The White Tiger’.

Born in a village in heartland India, the son of a rickshaw puller, Balram is taken out of school by his family and put to work in a teashop. As he crushes coals and wipes tables, he nurses a dream of escape - of breaking away from the banks of Mother Ganga, into whose depths have seeped the remains of a hundred generations. Balram’s journey from the darkness of village life to the light of entrepreneurial success is utterly amoral, brilliantly irreverent, deeply endearing and altogether unforgettable.

Aravind has shown the true face of India through Balram’s eyes. It’s no surprise that he deserved the award. Aravind adopted a fresh way of narration which made the characters livelier. The story is written in the form of a letter from ‘The White Tiger’, based in Electronic city of Bangalore, to the Chinese Premier.

I won’t reveal anything from the story. Every line in the book is a must read. And I can’t resist myself from reading it once again.

Okay! It’s time for me to run and read it again… see you later.