Independence Day...

....Is here... and there would be half a trillion Indians (our population would be around that much, I suppose?) writing about it. It's a day that invokes a wonderful concoction of hues, shades, and colors (including those on our local tricolor). It's my second independence day in Mumbai, and the short, brisk shots of rain in this city are perfectly in sync with the equally unpredictable nature of our central and state politics.
There are fears of violence, and probably justified. Somebody somewhere is probably hatching their own jehadi plot, trying to drown the sound of fire-crackers with probably louder noises...
There are the Indian cricket team players, who have given us a wonderful independence day gift...
There are the daily fresh crops of potholes which seem to grow with alarming rates on the jungle of our roads, as if they have superior evolotionary advantage compared to the gigantic fly-overs...
There are the mindless Bollywood movies churned out like the exhaust from a crowded kitchen where too many cooks are happily busy spoiling the broth...
There are the daily dreams that get crushed, reminding us that rather than forgetting what has happened to us, we seem to remember more what could not happen to us...
There are also the multi-millionaires that are being created as this nation continues with repeated drumrolls on its acquisitioning march across the planet...
There are...
..well, lots of things as you can imagine... everything has it's own significance on this particularly significant independence day. And although 60 is the traditional retirement age across most Indian companies, we can always hope that this country will continue to work as hard as ever, whatever be the results...

Power of Powerpoint

Some say "death by powerpoint", while some are actually alive because of it.

Take a look, you be the judge...

Attendance...

Most schools have these rules of attendance. Less than 75% and you lose a point in your grade, or you can't appear for final exams (no one wants to, but that's perhaps a different matter), or some such stuff that is mentioned in one of those papers that you get when you have just finished paying your first semester fees and filling out details for registration.

These days perhaps even blogs have attendance. I read this report which mentioned that thousands of blogs are floating like dead cadavers in the cold ether of cyberspace. Just when you thought there was something that could defy the rules of permanence, comes the revelation that even blogs come with a shelf life. You don't visit your e-temple often, and they label you an e-atheist. An infidel. And the punishment is to write an obituary about something you always held so close.

Your "dear diary..." amongst all the other equally dear ones, from intimate personal details to strange confessions to factual reportage... thousands of words trying to paint a picture, like an artist busily creating a sketch on the boulevard. Somebody would walk down, take a look, pass a comment, and walk away. And if they liked that one painting, they might actually search for you the next time they are on the boulevard. Probably refer your work to others who would then stop to admire, until you get famous. Until they take your name with awe, until the knowledge of your existence becomes a topic of "General Knowledge".

You would hate to see it die, won't you? Probably might be worth visiting the shrine once in a while. Who knows, what prayers might spew forth, and who knows, some of them might even be answered...

"Unsent Items"

There's a common feature in almost all of our communication devices called "Sent Items". You can see the mails and messages you sent just to reassure yourself (and probably to reassure others as well), or to serve as proof points in the terribly politically charged corporate atmospheres these days, or simply to reminisce over things you said (some which you wanted to, some which you were forced to, and some which you can't believe you said...)


But with all the technological advancements, there is one thing still missing perhaps -- a separate collection of all those unsent items that perhaps comprise an equally large volume of our communication. Every mail that you wrote but then deleted half way, every SMS that was typed with extreme deliberation, and then deleted (perhaps with even greater deliberation), and of course, not to mention the number of times you dialled a number and then abruptly cut it off before the first ring could reach the other side (Remember "...half a page of scribbled lines"?).

Who is noting down all those little pieces of thoughts that keep floating and sinking (and sometimes rising again), bobbing up and down, struggling with other thoughts around it, in the tumultous oceans of our minds? Who will be your scribe, your stenographer, and infact, who will be a patient ear to all those rumblings when you yourself can get lost within those voices?

They will make it one day. Like a vacuum cleaner for those tiny pieces of thoughts scattered along with the dust. Bring them all in at least... all that junk which is perhaps an essential after-effect of that very simple thing we do everyday -- exist...

Wool around Woolmer

"Rest in peace" is so inapplicable to this poor guy... Somebody probably murdered him. Two months back they said he was strangled. Then came the poison story. All the while the ex-coach of Pakistan was turning in his unwanted grave, partly because of the amazing performance by the Pakistani team and partly because they couldn't really figure out as to how he reached his grave...
And now what they are claiming will probably bring him back from the dead to actually tell the story. The latest news is that he died a natural death. In the 18th century, it took an ordinary postmortem not more than 24 hours to ascertain whether a death was unnatural or not. In Jamaica, perhaps medical science is trying to catch up and is already out of breath...

Some of us don't quite get famous while we are alive. For Woolmer, his strange fate has made him larger than life, after his life...