Current State of Affairs

I sat by the window,
Staring out at the rain.
Feeling the greyness everywhere,
Outside and within me.
I have been like this,
For quite some time now.
No rays of hope shine,
I have not seen the sun,
For quite some time now.
All dreams came crashing down,
On my encountering REALITY.
A sad state it is indeed,
To have lost,
And to continue losing.
All my attempts,
All my efforts,
To regain the lost me,
To regenerate from the ashes,
Have failed miserably.
I am lost...
I climb to the top
Of a pile of boulders,
And look down upon
The world I prepare to leave behind.
I find clusters
of people.
Some big, some small,
But all distinct
In their own special way.
I look down,
All of them are there,
Enjoying the cool breeze
Of their own unique achievements.
I find them,
And locate them all,
Save one.
The one standing
Right beside me.
With his hand in mine,
And lips
Uttering a promise,
To never let go,
To be there for me,
Whenever I may need him.
Bringing colour back,
To my blank life.
Subtly and slowly,
Touching every nook,
Every corner,
With not rainbow pastels,
But mild hues.
Things have become
So moist,
By the endless tears I shed,
That the colour spreads fast.
Before I can catch up with it
It spreads itself,
Before I can catch up with it
Like fire in some wild forest.
Covering me completely,
Consuming me,
Occupying my soul.
One tiny part remains though,
It detaches itself.
No longer under influence,
It lives on free and independent.
It is adamant about it.
It is stubborn.
It is free.
It is happy.
That grey piece,
That blank grey piece,
Is me.

- Me

Where the mind is without fear

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free Where the world has not been broken up into fragments By narrow domestic walls Where words come out from the depth of truth Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit Where the mind is led forward by thee Into ever-widening thought and action Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake -Rabindranath Tagore

Imaginative Creation???

Some craziness we were upto on the way back home from school.
We took a magnifying glass and burnt a hole through the poor piece of diary paper...

The Hindu (Peter Roebuck writes) 24/03/07

Bob Woolmer case: It’s just not cricket

How did it come to this? How did we allow a game to become a murder scene? A respected son has been cold-bloodedly killed in the middle of the game’s most prestigious event. Until these last few days it could hardly be imagined that any game could suffer such a loss. It is only a game.

A bloke armed with a hunk of leather tries to hit three sticks protected by another fellow bearing a lump of wood. How can anyone care so much? How can wrath or vengeance or hatred so erode a man’s better feelings that he kills because a match has been lost? Murders a man was not even playing? Endangers his own life to exact revenge?

At once it is a tragedy and an absurdity. A man steeped in the game has been taken before his work had been completed. A father has been denied his period of reflection. A wife must embark upon her twilight years without her companion. A family has been rent asunder. No one wanted to believe it.

No one thought it possible that the greed, the frenzy, the hysteria, the nationalism had so far escaped the containment of reason as to provoke such destruction. No-one wanted to believe that the madmen were serious.

Alas, the unavoidable revelation of our times is that civilization eludes us. Man’s inhumanity to man continues apace. Savagery stalks the streets of Baghdad and Harare. It is something to take a man’s life yet it happens every day and hardly raises a blink. Manners die in the gutter, their moans unheard.

Remain immune

Sport could not hope to remain immune. At times it has become as squalid as any political dogfight. Cricket has been as reluctant as any other recreation to confront its shadows. Recently a national captain was threatened by senior cricketing officials.

And what unfolded? Tatenda Taibu fled his home, left his country. Meanwhile the culprits retained office, filling their pockets with foreign currency, fattened apologists for the evil that has fed them.

Speculations abound

Inevitably speculation is rife about this latest outrage. Was it a criminal of the streets, a chancer seeking loot? Kingston is full of them but it is unlikely. Easier targets present themselves. Bookies? Woolmer knew a thing or two but was not the type to spill beans.

Moreover bookies prefer to work in the darkness. Murdering someone within a stone’s throw of the world’s media cannot be good for business. The timing of the death cannot be coincidental. Had pride been hurt? Pockets emptied? Passions aroused? Regardless, cricket needs to take a look at itself. Money has become its god. Indian players are at the beck and call of sponsors when they want to be in the nets. Drugs, cheating, gambling fester not far from the surface.

Off the field, frenzy has replaced calm and informed debate. Inevitably supporters lose their heads. Victories and defeats are no longer part and parcel of a fascinating game. Someone is to blame. Someone must pay the penalty.

To concentrate on these excesses is to distort the picture. But cricket does need to find a new sincerity. Woolmer’s untimely passing means the game must stop pretending that is permissible to throw stones, place bets, burn cars, barrack visitors, curse opponents, stare at umpires and pretend that leather-flingers and willow-wielders can be something more than collectors or runs and takers of wickets. It is time to start laughing again. But it might take awhile. A man has to be buried. A game has to emerge from the grave it has dug.

Just something as an introduction...

A "Dream" is not what you see in your sleep.
A "Dream" is the thing which doesn't let you sleep...

- Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam