Short is sweet!

Haikus are special poems originally from Japan which are known for their brevity, punch and having this distinctive ability to ring a bell in your mental silence and let you waltz in that cling for long lonely afternoons thereafter.. here i go with a couple of mine..

.Love..

January.
February.
March.
You still hurt.


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..Bliss..

5 am.
faraway trucks roar.
in the pitter patter of the downpour.
The tea stall radio sings
Along the bicycle bell clings.
Thud. The newspaper all wet.
You pull over the blanket.
Its Sunday.


..Relationships...

Long after the storm.
The tree remained
Bent.

..Secrets..

Hiding my thoughts
At the back of the moon
hoping that
no one will find it there.
but it ditches me.
every night.

..Grief..

The last of the whisky over.
And the stones all into the pond.
The end of happiness.
The beginning of peace.



...

Jaane tu.. ya jaane naa..

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Ever realised when does someone become more than just a friend?Or days when you simply cant stop looking at her, long after her story is over?Love blooms.And like weeds after a rainy day, almost anywhere. Enemies fall in love. Competitors fall in love. And often, friends fall in love. Dont take my words?

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Watch Jaane tu ,yaa jaaane na!

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Ready.Clap.Action. And you are immediately transported to an era we all lovingly look back,to the college corridors,bubblegum gossips, basketball courts, hot chicks, and cool dudes with open buttoned shirts and a three quarter romance story. In search of the missing quarter. A quintessential college story, in which love makes life so confusing, but then , without love, would we really want to live? .


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Its the story of a boy(Imran, Wow fresh material!) and a girl (Genelia, the usual college babe but who has a good side to her!) and a pack of five insane friends at the backdrop, just graduated, and raring to take on the world by their wild wild ways. You have just settled in your seat when your heart is almost taken away by those initial strums of the guitar in the Kabhi Kabhi Aditi..song set against St. Xaviers' famous basketball court. The story moves on in the predictable lines of Kuch kuch hota hain, where boy and girl dont realise till a long time that , Shit, its been love all the while?? thought and when they come across it, its too late. Almost.And then, a good sense dawns on both that its not too late still, like in Jab we met and then a lot of chasing, flying, horse riding and gate crashing to redeem that missing quarter you were always searching for . We already knew this story , didnt we? But still, Jaane tu... kept hearts glued, guts rolling out laughing,theatres houseful and a whole generation rooting to go back in time and relive their college days once again. Magic! .



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Strong storytelling, fresh dialogues (Remember the scene in which Aditi enters her brothers room , sees his paintings and spells an unheard, whaddaf***! Adorably cute..), and new faces apart, this story clicked because of two things. A fresh,rainwashed take on relationships, and second, its on the face simplicity !



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A few things i cant think henceforth ,without thinking about this movie would be..
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• College time, even with the worst assignments,irritating profs and terrible canteen food, is still the only dreamy part of our entire life. And like all good dreams , they end fast. Like when Aditi wonders where her college years went by, Jay's mom says, Phone pe beta, phone pe...

• Never say you dont love a person when you cant let go.Like when Aditi drives with Jay and Meghna in the night , and Meghna gets down at her home but Jay wanted to get down as well and spend a few moments together with her ,when in fact Aditi wanted to spend time with Jay, she says..Ab aur kitnaa drop karega... I still smile to myself thinking of that scene:)

• Without distance, closeness cannot grow. When Aditi sits by the sea all alone after being dumped by her fiance, and when Jay enters the camera frame,after a long time you see them together in the movie again, you just know it, they are so meant to be together.This is it, you realise! Beleive me on this,Distance lends its own charm.

• In matters of the heart, better never than late! Do something,anything. If you screw it, start over. Try something else. But do.Now.

• Sometimes when people repeatedly say they are so happy at the moment, Just take it, they are plain lonely and all they need is an arm around their shoulder saying, This too, shall pass.

• In love and in any relationship, there is just one rule, that there is none. Preparedness is many a time, a simple myth.You might wait for the moment when you and she would be all alone, atop a cliff with a band playing in he backdrop, when you would speak your heart out, but chances are nine out of ten that you might end up being late considering all the uncertainites and ultimately when you realise its her, Boy! you sure gotta gatecrash through security checks in some airport , slidding through x ray machines and baggages, and just in time with handcuffs in your hand and without giving a damn to lay, sur and taal sing out tera mujse hain pehle ka naata koi... yunhi nahi dil lubhata koi...jaane tu..ya jaane naa..

Anything for love. Just Anything.

• And finally, Friendship often ends in love, but love in friendship, never!

. Period.Name casting. As i came out of the theatre with these thousand sweet little lightbulb moments telling me, Hey .. hasde hasde hasde hasde hasde tu zara..Nahi to bas thoda thoda thoda thoda thoda thoda muskura, i realised, i have just watched a masterpiece which is gonna stay in mind for some time now.



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Growing up!

(# 119 - my oldest friend .Written for the Sunday scribbles)

Date:20th April

Somewhere over Indore.

Altitude:11500 metres.

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This time around when i was leaving home for Pune, my parents came to the airport to see me off.The flight was for 2:30 pm and we reached there by like 1. We caught up for a last round of coffee at the terminal CCD. Such occasions are always a little uncomfortable. You know all us are sad, yet Dad checks out for another time if i am carrying the tickets or Maa is pleading me hard to carry the ghar ka paani in a wrethched two litre Fanta bottle! The rush of emotions in the hush of pretence! The clock strikes 1:45 and i think its appropriate now to say how wonderful it was for the last ten days being with them ( a little regretful for the petty fights i had with them on one occasion and hadnt quite talked to them for three full days! ). We all get up , pay the bill ,pick my handluggage and move towards the security checks.

Before the final glass door that separates the ticketers from the ticketless, i drop my luggage on the ground and look at them.Maa, moist eyed, Dad, looking somewhere else, Me , smiling ear to ear in concealment.I hug Maa, and say, she looks beautiful still. And suddenly dad pretends to understand, Oh boy, u moving? I say, take care dad.He places his hand on my shoulder and wishes happy journey.

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I cross the glass barrier. Separated.

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I walked a few confdent steps to the Kingfisher counter to get my boarding pass. As it was being processed, i looked back. I saw Maa and dad waving their hands in huge sailor arcs from behind the glass panes, probably saying Come Again.Maa smiling or crying i couldnt figure out; Dad, bored to show whatever it was,as usual.

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I thought. This...was the couple. Who weathered each other for 27 long years, day and night, and then nights and days again,who never exchanged I-love-you s between them but still loved as much, who fought,fought themselves, fought for themselves, and fought for everything their children wanted these many years. They grow old now i see. My mother a little tinier, a little less beautiful, a few lesser teeth, a new bunch of grey on her head each time, and my dad, a little less robust, a few unmistakable wrinkles,and a little more worse with emotions!

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Fifteen minutes to spare , i sit in the departure lounge surrounded by a sea of people waiting to get into their flights.

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When i was growing up,one of my hugest fancies was to live an independant life, away from home, earn on my own and be the messiah son to my ageing parents.That day was here, but was nothing near or like the way i imagined it. It was a certain Ishaan Awaasthi kind of hollow thing, hardly explainable!

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Soon my flight was announced and i realised i had only my handbaggage wit me and forgotten my laptop in the security check As i went back to collect it, through the corridors of the hallway, i saw Mom and Dad still there . Maa, her nose still stuck on to the glass panel, for a glimpse of probably nothing.Teary. Tired. Dad standing besides, and carrying her bag of tiffins and boiled water bottles around his shoulder, looking earnestly at the Kingfisher boards to read Departed. I clicked them in my mind.The moment that was, priceless!

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I suddenly felt like rushing back in time, be dependant on them again, ask for pocket money ,have flanneled night suits, live by their rules, fight with them,and never grow up!A certain feeling of unreachableness crept in, a place few inches beyond my grasp. A squarefoot of vacuum. The price of growing up.

I rushed ahead for my flight and wrote this piece in mid air.Like my feelings, hung!

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Kuch is tarah..

Today was a sure forgettable day. Disastrous sounds perfect. Had an argument with her, lost a bet in office, and got wet on the way back home. Back home, i am still thinking about my friend who suddenly seemed so wrong to me today that i couldnt help losing my cool. Does an idle mind stop it at there? I checked on my mobile every two minutes for any I-am-sorry messages from her. With nothing coming along, i switched off my mobile for a no-one-cares-apart-from-me moral victory . And then switched it on after an hour to still find no new messages. Frying pan to fire, i start getting deep and Aristotalean about relationships and the whys, whos and hows of it. Flipped out an old India Today and started reading about rising food prices and its impact in our economy. Suddenly out of no where two ants started parading on the page. One, was trying to ride the other and the other was moving around in circles amidst jungles of letters and paragraphs . My first impulse was to blow them off. But then,i stopped, as the article wasnt getting any better and my idleness fast started generating options about the two.I thought, perhaps they are running away from home, or simply playing chor- police, perhaps it is the tenacity of friendship or the brutalness of a rape, May be they loved each other or damned plain hate.These two fascinated me now,what did they want?What?

It was just then, i sneezed.

I opened my eyes. Saw one of them displaced a few millimetres northwards in the page , lost, and looking for the other. Alone.

I smiled. The futility of relationships!





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