There came a day...

There came a day, when I knew
That I was in love…
When I opened the curtains,
And all the colours seemed brighter.
“Has it always been this way?” I gasped.
A butterfly alighted upon my palm.
“Always,” it said, “Always.”

There came a day, when I knew
That I was in love…
My fingers flicked the roses upon my table,
And I breathed in their heady scent.
“Have flowers always smelled so sweet?” I wondered.
I opened the note that came with the flowers,
“Always,” it said, “Always.”

There came a day, when I knew
That I was in love…
I found myself gliding, not walking,
Which is passing strange, as I had always wanted to fly.
“Is this what flying feels like?” I thought aloud.
A sparrow replied from yonder tree,
“Always,” it said, “Always.”

There came a day, when I knew
That I was in love…
A tear rolled down my cheek, and I was annoyed.
“Why are you here?” I asked, “I am not sad.”
“Your eyes are filled with the sweetest face,
And there is no room for me in there.
Now. Tomorrow. Always.”

Cross-posted on my poetry blog

The (Anti)Patriotic Speech

The following is the content of one of the speeches I gave at the Toastmasters Club in my company.

I am not a Patriot. I’m not even much of an Indian.

I can’t speak good Hindi. I can’t even speak my own mother tongue, Telugu, fluently. English is the language I’m most comfortable with, and I’m infamous for telling people that I only reply in English because I “think” in English. I watch English movies and serials, listen to English music, eat international cuisine. I’ve probably been to more cities in the US than I have in India.

I am not a Patriot.

As soon as I finished my bachelor’s degree in Chennai, I flew to the US for my Master’s, thus becoming a willing contributor to the “brain drain”. It doesn’t matter, of course, that I came back to India in less than three years. After all, nobody asks or cares what your intentions in going abroad were. You don’t need to know if I always intended to come back with skills I knew I wouldn’t be able to gain here. You don’t need to know that I like living in India much more I like living in the US. All that matters is that I left of my own volition. That’s all you need to make a claim that I’m being unpatriotic.

I am not a Patriot.

I don’t care much for “Indian” traditions and customs. For example, I don’t respect all my elders. You see, I have the temerity to believe that respect should be earned.

I am not a Patriot.

I don’t follow any of the Hindu traditions I was raised to. I don’t see what our religious practices have to do with the idea of God; I have a secular outlook. It doesn’t matter that I pray for the well-being of my friends and family; that I go to temples often, and I like their atmosphere of peace and calm. After all, I just admitted that I don’t believe in the Gods of my religion. (Sharp intake of breath) What a huge sin I have committed! How can I call myself a dutiful Indian after that!

It’s interesting then, that on the day of my graduation, I went to a temple in my college campus to give my thanks to God, and found it pretty much deserted. The very same temple, by the way, had been full on the weekend before the exams.

I am not a Patriot.

In fact, I might even qualify as a traitor. You see, one of my good friends is a Pakistani. I met her at a bridge tournament in Beijing, and we’ve been excellent friends since then. The right Indian mentality should be “Bomb every single Pakistani off the face of the Earth,” am I correct? But I would be positively horrified at that. I think that if citizens were to be held accountable for the actions of their governments, almost every human being on the planet would be hanged, including us.

Going by conventional yardsticks, it doesn’t matter that I insisted that a portion of my first salary from both my research assistantship and my job at Sabre go to a charitable cause. It doesn’t matter that I have played bridge for our country at the international level, and I still consider representing our country as one of my most meaningful ambitions in life. How can these things possibly count against all the anti-Indian things that I do?

Come to think of it, even the people I admire in my life are not patriotic. My mother can never remember who is our current President or Prime Minister. She doesn’t know our country’s stance on world issues, or our defense capabilities. What she knows is how to be a shining role model and inspiration for thousands of women, being one of the top woman entrepreneurs in South India. What she knows is how to do social service, and how to empower and uplift women. That’s probably very un-Indian of her, too: going against our time-honoured tradition of discriminating against women.

I have a friend here in Bangalore, who did her bachelors and her masters in the US. She came back, and rather than take up any of several high-paying jobs, she chose to work for an NGO in the daytime. In the evenings, she works for a non-profit organization on teaching English to underprivileged kids. But she’s very unpatriotic, you know, probably because of all that time spent abroad: she often participates in protests against government policies… policies like cutting down trees - how awful is that?!

My friends, the point I am driving at, is simple. There are many things in this world that should not be defined by others. They should be defined by you. I beg you. I implore you. Please do not go by any yardstick other than your own. Even if a million people believe something, that does not make it automatically true. Live by conscience, live by morals, live by principles; but let it be your conscience and your moral code. Do what you believe is right and don’t go by what society says. That is the key, to living with self-respect, and without regret.

I am a Patriot. I just happen to define it the way my heart tells me.

Thank you.

Honey, I forgot to charge the...

... the laptop?
... the mobile phone?
... no, the car!

I was on my way home from work one evening and was witness to a very curious sight. A petite little Reva electric car was stuck between two speed breakers, a man trying quite unsuccessfully to push the car over the one in the front. The speed breakers were so precisely spaced that he couldn't get any sort of momentum going in either direction, so until he rustled up another man or two for help, the car was most definitely stuck.

I've studied electric vehicles in the bygone era when I was in mechanical engineering, so I know for a fact that the car would have enough torque to get out of its spot... unless it ran out of battery power.

I can almost picture the guy going home late and his wife asking him what took him so long. "Honey, I forgot the charge the car," would be a stand out candidate for "Excuse of the Year" ;)

Cheers,
Prashanth.

The Case of the Coly Flower

I was waiting patiently at the billing counter of the grocery store. The guy behind the counter was a bit slow and I was getting a trifle vexed. When I saw him struggling with the billing software by entering "COLLY" and looking for a match when the item he was billing was a Cauliflower, I felt obligated to add a helpful "Try C.A.U.LI.."

The man shook his head and thought furiously. Finally he changed it to "COLY" and sure enough, he got a match, "COLY FLOWER".

There's got to be a "Moral of the Story" in here somewhere :). Aren't we all forced to do dumb things at our workplace because there's no other option to make things work?

Cheers,
Prashanth.

Diamonds are too glittery

I keep getting distracted every now and then by something shiny and flashy on my finger. Every now and then I glance at it, and I'm like, "Oh! Right. The ring." I guess I'm still not quite used to it.

I'm talking about the engagement ring. Oh, did I skip something?

Right. I got engaged last weekend. Had a huge and glitzy function organized by the in-laws. I thought I looked all decent and grown up, and even got some bright smiles out. My fiance doesn't realize it, but she has to thank my Karachi friends for giving me lessons in Smiling 101.

These days I say "we" a lot more often than "I" or "you". Well, what can I say, I asked for a change in my life, and I got it :). Now I'll see about making the most of it.

We will make the most of it.

Cheers,
Prashanth.

P.S. Will put up engagement pics on facebook soon, just give me a few days.

26

Well...

I've got to admit. This year was much better than 25 and 24 :)

And what an awesome start to the day. The first thing I see is a gift-wrapped parcel from someone special. Then I reach my brother's house and my two-year old nephew wishes me a happy birthday in that super-cute voice that only tiny tots have.

Now it's time to get ready for office and the daily rigmarole. But the day is already different from every other birthday I've had till now... lets see how it ends, shall we?

Edit: Ended with chocolate cake on my face and gifts and cards in my hands. Twas awesome :)

Cheers,
Prashanth.

Phir Dekhiye from Rock On

Really appeals to the poet in me... spent half an hour trying to get the translation right :)
Thanks to Goda for helping with the translation!

The Lyrics:

Aankhon Mein Jis Ke Koi To Khwab Hai
Khush Tha Wahin Jo Thoda Betaab Hai
Zindagi Mein Koi Arzoo Kijiye
Phir Dekhiye..

Hoton Pe Jis Ke Koi To Geet Hai
Woh Haare Bhi To Us Ki Hi Jeet Hai
Dil Mein Jo Geet Hai Gun Guna Lijiye
Phir Dekhiye..

Yaadon Mein Jis Ke Kisi Ka Naam Hai
Sapno Ke Jaise Us Ki Har Sham Hai
Koi To Aaj Se Apna Dil Dijiye
Phir Dekhiye..

Khwab Bhun Yeh Zara Geet Sun Yeh Zara
Phool Chun Yeh Zara
Phir Dekhiye..

The Translation:

When your eyes hold a dream,
You will be happy, even if restless;
So aspire to something in your life,
And see what happens...

When have a song on your lips,
You will find, there is no such thing as defeat;
So keep that song humming in your heart,
And see what happens...

When someone is always in your thoughts,
You will be living your dream every single day;
So give your heart to that someone,
And see what happens...

So why don't you
Dream some dreams...
Play some songs...
Admire some flowers...
And see what happens...

Bing sucks

Microsoft's at it again. Do any search from Bing and you won't find a single hit from a Google product, especially blogger.com. Go ahead, try it. Search for something that would turn up in the first page under a .blogspot.com link from Google. You'll never find it via Bing.

I call for a Bing boycott. Or another anti-trust case. Whatever. Microsoft Works is an oxymoron.

The Proposal

(After more than two and a half years, I wrote a poem. Hopefully, there will be more this year.)

A billion stars winked at her teasingly
From the clear night sky.
A million thoughts careened inside her head
In every possible direction.
A thousand smiles they had exchanged
Over the years.
A hundred reasons she could think of
To say no.
A dozen roses held tantalizingly
In front of her.
Two people waiting on the moor
In that most poignant of moments.
One person to spend
The rest of her life with?

To find, perhaps,
Countless joys, depthless trust,
Boundless love, endless happiness,
And priceless memories?

She took a deep breath,
And said, "Yes".

Prashanth Sriram.

Cross-posted on my poetry blog.

Journey to a smile

"Smile!"

"You too, Prashanth!"

"But I am smiling."

"You've gotta be kidding me!"

This was the scene at Beijing when I was taking some farewell pics... see, I'd made some friends at the World Mind Sports and it was highly probable that I would never meet them again (probability is still the same). The thing is, I'm notoriously bad at posing for photos. Above mentioned friend commented on above mentioned photograph on facebook, "You don't know how to smile. Period."

It's not that I don't know how to smile. I just don't know how to smile on demand. I laugh and smile very well. But, you see, that's only when I am actually laughing or smiling at something. If I'm told to smile for a photograph it inevitably comes out like a half-smile... or a half-smirk as somebody once put it. Anyway, I count those ten minutes of smile lessons at beijing as an investment that paid off later.

Later being this week. My bachelor days being numbered, I was ordered to get some photos taken at the studio for distribution to the owners of matching horrorscopes. And that brought me back to my old arch-nemesis: a camera lens pointed at me. The cameraman actually had to plead with me to smile. "An open-mouthed smile! An open-mouthed smile!" he begged, when all I could muster after five minutes of entreaty was a widening of my lips.

I was reminded of that scene in Harry Potter when he has to get summon a Patronus by thinking happy thoughts. Well, here I was faced with my own Boggart and fresh out of inspiration to smile. So I filled my thoughts with how ridiculous I thought this exercise was... you know... the whole arranged marriage process... and broke out in laughter. The cameraman didn't lose the serendipitous moment and clicked away, leaving a photograph that my brother proudly described as my best one ever.

It's been a long journey to find my smile. And even though I found it for the strangest of reasons and in the strangest of ways, I'm still glad I found it. I hope it sticks.

Cheers,
Prashanth.

Say it out aloud

Have you wondered how a particular person - say your mother, or your friend - can always tell when you're lying? The human brain is a brilliant and natural lie detector; only caveat is that you need to know the person who is speaking, be familiar with his voice and intonation.

It occurred to me that this might be useful to figure out when you're lying to yourself. That's right. Yourself. The next time you have a doubt as to whether you did the right thing, or are doing the right thing - whether you may have deluded yourself that something is true, or lied to yourself because it is convenient to do so, apply this test. Say it out aloud. You'd be surprised. You can often tell from the sound of your own voice, from the conviction in it, if you've been lying to yourself all along.

I had an argument with someone a few weeks ago, and some harsh words were said. When I revisited it in my mind I couldn't quite figure out who had been in the wrong. So I said it aloud, "I was a jerk," and I knew it to be true.

Perhaps this has more applications... a relationship litmus test, anyone? Say it out aloud, "I am in love," and you'll know if it is true or not? ;)

Cheers,
Prashanth.

Short Story: Speak, friend, and enter

(This is purely a work of fiction. Any reference to real life events or characters is simply to give a context for the story.)


People say the internet is getting more and more useless by the day because of the sheer volume of false and unreliable information – and people – on it. But I have always maintained that this is a statement for amateurs. For those know how to find something, the net is a treasure trove.

Take for instance, book clubs. An internet book club is a great place to find people with similar reading interests – something that rarely happens in real life, especially if you are a bit eclectic in your tastes.

It was at one of these internet book clubs that I ran into Dosti.

I had entered a Khaled Hosseini book club and walked into an impassioned speech on the Western perception of Islam. In general, these clubs are like just any other chatroom: there will be a good amount of light and irrelevant conversation going on, interspersed with a thread of genre-related discussion and a thread of interesting interpretation on something in the book. But this… this was different. It was as if you walked into a crowded room and found one commanding presence, one commanding voice, weaving a spell through the audience. I suddenly wanted to know what that voice would sound like, what that face would look like in real life.

Now, unlike most Americans, I can speak a little when it comes to Asian languages. So I knew that Dosti meant Friendship. And true to her nickname, I found her a genuinely friendly person, witty and charming in an engaging way, with an endearing tendency to launch off into eloquent speeches on social issues. I must admit, while I care about the emancipation of women oppressed in certain societies, the hardships undergone by children in poverty-stricken places, that the perpetrators of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism are victims of a sort, and so on, it takes a special sort of charisma to hold my attention on these topics. We all inure ourselves, not wanting to know, not wanting to do, anything about such things. But this woman… she broke through my shell, and even before I typed my first personal message to her, she was a friend. A friend who could make me care about things I thought long buried.

She pried that out, too, so softly that I didn’t even realize what I was saying, without realizing that I was crying. There was a time when I was a student of history, of sociology. A time when I was active in seeking knowledge about the people who live in our world, identifying with them, and thinking about how I could help.

And then 9/11 happened. Followed by a misguided “war” on terror. My father, who was a high ranking military officer, was involved daily in planning “precision” strikes and “snatch and grabs” that inevitably left innocent lives ruined in their wake. And so I distanced myself from it all. From a promising career at Washington, I turned into a consultant for software on history and such.

It was funny, the places I would find her online. Tolkien. Milton. The “I wish I had thrown the shoe at Bush” club. The “Islam preaches compassion, not hate” club. That last one had been started by her.

She was a feminist, but not the kind who wants more days for maternity leave or more executive level jobs for women. She argued for girls to go to school everywhere, for a woman to be able to walk on a road without covering their face with a burkha, for a woman to have the right to choose her husband without dying gruesomely in an “honour killing”.

One day, when I couldn’t hold my curiosity, I invited her to a voice chat. I had to know what she sounded like.

She picked up.

“Hi!”

“Now will you tell me your real name?”

It was a standing joke. Whenever I asked her for her real name, she would evade it melodramatically.

This time, I could hear her mellifluous laugh.

“My name is so lovely, it can open the gates to the mines of Moria!”

Now this one I was familiar with. It was from The Lord of the Rings, where the fellowship seek passage through the mines but are defeated by an inscription that says, “Speak, friend, and enter.” The mighty Gandalf tries a bunch of dwarvish passwords but fails. Then one of hobbits asks him for the word “friend” in elvish. “Mellon” replies Gandalf, and the gates swing open dramatically.

“You are a Melon?” I asked in mock horror.

“Sorry, Walker, wrong again! But tell you what, you tell me your real name now and I will consider telling you mine.”

Walker (followed by the inevitable string of numbers to make it unique) was my ID. It also happened to be my real name.

“My name is Luke Walker.” It really is. Don’t ask.

“Come on, be serious.”

“What can I say, my Dad hadn’t watched Star Wars before he named me!”

At this she broke into peals of laughter. I don’t know how long she laughed, but I would happily have stood at that other end listening to the laugh even if it lasted all day.

“Ohhh, Luke! That was almost worth telling you my name in exchange!”

“Not fair! You said you would tell me!”

“I said I would consider it,” she said slyly.

That was the first of several long conversations. We must have talked about everything, but somehow at the end of it I didn’t know her name or even which country she was in. There was one recurring theme, though. She would ask me what was my mission in my life.

“To raise a family, and live quietly and happily.”

I could almost visualize her making a face at that.

“And you?”

“I want to change the world,” she would declare.

“Hard to see how a kindergarten teacher can do that,” I tried to tease. But at that her tone grew serious.

“I teach the next generation of boys and girls to love and not hate, to live in harmony and compassion instead of war and revenge. If that’s not changing the world, I don’t know what is.”

It was because of statements like that, and everything else. Thanks to her, I changed. Inside. In ways I didn’t realize until it happened.

It began with her giving me her phone number. She said she was going to a small village to meet some relatives, and as she wouldn’t have access to the internet, I could call her up if I got lonely. She had already told me not to try to track her down through her IP address. This was even bigger a temptation, because with a phone number you can find out anything. I resisted it. I didn’t want to lose her trust.

As things would have it, it was she who called from it, even before I called her. And that too at an inopportune time. I was deep in a conversation with Dad, who was upset about a planned airstrike that would result in too many civilian casualties to his liking.

“Luke?”

I could hear a lot of noise in the background. They sounded disturbingly like explosions.

“Dosti?”

“I’m scared.”

“Where are you?”

“In the mayor’s office in ____” she named the same country, the same village that my Dad had just named.

My blood ran cold. My heart must have stopped beating for longer than is safe. I was seized with an overwhelming sense of foreboding.

“Luke…”

There was a very loud explosion and the line went dead.

My Dad would tell me of this day later. How shaken, panicked and desperate I was. How many strings he had to pull to transport me to that village, to get a battalion there and have a hospital of sorts set up in record time. But I don’t remember all that. I only remember walking into the hospital and enquiring about people brought in from the Mayor’s office. I remember scanning the list, wondering if I would even recognize her name if I saw it.

I saw it.

The name was “Dosti”. So she had told me her real name the whole time. I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry.

I asked someone about her. I learnt that her entire family had been wiped out, and that she had survived, but with a broken leg, two broken ribs, and a concussion.

I cried.

When I reached her bedside, she seemed to be asleep. I took her hand in mine. She spoke without opening her eyes. She knew it could only be me.

“Can you take me away, Luke? Back to your country. There is nothing left for me here.”

“I think so. They may take a few days to clear it, but since they have your ID and your papers it shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Well, I wasn’t planning on going anywhere for a few days anyway,” she gestured to her leg in the cast. I smiled through the tears.

“Don’t cry,” she said softly. Obviously she didn’t know that when a girl loses everything, she is supposed to be the one crying and be comforted by the handsome prince.

The time after that, till this day, was a whirlwind. I used my Dad’s connections to resuscitate my career and earn myself a place in the foreign service. Dosti threw herself into one humanitarian cause after another. I put up a sign outside her office saying, “Speak, friend, and enter.” She put up one outside my office saying, “The Force is in every one of us.” They were the happiest days of my life.

We watched America’s first black president give his acceptance speech. I saw her mouth “change the world” while listening to it. A week later I got a letter inviting me to be a member of his foreign policy team.

“Change the world?” she asked as I read it.

“Change the world,” I confirmed. And we both smiled.

X ----- X ----- X

Striking items off the list

Netless in Bangalore: the reason for my long absence from this blog. But I'm back now :)

If I had to sum up what I've been doing in the time since my last post, I would put it in this way: I've been striking items off my list. You know. That invisible list that all of us keep, of important things to do or change about your life. Get a job you like. Buy that motorbike. That kind of stuff.

It's incredible, but I've struck off every item on that list. Pretty unbelievable considering the state of affairs in my life for the past two years or so. In other words, I have a stable existence with a good job, good friends, a life outside of work, a sufficiently convenient place to live, time and even inclination for personal pursuits. Wow! Well, forget about goals, ambitions, things to accomplish in life, etc. Can't do those things, and can't take satisfaction in them if you're not happy, right?

So here I am. After a long time and after a lot of dashed hopes, at a place where I can once again start pursuing my dreams. A foundation to start building upon. Different dreams; different hopes; different goals. But you have to play the cards that life deals you. When life hands you lemons, make lemonade, they say :)

I am ready to make lemonade.

Cheers,
Prashanth.