It's so weird. The thought itself is so weird.
It's 1st Jan 2007 morning 0000 hours & i'm writing a blog here.
I think this is the height of loneliness.
I think i should give this up now.
I'm tired of hiding myself down.
I don't know why i keep searching for someone.
Someone whom i can value as a true friend.
I had a thought of taking a resolution so i thought asking someone.
No replies.
You know some times people are so busy they forget about the people who care for them.
I did not get any replies.
& I made a resolution.
Some times you expect so much from your life that it hurts back like hell.
I talk to people everyday, But still in my heart the feeling of solitude is growing day by day.
I pray to god today from my heart that whatever my friends wish for it may come true.
I've lost my patience , my dignity, the feeling of self respect, some times i really expect too much the thing which is not made for my share.
I've made a resolution to make this feeling more strong.
i'd read some where that when i was born i was crying and people were enjoying,
but when i'll go people will cry and i'll just smile.
I don't want to make someone miss me.
I just pray god please cover my this resolution.
So when i die no one will know when i've left this world.
GOD BLESS EVERYONE near to me.
I know if some one would need a friend in life i am not the one who would make you smile.
But give me a call i'll cry with you.
Sunday, 31 December 2006
Loving the Loneliness
Saturday, 30 December 2006
Test Of Love
John Blanchard stood up from the bench, straightened his Army uniform, and studied the crowd of people making their way through Grand Central Station.
He looked for the girl whose heart he knew, but whose face he didn't, the girl with the rose. His interest in her had begun thirteen months before in a Florida library. Taking a book off the shelf he found himself intrigued, not with the words of the book, but with the notes penciled in the margin. The soft handwriting reflected a thoughtful soul and insightful mind.
In the front of the book, he discovered the previous owner's name, Miss Hollis Maynell. With time and effort he located her address. She lived in New York City. He wrote her a letter introducing himself and inviting her to correspond. The next day he was shipped overseas for service in World War II.
During the next year and one-month the two grew to know each other through the mail. Each letter was a seed falling on a fertile heart. A Romance was budding.
Blanchard requested a photograph, but she refused. She felt that if he really cared, it wouldn't matter what she looked like.
When the day finally came for him to return from Europe, they scheduled their first meeting - 7:00 PM at the Grand Central Station in New York.
"You'll recognize me," she wrote, "by the red rose I'll be wearing on my lapel."
So at 7:00 he was in the station looking for a girl whose heart he loved, but whose face he'd never seen.
I'll let Mr. Blanchard tell you what happened:
A young woman was coming toward me, her figure long and slim. Her blonde hair lay back in curls from her delicate ears; her eyes were blue as flowers. Her lips and chin had a gentle firmness, and in her pale green suit she was like springtime come alive.
I started toward her, entirely forgetting to notice that she was not wearing a rose. As I moved, a small, provocative smile curved her lips.
"Going my way, sailor?" she murmured.
Almost uncontrollably I made one step closer to her, and then I saw Hollis Maynell. She was standing almost directly behind the girl. A woman well past 40, she had graying hair tucked under a worn hat. She was more than plump, her thick-ankled feet thrust into low-heeled shoes. The girl in the green suit was walking quickly away.
I felt as though I was split in two, so keen was my desire to follow her, and yet so deep was my longing for the woman whose spirit had truly companioned me and upheld my own.
And there she stood. Her pale, plump face was gentle and sensible, her gray eyes had a warm and kindly twinkle. I did not hesitate. My fingers gripped the small worn blue leather copy of the book that was to identify me to her.
This would not be love, but it would be something precious, something perhaps even better than love, a friendship for which I had been and must ever be grateful. I squared my shoulders and saluted and held out the book to the woman, even though while I spoke I felt choked by the bitterness of my disappointment.
"I'm Lieutenant John Blanchard, and you must be Miss Maynell. I am so glad you could meet me; may I take you to dinner?"
The woman's face broadened into a tolerant smile.
"I don't know what this is about, son," she answered, "but the young lady in the green suit who just went by, she begged me to wear this rose on my coat. And she said if you were to ask me out to dinner, I should go and tell you that she is waiting for you in the big restaurant across the street. She said it was some kind of test!"
Top 10 Sad Quotes
1) John Greenleaf Whittier
2) Jim Rohn
3) Psalms
4) Winston Churchill
5) Marcus Aurelius
6) Malcolm X
7) Voltaire
8) Olive Schreiner
9) Wizard of Oz
10) W. M. Lewis
Friday, 29 December 2006
The E-Slaves
The instant message she read was terse.
Night-witch: Do you have a soul?
You know what day it is?
Wednesday, no, Friday, no, Saturday? You don't seem to care, do you?
Jenny thought for a while, stumped for an answer. She doesn't know what day it is. She is so disoriented by the night shifts that she stopped caring. The message quickly disappeared without an answer as Night-witch rapidly typed questions after irritating questions on the messenger. Who is this Night-witch?
Jenny's actual name is Janaki. But the call centre where she works changed it to Jenny, which is her e-name, or electronic name. With the electronic name, she also had to fake an American accent, which she was trained to put on while answering calls. She works in a call centre as a voice-based support executive. She works in what they call a technology park. Her office is on the fourth floor of a modern building with central air-conditioning. The park has green lawns and well-paved roads, a rarity in India. But just outside this futuristic city, runnels of dirty sewage spill on the road and small children defecate in the open.
All night she attends to phone calls from far away United States of America for a multinational insurance company. The company she works for – Compucom – got the contract to receive and manage all the insurance company's incoming calls. The calls start coming in every evening when it is morning in the USA and end in the morning when it is evening in the USA. She sleeps during day and in the evening is picked up by the call centre bus and comes to work in a narrow air-conditioned office with rows of tables with 20 of them in a space of about 40 feet by 4 feet.
There are 250 executives like her all working night shifts. One of them is Night-witch. She doesn't know who because she doesn't know all her colleagues. Most of them leave in a month or two and are replaced. So it is difficult knowing everybody's name and faces.
She has only a few friends. She eats with them during the dinner break from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. After that they are supposed to swipe their identity cards and be at their workstations throughout the night. The nights are long and arduous and she feels sleepy. But to take a break she has to log out of the computer first. If she logs out too often the supervisor, one Mr. Sheth, will ask questions.
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Mr Sheth sits in a cubicle the size of a toilet. He is a harried and harassed man, always studying his computer screen. His mind is filled with productivity figures like how many calls were attended on a particular day and how much each employee has produced. When there are problems like abusive callers, Jenny summons him, and he sorts out the problem. Like the time a drunken caller was abusive with her a few days ago. “You m***$^& you don't know anything about me. How can you manage my insurance policies?,” he said in his alien accent with which Jenny was now familiar.
No amount of sweet words and training could pacify him. That was when she called Mr. Sheth.
Mr. Sheth came to her table. All the other executives were watching.
“Hey Mister, he said into the phone. You are not in the proper frame of mind. Please come back when you are sober and we will attend to your call.”
“**&&^&*” from the other end.
“Look we have no time for callers like you. Please behave or I will have to report you to the police.”
Report to the police? From India? About a man in the US? He was kidding, of course.
The caller hung up.
“Handle them politely but firmly,” Mr. Sheth said and disappeared into his toilet-sized cubicle.
Pooja is Janaki's friend. Pooja's online name is Pamela. They both share the same birthdates. March seventh, both of them are Pisceans. Both, pacifists and accepters of fate. Pamela is getting married and all she talks about is the lengthy traditional rituals she has to undergo before marriage. She is from Punjab and weddings there are quite elaborate.
She has to make gold jewelry, buy silk saris, another silk ghagra-choli with elaborate gold filigree for the wedding reception and a house and furniture for themselves in Navi Mumbai. Jenny and Pamela get along well. They walk to the transport buses together and sit together and are inseparable.
“Who is this Night-witch, Pamela?” Jenny asked one day, when they were traveling in the bus together. They always called each other by their e-names to tease each other.
“I don't know. Why?”
“She sends me these instant messages and before I can reply, she disappears.”
“Strange.”
“Yes, strange. Most of them are questions that upset me a lot.”
“Girls are vegetables, they get bored and listless in the midnight shift,” one night the instant message read. That night the office was solemn with only the clicking of mouses and key depressions sounding like the chattering of a stream over a rocky bed.
Before Jenny could reply the message had disappeared. That was rude. She should report it. She went to Mr. Sheth.
“Mr. Sheth of late I have been getting some funny messages on my messenger.”
“Does it bother you?”
“No it doesn't but I think it interferes with my work. It disturbs me sometimes. It affects my productivity.”
“Okay I will look into it.”
One day Jenny came to the office and saw the horizontal blinds pulled tightly across the windows.
“They don't want us to even look at the dark sky and the lights anymore,” Pamela said.
“This is not fair.” Jenny said.
“Like everything is fair over here,” Pamela said.
“We are nothing but slaves, friend.”
“We are e-slaves with e-names and pseudo identities.”
When Jenny went back to her workstation a message on the instant messenger popped up.
Night-witch: Do you have a soul?
Jenny: No. My soul has been sold.
Night-witch: They have even sealed the toilet windows. You have no soul, no sleep, e-slave. You don't deserve sleep for selling your soul.
Jenny: Who are you?
Night-witch: It doesn't matter who I am. I also have no soul.
Jenny: What are you?
Night-witch: Do you wish to speak in a phony accent forever?
Jenny: I am getting the creeps!
Night-witch: How do you like to be a creature of the night?
That really got to Jenny. The rest of the night was torture. Her mind was not on the calls she was answering. She became very afraid. The office seemed to close in on her. She couldn't look out of the windows from the fourth floor occasionally and see disconsolate e-slaves like her walking on the street below, going home after finishing shifts that ended in the evening. The whole estate seemed filled with grumpy and sleep-starved, weary eyed people like her. They all had dark circles under eyes, bad skin and hair as if made of some jute fiber. They all looked frazzled. Who was this night-witch? An e-slave like her?
Now she regretted having accepted the job. She had accepted the call centre job without thinking. A job was better than sitting at home and waiting for her parents to find a nice boy to marry her off, she thought then. But this wasn't proving to be the job of her dreams she had imagined.
Some nights there was no water in the rest rooms and it stank. Some days the mosquitoes inside the office restrooms were so thick that she was scared she might get malaria, a disease she dreaded.
“I am scared of getting malaria, working here,” she told Pamela.
“Like the plague?”
“Like the plague.”
“Me, too. I had it more than once. It is terrible. You feel like lying down and dying.”
“Working on the night shift weakens your immune system,” Jenny said.
“By now we might have become immune to malaria, I suppose.”
“It also plays havoc with your digestive system,” Jenny said.
“My digestive system is already a mess,” Pamela said and they both laughed.
Jenny arrived one day and Pamela wasn't on here seat. She started work as usual as the phone at her terminal was ringing with the insistence of a hungry child. Soon she was immersed in the details of people's insurance policies and their troubles with buying security cover for their cars and homes.
She saw Pamela emerge from Mr. Sheth's cubicle. Pamela didn't look at her. Pamela went to her table took her purse and just walked out. Jenny made a note to call Pamela when it was time for the dinner break. She attended 10 calls before dinner each one in a rising scale of tortuousness.
During dinner break Jenny phoned Pamela on her mobile phone from her own sleek mobile handset. That's one advantage of being living on the razor edge of technology. E-slaves had to use technologies to keep up with the world.
“Hello, Pamela what happened?”
“Hi, Jenny, I was sacked!”
“But why? What was the reason?”
“I have been found out.”
“What?”
“You know the night-witch?”
“Yes. The tormentor of my midnight shifts.”
“That was me.”
Jenny's jaws dropped.
“But why did you send those provocative messages?”
“I was bored. That was the only way I could keep myself awake.”
“Come on, you can't be serious.”
“Do you have a soul you e-slave? Do you wish to spend all your life in a narrow workspace answering calls and speaking in a phony accent that makes your mouth ache? Do you want to be a creature of the night forever? Do you wish to be enslaved by people who live thousands of kilometers away, who you will never meet? Do you have a soul?”
That was the last Jenny heard from Pamela.
Flirting in Short Messages
I was going to meet Savita Fernandes for the first time. We had met online at a literary community that exchanged messages and networked in the disembodied medium of the Internet.
She looked quite pert and pretty in a photograph posted on her profile page and I could imagine an interesting if not intellectual conversation with a kindred literary soul. She liked reading Tolkien and wrote prose, short stories, and poetry.
Savita is a biologist doing research in a government-funded laboratory in Pune and I am a technical writer based in
The next meeting of Neterati was to take place at the residence of poet Manisha Gidwani, poet of repute, a Neterati member who lived in CBD Belapur. Savita had come into
I had written about Savita:
Savita Fernandes researcher of plant biology,
She spends quality time on word morphology,
Her writing has a truly distinctive voice,
But she says she is a biologist not a writer by choice!
To which she had replied:
Srinivas Iyer writer of web site content,
Teasing acolyte writers isn't his honest intent,
Front Page and Dreamweaver are his tools,
But his writing is only meant for fools!
So we had exchanged articles, short poems, limericks, clerihews and our friendship had grown.
When a brief lull had occurred in our exchange of smart verses she had sent a personal message, “Why no pomes, jokes, stories for several days?”
To which I had written back a clerihew:
What are Pomes dear Savita?
Are they the teachings of the Gita?
Are these pomes coming from deep within your heart?
With the potential of a million heartaches to start?
When she reached the outskirts of New Bombay she began messaging me for directions. In the morning she had visited her place of birth in Vile Parle where she still had an uncle living in a rundown bungalow in a Catholic locality beside a Catholic Church and school. She could never forget her childhood there and made frequent visits, more to seek continuity with the past, than the love of her uncle and aunt.
Her parents had sold their house in the same locality and moved to Pune, which was then a retirement paradise where accommodation was available cheap.
As she crossed the
“I am nearing Vashi. Where do I get down?” She messaged.
“There is a lot of time. Enjoy the scenery. What do you see?” I messaged back.
“I see a lot of mangroves, feel the cool wind, the sea shimmering.”
“Reminds me of the romantic poets.”
“Which one?”
“Keats.”
“Quote one.”
“Wide sea that one continuous murmur breeds along the pebbled shore of memory!”
“You have a good memory.”
“For pomes, yes.”
“Hahahaha!”
Then the messages stopped. She fell silent.
“Where am I?”
“What do you see?”
“A flyover and a lot of chimneys spewing black smoke.”
“You are nearing CBD Belapur. What do you see inside the bus?”
“Why? A pot-bellied conductor, with a dour expression and the look as if he is anal retentive.”
“Hahahaha! You are funny. What else?”
“There is this balding man sitting in front of me, his hair is fifty per cent gone.”
There was a balding man sitting in front of me too.
“Oh! Do be careful.”
“Why?”
“Balding men can be dangerous.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Hormone imbalance causes premature balding, what is he wearing?”
“A tee-shirt, frayed collars, I can see his stubbly cheeks.”
“What is he doing?”
“He is reading a novel. Tolkien's 'Lord of the Rings', and he is messaging somebody.”
“Who?”
“How do I know? He is looking very intently at his cell phone.”
“How do you rate him on a scale of one to ten?”
“He would be four, I guess.”
“Oh! I thought you would be kinder to him.”
“Why? You haven't seen him, so, how can you say I should be kinder to him?”
“Because he is reading Tolkien, you like Tolkien don't you?”
“Yes, that doesn't mean I should rate him any higher than I did. He is not my type. Besides, he is older.”
“I see!”
“Why, 'I see!'”
“Nothing. Where are you now?”
“There is a nasty, penetrating smell,” she messaged looking out of the window at a tall building with a huge vat-like structure on top.
“That's the beer company Bombay Pilsner. What are you wearing?”
“Guess. We had the exercise on colors. What color did I write about?”
“Pink. You wrote about your 'Pink Obsession'. You are wearing a pink top and denim jeans.”
“And....”
“You are wearing one of those earrings that dangle like a chain.”
“And....”
“You have a Ray-ban Predator model, perched on your hair.”
“How do you know all this? We never met!”
“Just guess work.”
“But how?”
“Because you like pink you will wear pink on a weekend. Because you are on a short journey, you will wear jeans. The earrings were just a guess. The glasses, naturally, you will wear glasses in this heat.”
“What else Sherlock Holmes?”
“You are carrying a blue duffel bag.”
“Wait a minute, you are not the man sitting in front of me. Oh!” she sounded disappointed.
“Who? The balding man with dandruff in his hair?”
“How do you know he has dandruff? I didn't mention it.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“Look at the seat across the aisle.”
She turned her head, her eyes met mine, and a brilliant smile lit her face.
“It's you, you liar,” she messaged for the last time.
We both laughed at the same time and gestured at each other.
The balding man in the front row looked back, shrugged, shook his head, and went back to his book and short messaging texts.
“Crazy adrenaline-pumping youngsters,” he punched into his cell phone to whoever was receiving his messages.
I got up, crossed the aisle, and sat down beside Savita Fernandes. We had a lot of catching up to do.
Tonight
I know I've had my share.
Even when I made them,
No one really cared.
Now I've reached the limit,
There will be no turning back.
I'm tired of the illusions,
I see them slowly crack.
You don't have to love me,
You don't have to smile.
Just lay down here beside me,
And stay with me awhile.
I tried to make some changes
To make it all work out.
And in the final moments,
Still I had my doubts.
Let the feelings die now,
Just throw the years away.
Pretend you never knew me,
But say tonight you'll stay.
You don't have to want me,
You don't have to care.
Tomorrow is a new day,
Tonight will take us there.
Love Is Gone
You're laying there in the afterglow,
You're feeling fine - but do you know
Where the feelings go?
Closed your eyes and you fell in love,
Had a taste, but it's not enough.
Lost your way - then you gave it up,
What were you thinking of?
Are you really what you think you are?
You seem to feel you're a shooting star,
But your light doesn't travel far,
No one knows your name.
You gain respect as you live and learn,
A shooting star has to crash and burn,
You take a trip but you never leave,
So many lies, who should you believe?
All your friends - how they can deceive,
All your life you have tried in vain,
Your light was shining through the falling rain.
Lost your heart - and you felt the pain,
Then you went insane.
Your future is so hard to see,
Past mistakes are now just history.
Ask yourself - "Will she remember me?"
Just wait and see.
Old lovers can never be good friends,
And when the fun and loving ends,
You'll wonder if your heart will mend,
And you'll find It's broke again.
So when it's over, let the feelings die.
It never does too much good to cry.
Don't waste your time by asking how or why,
You lost your way, so just say good-bye
And let the memories of those painful days
Just fade & Die.
You took a chance but you lost your heart,
Somehow the tears tore it all apart.
You're all alone when the crying starts,
You are crying inside and she departs.
It's over now and it's time to go.
No one cares if you make it home.
It's not easy - and you're so alone.
When the love is gone.The love is gone
Please Forgive Me
Here I am between a bar stool
And your memory.
And the more I drink,
The stronger it becomes.
In this game of love we're playing,
It's all over.
I'm the loser, so I guess
That means you won.
All my life I tried to find
The simple answers.
But there doesn't seem to be
An easy way.
So I'll sit right here till
Happy hour is over,
And I'll drink and cry
The emptiness away.
The only thing I ever could believe in
Said good-bye and now the happiness is gone.
My mistakes were just too much
For her to live through,
Who can blame her if she'd rather be alone?
Take good care and keep the smiles
I once gave you.
You're a beauty and they look
So good on you.
Save your heart until you find
The one you need, dear.
Don't fall in love until you know
The love is true.
No one knows why sometimes love
Can't last forever.
But I know it's always been
That way for me.
I just hope and pray your own luck
Turns out better.
I accept the way I knew
It had to be.
I'll still love you till this lonely life is over,
And someday you will forget the pain I caused.
I never meant to hurt you, please believe me,
If I know you do then I'll survive the loss.
If You Could See Me Now
When I was young and you were free?
Love was a toy I tossed around,
I had no chains to hold me down.
If you could see me now.
Remember how I laughed at fear,
And never cried a lonely tear?
I dreamed of love throughout the night,
Embraced with joy the morning light.
If you could see me now.
Now time has gone and passed me by,
I sit alone each night and cry.
Your memories haunt me as I think,
And thoughts grow dim with every drink.
If you could see me now.
Often I wonder where you are today,
And I suppose you wonder why I went away.
It never was because of you,
Just something that I had to do.
If you could see me now.
Today the sun shines bright outside,
But my soul is dark with no place to hide.
Your face I see in another drink,
And I cry and wonder what you'd think,
If you could see me now.
Aadat Si Ho Gayi Hai
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| Jab se dil lagaya hai tum se Ab to chaahe chhod bhi do hume |
Alone in the dark
I´m sitting here alone in the dark
I´m sad and all alone
I´m so sad that I want to cry
and no one is here to ask me why...
Everyone think that I´m ok
but no one knows, how I feel inside
I want to cry alone in the dark
Far away from everyone, so i don't leave my mark...
People think i make them laugh
All i do is make a bluff
It's so easy to make a lie
What's really hard is show my inside