"In a moment of murderous rage, the rain pounds against my window, splattering across the glass, threatening to engulf me in a film of suffocating stillness but then, wakes up to gravity and slips away tiredly along the surface, conceding defeat."
Interesting lines. Wonder how I came up with them while trying to drive in a torrential downpour, unable to view the road ahead of me. I typed them down in my mobile as soon as I parked the car at home, gleefully, I should add, contented that the trip to the medical store in the deluge had been not so useless, after all. Normally, on a normal day, with me in a normal mood, all such lines go into the vault, the database of disconnected pieces of crafted language that I sometime later, in a fit of inspiration, would try to weave together and produce a blog entry or a poem or a flash video or whatever other piece of 'art', as we might call it. But tonight, I'm in no mood to weave, no mood to contrive and above all, honestly, in no mood to think. A tryst with a few picturesque words and, unfortunately, fewer wordy pictures over the past couple of days has left me exhausted. And writing, no matter how distasteful and embarassing it might be to admit for us writers, is a painful process. So then, let's cut down on the pain tonight, shall we?
Wall-E's out. After a long, eager wait and a resultant weary resignation, that is. Damn Pixar. Yet, we all know what's gonna happen now, don't we?
Darren Aronofsky's new flick, 'The Wrestler' is due to premiere in some film festival this Sep 5th. I know I won't be able to watch it till a year or so when the DVD gets out in stores but what I'm more interested in is Clint Mansell's composition for its score. And for those who haven't heard it from me yet, Clint Mansell is god. People usually hark 'Lux Aeterna' when they hear his name (I was once one of them) but, The Fountain contains better written pieces of classical compositions than any of the ones from Requiem for a Dream or any of his earlier works (barring 'Lux Aeterna', which is a piece of divine brilliance that he may, in all probability, never produce again in his life). It's an album that's pure brilliance, complementing the movie in every sense, every single track exuding ceaseless emotion. Nothing else I've ever listened to in my life comes close. I've been playing it regularly for over an year now and still, everytime I play each track, I unravel something new.
And now, I think I should stop writing before I start talking in cliches. The rain has subsided, I hope. Yes, I can venture out into my balcony and savour the night's balmy radiance for a moment before I collapse into the waiting arms of Morpheus. Oh my god, who talks like that? And who writes like that?
[I tend to use a lot of commas, don't I? Banville's fault, to an extent, I'd like to say. And maybe, even Pynchon's. ;) ]
There's a certain pleasure in writing a blog entry while you're half asleep. It's like getting the best of both worlds, in a true sense. But still, there aren't any awakwardly constructed sentences and spelling errors. Oh, my obsessions.
I think I'm rambling. Oh, but then, don't we all?
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
To be written
12 33 am. I'm just back from a rainy night's drive. Pure, unadulterated ecstasy, if ever there was one. I'm tired. I have very few hours of sleep available to me before I wake up to the day and I would give a lot of things to be able to get off this chair and slink away into the night but this has to be written.
In a few hours, I might get on a train. After a long, long time. New music's being pumped into my player and my book is ready.
Somewhere, somewhere, a window waits for me.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Déjà vu
I was there. Though I never actually had been.
I got down at the gates and surveyed the milieu. It was late in the evening, the time around which trees start fading away into grey outlines that sway with the breeze. There was the huge wall that ran all around it, just as I had been told. Walking in, there was a sense of nostalgia for all that was there, the imperious gates, the desolute grey edifices, the tall trees and the beaten paths that ran through them. It was all there, nothing I'd ever known but still, somehow, I knew I knew. Exactly as you told me it would be.
Memories lay in wait, fettered in time, waiting to be set free. Unfinished parleys drew me to places that spoke of shadows that had once been, of a dreamy smile that once stole time. I knew not what I knew as I traversed your past, alerting it to my arrival, revising it to my existence. Amid secrets that weren't secret anymore and bygones that refused to stay bygone, I stood smiling, contemplating clocks and chances, as I knew you had once done.
Two smiles. Disconnected by time, connected by a moment.
Monday, July 7, 2008
4 hours, 48 minutes. Plus a moment.
There was wind. There was rain. There was a blue sky too.
There are moments in a sport's history that will someday later come to be known as the ones that changed it forever, the moments about which people will someday proudly proclaim, 'I was there!', and tonight, there were two unassuming gentlemen at the Centre court at Wimbledon scripting one such moment, changing the face of the sport forever. Two maestros outdid one other in turns, like wizards conjuring up spells of genius with their racquet-shaped wands, two contrasting styles at a stalemate. One never gave up, the other never gave in. Fate hung by millimetre-thick threads while sporting brilliance never seemed more than a shot away.
And then, a lash of the forehand sent the ball crashing into the net and it came down onto the grass, lifeless.
6-4, 6-4, 6-7, 6-7, 9-7.
Wimbledon erupted, and a twenty-two year old Spaniard collapsed on the other side of the net, ecstasy rolling down his eyes. Rafael Nadal had finally conquered Roger Federer. On grass. At Wimbledon. Words I have waited an year to type out. Rafael Nadal was Wimbledon Champion, and that was where the world ended. There were no more balls to be hit, no more runs to be made. He didn't know what to do. Appropriately. For four hours and forty eight minutes on centre court, amid rain delays, gusty winds and with one of the game's greatest legends on the other side of the net, he made the world believe he was something more than just human and it was apt that the glorious moment that it all culminated in showed more than any other that he was just a man. Everything rushed into his head, every single time he had ever held a Tennis racquet, everything he'd sacrificed, dreaming of the day he would hold aloft that golden trophy on the lawns of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. Not the father, not the uncle, not even the Prince and Princess of Spain could do anything about the tears. They belonged, rightly so, to the grass he had dreamt of as a little boy in Majorca, the same grass on which he had just fulfilled his sporting destiny.
On the other side of the net, Roger Federer was experiencing something painfully new, the feeling of being the runner-up at Wimbledon. For five years, he had ruled the All England Club like few had ever done before him but this time, as he later acknowledged with a calm smile on his face, he tried everything but it just wasn't enough. There was very, very little separating the two today and the match could've easily gone either way but in the end, it was Nadal's unremitting energy and stamina that produced the very, very little extra that the game needed to produce a winner.
It was perhaps fitting that this game took place at the home of the modern game. Fueled by what is fast becoming one of the greatest rivalries that tennis, or any other sport, for that matter, has known, the sport had been elevated to another level, producing some of the most breathtaking tennis that has been seen in a long time. We would be compelled to go back twenty eight years in time to find something that rivals the beauty of this match when Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe produced something similar in terms of the rivalry and quality. The same match that contained the momentous tiebreak in the fourth set which McEnroe took 18-16. But Borg held on to win that epic match, staving off waves of brilliant shot-making from McEnroe to make it five Wimbledon crowns in a row. The next year's final featured the same duo but this time it was McEnroe who took the crown, capping off a great rivalry with the Swede, ending his five year reign. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
It may well have been that this year's Wimbledon title had been won, or lost, at the French Open final. It's been a well-observed trend over the past few years that Nadal has been getting better on grass than Federer has on clay. And when, this year, on his third attempt at the French crown, Federer could muster only four games while being annihilated in what was one of Nadal's most clinical displays of clay-court tennis, he could've lost more than just that match. Whatever Roger may say, however vehemently he may deny that Wimbledon is not Roland Garros, he offered little today to prove it. No matter the surface, Nadal to him is the puzzle he can't seem to solve, the untiring bundle of energy that negates his strokemaking like no one ever did before, the guy who makes his genius look all too human at times. Look at the facts. Out of thirteen break points, Federer converted one, only one. Not the Federer we know, is he? When was the last time he committed twice the number (52, to Nadal's 27) of his opponent's unforced errors? And when did you last see him scream on court, egging himself on and anguishing at lost points? And when, oh when, did you catch Mirka Vavrinec exhort him from the sidelines?
As you watched the match today, there was an impending sense of collapsibility about the champion, no matter what instinct suggested. Nadal broke him early to take the first set but trailing 1-4 in the second set, there had to be something special about the Majorcan to topple the Swiss and there indeed was. Federer's serve was broken twice and Nadal had the second set wrapped up in 46 minutes. With Nadal serving at 4-5 in the third set, rain forced a delay for the first time, probably coming to the defending champion's aid. And after play resumed, he fought back strongly and took third and fourth sets on tiebreak, neither unable to break the other’s serve. The fourth set tie-break produced the most exhilarating tennis of the match, Federer having to dig deep to save two championship points for the Spaniard, in the end taking the tiebreak 10-8. But later in the fifth set, Nadal's energy started kicking in and he started stretching Federer's serves more with each game and in the end, he broke Federer in the fifteenth game of the set to serve for the championship at 8-7. Federer fought with all his might, dragging the game to deuce before conceding a championship point and then manufacturing what was probably the return of the match to bring it back to deuce again. But then, a magnificent serve brought Nadal his fourth championship point and another unforced error from the champion ended his five year reign, giving the Spaniard his first ever Wimbledon crown.
So, what does Nadal’s win mean for men's Tennis? There will be zealous proclamations of a 'changing of the guard' and questions raised about the 'end of a reign' but it doesn't take too much of common sense to see that it's not the case. Federer is far from a spent force and Nadal is far from unbeatable. But this will change a few things for sure and Federer will know them better than anybody else. His aura of invincibility has finally been broken but actually, it may not have come at a better time for him to reassess himself if he seeks to capture that French Open title that has eluded him for so long. If there has been a single factor that has worked against him in debates of "the greatest of all time", it has been the absence of a real challenge from his rivals unlike the other greats Sampras or Borg who had clear challengers like Agassi and McEnroe snapping at their heels all their time. And now, Roger has that, a true challenger in the guise of Nadal. If he seeks to put at rest all those theories that he has been largely untested by real competition, this is the time. His game on clay is still notches below Nadal's and he has to work a lot to get there but he now knows that it's the Nadal in his mind that's bothering him more than the one across the net. Next year's French Open and, not to mention, Wimbledon, may well be the dawn of a new era in men’s Tennis thanks to this fierce rivalry. Tennis stands to be the winner no matter what the outcome.
Nadal put things into perspective in the presentation ceremony when asked if it was a special win because he beat Federer to win it. He said, 'He has five Wimbledon titles to his name and I have just won my first.' That should settle it. But for tonight and the history that accompanies it, there won't be a more fitting and deserving Wimbledon champion than this young man. John McEnroe would agree.
There are moments in a sport's history that will someday later come to be known as the ones that changed it forever, the moments about which people will someday proudly proclaim, 'I was there!', and tonight, there were two unassuming gentlemen at the Centre court at Wimbledon scripting one such moment, changing the face of the sport forever. Two maestros outdid one other in turns, like wizards conjuring up spells of genius with their racquet-shaped wands, two contrasting styles at a stalemate. One never gave up, the other never gave in. Fate hung by millimetre-thick threads while sporting brilliance never seemed more than a shot away.
And then, a lash of the forehand sent the ball crashing into the net and it came down onto the grass, lifeless.
6-4, 6-4, 6-7, 6-7, 9-7.
Wimbledon erupted, and a twenty-two year old Spaniard collapsed on the other side of the net, ecstasy rolling down his eyes. Rafael Nadal had finally conquered Roger Federer. On grass. At Wimbledon. Words I have waited an year to type out. Rafael Nadal was Wimbledon Champion, and that was where the world ended. There were no more balls to be hit, no more runs to be made. He didn't know what to do. Appropriately. For four hours and forty eight minutes on centre court, amid rain delays, gusty winds and with one of the game's greatest legends on the other side of the net, he made the world believe he was something more than just human and it was apt that the glorious moment that it all culminated in showed more than any other that he was just a man. Everything rushed into his head, every single time he had ever held a Tennis racquet, everything he'd sacrificed, dreaming of the day he would hold aloft that golden trophy on the lawns of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. Not the father, not the uncle, not even the Prince and Princess of Spain could do anything about the tears. They belonged, rightly so, to the grass he had dreamt of as a little boy in Majorca, the same grass on which he had just fulfilled his sporting destiny.
On the other side of the net, Roger Federer was experiencing something painfully new, the feeling of being the runner-up at Wimbledon. For five years, he had ruled the All England Club like few had ever done before him but this time, as he later acknowledged with a calm smile on his face, he tried everything but it just wasn't enough. There was very, very little separating the two today and the match could've easily gone either way but in the end, it was Nadal's unremitting energy and stamina that produced the very, very little extra that the game needed to produce a winner.
It was perhaps fitting that this game took place at the home of the modern game. Fueled by what is fast becoming one of the greatest rivalries that tennis, or any other sport, for that matter, has known, the sport had been elevated to another level, producing some of the most breathtaking tennis that has been seen in a long time. We would be compelled to go back twenty eight years in time to find something that rivals the beauty of this match when Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe produced something similar in terms of the rivalry and quality. The same match that contained the momentous tiebreak in the fourth set which McEnroe took 18-16. But Borg held on to win that epic match, staving off waves of brilliant shot-making from McEnroe to make it five Wimbledon crowns in a row. The next year's final featured the same duo but this time it was McEnroe who took the crown, capping off a great rivalry with the Swede, ending his five year reign. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
It may well have been that this year's Wimbledon title had been won, or lost, at the French Open final. It's been a well-observed trend over the past few years that Nadal has been getting better on grass than Federer has on clay. And when, this year, on his third attempt at the French crown, Federer could muster only four games while being annihilated in what was one of Nadal's most clinical displays of clay-court tennis, he could've lost more than just that match. Whatever Roger may say, however vehemently he may deny that Wimbledon is not Roland Garros, he offered little today to prove it. No matter the surface, Nadal to him is the puzzle he can't seem to solve, the untiring bundle of energy that negates his strokemaking like no one ever did before, the guy who makes his genius look all too human at times. Look at the facts. Out of thirteen break points, Federer converted one, only one. Not the Federer we know, is he? When was the last time he committed twice the number (52, to Nadal's 27) of his opponent's unforced errors? And when did you last see him scream on court, egging himself on and anguishing at lost points? And when, oh when, did you catch Mirka Vavrinec exhort him from the sidelines?
As you watched the match today, there was an impending sense of collapsibility about the champion, no matter what instinct suggested. Nadal broke him early to take the first set but trailing 1-4 in the second set, there had to be something special about the Majorcan to topple the Swiss and there indeed was. Federer's serve was broken twice and Nadal had the second set wrapped up in 46 minutes. With Nadal serving at 4-5 in the third set, rain forced a delay for the first time, probably coming to the defending champion's aid. And after play resumed, he fought back strongly and took third and fourth sets on tiebreak, neither unable to break the other’s serve. The fourth set tie-break produced the most exhilarating tennis of the match, Federer having to dig deep to save two championship points for the Spaniard, in the end taking the tiebreak 10-8. But later in the fifth set, Nadal's energy started kicking in and he started stretching Federer's serves more with each game and in the end, he broke Federer in the fifteenth game of the set to serve for the championship at 8-7. Federer fought with all his might, dragging the game to deuce before conceding a championship point and then manufacturing what was probably the return of the match to bring it back to deuce again. But then, a magnificent serve brought Nadal his fourth championship point and another unforced error from the champion ended his five year reign, giving the Spaniard his first ever Wimbledon crown.
So, what does Nadal’s win mean for men's Tennis? There will be zealous proclamations of a 'changing of the guard' and questions raised about the 'end of a reign' but it doesn't take too much of common sense to see that it's not the case. Federer is far from a spent force and Nadal is far from unbeatable. But this will change a few things for sure and Federer will know them better than anybody else. His aura of invincibility has finally been broken but actually, it may not have come at a better time for him to reassess himself if he seeks to capture that French Open title that has eluded him for so long. If there has been a single factor that has worked against him in debates of "the greatest of all time", it has been the absence of a real challenge from his rivals unlike the other greats Sampras or Borg who had clear challengers like Agassi and McEnroe snapping at their heels all their time. And now, Roger has that, a true challenger in the guise of Nadal. If he seeks to put at rest all those theories that he has been largely untested by real competition, this is the time. His game on clay is still notches below Nadal's and he has to work a lot to get there but he now knows that it's the Nadal in his mind that's bothering him more than the one across the net. Next year's French Open and, not to mention, Wimbledon, may well be the dawn of a new era in men’s Tennis thanks to this fierce rivalry. Tennis stands to be the winner no matter what the outcome.
Nadal put things into perspective in the presentation ceremony when asked if it was a special win because he beat Federer to win it. He said, 'He has five Wimbledon titles to his name and I have just won my first.' That should settle it. But for tonight and the history that accompanies it, there won't be a more fitting and deserving Wimbledon champion than this young man. John McEnroe would agree.
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Epiphany
Ever felt a moment grab you by the scruff of your neck and drag you all the way through the screaming quiet corridors of your life? Through those flashy freeways, the dusty, crowded lanes, the beautiful, dewy green lawns, those scary, dark alleys, those mud filled potholes... And then wake up somewhere you've never been, only to remember that you don't remember anything that preceded this wild, hopefully isolated, incident? Wondering what set off this chain of epiphanies, what dragged you that far, what blotted your memory so it wouldn't betray what it knew? And then, be hit by a thousand realisations all at once? That you're high, unable to know what sent you up there? That you're grinning your heart out to yourself, painfully? That your eyes are hanging from the whirling, kaliedoscopic roof on top of your swirling head? That your feet have started flying off windows you never knew were there before? That your hands don't have a body anymore? That you're shouting your ears off to get out the ball of blue energy bouncing around inside you? That you're looking around blindly for a sense to re-awaken your senses, to enlighten your blunted memory?
Switch off the headphones, slide them off your ears.
The world shall right itself.
Switch off the headphones, slide them off your ears.
The world shall right itself.
Friday, June 20, 2008
The Sign of Four
Right now, I have a lot of things to write. But I know that by the time I devise a way to put them all together in one piece, I'll either deviate into writing something 'more serious' [sic] or get too bored with attempting something on such a huge scale and leave it unfinished, thereby inducing a well known side effect-'an unpublished entry'. And so, in keeping with my endeavour in trying to keep the 'devising' bit out of my writing, I'll keep it more straightforward.
Subject 1 - All right, first things first. I have finally, finally gotten my hands on Nabokov's Pale Fire. Though it isn't mine to scribble in and revel in possession(it's a library book), it still is the book I probably wanted to read more than anything else in my whole wide, little book world and tonight calls for a celebration, which means a faster reading of Pynchon's Vineland. Not to take anything away from Pynchon here. In fact, he's so damn good that I was actually thinking about attempting a comprehensive review of the book which, might not be a big deal for most books but is for this one. [I'm not known for making bets but here's one- I bet 99 people out of 100 will put down this book before they reach the twentieth page. Challenges are invited.] He's crammed more of America into this book than most authors do in their lifetimes. I'd heard a lot about him before reading this but now, nothing's enough. Ah, by the way, there was this unwritten blog entry that was supposed to deal with the quintessential American novel and-behold!-American symbolism in Kamal's Dasavatharam. Sorry to disappoint you here but I promised myself earlier I wasn't gonna digress too much. Maybe some other night. Tonight's for Nabokov and Pynchon.
Subject 2 - Coldplay's new album rocks. It absolutely does. Thanks again Martin. Don't forget to tell the others.
Subject 3 - This is a bit old by subject 1's standards but last week, Lucas Podolski scored against Poland. Twice. Of all the things that could've happened. Oh.
For the sake of clarity here, let me elaborate. Podolski is a Polish-born striker who plays for Germany and I'm referring to the Euro 08 league match between Germany and Poland. Now, you see the irony? To his credit, he didn't celebrate after scoring. And the expression on his face right after tapping the ball home into the net, is what made me write this. Of course, he voluntarily made a decision to play for Germany and everything that happens ensues from it but still, I hope Germany aren't drawn with Poland again. Atleast as long as Podolski's around. And if they do, I pray to hell he doesn't score. There's too much pain in this world already.
Subject 4 - Have you ever felt that you feel like carting your life away to a whole new place only so you can get more out of the place you are in?
Hmmmm, I'll not write more on this here lest I get into a frame of writing people are more than familiar with. I will not. I will not. I will not.
Oh, for god's sake, Dheeraj, have an open mind.
Subject 1 - All right, first things first. I have finally, finally gotten my hands on Nabokov's Pale Fire. Though it isn't mine to scribble in and revel in possession(it's a library book), it still is the book I probably wanted to read more than anything else in my whole wide, little book world and tonight calls for a celebration, which means a faster reading of Pynchon's Vineland. Not to take anything away from Pynchon here. In fact, he's so damn good that I was actually thinking about attempting a comprehensive review of the book which, might not be a big deal for most books but is for this one. [I'm not known for making bets but here's one- I bet 99 people out of 100 will put down this book before they reach the twentieth page. Challenges are invited.] He's crammed more of America into this book than most authors do in their lifetimes. I'd heard a lot about him before reading this but now, nothing's enough. Ah, by the way, there was this unwritten blog entry that was supposed to deal with the quintessential American novel and-behold!-American symbolism in Kamal's Dasavatharam. Sorry to disappoint you here but I promised myself earlier I wasn't gonna digress too much. Maybe some other night. Tonight's for Nabokov and Pynchon.
Subject 2 - Coldplay's new album rocks. It absolutely does. Thanks again Martin. Don't forget to tell the others.
Subject 3 - This is a bit old by subject 1's standards but last week, Lucas Podolski scored against Poland. Twice. Of all the things that could've happened. Oh.
For the sake of clarity here, let me elaborate. Podolski is a Polish-born striker who plays for Germany and I'm referring to the Euro 08 league match between Germany and Poland. Now, you see the irony? To his credit, he didn't celebrate after scoring. And the expression on his face right after tapping the ball home into the net, is what made me write this. Of course, he voluntarily made a decision to play for Germany and everything that happens ensues from it but still, I hope Germany aren't drawn with Poland again. Atleast as long as Podolski's around. And if they do, I pray to hell he doesn't score. There's too much pain in this world already.
Subject 4 - Have you ever felt that you feel like carting your life away to a whole new place only so you can get more out of the place you are in?
Hmmmm, I'll not write more on this here lest I get into a frame of writing people are more than familiar with. I will not. I will not. I will not.
Oh, for god's sake, Dheeraj, have an open mind.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
The sixteenth dream
"Those who are dead are not dead
They're just living in my head..."
- "42" [Coldplay/Viva La Vida]
A dream that was once a reality now languishes in memory as a dream, never to be real again. But then again, what is life, if not a dream woven out of innumerable dreams like an ocean that doesn't know where one drop begins and the other ends?
They're just living in my head..."
- "42" [Coldplay/Viva La Vida]
A dream that was once a reality now languishes in memory as a dream, never to be real again. But then again, what is life, if not a dream woven out of innumerable dreams like an ocean that doesn't know where one drop begins and the other ends?
Maybe one day, again, I would show him my report card and a broad smile would appear on his face, there would be another pat on my back, another 'Fantastic!' in the air as an old grey cassette player by the side sang "Main pal do pal ka shayar hoon...". I didn't know then what I had done to make him so happy. But then, I never knew a lot of things. I don't know when that cassette player stopped working and we bought a new one, I don't know when I stopped caring about report cards and I don't know when the word 'fantastic' ceased to be just a word. The ignorance that is all that remains of a lost life.
Today is the sixteenth. Next year, it will be the seventeenth. But then, it would be another day. Another dream.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Faint
I speak with the strength of all that is weak
All of those that live in life’s shadows
Never standing up for what they seek
Fearing the light, stifling all that grows
Those that wither away, trying to belong
Vainly denying that the world’s not for the tame
Forgetting life’s laws are written only for the strong
Not for the faint voices that ramble without an aim
If only life knew the powerful from the powerless
And took it upon itself to set the balance straight
Perhaps then a tirade wouldn’t be worth the stress
And spare the wordless from the fangs of fate
I hate the strong no more than I love the frail
But I side with the weak for all that has rendered me sore
Nor do I speak of it as an excuse to fail
For, being weak is a weakness, nothing more.
All of those that live in life’s shadows
Never standing up for what they seek
Fearing the light, stifling all that grows
Those that wither away, trying to belong
Vainly denying that the world’s not for the tame
Forgetting life’s laws are written only for the strong
Not for the faint voices that ramble without an aim
If only life knew the powerful from the powerless
And took it upon itself to set the balance straight
Perhaps then a tirade wouldn’t be worth the stress
And spare the wordless from the fangs of fate
I hate the strong no more than I love the frail
But I side with the weak for all that has rendered me sore
Nor do I speak of it as an excuse to fail
For, being weak is a weakness, nothing more.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
The week that almost was, Damon Albarn & his guns, and more.
12 23 am. Damon Albarn's up and crooning about some girl being a gun. Maybe it's time for a change in the music. Some randomness should suffice.
It's been a good week, this. In the past seven days, I've resigned from my first job, watched my first ever Champions League final, watched the three old Indy Jones flicks, managed to get my mobile number on an ad in the classifieds that entitles me to atleast a handful of calls every hour, played my first competitive cricket match in over two years, watched Sachin get more animated over a dismissal than I'd seen him in over 14 years, let A R Rahman disrupt my music listening habits yet again, started [but not finished] three poems and a couple of articles, travelled about 100km on a bike under a cool afternoon sun and among various such pointless things, inexplicably ended up reviewing my week in my blog.
I suspect too much of 'chanelled' writing is getting to me. I've been saving up lines, storing them, weaving and interweaving them to produce a coherent mass of words and then stowing them away for one big blaze of glory. Maybe I could do with less of that. And more of this.
I had this irrepressible urge to write about the Champions League final but I somehow managed to wriggle out of it. There was this (great) idea I had to write a piece about the contrasting fates of Ronaldo and Terry, both undisputable heroes for their respective sides in regulation time of the final and all through the season, both penalty-missers in the shootout. I think it would've turned out very well. Why can't I finish it now? Hmmmm, some pieces come with an expiry date and this one did. The moment has passed and it isn't coming back. Oh well, maybe the rough draft might be of use somewhere else, sometime else. Huh, there it is. My well-publicised greed with words.
1 17 am. Wonder why it took me so long to type all those simple lines out. I should work on writing faster. Ah, what are the chances. For all my playlist's randomness, Damon Albarn's crooning yet again, this time in his Clint Eastwood-obsessed simian incarnation, about a gun. But this time it's more meaningful. He's on about establishing peace using guns.
It's been a good week, this. In the past seven days, I've resigned from my first job, watched my first ever Champions League final, watched the three old Indy Jones flicks, managed to get my mobile number on an ad in the classifieds that entitles me to atleast a handful of calls every hour, played my first competitive cricket match in over two years, watched Sachin get more animated over a dismissal than I'd seen him in over 14 years, let A R Rahman disrupt my music listening habits yet again, started [but not finished] three poems and a couple of articles, travelled about 100km on a bike under a cool afternoon sun and among various such pointless things, inexplicably ended up reviewing my week in my blog.
I suspect too much of 'chanelled' writing is getting to me. I've been saving up lines, storing them, weaving and interweaving them to produce a coherent mass of words and then stowing them away for one big blaze of glory. Maybe I could do with less of that. And more of this.
I had this irrepressible urge to write about the Champions League final but I somehow managed to wriggle out of it. There was this (great) idea I had to write a piece about the contrasting fates of Ronaldo and Terry, both undisputable heroes for their respective sides in regulation time of the final and all through the season, both penalty-missers in the shootout. I think it would've turned out very well. Why can't I finish it now? Hmmmm, some pieces come with an expiry date and this one did. The moment has passed and it isn't coming back. Oh well, maybe the rough draft might be of use somewhere else, sometime else. Huh, there it is. My well-publicised greed with words.
1 17 am. Wonder why it took me so long to type all those simple lines out. I should work on writing faster. Ah, what are the chances. For all my playlist's randomness, Damon Albarn's crooning yet again, this time in his Clint Eastwood-obsessed simian incarnation, about a gun. But this time it's more meaningful. He's on about establishing peace using guns.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Cadence
Stir from your stupor.
See through. Hear out. Feel.
Think for once. Ponder.
Breathe in.
Spin out of yourself.
Out of the circadian cadences.
Close the blinds.
Free the impulse.
Memory is momentary.
Consequences are always only random.
Wish away.
Nothing is worth being done over and over again.
Never.
See through. Hear out. Feel.
Think for once. Ponder.
Breathe in.
Spin out of yourself.
Out of the circadian cadences.
Close the blinds.
Free the impulse.
Memory is momentary.
Consequences are always only random.
Wish away.
Nothing is worth being done over and over again.
Never.
Friday, August 17, 2007
Elsewhere...
Finally, a new post. To inform that for obscure/apparent reasons I'll also be blogging somewhere else from now on.
http://confabulations.sulekha.com/
http://confabulations.sulekha.com/
Sunday, July 8, 2007
Vamos Rafa
" Roger Federer has just won his fifth consecutive Wimbledon title. "
" Rafael Nadal has just lost his second consecutive Wimbledon final. "
Two statements that could just as simply have been factually incorrect in a fairer world.
I don't care what they call Federer. "The greatest ever" and god-knows-what-else. Maybe they're right. I'm nobody to judge him. I haven't seen much of tennis in the years Roger has dominated and that may be the reason why I don't claim he's my favorite. Maybe. I've seen a considerable amount of him to acknowledge that all the accolades heaped on him could even possibly be true. But I'm not here to judge him, as I've already said. He may be the greatest ever. And he may well go on and win Wimbledon and everything else (Even the French, I may add... ) for the next ten years. Doesn't matter. This is about Rafael Nadal. And I'm not going to let anybody else take the spotlight away from him here too.
This might be a very subjective opinion and if the reader doesn't agree with what I have to say, with all due respect, I don't care. To me, the Wimbledon Gentlemen's Singles Champion of 2007 will be Rafael Nadal. Roger Federer may have been the better player and won the required 3 sets on the day but it is to be expected of him, isn't it? Now, where does Rafael come into the picture? On an alien surface almost custom-made for his adversary's game, he took that man where nobody else had ever taken him. In the 34 matches there before this, Roger Federer gave up only six sets in all. And never before has he been stretched to a five-setter. Writing all this, I run the risk of this being interpreted as a tribute to Roger's genius but I don't mind. After all, he surely is a genius. That's what makes Rafael even more special. His talent can only be appreciated by the presentation of the talents of the maestro on the other side of the net. Confronted by an intimidating genius, in alien conditions, it's not that easy for a 21 year old to even compete, let alone dominate. But then, genius does need the presence of genius to assert itself. If anybody ever again says that Rafael Nadal is just the king of clay and nothing more, well, I won't say anything.
Whether this is the last time Rafa will ever lose in a Wimbledon final or whether this is the closest he will ever get to winning Wimbledon, time will only tell. Nobody else can. But ah,today, today... The precision of the shots, the athleticism on the court, the aggression, the courage... he truly overshadowed the Swiss genius at moments, constantly pushing Roger to dig deeper into himself to search for more of the magic touch he so generously used to squander while playing with mortals earlier. There were moments where Federer was so exasperated that he was beginning to feel 'relieved', at times even 'exulting', after winning points. Out-of-place in a Wimbledon final for that man, don't you think? Rafael might have blown it himself in the end, twice squandering breakpoints at 2-2 and 3-3 in the final set, but then... And I don't know the nature of his injury in the fourth set, which forced him to take injury time and get the knee bandaged, to pass a comment saying it hampered his chances. Well, at the end of the day, Roger may have won it just because he was better where it mattered. Kudos to him for that. Well, maybe he might improve and even beat Rafael at the French next year but that's not the point. I might even be tempted to say after today that Rafael Nadal will surely be a Wimbledon champion someday and he might even be, but it all doesn't matter for me. This is just about today, nothing more.
Today, Rafael Nadal became one of the greatest sportsmen I have ever seen in my life. I don't call many people that, and I do feel privileged to call him that today. He might as well never wield a racquet again in his lifetime or never take the tennis court again in my world. I may never write again about him in my life or I may never again watch him play. But a mark's been made forever. Indelibly so. The words "Rafael Nadal" will sound different in my head from now on, and evoke memories of a hot English summer day at the All England Club when a Capri-clad young man armed with a tennis racquet staked his claim to sporting immortality, and succeeded. Dramatic writing, I know. I'm not much given to fits of impetuousness but I can't help it right now. Vamos Rafa.
" Rafael Nadal has just lost his second consecutive Wimbledon final. "
Two statements that could just as simply have been factually incorrect in a fairer world.
I don't care what they call Federer. "The greatest ever" and god-knows-what-else. Maybe they're right. I'm nobody to judge him. I haven't seen much of tennis in the years Roger has dominated and that may be the reason why I don't claim he's my favorite. Maybe. I've seen a considerable amount of him to acknowledge that all the accolades heaped on him could even possibly be true. But I'm not here to judge him, as I've already said. He may be the greatest ever. And he may well go on and win Wimbledon and everything else (Even the French, I may add... ) for the next ten years. Doesn't matter. This is about Rafael Nadal. And I'm not going to let anybody else take the spotlight away from him here too.
This might be a very subjective opinion and if the reader doesn't agree with what I have to say, with all due respect, I don't care. To me, the Wimbledon Gentlemen's Singles Champion of 2007 will be Rafael Nadal. Roger Federer may have been the better player and won the required 3 sets on the day but it is to be expected of him, isn't it? Now, where does Rafael come into the picture? On an alien surface almost custom-made for his adversary's game, he took that man where nobody else had ever taken him. In the 34 matches there before this, Roger Federer gave up only six sets in all. And never before has he been stretched to a five-setter. Writing all this, I run the risk of this being interpreted as a tribute to Roger's genius but I don't mind. After all, he surely is a genius. That's what makes Rafael even more special. His talent can only be appreciated by the presentation of the talents of the maestro on the other side of the net. Confronted by an intimidating genius, in alien conditions, it's not that easy for a 21 year old to even compete, let alone dominate. But then, genius does need the presence of genius to assert itself. If anybody ever again says that Rafael Nadal is just the king of clay and nothing more, well, I won't say anything.
Whether this is the last time Rafa will ever lose in a Wimbledon final or whether this is the closest he will ever get to winning Wimbledon, time will only tell. Nobody else can. But ah,today, today... The precision of the shots, the athleticism on the court, the aggression, the courage... he truly overshadowed the Swiss genius at moments, constantly pushing Roger to dig deeper into himself to search for more of the magic touch he so generously used to squander while playing with mortals earlier. There were moments where Federer was so exasperated that he was beginning to feel 'relieved', at times even 'exulting', after winning points. Out-of-place in a Wimbledon final for that man, don't you think? Rafael might have blown it himself in the end, twice squandering breakpoints at 2-2 and 3-3 in the final set, but then... And I don't know the nature of his injury in the fourth set, which forced him to take injury time and get the knee bandaged, to pass a comment saying it hampered his chances. Well, at the end of the day, Roger may have won it just because he was better where it mattered. Kudos to him for that. Well, maybe he might improve and even beat Rafael at the French next year but that's not the point. I might even be tempted to say after today that Rafael Nadal will surely be a Wimbledon champion someday and he might even be, but it all doesn't matter for me. This is just about today, nothing more.
Today, Rafael Nadal became one of the greatest sportsmen I have ever seen in my life. I don't call many people that, and I do feel privileged to call him that today. He might as well never wield a racquet again in his lifetime or never take the tennis court again in my world. I may never write again about him in my life or I may never again watch him play. But a mark's been made forever. Indelibly so. The words "Rafael Nadal" will sound different in my head from now on, and evoke memories of a hot English summer day at the All England Club when a Capri-clad young man armed with a tennis racquet staked his claim to sporting immortality, and succeeded. Dramatic writing, I know. I'm not much given to fits of impetuousness but I can't help it right now. Vamos Rafa.
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