Who knows what these rings have witnessed? It has seen history unfold. It has heard the wind tell it stories over many moons. Many seasons. Many years. The ages.
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SHRINKING SPACES
Young turks, crass riff raff, a foot in the door and then gradually elbowing their way in. Desperate to control, a sign of the times.
The genteel, old fogies, value systems constrained, constricted and then crowded out, shown the door.
Coffee & a Conversation
So I met a bunch of fellas over an imaginary cuppa in a cool cafe called Gaia’s, with soft, puffy, white clouds around us.
There was a slim guy with longish hair & a crown of thorns; another with blue skin wearing a peacock feather in his hair; one with dreadlocks, tiger skin & a crescent moon; a bearded & ochre-turbaned man; another bearded fellow in pure white vestments; one with long earlobes, a beatific expression, wearing a robe & carrying his hair in a top bun; a grandfatherly old chap with a flowing white beard & a staff and another whose face was cloaked so I couldn’t see it. They looked vastly different from each other, but all had a similar, strange glow around their heads.
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MA SHAKTI
Against the backdrop of the recent murder of a Pakistani model by her brother under the guise of “honour killing” and by similar unfortunate occurrences, including female foeticide, in our part of the world, here’s my (admittedly oblique) take, with my friend Nandita very kindly doing the honours in Hindi. With all the progress our countries have made, some social evils very evidently, still need to be stamped out.
Where I Dwell
My abode being of a certain age
In a dream I came upon a plan
To rebuild my residence
Remodel some parts
Set up new walls
Open out others
The Tree Of Life
Solidly alone.
A living, breathing, organism.
Centuries old. Rooted in history.
Mute witness to the cyclicality of civilization.
And the linearity of time
Solitary. Proud. Strong.
Incompatible with today.
A hark back to the times that were.
Before the city lost out to progress and modernity.
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DIGITAL AGE
The arthritic old, simply don’t
The young are all
Universal and uniform
Ambidextrous texters
Tweeting twenty four seven
Us, those twixt & tween
Tetchy and testy Continue reading →
FEAR
Today, I take you on, my fears
You overwhelmed me all these years
Made me despair, had me in tears
Because of you I looked long but never leapt
Where many ran, I carefully stepped
You caused me to seem so out of depth
Many desires that I had sought
Those battles were lost before they were fought
You, fear, brought a lot to naught
From not wagering on a winning bet
To waking up in a clammy sweat
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WTF
WTF is it with Gen Y conversations nowadays? What was earlier spoken English bastardized with Americanisms and Bollywood Hindi, is now abbreviated unintelligible garbage, especially to the language-challenged 40 year old parents of the speakers of this new language. Sure, even we had slang in our days – some of which I’m sure had our folks confused – which we use even today, but it’s no longer “cool”.
IMO, this new language, is a combination of sms and on-line related terms that makes it so confusing, almost like the shorthand squiggles that stenos wrote with back in the days they took dictation, and which had some of us LOL.
Writing in long hand is AFAIK utterly, completely passé with all the multi-tasking that today’s kids do – talk on the phone while surfing while eating while listening to music even while pretending to hear what dad has to say. And is further complicated by the surfeit of attention-seeking, sense-activating gizmos at hand. So focus on communication beyond a few seconds is impossible. No wonder the twats tweet!
It’s not just texting that’s seeing this trend, but emails, too. No longer is a reply in the form of a letter; it’s literally a single letter. Because even a two letter word like OK, itself the short form of okay, has further been circumcised to K. And questions are asked simply by punching in a “?”. No more does an “x” suffice for a kiss; emoticons are used to express feelings and sentences are punctuated by parentheses and semicolons coming together cleverly to make faces.
Makes me think, OMG, what next?
Dunno, dude, but I gotta go… TTYL, TC!
random rants ruminations ramblings 