The Kite runner - some thoughts.

I read "The Kite Runner" today. How did I like it? It is something you cannot dislike. It rings like reality.

Yesterday someone was asking why I prefer fictions to non-fictions. She asked if it is fantasy that I look for, do i try to run away from reality. To tell the truth, I was caught off-guard. It actually is a truth. Books always give me a way to move around in a different world. But I didnt see it as 'running away' atleast not until she said so. It was something I didnt want to agree to. I'd rather have agreed if she had used the word 'escape' and not 'run-away'. I replied that its not fantasy of the fiction that fascinates me, its the creativity of the author, the ability to create characters, world, situations in his book. Yet when I read "The Kite Maker", I felt it ring like reality, no make-believe world there and that fascinated me more.

It is a sad story. So I was told. So I found. But actually it is much more than just a sad story.

Here are aome thoughts that I found in the book.

And that's the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too. [Page - 48]

It is difficult to know which is harder, to think everyone means what they say or to think nobody means what they say. To decide who means and who does not is probably the hardest. Yet this should be the way. Isn't it? How do these people react when they discover the superficial world around them? Do they break down or do they too get drowned. Is it possible to live genuinely when everything around you is superficial? For Hassan it was. He moved away, or rather was moved away, far way and finally farther away. But what happens when moving away is not one of the options? Or may be such people don't exist, are not let to exist.

Quiet is peace. Tranquility. Quiet is turning down the VOLUME knob on life.
Silence is pushing the OFF button. Shutting it down. All of it. [Page - 315]

This gives a new perspective to "silence". I never thought it this way. I may have been wrong. We do sometimes shut down our windows. Pull their shutters down. In some way or the other everyone does that till we need that sunlight again, till we want to feel the wind again. But not forever, not forever. Yet do you think it can happen that we just forget that shutters can be up again?

Running after butterflies

When I started blogging, I didnt intend it to be my online journal - the ones that say 'i went to office today, we had a lot of work... etc'. I wanted it to be the window that would connect my thoughts to outside world. I wanted to catch the momentarily fleeting thoughts and pen them down here. May be that precisely is the reason why my post count has dwindled over time. It will be wrong to say that thoughts don't fleet anymore. They do but I just don't get to pen them down.

It is something like, you see the colourful butterflies, you smile but you don't run after them like you used to. It has nothing to do with the absence of butterflies, nothing to do with your growing up, nothing to do with your not being able to catch them - because catching was never the fun, it was always the running after them- yet today you just don't run after them.

Why do you think, we stopped running after them? Was it that we realised the futility of it? Or is it that we forgot to have fun or may be we just changed our ways to have fun. Then again, what actually is 'funny'. So often I find the distinction between humour and sarcasm blurring. I realise laughing is not an indeliberate effect anymore but actually a deliberate action. We laugh because we are supposed to. We smile for the same reason.

I wandered away (as usual). I was talking about blogs. Sometimes I wonder there are so many blogs in this blogsworld that have been abandoned, lost, left unfinished, forgotten, ... dead. Its all like phases you know, we get crazy about something for sometime. One month, two at most then forgotten. Then I look at my blog and think how often did I come close to abandoning it. Yet what is it that brings me back again to run after the butterflies!

May be its not futile after all.

'Transit'

Most of the time, like most of the people, I find 'transit' periods awfully boring. Waiting for the results of an important exam (ask the 2007 CAT-takers :D), the duration between getting a job and leaving the college, the duration when you wait for your interview, the time when your preparation is mostly done and the examination seems to arrive too slowly, the time when train/flight gets late, the time when your work is done but you still have to wait in the office because its just too early to leave, traffic signals, long queues (for the movie, in the stores, bill payment, mess, etc), and many more.

Yet to think that the trip to home this Diwali had longer transit duration than the journey duration! The 'to' had a transit duration of 6 hours and the 'fro' had 9 hrs that makes a total of 15 hrs while total flight duration was at most 10 hrs. Both of these transit periods were spent in the Mumbai Airport. In the 6 hrs one, I had company so it was not at all irksome. But the 9 hrs were spent alone (mostly). The question however is 'was it then really tiresome?'. Well, not really.

I reached Mumbai at 9.30pm. Went on to the departure lounge and waited. For company I had phone, book and fm. Not bad. Once in a while some airport officer would come and ask if I was fine , tell me where I could find snacks/tea/coffee. The couple next to me had their flight at 5.30am. They left early but while they were there we had small chats about how bad the waiting lounge was, that Mumbai airport should have some kind of waiting room, and that it actually used to have. Other than this I was continuosly talking on phone (having arguments actually) during the early hours when it wasnt time to go to sleep for them. For the rest of the time I was busy probing into Orhan Pamuk's "My name is Red" and listening to the songs played on fm. (This finally discharged my cell and I had to stand and get it charged --> this too took some time :D)

Before long it was already time to get up and get going.
I didn't feel the passage of time. May be I didn't take it as a transit but rather as a part of the journey. Sitting there while I was observing the surroundings I thought it is stupid to think that our life stops during transits. Why, there was motion everywhere even in the 'waiting' of passengers, their loitering, reading, talking, and even dozing off.

New Look again!

What a mess that was!!! How did you ppl even manage to visit it??? :D



Well after lot of experiments I settled at this particular template. The colour is not what I generally choose but the theme still is from my favorites.



A few days back, I deleted all my poems and there from my blogs. Some of you might have noticed. Did you wonder why? If you are, by any chance, curious, then your answer lies in this particular link: http://sanjumomentum.blogspot.com/

Have a look. Looks familiar? Familiar picture? Familiar entries? Some of you might be actually reading this not on my blog but on the blog mentioned above.
I came across this blog on 19th Sept 2007, it was after this that I went away on hiatus but I guess now I am back for good.

There is soooooooo much to write and sooooooooooooo less time. :(
I will take some days to make up for the gap.

But c you soon.

This post can be treated as 'old'. The link given above does not have much relevance anymore. Not deleting or editing it but keeping it as a memento. [Edited by Anki on 24/12/2007]

On a brief note.

I dont know if any of you remember my post "Reality or rainbow??!! " (Check the link in case you don't).

Anyways I came across this article today "Your world is in your brain" (Read for yourself!)
See I always told you so :D

(Pretty pressed for time now, hence no updates. wait till Oct. or better still till Nov.)

-@nk!

What have I been doing!

It has been a long time since I wrote anything except the last blog entry. So today when I found some ample time, I wondered 'what have I been doing all these days!'
To start with, end of college suddenly shook up a well settled (although not routined) life.( As indicated in the last post) The next phase is taking some time to get settled but still, I had been busy.

Work - A new place of learning. Mostly learning now not much of performing. This is what takes at least 40 hours of my week.

Books - I have been reading a good lot of books. I finished the following:

The Inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai
The Godfather - Mario Puzo
Eleven Minutes - Paulo Coelho
The Broker - John Grisham
Shalimar the Clown - Salman Rushdie
Sleeping Murder - Agatha Christie

At present I am on:
4.50 From Paddington - Agatha Christie

Books on the rack:
God Knows - Joseph Heller
Zahir - Paulo Coelho

Other than these I have been busy with knowing and getting used to with the new place.
Inspite of all these, I do miss writing. I miss writng my impressions (book reviews) and my expressions I miss the absolute leisurely time when I could let my thoughts just wander away and then capture the thougts. I miss those times when I didnt have write hurriedly while using the computer and when it wasn't a tool of work but a tool of leisure. :)

And with these miss-all-s, comes things I enjoy. I enjoy the idea of questioning and learning. I enjoy the last two days of week which takes my mind off my work. I enjoy the sense of freedom and responsibility. I enjoy being able to responsible for things around me. And for a change I am enjoying growing up.

So, what have you been doing?

Life - A river

I dont know why but somehow, I always end up comparing Life with a river. The river continues to flow at its pace in a similar way as life does. Time never allows one to reach the same water in the same place more than once. So is life. It therefore becomes necesarry that one approaches life at right time. What is the right time, that ofcourse depends so much on the person and the reason for one's approach.
This was the dynamic aspect, the movement, the flow. Then there is the constancy. You might wonder, how can a river be constant. I too used to. But imagine going to a particular spot near a river everyday. Do you see any change? The water still flows just the way it did the day before. Its not the same drop of water but it still is the same water. May be after a long long time, there will be changes. The river will be wider, deeper but it still will be the same river. Its only when you see the flow, you realise that time does not allow you to see the exact same water more than once, but if you see the river, it is same. Isnt it? Is that not constancy? And does the same thing not happen with every person?
There ofcourse other similarities that I keep finding. For example all of sudden with the arrival of a rift or cliff, the course of the river changes drastically. Life too encounters such sudden changes. Actually, let me be true, it is this particular aspect because of which i am writing this entry today. Just two months ago, life was so different, and one particular day of last month changed it completely. The 4th of June. If I look back now, it seems all that followed after that, had been waiting for that day to arrive. Life had reached a stand-still before that and as soon it arrived, everything else came almost like an avalanche. This whole thing reminded me of a waterfall. The forceful yet a beautiful way in which a river meets a change.

Life is so much like a river!!!

My first post after job and from office.