red river valley..

To be honest, this post is inspired by chaachi's latest one. Its about a cowboy song 'red river valley'. I don't remember when i heard the song first or how i came across it..all i know is that i have loved the song for years and remember it involuntarily everytime i feel melancholy. There is something about the song, something soothing...its sad yet gives me this feeling of hope and this image of brilliant sunshine in my mind. Its a really really old song...more than a century old from what i know.
For those of you who haven’t heard it, search it up on youtube.

Lyrics:
From this valley they say you are going,
We will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile,
For they say you are taking the sunshine
Which has brightened our pathways a while.

Chorus:
Come and sit by my side if you love me;
Do not hasten to bid me adieu,
But remember the Red River Valley,
And the girl that has loved you so true.

I've been thinking a long time, my darling,
Of the sweet words you never would say,
Now, alas, must my fond hopes all vanish?
For they say you are going away.
- Chorus

Won't you think of the valley you're leaving,
Oh, how lonely and sad it will be,
Just think of the fond heart you're breaking,
And the grief you are causing to me.
- Chorus

From this valley they say you are going,
When you go, may your darling go too?
Would you leave her behind unprotected,
When she loves no one other than you.
- Chorus

As you go to your home by the ocean,
May you never forget those sweet hours,
That we spent in the Red River Valley,
And the love we exchanged 'mid the flowers.
- Chorus

I have promised you, darling, that never
Will a word from my lips cause you pain,
And my life, it will be yours forever,
If you only will love me again.
- Chorus

They will bury me where you have wandered,
Near the hills where the daffodils grow,
When you're gone from the Red River valley,
For I can't live without you I know.
- Chorus

je suis ennuyé

I feel pissed. F***ing pissed. Feel like screaming my head off, throwing stuff around and kicking someone real hard. Its hot like hell, power keeps on going away all the freaking time and i got NOTHING to do. I am bored like never before. I have absolutely nothing to write about and i am typing all this shit out of sheer irritation. Why the f**k do we need a 75 day break?? AAAAAAAAARGHHHH!!!!
The holidays are turning out to be just painful now.... i can’t believe that there are still about thirty days to go. Life’s been confined to tv, facebook, gtalk and blogs.Sad, i know. Some other day i might have done a philosophical analysis of why it should be so. But today i am just gonna keep repeating that i am annoyed and bored. You can read on if you want to but this is gonna be an utterly useless post(not to say that others were any use).
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaay...i just used 167 words writing pointlessly.
Damn!!! Sagar’s having an influence on me.
This post can compete with his most mindless ones. 188 words. But in case you are still reading, it feels good to just blabber about nothing. The fact that i am finally writing a post and that its hardly taking any effort has somehow reduced my annoyance.
MS Word apparently has nineteen synonyms for ‘annoyed’. I didn’t know that riled and narked meant annoyed. ‘Narked’..err.. just seems like an annoying insertion of ‘r’ in ‘naked’.254 words. 'Irritated’, though a synonym of annoyed, has got just nine synonyms. Now if ‘irritated’ is synonymus with ‘annoyed’ and the later with ‘narked’, won’t that make ‘narked' synonymus with ‘irritated’??? Then why is it not in the list? Or am i missing something?
Never used the thesaurus much anyways. And that has five synonyms. Wow...315 words. I think this is enough. If nothing, it kept the screaming in my head low for about fifteen minutes.

Silver and Blue...

Sometimes thoughtfulness comes in most unexpected of moments...
Forced by powercut and heat, last evening, I decided go sit on my roof and listen to music. Power failure implies no comp no ac and no TV, which seems to take the joblessness of my existence to new levels.
There I was greeted by the splendid sight of a near full moon on one side and lightening crossing the sky on the other. And a few stars scattered here and there. Its amazing how looking at the moon, thousands of recollections compressed in a nanosecond visit my brain, giving a weird gut feeling. A shining bright moon on a deep blue sky is like a regular template which has been used by so many of your memories.
I always take delight in observing the patterns made by clouds in moon’s vicinity, illuminated silver by its light. Nothing better than gazing at it and listening to music, in complete solitude. Well ok..at least during powercuts.
I closed my eyes after staring at it for a few minutes and it was like catching hold of some hopping portkey...Now I was in college on the road leading to the guest house, looking at the thousand stars twinkling above the dark outlines of trees....now behind the atish cafe...looking at the stretch of the river beyond the tennis court....Now on the same roof years back in time, gazing at the milky way and sharing my immature understanding of space with my bro......Now in the garden of a long forsaken house, just four years old and out in the dark for the first time without company ,fighting fear and admiring the sky at the same time.
Jerking out of my past, I thought about future.... about the events yet to come that will use this template. And there was a certain relief in knowing that wherever I end up living, some seemingly insignificant pleasures will never be out of reach.

Rain Rain ..go away

My dog and I exchange a gloomy look. Lazy as the two of us are, we still like our daily exercise of playing in the garden, chasing the frogs around. But its been raining incessantly for about a day now, forcing us to stay indoors and curse the unremitting downpour.
I have been cuddled in a chair since morning in my veranda, watching the rains, hoping for some kind of inspiration or rekindling some deep thoughtfulness. But in vain. I guess a year in an engineering college renders you incapable of something like that. It seems like a highly abnormal and futile exercise, unless the post ‘getting screwed’ pangs are still there (and I am talking about acads here...).

So, finally I give up and engross myself in the somewhat pitiful, somewhat fascinating life of Jane Eyre..a book I started few days back. Fifty pages later, a hint of sunlight makes me look up. Though the sky is somewhat less grey, its still raining hard. Most of the roads would be waterlogged by now, drains overflowing and streets all muddy and slippery. The dead brown moss covering boundary walls here and there will soon spring back to life and so will thousands of toads and snakes. The air too feels so damp and cold. I sometimes plain abhor the rains.

Even plain Jane’s tale seems dreary now and I am already sick of TV and my laptop.
Mom drops by to announce that I might skip taking a bath if I want to and that she’ll make pakodas for snacks.
Even raining clouds have a silver lining i guess...

THE CRASH

What can be the consequences of a severe system failure in the middle of summer vacations???
Several and far reaching.....
You are left with no music to listen to. No pics to upload on stupid social networking sites you become a part of in your joblessness and in case you like using ms word instead of paper to pen your thoughts...then... well...for better or for worse nobody will ever be able to read them again.
If you like doing random shit using different softwares then your little works of art which nobody else could understand or appreciate are gone forever too. Sad stuff happens all the time. Imagine spilling water on a painting u did painstakingly or how a temporary loss of memory would make u feel. Combine both the feelings....and that is how a sudden system crash makes you feel.

Well... to be honest it wasn’t all that unexpected...I had been warned. So if you are more into immediate gains and pleasures..and keep on overlooking problems, you pay for it.
But that’s ok I guess....
Once a problem sinks in, it isn’t too bad...maybe because you get used to it. I miss the nice time spent with my lappy..watching all those sitcoms and weird videos specially when presently I am like Tom Hanks in Cast Away minus the island and the lack of people and food and commodities :P
Now..enough of cheesy lines...i am on way to recovery from the great trauma of the loss..rediscovering lost pleasures of the idiot box!!!
Hey don’t shake your head in hopelessness...yesterday i learnt how the fart of a particular worm has cyanide and that if about a hundred of those fart in unison, that might be the last thing you ever smell..
Where else but on Animal Planet would you learn that!!!

The sound of muzak...a guest post by Chaach

There is so much about what music means to us that being able to explain it in words is not only impossible but would also make it much less important.
I don’t know if it is because we are so jobless but every song I listen to and write. I’ll observe every aspect of it. The random strum of guitar at some point, the change in pitch in the singer’s voice, the brilliant use of different instruments like a saxophone.....
I know very little about the technicalities of music. I am not very fond of trivia on music and musicians. For me music is just a pure feeling. When people relate their feelings to music..its mostly feeling blue. For me its just any feeling..Be it feeling stupid, feeling angry, feeling turned on, feeling elated, feeling scared or feeling low..feeling random emotions or even feeling like studying.

Music hugely determines how I feel at any moment. I don’t choose the music I want to listen based on my mood. I have never been really sure of my mood for that matter. At every moment I feel too many things. I feel confused and my head is always always brimming with thoughts.
Its here that music decides the feeling that will be most profound while listening to it. Sounds confusing, I know. Let me give you an example.....
Once after an exam, I was feeling so tired that I could not sleep. And when I was finally sleepy, it was too late and it was time to start studying for the next exam. So I randomly put the song ‘learning to fly’ by Pink Floyd and started listening to it on repeat mode on my speakers. The cool breeze on my face and the song on..I studied with full concentration. When I took a break for dinner I was still so so high. I was madly in love with the song and the feeling that it gave me.

This has a downside too. Sometimes playing a sad song with lyrics you relate to a lot can make you feel sad even when you don’t want to. Sometimes when you can’t listen to music...say when you are out somewhere and your ‘pod has no battery, you feel irritated. You in a way become dependent on music.
Enough about music and feelings...i think I went overboard with it and you are already yawning.
There are some aspects about songs which I love so much that I can’t help mentioning with perfect examples.
The weeping sound of a guitar..
e.g. Bombay rain
amazing drumming...
e.g. Achilles’ last stand – Led Zeppelin
A fair judgement – Opeth
lyrics that amplify your rush of emotions..
e.g. Make this go on forever – snow patrol
Say goodbye – junkyard grooves
Weird moodiness..
e.g. lemon tree – fool’s garden
No rain – blind melon
No instruments at all..
e.g. pehchaan – penn masala
Brilliant merging of guitar and drums..
e.g. sound of muzak – porcupine tree
Mad guitar solos...
e.g. free bird – lynard skynard
drastic mood uplifters....
e.g. haste to the wedding – The Corrs
An assured high giver...
e.g. learning to fly – Floyd.

finally a post .. :)

Time to remove the cobwebs on my blog...two months is a freaking lot. Too much has happened since I posted last. One whole year is over at BITS and we will have people junior to us next sem.
What does your first year at an engineering college normally teach you?
Nothing. And this is one of the most important realisations that should dawn upon you in the first year. Well ok...its not exactly nothing...as far as the whole experience of living in a fully residential college away from humanity is concerned. You learn quite a few survival skills. You learn how to go without enough food and clean clothes. And you also learn how much you depend on maggi, google and deo. How messaging and gtalk become as important as your tongue for bonding with people around you.

But as far as what college teaches you is concerned...its mostly crap that is hard to value...stuff that you mug up only because you have to. Stuff that you don’t have any clue how you are gonna apply in future. The books might not be all that useless but the same old methods of teaching and examination make sure you retain a very small part of the course. Depending on their interests people find solace in a course or two and keep cursing the rest. There are times when you don’t see any point of you being in an engineering college.

But too many things make up for that occasional dissatisfaction.


All the mugging and the stress...everything is worth the experience..the experience of living life as you never have and never will. Its a journey on road to self discovery....and when you truely understand that you shouldn’t be here studying this you also realise how much you belong to the place.

read your thoughts

I always make this big deal about being able to write when i am in a mood for it....when i have this sudden inexplicable urge to write.
That does not mean i do not want to write other times...i do but the sudden urge is missing. Right now I am supposedly jobless (well...if I can ignore some not so urgent tasks)....and i am gonna try and write without the sudden urge. Let me see the results.....

So on an eventless and unremarkable day...what can i write about?

Lemme see....
My life....no
My friends.....no
My college......maybe
Goa.....no
My thoughts.......yes...
Its surprising how only one thing determines and fills up our day....what goes on inside our head..

No matter how less you have managed to accomplish one particular day.....if a lot has been going on inside your head , it will never be an unremarkable day for you though it might seem so to others...
Well some people...maybe daydreamers/thinkers might understand the point i am trying to make ...others won’t.
But i am in strong favour of some random thought always being processed in your brain.....surprising but true...the quality of these random thoughts can tell a lot about a person..
What can be the best setting for random thoughts? Maybe a CP lecture by ‘circuute’ guy.
Sitting trying to figure out the shit he 's saying what randomness goes on in your mind?
I’ll analyse my friends..lets see what goes on in their head during the mutha lecture...

Chaachi....9X/GANPAT/phy sux/mehehehe......
Doodie .....WAAAAAAAAAAAVEES man WAAAAAAAVES/cute ;) /ahem

Tuffy .......listens to the guy/messages/ya thaaaaaaaat.../analyzes past day to past hour....
Rash....what shit / lol! / FIFA.....
Prashant...why do we...../why do people.../ realising specialities of some tune he is stuck with....
Bing...GAWWWWWWWWWD..../he wants to EAT...../n sketches the rest of his thoughts.....
Me...well..its my random thoughts that you are reading right nw...

Joblessness and randomness go hand in hand......
Guess it’s my love for randomness that keeps me jobless all the time... :)

starlight

I wish i could make music through words...sometimes things you feel like writing about are too beautiful for words...ordinary for random people but so beautiful inside your head.....

A pool of water surrounded by rocks that look as lifeless as they are.
Doesn’t sound amazing at all....does it?

Lets add few more things now...
Relaxing after a taxing week.....
Lying down with people you love spending time with... gazing at the blue starry sky....
Cool wind blowing through your hair and over your face...and not a single worry to spoil all that....just music going on inside your head...
Constellations ...the Jack Johnson song in my head....and i guess sm random tune in prashant’s. Doodie was humming starlight i think...


Orion.....dark matter...relativity...telepathy....stones hitting the water surface....much to break the silence and much to keep it intact...
You might be saying how the searchlight behind the hills looks so sexy or how orion is kinda different around eleven.....how the place reminds you of Leningrad ....or discussing whether songs in hindi movies streatch for more than a day in the video( ya that..i know)...
I am vaguely aware of all that.....tunes and feelings mixing in my head like colours....dunno what shade ..
Not trying to figure out....no words no music no gesture to describe it...

But if you are like me and you too where lying there at that moment...i guess you would understand.

Starlight
Star bright
The first star i see tonight
Wish i may
Wish i might
May my wish come true tonight

feel aati hai...

My room is not supposed to look or feel like this in the middle of night....packed, warm and cosy. And every time I open the window a little...this bone chilling wind is not supposed to hit my face. All of this reminds me of winter back home. I hate the feel of winter nights...they make you nostalgic and contemplative. I have no clear idea why I share this intense relationship with winter. Maybe because back home winter is the most beautiful time of the year.

Nywho, coming back to Goa....it’s their coldest winter in 78 years. Which is still not much by North Indian standards but enough for,as my friends would say...feel aane ke liye.

Quark starts from tomorrow....and I am really looking forward to the next three days now. The posters are awesome and so is the rest of the decoration. Today B-wing was looking so splendid in the evening. Standing there seeing all those people work...well...feel as rahi thi.

Good days....

A productive Sunday I would say. Well...not in terms of studies ..But finally I managed to write my next blog post. Today Bing’s post got me thinking about a very phashinating thing...the colour of my memories.
Its surprising how each one of my vivid memories is either dominated by bright sunlight or by gray clouds and silver moonlight. Most of these gray and white memories are so intense .They are not about something significant happening back then but about me enjoying the moments for their sheer beauty.....
As a kid, during nights of powercuts, me and my bro would lie down on the roof and gaze at the stars for ages (yes ,the powrecuts would last really long sometimes). The feeling of awe and wonder at their beauty and their mystery would make those moments so amazing.
For the same reason I cherish all these blackout nights here in BITS ....sitting with friends at I_THE SPOT_I gazing at the lights shimmering in the Zuari river and the stars twinkling around the lone naked tree......Even this moment is a beautiful one....sitting and contemplating is my favourite activity.
I feel good.

Musings of a jobless mind

I so wish I could see the Zuari from my room....I hate the fact that my room window overlooks the hostel enclosure. A great view is all that I need to perfect my mental state of joblessness and contemplation on a Sunday afternoon. It’s strange... I want to write...my mind is swelling with random thoughts...but I cannot interpret them somehow and just can’t put them into words. One moment I am thinking of some gray and white memories and the other moment about the pizzas I had last night. Total disconnect. I love randomness....in thoughts and in action. It can be an escape. Can be a process that leads to realisations....analyzing...and almost always, to relief.

feel a feel

So much has happened in the span of last five months that i think hardly anything that has happened in all those years is worth mentioning here. I feel way more close to friends i have made here than i ever felt to people i have known for about a decade....feel more attched to this place than to the place where i have lived all my life....feel too many emotions too often. Even dream too much....of sunshine lit empty roads lined with trees....of wind in huge green fields... cottages surrounded by long golden grass.....sound of temple bells on chilly winter nights....shining green leaves and the smell of earth after first downpour...gray and cold rainy evenings that would arouse a sense of intense nostalgia...memories i can still attach feelings to. Yes i think frequently of home but do not yearn to be there.


Feeling too emotionally exausted right now.....want to close my eyes and feel the sea waves hitting my legs.....i open my eyes and there is black sea all around which somewhere merges with the black starry sky. I can see a small boat at the horizon flashing blue light and light from near by buildings being reflected on the water....i can feel the sand slipping beneath my feet.

too many random feelings......too intense for me to handle.