Epilogue to a fantastico month

I do not know whether I would be on the leader-board anymore by the time I finish writing this post. This first line may not sound right to you because it is part of a long drawn out journey, a navigation through a hectic month.

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I should probably be worried as I type these words ever so slowly on my word editor. Maybe I am. Maybe I am trying to fool me into thinking the opposite whereas deep down, I am as restless as those above and below me on the leader-board. But this post is not about all that, and the fact that I have mentioned these things before coming to what I really want to say is something I should be sinned for.

It began on January the 19th, a marathon like no other and a month that would go down as one of the most memorable in the life of everyone who participated in it. There is a whole spectrum of emotions that this fantastico month has offered me. It gave me moments where I was angry, disappointed, sad. It showed me times which brought those rare smiles of pure happiness on my face. But it will all be over tomorrow. And tomorrow, another new chapter will begin.

I have no doubt that this would be my last post for the marathon. As such, I feel like making it as creative as I can. But I am not able to. Sometimes, when you write fiction, you come with such beautiful ideas that you marvel if you yourself have written them. But that seldom happens when you are stating facts. I say ‘facts’ and not ‘truth’ because even I do not know what the truth is.

There are posts that I am proud of to have written in this month. There are few of them that are born out of the most intimate desires of my heart and as such, they will sound good to me even when a few years down the line I revisit them and find how downright ordinary my writing is. There are other posts that I feel I have sacrificed the quality of, just so I could boast high on quantity. I would apologize to them when they come haunting me in my dreams someday. I guess they will forgive me and understand my predicament.

If I say that I do not care about winning or losing anymore, I would be telling the whitest lie to you. If I say that, you can personally come to my room someday to give me two slaps left and right and I would be alright. But something tells me I wouldn’t be saying that. I am writing my heart out here and sometimes when you do that, it doesn’t make much sense. But there is one thing that my heart tells me right now and at the moment, it’s making sense to me. It’s telling me that I would not be looking back at this past month with disappointment.

There are many takeaways that I have. I have earned some followers to my blog, they sometimes comment on a piece they like and my happiness knows no bounds. I got into habit of using wordpress on a daily basis. I have been working on it for a year or so but the ‘getting in drift of things’ part has happened this month only. I also learned about a glorious yet joyful mistake of mine. I have been using my primary email-id for this blog. And so, every time someone hits that like button, I get an email notification there. I always open the mail and check it out. It tells me that so and so person liked my post and that “they thought it was pretty awesome”. Everytime I read this line, for a second there I always believe it literally. Then my mind tells me some BS about networking and that’s what bloggers have to do in order to widen their blog’s reach blah blah blah and some other nonsense. I never pay heed to it and bask in the glory of being awesome.

I received 20 genuine comments for the ninety odd posts I wrote on this blog in the past month. It may not look like a good number but I have treasured each and everyone of them, reopening my posts multiple times just to have a look at them. I have replied to them all, mostly with a longer text asking those lovely people to keep visiting and guiding the blog towards better writing in future. I have at times, edited the comments that I had replied to them, just to come up with something better to thank them with.

I also created a facebook page for this blog which had been lying a bit neglected under a premier blog of mine. I call that other blog ‘a premier blog’ just because it gets some hits now and then 😛 It isn’t really all that premier, so to speak. I have a feeling this post has gotten too long for anyone to care for it. But I am not going to edit any line of it. I would just finish it with a good quote and publish it and then submit it back on the Marathon with the hope that I eventually win something.

"when you work
you fulfil a part of earth’s furthest dream,
assigned to you when that dream was born,
And in keeping yourself with labour
you are in truth loving life"
- Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

This blog post is inspired by the blogging marathon hosted on IndiBlogger for the launch of the #Fantastico Zica from Tata Motors. You can apply for a test drive of the hatchback Zica today.

If only…

Rehan sat at the chair, looking at the two frightful gentlemen before him ready to scrape away his whole life. He handed them over a folder with his credentials and the interview began.

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Only a week earlier, they had had their first exams of the semester and what a nightmare had it been. He would always have the extra pressure to first go through the entire syllabus in a day and then explain the important points to all his peers who would come to him in the evening wishing that he leaks the entire paper to them in a few hours. But Rehan didn’t mind it. In fact, being the peppy guy he was, he would always try to help them as much as he could. He was such a fantastico person in everyone’s eyes, nothing like those morons who would not tell you a single thing, probably in fear that you may end up scoring higher than them.

Somehow, they passed along and there was another challenge ahead of him. A prominent company was coming on-campus to recruit students for summer-training. There was also a navigation of the word around that out of all students that it selected for the training, it gave a Pre-placement offer to almost all of them. Rehan thus, began his preparation for the day, working hard day and night, going through all the proabables they could ask him.

Four days before the recruitment day, as he was going through his notes sitting in the canteen, Rhea came to him. She told him that she had been very weak in ‘Antenna theory’ and asked if he could help her out with it someday. Rehan instantly agreed to it but told her that he needed to brush up his basics before teaching her. It had been some time now that they had studied it and amongst exams and the recruitment drive, he had forgotten much of it. Still, he agreed to help her the next day.

As he returned from college that day, he got a call from one of his seniors whom he had been trying to contact for some days. He had been working for the same company and made his way through the same procedure. As such, Rehan wanted to know some inside secrets from him. The senior told him about a bunch of important topics, most of them he knew little to nothing about. He told him they were almost a sure shot thing and to study them by all his heart. True to his grit, he began to study those topics, forgetting everything else.

The next day, Rhea met him again in the canteen and he told her he could only help after the recruitment drive was over. She seemed to understand and as he apologized for it, she told him it was nothing and to concentrate on his work. She wished him good luck and went away.

Three days later, the process began in the morning with a group-discussion. Rehan outlasted all other candidates with his careful handling of facts and sentiments and was pretty pumped up for the PI round. As he stood outside the cabin, waiting impatiently for his turn to come, he made crude calculations in his mind- “If I perform even average in the PI then after adding the marks of the group discussion, I would surely end up in the list”, “How much weightage would they be giving to each part” and stuff like that.

After four solid and long hours, he was there. The first things they asked him were to give an introduction of himself, his fields of interest and why he thinks he would be suitable for the applied position- all basic stuff. High on confidence, Rehan gave some good answers and was even successful in defending himself when some of them tried to get back on him on a few points. Then came the technical part. And the first question the guy asked him was on ‘Antenna Theory’. He felt a wave of shock slap his face as he mumbled out some gibberish as an answer. The guy knew he had got him where he wanted and kept on coming with the same questions, even in more intricate detail. With every question he asked, Rehan would think in his head how he remembered studying the topic once but nothing else of it.

Soon the interviews were over and at night, the results were announced. Rehan didn’t make it. That night, as he tried to sleep, his mind was flooded with regret. He felt that a small neglect had had such an impact on his career. Everytime he tried to close his eyes and every time he did, the face of Rhea popped up asking “Will you teach me ‘Antenna theory’ ?”,  “Please teach me Antenna theory”.

He gave up the thought of sleeping, knowing he wouldn’t be able to and opened his book to study. He went to the index and opened the selected pages. The topic read in bold font ‘Antenna theory’ as he wondered to himself– “If only..”

This blog post is inspired by the blogging marathon hosted on IndiBlogger for the launch of the #Fantastico Zica from Tata Motors. You can apply for a test drive of the hatchback Zica today.

Impact of a hoarder

Once upon a time, in a land far and far away from all basic human quirks, there thrived a community. This community comprised of hundreds and thousands who used to produce all of their own stuff, produce their own food, procure supplies and live along well and merry. They would sometimes socialize with each other, by coming to meetings. They would discuss how their lives were going, what they had produced and the problems they were having. Some would tell about people who weren’t producing their own food and supplies and were stealing them from others. Others would report how they were fearful of bad elements ruining there perfect little existence. There was a small congress of elders who would hear them and hand out the necessary punishment and suitable solutions to the community. Things were going well and all people were more or less satisfied with what they had built for themselves.

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Then came hard times. It had been a harsh winter for everyone and the storms and hail left much of the fields barren. Now there was a system they followed in their community. There was no distribution of land individually for a particular person and Mother Earth was for all. Anyone who could plough his or her way by the sweat of the bro could produce as much as he or she would like. But as the land had suddenly become limited, they were having some fears for the future. A meeting was called and it was decided that they would host it everyday for resolution of problems till the harsh times have subsided.

In the meeting, there was concern over what would be allotted to whom so that everyone gets a fair share and no-one suffers. They were all brainstorming over the matter. While some suggested that the old rule of produce as per ability is followed, others suggested that the resources be divided equally among all. The elders told them that the latter would not be feasible because some may need that equal share more than the others while some may need a very small portion. In the midst of them all, there was a woman who had been sitting silent all along. Maybe she knew something but she was trying to find the right words to say it. When she was sure on what needed to be said, she went on- “Hard times have fallen upon us and it’s times like these that truly test the true nature of men and women. But I fear something. I fear that this is where our harmony would end. I fear that those who can produce more and more would try to seize control over others. She feared that they would hoard their produce much more than they needed and as such others would suffer. But the elders did not pay heed to her and went on with the produce per ability rule.

Earlier, it was all good and those who could produce more and needed less would regularly bring their stock to the elders and taking their own bit out, would contribute the rest for the community need. The elders thought everything was good but some of them still feared about the hoarding.

When the produce season was coming to a hault, some of the people who could not produce more were running out of supplies. They were helpless. Those who could produce more remained strong but there was only so much they could do for the greater good. And then struck calamity. What they had feared materialized as they came to know that while some were suffering for lack of it, a big producer had hoarded the greatest produce of the community. But he did not want to share it and so he never came forward with anything in the meetings. He had the upper hand in decisions now and he could exploit it all he wanted to. He told his community people that he was going to introduce something to them, something that would change the way things worked around there- He introduced Business- a tradeoff.

Things fell apart after this and  the once glorious, harmonious community was never the same. It had suffered a deep impact on its most fundamental of levels and all this time, it saw it coming. Guess, it was the community people’s own fault.

This blog post is inspired by the blogging marathon hosted on IndiBlogger for the launch of the #Fantastico Zica from Tata Motors. You can apply for a test drive of the hatchback Zica today.

All he wanted..

“your hand
touching mine.
this is how
galaxies
collide.” 
― Sanober Khan

Deep read the line, throwing his fist on the table with a thud, and wished he could have written it. He had always been fascinated by poetry, so much so that it exceeded his own enthusiasm at times. Ever since boyhood, he would find a good line lying in a trash and would spend hours searching for another. He would throw in a fantastico line from Elliot in a normal discussion among his peers and they would shoo him away, calling him names, calling him a nerd. But he didn’t mind that and he knew he would always find people like him to share his world with.

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And so, when he came to know that there was a fantastico budding poetess in his class, he couldn’t help getting all too excited about it. In spite of being a shy guy otherwise, he didn’t hesitate in approaching Kavyaa. He asked her about her interests in poetry and she reluctantly answered him. He then asked if they could make meet sometime. He told her he wanted to talk about  Szymborska and Tretheway, about Sherman and Ginsberg. But he didn’t know why she freaked out. Maybe she assumed that he was a weirdo trying to lurk around just so he could be with and around her. Maybe she didn’t like him in the first place. But Deep was too passionate to think about this. What he saw was someone he could tell everything he knew about poetry to and that was just too much for him. Maybe he got over the line in trying to persuade her but at least in his mind, he did not feel so.

Unfortunately, he never got his wish and every time he asked her for it, she came up with an excuse. Then, one day, as he was browsing over his facebook feed, he got a friend request from a guy he did not know. He checked out his profile and found a mutual friend in Kavyaa . Now he was a peppy guy over facebook and he accepted all his friend requests. So this time too, he did just that. The next day, as he was undergoing the navigation of his feed, he found that Kavyaa had shared an old photo with the same guy. She had tagged some of her closest friends from her school days in the pic and captioned it ‘love birds’. Deep didn’t mind it and even liked the picture.

In the following days, Kavyaa would post at least two updates every day, tagging that guy and her friends, talking about how they loved each other. Still, Deep kept on prodding her whenever they met in class and she would always deny. Then one day, Deep got a message from that guy. He told Deep about how he and Kavyaa were in love for long. He was quite friendly telling him all that and requested him not to go about troubling Kavyaa. Deep understood then, that he had crossed the line here and gave him his word. He told him he would never again trouble her and that the guy should not worry about it anymore.

A few months passed and Deep remained true to his word. But he kept on with his poetry and even participated in a contest held under a fest. He also came to know that Kavyaa and a friend of Deep would be anchoring the proceedings.

The big day was two days ahead and he was working on his poems when his anchor friend came to his room. He had a huge grin on his face and told Deep that he had to tell him something shocking. Kavyaa had told his friend that she wasn’t really in a relationship with anyone and that she had woven this scheme just to get Deep off her tail. She had also told him that she got a best friend of hers to play her boyfriend in this drama and to talk to Deep about it.

As Deep heard all this, he gave a nervous laugh to him and went about with his poem. Stuck on the very next line, he wondered what had made her take this so seriously. That his requests would have such a deep impact on her was something unthinkable for him. All he wanted was to discuss poetry with her.

This blog post is inspired by the blogging marathon hosted on IndiBlogger for the launch of the #Fantastico Zica from Tata Motors. You can apply for a test drive of the hatchback Zica today.

Impact of a powercut

You need not read this and you will not like this. Because it’s not a post, it’s a rambling. It’s a rambling about a realization- Just when you feel like you are in control of things in life, it kicks you with an iron rod and reminds you how very wrong you were all this while.

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So you are sitting infront of your computer screen, staring at that blinking cursor on your word editor, lost in a thought. You think about something to write, you almost like it and type it and then you delete it. You feel like you have got all the time in the world and you need not write anything foolish. The idea comes up obviously so as to not look like a buffoon in front of the readers who might sift through what you write. But somwhere deep down, you want to give them their time’s worth. You feel that if someone is giving you their 3 minutes reading your post, they should have atleast one takeaway from it. And then strikes calamity.

There is a power cut and the network icon on your computer turns red. But it doesn’t dawn upon you straightaway. So you keep on typing and after a paragraph or so, you feel the impact of what has just transpired. Your fingers stop dead on the keys and your eyes keep staring on the remaining battery. It says fifty percent and that it would last 2 more hours. But you know your computer better than it does. And so you understand that there is no way you are going to get more than an hour and a half out of it and that too if you are lucky. You think about increasing your pace but there is only so much effort you can put into it. But you resume typing, hoping the power would be back soon.

It’s a bad day for you and the hope keeps on faltering just as the battery keeps on powering down- 45%, 41%, 37 %, and down again. You suddenly get an idea to check what others are writing, where they are and where they are going. And it hits you again. You cannot do that, you are no longer on the internet, YOU SIR, are cut-off from the world.

You finish a post and the battery runs down. You are just able to save it and feel a bit relieved. You shut your computer and you wait. You go out in the balcony, looking at birds, looking at the skies, the nature, the sun. At all other times, you love it but not now. They just aren’t the same anymore. They are lacking something, not in the essence maybe but in your mind. You return to your room and your hands reach the switchboard on their own. You try to switch on the light but it already is and it’s a tight slap to your mind again. Habit, it turns out, is a bad thing.

You wait for seven hours and there still is no sign of a ray of hope, a literal ray. But an hour later, you are still typing this post. The power isn’t back but few things in life can really stop you from doing what you want to.

 

This blog post is inspired by the blogging marathon hosted on IndiBlogger for the launch of the #Fantastico Zica from Tata Motors. You can apply for a test drive of the hatchback Zica today.