Yem Bee Yay

Life at B-School is like smoking a cigarette for the first time. You are excited about taking your first drag, the first post graduate course of your life. There are apprehensions galore. Will you like it, the cigarette and the course? Will you able to prove yourself through this? What if you get addicted to it and never come out of this evil habit? What if MBA doesn’t let you sleep and kills you slowly? But as they say, every cloud has a silver lining. Negative questions become hopeful questions. What if the first drag makes you feel like you have attained nirvana? What if you get all the answers to your questions in your life through this course?

That is your train of thoughts before taking the first drag. Now that you have a lit up cigarette in hand, you end up taking the first drag anyway. How about the second and the subsequent drags which are on their way? Will you take them? Maybe you will. Like everything else in life, you are giving it a shot after all. With the second drag, you realize what kind of journey you have embarked upon. You cough and choke, but you recover just fine. You meet people who are already into smoking, who are already in a B-school. You learn how to take a drag smoothly. You learn the various subjects and opportunities the course has to offer. You are buzzed slightly, but you still continue to smoke. You are bored/frustrated/lost/contented/curious during the course, and you continue to be so or perhaps change for good or bad. In any case, you trudge through the course with lost hopes or regained hopes.

You are either sad or happy that the cigarette is getting over. You got exactly what you wanted out of it. Will you go for another smoke after the first one gets over?

Life at B-school is trying things out and making sense through the cloud of smoke.

IF

If you let me fly today,
I may lose my way.
If you set me now free,
I may never come back to thee.

If you hold my hand tight,
I may never learn to fight.
If you tie me down with a chain,
I may fight my way out of the pain.

If you throw me into the sea,
I may find it difficult to breathe.
If you let me explore the depth of the seas,
I may get to see beautiful animals and coral reefs.

If you smear dirt on my face,
I may find it full of shame and disgrace.
If you paint my face with filth,
I may learn eternal beauty is a myth.

If you kiss me on a night that is moonlit,
I may mistake it to be love, so sweet.
If you let us come close and closer,
I may start believing in a life of love and no fear.

If you promise to be with me forever,
I may want to depend on you forever.
If you assure me of leaving me never,
I may build our dreams together.

(Footnote: Well there is a pattern in the poem (not the rhyme,no) but something subtle. The hint is that something peculiar is repeated in every stanza. The tone may be? Or the contrasting options? Read again :) )

JIG-SAW PUZZLE

Put the pieces together,

Put your mind on the task.

Look what you've got!

Visages behind the jig-saw mask.

POINTLESS

It has been a long time that I have sat down and written something. Oh wait, the last one was my farewell mail. Two mails in fact - one for the master, one for the dame and one for the little boy who lives down the lane. But doesn’t that make it three mails then? Ha! Gotcha! I was just checking your mathematical proficiency. Quite deplorable I must say. So yes, where were we? Fare thee well and the jazz. Yes. But jazz? Really? I do not quite understand jazz music. I prefer slow rock or blues. It suits my nature. That reminds me of last year’s Earth hour day. I convinced a bunch of friends to go to this palatial mall and watch the city go dark for one hour in the night. Well, that was my idea of doing something for the nature or some such.

Ideas are galore but too less time to implement all. Unlike the famous (or infamous) ads by Idea which were implemented fine, but were didactic and annoying. You know what annoys me the most? People! People, who don’t speak the truth, but speak absolutely unnecessary things behind your back which have never happened in real. And as quoted in some t-shirt I had seen long ago, the problem with real life is that there is no background music. Fancy that!

Haha! Fancy. Fancy dress competitions back in school; the safest way to make a complete fool of oneself. But the funny thing was that others were fools too. So you, taking part in the competition, would not be branded as a more or a lesser fool. Oh what a fool! I forgot to tell you about this latest touch phone I bought a while ago. Turns out, smart phone, as they say, is the next “hot” thing in the market. I liked it very. I used to play games on it, check mails, make calls and so on and so forth. But I somehow found it excruciatingly slow and sold it off to my office colleague at a much lesser price.

Office used to be fun. The morning would start with a long tea-drinking session followed by inconsequential talks with my cubicle mate. Nothing eventful generally used to happen. Therefore, I used to make an ordinary event sound special, such as, seeing a caterpillar near the fountain or finding a cockroach in the curry from the cafeteria. Absolutely ordinary events, I tell you. The day would end with a bus ride back home, where I would see familiar faces on the bus or I would not see any faces at all because I would be fast asleep!

How much can one sleep anyway? After four years of engineering course followed by two years of IT job, I cannot but think of only sleep and some respite. Not long sleeps but. Lot of small naps. But what’s the point now? I am sitting in front of the computer, typing out something and not worried about sleep. Did you say ghost? Nah! Too harsh a word for me. I am a normal person who loves to check mails, and at times, read the same mail again and again. Sigh. So now that I am done writing all the farewell mails because I quit my job, I am jobless and should write something nice. Any pointers, anyone?

MAMA'S BOY!

Born and brought up in a humble village,
People adored me despite all my drama.
They pampered me, they played with me,
But my best friend was my mother, my Mama.

Mama taught me how to crawl and walk,
She taught me how to read and write.
She helped me learn the rights and wrongs,
Moral and immoral, and darkness and light.

‘You are such a Mama’s boy’,
People in my village complained.
I never reacted much anyway,
For I loved Mama a lot, the fact remained.

Mama showed me the colors of life,
Blue, Green, Yellow and Red.
Ignorantly innocent foolish me,
A lot of dreams in my eyes placed.

Mama always knew I was a timid boy,
She would thusly never let go of me.
Any quarrel, any fight that ever happened,
She would always be there to protect me.

As I turned into a young and handsome thirteen year old,
Mama taught me how to be fearless and brave.
With the nasty ugly world out there,
Mama said “Hard work and sincerity will keep you safe.”

People came and went in my life,
And so did the numerous springs and falls.
Mama was always there to help me,
Swim in deep waters and climb the high walls.

With the past residing in the deepest corner of my mind,
I was then twenty and standing alone there.
Too bad, Mama was not there with me,
I had lost everyone in the dark somewhere.

I held firmly the dark metallic reality,
My hands didn’t shake, my eyes never swayed.
I aimed the rifle at a person my chief loathed,
The sound of the bullet rang through my head.

I left the site with a conquering pride,
They chased me and I fired at them.
They never caught me and I kept taking lives,
Purely for wealth, not for name or fame.

I never talked about this to Mama,
Solely because I didn’t want to.
‘I had to survive in the nasty ugly world, Mama’,
‘And what only matters in this world is what you do’.

It was not what I had dreamt of becoming as a kid,
But destiny had planned it differently for me.
‘I had to survive in the nasty ugly world, Mama’,
‘If only I could have looked into your eyes and said thee’.

SLEEP

Get snugly and cozy,

Sleep like a koala bear.

Dreams are varied and many,

Live them with no fear.