Nothing to do...?

My mum tells me how as a kid, I'd get on everyone's nerves asking the same question over and over again... "What should I do?"..And this was not a huge, existential question of any sort... I always meant to get suggestions about what i should do right then... one restless kid I was... any activity suggested to me would hold my interest for only so long and I'd come back with the unanswerable...What should I do?

And I still don't stop asking myself that... every now and then. Except that now I know how much there is to do in a lifetime and how little time. Things have changed to the point that I dread making to-do lists... simply because they are always too long for me... and importantly also because they force me to set my priorities in my head. What's a priority anyway... what you need over what you want... ? What if you begin to absolutely need everything you want... you begin to have to-do lists as long as mine...

I often hear people complaining.."Well...I'm so bored...there's nothing to do "... How on earth does that happen... I haven't had nothing to do in a long long time , if ever. In fact , I have so much to do I always end up thinking I'm not making good enough use of my time. And you'd think for someone like me who gets bored rather easily (a friend of mine calls it my 'commitment issue'), this problem gets progressively simpler... nope... I seem to have atleast a semi-infinite lists of things I have to (need to ...?) do. And I'm glad to be that way. Boredom and void scare me.

I have never contemplated suicide... If I ever do, let it be known that it was most likely because I was fatally bored...'coz I had nothing to do...

"Esteem means what?"

This TV commercial from a while ago...
"Esteem means what?..." this little girl asks her Dad.
“Esteem means honour, pride.” The kid needs to know more...
“Pride means feeling good inside.”
That's the simplest and the truest thing I had heard... I have never been able to define anything I thought was worth defining... being in love, making love, trust, happiness, truth, esteem... but I often think these aren't different things at all... they all boil down to this... FEELING GOOD INSIDE ... that's all there is to it all...

As the aforementioned ad goes , the girl confirms her understanding by saying... "Aaah...like ice cream?"...

Yes dear ... indeed like ice cream... or dark chocolate... or that book you loved reading...or Gulzar's poetry... or the first rain of the season... or that crazy teenage crush... or all those times you just felt happy being around someone... or that awesome cup of fresh-brewed coffee...or the first pay check you earned... or that orgasm... or that confession ... it all felt the same in some way or the other... felt good inside

तेरे हर्फ़-हर्फ़ को कई बार पढ़ा है मैंने , तेरी हर बात को सुना है बार-बार
कई बार तेरे जाने के बाद भी देर तक की हैं तुझसे कई बातें
कि कुछ देर और रुकते तुम तो ये भी कहती तुमसे और वो भी...

बचपन का वो खिलौना जो अब तक संभाल रखा है , वो दिखाती
तब की शरारतें और अब की मुसीबतें सब सुनाती
बताती कब पापा से पहली दफा झूठ बोला था
मन न लगे तो वो जो एक गाना सुनती हूँ ना हमेशा , तुम्हें  वो भी सुनाती

कल क्या stupid सपना देखा फिर से ,वो बतलाती
किताबों के हाशिए में कभी - कभार लिख देती हूँ जो सब 
अपनी इकलौती diary पढ़ाती
Jenny  की तस्वीर दिखाती तुम्हें

तुम्हें भी लगता है क्या  ऐसा
की second की सुई की आवाज़ कुछ तेज़ सी हो जाती है
कसम से , सूइयाँ कुछ तेज़ चल पड़ती हैं तुम होते हो तो
तेरे जाने से पहले तेरे जाने का वक़्त आ खड़ा होता है

कई बार बिना तेरे भी बातें की हैं तुझसे
औरों ने जब भी बेबात मुस्काते देखा है
आईने ने कभी बेवजह इतराते देखा है
हर बार किसी ख्याल के रस्ते तुम्हें ही तो पास आते देखा है

कुछ इसी तरह जिया है तुझे , बिना तेरे

Namma Theatre...

I remember being kinda pissed off the first time they turned me away.Rangashankara has always been a stickler for time.If you were late for a show , you missed it..no matter who you were , no matter how much you had paid for the tickets. In a city where an evening outing was synonymous to dancing away at ZeroG or drinking away at Fuga, Rangashankara was like coming home.
I saw my first ever play here... racing against time and a heavy downpour...and it was totally worth it. Since then, I have seen many more at all kinds of places.I have seen places like Kyra claiming to give theater a new dimension while they stage plays,literally in a restaurant. While at Kyra, people chat,come and leave at will, order food and drinks, all while there are people on stage trying to connect to an audience that is often distracted, to say the least; I have heard stories of how at the start of a play at RangaShankara, Mr. Girish Karnad himself got up to close the door left ajar by a hurried member of the audience. It simply boils down to the respect to the stage and the artistes on it.
Bringing up how economical RS has managed to keep theater for the likes of me, is almost berating its larger significance on the fast-homogenizing cultural scene of Bangalore.
A befitting tribute to the man who gave me Malgudi Days when I was a kid and continues to evoke the childlike delight in me with every visit to his temple of art.

Kyaap

I cannot explain the title of this post. It is one of those words... if you know what it means , you just do or you don't...cannot be explained. Except that this word really doesn't mean anything. I am not even sure it qualifies as a proper word in its own language. For everyone who has heard of this word , you sure know where the source is. Manohar Shyam Joshi's lovely writing and his talent to come up with earthy ostentatiously meaningless words like this one. Why I use it here , is because it best describes what I created this blog for (so much for a meaningless word).

I never felt the need to have a blog...never had much to say anyway. So why now? Still do not have a reason ..probably that's why.

It doesn't have to be read, doesn't need to make perfect sense, doesn't even have to exist. It is free to discover or carve its own reason for existence, its own purpose in its own good time.Till then , well, it's just kyaap