11 things:

Things that I want to do in the next 1 year (things that are in my hand):

1. Make 5 short films (starting in March, 2012)
2. Hitchhike across India (first six months)
3. Publish 4 books (all across the year)
4. Learn Urdu - (during my travel)
5. Spend a month in the gurukul parampara with Indian Classical musicians (during summer, courtesy SPIC MACAY)
6. Get initiated into Kriya Yoga (once I come back to Delhi)
7. Read 30 contemporary English/Hindi classics (during my travel)
8. Write 100 songs in Hindi/Urdu (all across the year)
9. Learn Python, a computer programming language (once I'm done with my trip)
10. Make a classy FB application, design the UI myself (once I learn Python)
11. Deliver 30 speeches, in Toastmasters, Oration and other invited arenas. (all across the year)

Route to Roots

Hello friends,

After a really long time, I'm actually writing something. That's because after a really long time I'm actually free. First of all I would like to thank Farhan Ashraf, for suggesting this wonderful title 'Route to Roots' for the memoir that I'm going to pen down during my travel.

My last two years had been very enriching for me. I took some radical decisions: didn't take up campus placement, pursued the idea(thewittyshit.com) that I was passionate about, somehow managed to instill belief into my parents and family members about my decision, steered its growth to what it has become today along with my able partner, struggled to earn every little penny for the venture, so that we don't have to borrow money from our parents; lived with uncertainty when our 'right-hands' deserted us in the middle of the entrepreneurial road and kept on moving forward. It was the toughest and most fruitful period of my life. When your talented friends are making a lac a month, hanging on to something financially not quite rewarding works when you work not for money, but for satisfaction. It taught me a lot about conquering one's fear of uncertainty. I know that now I can manage without a penny for seven days, I can live without food for two days, I can live without bathing for ... oh leave it. Now I can clearly say 'been there, done that!'

On February 8th, I decided to leave the venture that I co-founded. Why did I leave? If that's the question that's circling in your mind, I would say that it's a personal question and I would not like to answer that 'now'. I quit. When I got free, I had a lot of options. I could have started applying for jobs in consulting, advertising or private equity firms, for all I am a fit candidate. I could have begun working on another start-up from the 7 innovative business ideas that I have in my mind. Or I could have continued writing chick-lit stuff and be complacent with it. No. This was not me. I am not going to again put myself in an assembly line situation. At least not immediately.

I had spent my last 2 years in such a state that almost every second minute the feeling of what's up with the venture circled my mind. In short, I was more like a machine, which when on, used to only work in a particular direction blocking every other part of it.

Now, being completely free, I had nothing special in mind. I am associated with this amazing bunch of musicians in the band called Avacara. I spent the entire night of 8th with them, jamming all night amidst smoke and mist with them. Music comforted me. I decided that I would learn Hindustani Classical music as it would help me in composition. For that I needed to go home, since my father is friends with a lot of musicians there. So be it. Going home was decided. My mother has not been keeping well lately gave all the more reasons to go home, which is in Dhanbad (Jharkhand). I decided to leave on 25th February to Dhanbad.

But my mother, who is a lecturer, is going to Chandigarh on an academic trip on 16th March for two weeks and I would have been totally alone during that phase. When she told me this, I decided that it was time. Time to travel. It was time to break into the seamless length and breadth of my country, that has always enamoured me. To meet its people, to live their lives, to learn their inspirations, to get inspired from them, to hear their stories and to share mine, to give whatever little experience I possess and to take whatever magnanimous learnings they possess, to meet my readers across India, be a guest to them and hear what they would want to read from me someday and tell them that they would read about themselves sometime pretty soon.

I posted my desire about an India trip on a shoestring budget on Facebook asking for hosts and I was absolutely touched to see an overwhelming response from friends and readers across the country, who were willing to let me reside at their place for free for 2-3 days during my travel. I laid down the dots that my friends had responded and connected them. When I finished, I was astonished to see that it resembled a bird. A bird ready for flight.

I recalled my school days when I read biographies of Steve Jobs or Kalam Saheb or Einstein. All of them had faced this vacant phase where they didn't know what to do and they just kept on travelling and it gave them the next direction to proceed. They met people, they discovered ideas and ideals, they learnt something entirely new during this vacant phase that shaped their lives later on. I am sure this journey is going to cast a deep impression in my soul and is going to change my life in some way, making me a better person and definitely, a better and a more experienced writer.

I'm going to begin my journey from 16th March. I am going to travel alone; with limited baggage, limited money, no laptop, no internet, one diary, one pen and two books titled 'Into The Wild' and 'The Autobiography of a Yogi'. I'm going to meet students, entrepreneurs, my readers, designers, techies, musicians, photographers and more at all those places and going to include my experience with them in my book. The basic intent of this tour is to explore how does the city affect the ideologies and aspirations of people, in the meanwhile searching for the next big idea for another start-up. I am low on cash as I'd exhausted all my royalties(my only source of money) into the venture. I am searching for a sponsor for my trip.

P.S. If you can refer some organization which may be willing to sponsor my trip, I would be more than glad. Not boasting, but just to give you an idea: I have a reach over 60000 young people of the age-group of 13-25 in India via my books, and I would be releasing two books before releasing my travel memoir, so the number is supposed to cross 2 lacs by then. I can easily dedicate a chapter to the sponsor in that book and carry promotional materials(bags/caps) across. Also, part sponsors would be welcome, whose story would be subtly embedded in their cities' stories.

Tomorrow

My next 10 years, prospective book titles:

1. Oops trilogy - Light fiction
2. Graffiti - short-story collection
3. 365 Days - Fiction, book of tweets, more like a play
4. The Book - A love story
5. As I'll Die in Sometime - Thriller, Dark
6. Abdul - Fiction
7. Tale of a plot - Novella
8. Mother - Fiction, Dark
9. The Last Book - Fiction
10. Coma, Comma - Novella
11. The Muddleheaded Prime Minister - Satire
12. Coffee? - A romantic play

On Passion

Passion. The only word that can differentiate you from yourself. Because when it overpowers you, you're not you. You're the passion. Think about it.

My experiments with writing

My belief, right from the very beginning has been that being versatile is one of the key ingredients in the making of a good writer. I treat a writer as a musician, who dares to explore different styles, trying to fuse the good things he has learnt with his own innovations.

A person can be versatile only if s/he is willing to let the mind pervade the areas where they haven't been before. Though with time, one may discover that his/her real forte is in a particular genre, but surely, trying different things groom the narrative capabilities of a story-teller.

I started writing as a blogger, with diary-like entries that mostly concerned with already known philosophies, which obviously found no readers, so I moved to describing events - in which I found myself quite naturally gifted, since I could make them interesting, owing to my tendency to magnanimously exaggerate the story. Once started into events, I started penning down almost all the small incidents with a good amount of exaggerated spice in each of those episodes, which turned to incite my blog-pals, since they happened to like it.

This was the time of my peak confidence as a writer, though my experience lacked more experimentation. With ample confidence in my abilities, I decided that it's time to take the big step. It was the time I started writing my novel, with no intention to publish it at all, since I intended to have a short-novel, with oddly 12-13 chapters of 2 pages each. I intertwined all the funny incidents that I had ever heard/seen with an extraordinary contribution from my imagination to make the novel complete, but alas, the novel was no-more short, but rather a voluminous one with 33 complete chapters in it. Miraculously, it had its own destiny, because thereafter, one by one, many things happened, like my chance meeting with the publisher, the agreement and expansion of my work. I was more than happy.

I made sure that in my novel, which could actually be categorized as just-another-IITian novel, I would not exploit IIT's name on the cover. So I chose an IIT-free title and subtitle, despite all the previous IITians books by my publisher(that were just 2 at that time, compared to over a dozen currently) had those. I even didn't publicise my novel by putting up posters or something in the campus. I made a promotional video, but it didn't spread a lot, owing to my laziness at its promotion. But it found its own readers with time and sold more than 10,000 copies in just 6 months, becoming a national bestseller; 10000 copies being the current Indian standard to classify a 'bestseller'.

Once published, there came a time when I thought I needed to move on. I started noticing plots of stories in everyday life. Everywhere I could observe situations in which twists were possible. I started writing stories. On various themes like humour, sarcasm, emotions, love, twists, human nature, thriller, horror etc. If I now say that I consider myself as a writer, then it's not due to the fact that I am a published author, but because I have seen, breathed and breathed life into stories from in and around my life.

To all the aspiring authors and creative writers, the best suggestion I could give as a fellow writer is that write stories - you could see them almost floating all around you, and you can breathe life into them. You would learn so many intricacies of writing, once you start, such as - How you should start a story? How should you engross the reader to read the next line without getting bored? How should you end with a perfect punch? How you should unravel the mysteries? How to deliver the twist in the tale, with subtlety?

As time passed by, I started writing another book, so that brought me away from story-writing, but that could not stop me from seeing the plots of stories floating around. I've around 35 plots of short-stories in my head currently. The best thing that my life with stories has given me is that now I can see plots for novel, with as many as 7 of them being in my head currently. There is a subtle difference between the plots of stories and plots of novels i.e. the novels have a very long middle, where as it's quite short in the case of stories. So, it gets a little more difficult to enrapture the reader, keeping his/her interest alive throughout the middle in case of a novel.

Half-way down with my second novel, which was not the sequel, but it was with a really unique theme with a novel within a novel; I felt a little bit uneasy. Because my big-ambitious novel was set in a city in which I had never been, with the protagonist as an entrepreneur, that I had not been that time; and being married, that I would definitely not be in the recent time. So I decided to stop. I had written around 31,000 words, but I decided for good, that I needed to stop, since I was not doing any good in pursuing something that requires a broader panorama.

In the meanwhile, I got into poetry. The best thing about poetry was it didn't hinder my story-telling spirit, since all of my poems had either a story to tell or an emotional recount. Somewhere around this time, I got interested into limericks(which are five-line funny poems) and crafted many of those in my notebook, while idling in the lecture theatres.

Facebook gave a strange gift to me. It polished my skill in word-play. I started writing one-liners, which sometimes were profound or witty, or sometimes just mere play of words. This gave me a strange familiarity, since I now knew writing from a completely different perspective. A story can be told in even one-line. How's that for a story? It gave birth to my business idea and made me realize that all the ideas - be it design, literary, artistic or business lie on the same plane of existence, one just needs to change the perspective to catch it.

I started up and am enjoying a lot as a content writer for my website. Meanwhile, urged by my readers, with more than 1000 mails in my inbox asking me to write the sequel to my incomplete first book, I decided to give it a go. In a day, I got the plot. For your information, the word 'got the plot' means knowing how you're going to end the story, since once you know how you're going to end, everything falls into place. So, I started writing the sequel around 1.5 months ago, which clashed with my venture, and I had been fighting really hard to get a state of being with completely uncluttered mind and no tasks on head, so that I continue with the mammoth task with passion. It's currently at 8,000 words and would require almost a month of dedicated efforts to give it the shape of a book.

That's all from my 3 years writing journey. A journey that'll never end. Since a writer never quits writing, he keeps writing - sometimes his destiny and sometimes, history.

Just for interest:

Graffiti - My Stories Blog

Witty Shit - My One-liner Blog

Quantum Leap - My Old Travelogue

Oops! 'I' fell in love! - The Story of Making of my Novel

P.S. To write is to live - with all the characters of all the worlds.

On Ideas

Earlier I was really insecure about sharing my ideas. I felt that someone will steal it and start working on it.

However with time, I got matured and things have become clear to me. Two of the important things are listed below:

Association: The best thing about your idea is the association that you build with it. A new person, can copy your idea but would never be able to put the passion that you'll be having for it. The idea gestates in your mind and when it's your child you know it better than anyone else on this world. This ensures that no-one, other than you, can really pursue your idea to the fullest. Innovations can be brought by others on your idea, but the sacred bond one should have to the idea remains with the person in whose mind it occurred at the very first place.

Sharing: With time, another thing that has happened to me is that I've become more keen on sharing. Now instead of holding all the ideas that I get to myself, I like to find an interested person and ask him/her to pursue it. Because every idea has a time, and since currently I am working on one idea, I would not be able to pursue many. So, it's always good to find interested persons who are capable enough to rear my child - brainchild, to be precise. And I love to guide them.

I feel blessed to have experienced four different kind of ideas in a really grand way viz. business ideas, story ideas, photography ideas and design ideas. And with time, I hope to experience thousand more kinds.

P.S. Ideas are intoxicating and non-toxic. It's the best addiction one can have. And certainly, they can change your life.

P.S. After reading this, I feel that I am going towards writing non-fiction. A welcome change.

thewittyshit.com

Hi friends,

This post is about my venture, thewittyshit.com

Being a creative guy, I failed to succumb to the technical jargons that IIT had to offer to me, and I decided to take the uncommon path - the entrepreneurial path. My start-up is an online-networking-cum-merchandising venture, which will be focussed around one-liners fabricated by the aam-aadmi.

We've openings for young and dynamic people who would be interested in working full-time or part-time with us. If you're interested, read the careers section below.

About us:

www.thewittyshit.com is a networking-cum-merchandising website intended to tap surges of creativity in common people by creating a network of people who are good with words(especially one-liners), providing them a customizable-space to record and host their 'witcraft' and giving them an opportunity to get incentives for the same by merchandising. We believe that quotes are for those who don't have a say for themselves. And if you've the wit, you're equipped, to fabricate your own quotes.

With us, you can get your facebook status messages and tweets recorded, hosted and reach a larger audience with your signature attached to it. We are here to host your quotes in the masses. If your quote gets popular, we would bring out a product featuring your quote and give you royalty from the sales. Just be with us and see how your little creativity can fetch you a lot!

Careers:

At thewittyshit.com, you’ll find people obsessed with the word called ‘communication’. We’re all about communication - communicating through written words, communicating visually through designs and communicating verbally. Not that we do it because we love sharing our thoughts and ideas, but rather because we love to get to know the thoughts and ideas of the other side – your side. We love enthusiastic people, who know how to take fun from the work that they do for us and make work fun for the people around. After all, how boring is this life without an exclamation mark!

Our work focuses on marketing strategies to target youth(especially college students), graphic designing to cater to the gen-x needs, supply chain analytics, web-development and maintenance, product development, plagiarism-check algorithms and inventing smart financial and publicity schemes.

If communication is your passion and you’ve the guts to imagine out-of-the-box communication solutions, you’re born to be a wit-maker! We, being passionate wit-makers ourselves, are the most active users as well as staunch critics of our services and we think we understand what we need and how to get it. Despite being a start-up, we promise a handsome remuneration if you’re ready to show your mettle, plus a lot of enriching work experience for you to carry for your lifetime.

See our current openings:

Marketing Team:

1. College Student Ambassadors

Responsibilities:

• Host our brand in your college and market our products(tees) there.

• Help us organize slogan and design competition in your college.

Qualifications Required:

• A college-level significant position of responsibility would be great!

2. Business Outreach Executives

Responsibilities:

• Pitching a plethora of colleges and companies.

• Convincing people, conveying what we are all about and what do we offer!

3. Marketing Lead –

Responsibilities:

• Talking to your team members

• Coordinating their job, assigning them targets and deadlines.

• Devising astute marketing strategies to reach out to the maximum crowd.

Qualifications Required:

• A significant position of responsibility in the cultural or technical fest of your college.

• Previous work experience in any start-up or NGOs would be an icing on the cake!

Design Team:

1. Graphic Designer

Responsibilities:

• Poster designing for events and competitions that we organize.

• Information brochure design.

• Visiting cards design

2. Textile Designer

Responsibilities:

• Designing of T-shirts

• Creating characters, mascots and logos for assignments.

Pre-requisite: One should be proficient with Photoshop and Corel Draw.

Web-development Team

Web-Designer

Responsibilities –

• Giving an aesthetic feel to the website.

• Working on Drupal modules.

Pre-requisites: Should be fully aware about the CMS Drupal. Must have some work experience in the same.

Prerequisites for each of the above openings:

(a) Enthusiasm (b) Enthusiasm, and (c) Enthusiasm.

No matter what college are you in, no matter what place you reside currently, if you've the passion and the required skill-set, we have a position for you.

Question yourself:

1.Do you want to work with determined creative entrepreneurs?

2. Do you think you're capable enough to contribute in any of these domains?

3. Are you enthusiastic enough to be a wit-maker?

If yes, mail us your resumes and a 'statement of purpose' at thewittyshit@gmail.com, our team'll get back to you immediately.

P.S. Follow our facebook page - to remain informed - http://www.facebook.com/thewittyshit

On Spontaneity and Creativity

The word 'creativity' holds prime importance in my life. For several reasons. The first being my upbringing. I've been brought up in an environment where nuggets of creativity were scattered all across my senses. From writers to painters, from musicians to shayars, from thinkers to readers; they all seemed to be linked to my life through my father in some way or the other.

Exposure, that's what I've got, despite hailing from a small city of a small state. All of these little reverberations left an irreplaceable impression in my mind. The impression that 'creativity lies in spontaneity'. The memories of jugalbandi, where my Dad used to sing and the instrumentalists played music that came straight through their hearts rendering a captivating symphony, whirls my soul every time I think about it. My father didn't instruct them what to play and when to play. Everything that happened was spontaneous and melodious. Coordination seemed to be in their veins. I, sitting with my little legs crossed, enjoyed everything with rapt attention. I didn't realize that listening music can gift you with a sense of music, which I realized much later when it came to the instruments. I found a sudden connection with them.

But then I came to Delhi. Here, the multitudinous of creative souls appealed to my heart. I found great number of them. But later I found that half of them were machine-like. They lacked spontaneity. They could do great things with great many things, but their motivation for doing that thing was not the joy of doing that thing, but rather the joy in anticipation of getting the result out of what they did. It was not something that I knew.

I accepted it. I tried to emulate them, imitating their ideologies and work-motive but found out that it was not being me. I consider myself a creative person, despite being a beginner in the vast arena of creativity. But, I can't be creative when forced. I can't carry on the creative work to the best of my ability if there's some result-oriented motive behind it. If you ask me to write a story to win a competition, I can assure you that I would miserably suck at the work, precisely because it's not my spontaneous self doing the work. But, if I write a story because I want to write, because my self feels for the theme of the story, it's the same me who will assure you that it will be outstanding. For me, spontaneity is the key to creativity.

I worked with other people in music and though I learnt a lot, but I found spontaneity missing. Thereafter, I secluded myself, into a creative domain which was one man's play, where it's only me and my imagination that plays the key-role. Writing, photography and composition. It was fun, since spontaneity came bubbling forward and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Though with time, I've learnt how to make myself deliver an optimum performance for some creative job assigned to me, the result might not be outstanding, but nevertheless, it would be satisfactory. Satisfactory enough to be called good.

P.S. Synergy is when my heart and soul connects with what I'm doing. And for me, spontaneity is what brings synergy.

Being an author - an experience

It has been almost 4 months since my book - my creation came into existence. This has been a really new experience for me, since being just 20, I've been blessed not only to realize the thing that I loved to do the most(writing!) but also, take a big step of going a step beyond just writing for pleasure, to writing to entertain others. Here, I present some of the realizations that are born out of my experience as an author:

1. The real friends show enormous faith in you! They are the ones who share your happiness.

2. Fans are friends, for they fuel your ambitions.

3. You start seeing a story in every situation of not only your life, but of anybody's life who happens to cross your eyes. The whole world seems to be a big story, with each event having a tale to tell of its own.

4. All you need as a writer is a friend who has some time to listen to your thoughts, ideas for stories and tales sprouting in your mind and suggest to make it more real, better and touching. I thank God for giving me such friends - Rajiv, Ravi, Aman, Aishy, Saumya, Ankit, Keshav, Avinav, Pallavi, Supriya and Apoorv.

5. You come to know the difference between the real criticism and the biased ones. The real criticism is the one which suggests you how to improve.

6. You get to know how to handle appreciation as well as criticism with an open mind. You tend to respect the genuine criticism and ignore the biased ones.

7. You like to appreciate aspiring writers more, since once you too were at their place and you see yourself in them.

8. You don't encounter any hitch about whether you'll be able to write another book or not. Confidence in writing touches the acme.

9. You don't need to worry about getting published! Once published, relieved forever.

10. There are just two kinds of 'readers' - those who like you as a writer and those who don't!

11. However, you often encounter the third kind of 'people' (not readers) - they are those who hate you, without any reasons and you feel sorry for them because they need help. My Dad, who happens to be my only mentor, said to me just before I was going to get published, 'If somebody dislikes your work, then there is something wrong with you. But, if somebody hates you/your work, then there is something wrong with him/her.'

12. Each small accomplishment seems to be just a beginning in the never-ending road of life. You realize the BIG-ness of the word called 'life'.

13. You find it really funny when you encounter sudden hostility from strangers - those who don't even know you. It brings a strange kind of pleasure, more so because this kind of hostility owes its origin to envy.

14. In the end, it's just you and the flight of your imagination that plays the melody - it's the flight of your lifetime and you just wish that it never ends.

P.S. This is completely personal recount. Any similarity is purely co-incidental.

The Story

Hey readers, it has been a long time since I wrote something. I was busy with the publishing work of my novel - 'Oops!'. I am happy to announce that everything right from proof-reading, cover-design, typesetting has been done and the novel has gone for publishing. The release date of the novel has not yet been finalized, I plan to release it on 29th Aug, i.e. my birthday, but my Dad wishes to release it before my birthday - in a way making him proud that I published my novel when I was still 19 years old.

Now, I am quite free and I am longing to be more regular on Graffiti - the story-teller within me is dying to write yet another story. My travelogue too will be updated soon, since I have some awesome experiences of Scotland to share with you all.

So here I am. All free - with excitement, vigour and 'time' for my blog.

P.S. I found that I was gifted at exaggeration, so I became a story-teller.

The Stepping Stone

Have you ever had a flash of idea? An idea which can make you lose your sleep, can overpower your thinking so vehemently that no moment passes without it. If not then certainly you are missing an important ingredient of life, called passion. I am not here to preach you about passion but I want to share my experience with my passion. For those who don't know, I have written a novel titled 'Oops! 'I' fell in love!' which is due its release this August. It is a comedy of errors in a vulnerable small-town guy's tryst with love in this strange Delhi.

After writing this bit of humorous thingy, an irresistible urge to write something with a message - impactful but without any trace of philosophy - came within me. My urge to get this flash of idea made me into a story-teller and in the meantime I wrote about five stories which turned quite impressive(even to me!). Ideas for a dozen more of these are in the assembly line waiting for my exams to end, but none of them could help me out with the theme for my next novel, until the day before.

It's a matter of just yesterday. After struggling for over a month to find MY IDEA I have finally got it ~ in just a flash of second. I was sitting in the library and reading my plasma notes with the concentration of a drunken driver when I was shaken by this thought. The idea traced back to my last article '18+' in Graffiti and it made me think of an issue which could be addressed in a novel which is still(hopefully) not thought of by anyone else on this planet!

Friends, I have an immense pleasure in announcing that I have got a theme for my next novel. With AIDS as the backdrop, I would address the issue, "If a sufferer is deprived of love and care, what devastating impact he/she can have on the society!" I am not disclosing the plot, nor am I going to publish it on blog. I would be working silently on this theme for the next half of year and then come up with my creation materialized in my hand.

It is a very dark theme and demands quite a lot of research at my end. The moment I got this idea, my mind jumped in thrill and enthusiasm. I called two of my closest friends and shared my excitement with them, they instilled faith in me by being very appreciative of my plot and even the uniqueness of idea. I searched my mobile contact list and I felt really bad that I could not share it with anybody else since either they would not share the same excitement as me or they would be too critical.(It happens, as I've seen that if you bestow the right to judge your work to someone who has no niche in your field of art, they tend to be over-critical, they start thinking that they are the God! Offences meant!)

AN EXCERPT FROM MY DIARY:
20th April

With great hope at night I called my Dad and said, "Dad, I have got that flash - my BIG idea! I am going to write about AIDS, in a completely different perspective! Dark theme!"

I then went on to discuss my whole plot with him and he showed some mixed reactions - happy but fearful.

"It will serve two purposes - (a) Create awareness about AIDS in an impactful way, and (b) develop respect amongst people towards the affected few. We are educated ones and I think I will create a long-lasting impact on the society with a dark theme instead of the same happy ending themes. For that I would need to meet AIDS affected people and need their story of discrimination plus their feelings towards society." I continued.

To which Dad replied, "That's really innovative, brilliant sketch. But don't mix up with those AIDS affected ones too much. Avoid shaking hands or even accepting something from their hand or any physical proximity. Always maintain safe distance from them."

I was stunned. I replied, "Dad, you know everything about how AIDS occurs and it is not communicable, but still! I am shocked. I am sorry to inform you that your advice worked in the wrong way. These words of yours have made me a thousand times more enthusiastic about doing immense research in writing this. I would meet the affected people, shake hands with them and even hug them. And I will change this very perception of people around me."

Dad did not reply. Perhaps, his inner voice saying that his son is right overpowered his fatherly protective feelings for me. I instantly knew that he inwardly desired me to break free from all these social taboos and reach out to my dream!

"Thank you Dad." I said.

"I am proud of you son!" He said. There were tears in my eyes, and I could see his eyes too filled with tears, which were however 1000 kms away from me. I smiled anticipating the green signal in the path of my dream.

P.S. I love you Dad.

Alive

This is an old photograph captured by me in my own garden at home, which has recently come into the limelight. It portrays the sense of romance and mischief hidden in the mini-droplets on the flower.

I titled it 'Alive' since for me being alive is experiencing the romance and the beauty of life.

P.S. Of success and ethics, I chose ethics. I don't why but that made me happy.

Just out of the blues...

As the title says, 'Just out of the blues' so is it.

Got bored of conventional photography, so tried to make some sparks out of stones. I like it and I hope you too like it.

P.S. I am purchasing a Nikon P80. Yippie.

My Passion

My Passion

Someone asked me, "What is success in your eyes?"

"Success is finding your passion", I replied.

"What is passion?", he asked.

"It is anything which can make you lose your sleep."

"Have you ever lost it?", he enquired.

I opened my eyes and exclaimed, "I did!"
And I began writing this.

I found my passion, what about YOU?

The Break-up Prize

We had every moments spent splendidly, she had been always there with me whether it was my up or down. She was my first love and I was exceptionally fond of her, but you know, time changes everything. Our love had its own way and things started to go bad and then worse and finally to the worst. From the last few months, she had started behaving erratically. She had become numb to my emotions and she did not sound happy with me. Despite my conscious efforts to tune her attitude towards the better side, she resisted. The comfort level had been lost somewhere in the dust of time. The years of togetherness had been evil-eyed.

Tired of being sorry, my patience couldn't last for her to improve. Her behaviour was worsening regularly and at last I gave up. Annoyed, I left her last week when I found that she was irrepairable. I had not told her that I broke-up with her, since she was smart enough to understand the rift in between us. We neither hung out nor even talked to each other since I started ignoring her. She might be upset, but I don't care. She had lost her charm for all I care.

After snapping our relationship last week, I was happy, very relieved. During the last four days though, I missed the presence of that somebody in my life, I again became desperate.

I needed a girlfriend man! Someone with whom I could have more fun, someone more beautiful, sexier and with whom I could make my friends envy me. I went to many places to search for her. On my couple of visits to the best places in Delhi for finding my perfect choice, I found many sexy models. They were complete in themselves to satisfy my desires. But still I had something unknown inhibiting me from interacting with them.

Last night, I became very desperate to have that SHE in my life. I went to the other part of Delhi, which was a home to all the sexy and ravishing figures of the country. I interacted with about a dozen of super-hot models. While I was flirting with a super-slim  babe, my eyes came across Henna. If you don't believe that there exists a thing called "Love at first sight", then you are certainly wrong!

She was everything I had in my dreams. My break-up with my previous girlfriend proved to be fruitful as I found a real 'hottie'. Perfect figure, fair skin, beautiful texture and a raunchy voice. She had double the assets that my ex. She was the perfect material to make my friends jealous and even develop an inferiority complex in my ex-gf!

I asked her to accompany me, and she willingly accepted. She told that it was the first time that someone had showed so much interest in her. Being a Casa Nova, it was my forte to win hearts of ravishing beauties. I caressed her in my arms, and held her throughout I came back to my place.

In my room, I asked her to feel at ease. She was there in front of me, with a tempting charm in her body attracting me towards her. I was drawn towards her and I could not help resisting my desires. I needed her to dissolve my sorrows that had been entangled in my mind after the break-up with my first love.

I went near her and carressed her. I tickled her with my fingers and she laughed. I uncovered her body and started to touch her all around. She was sensuous, and when in my arms, I could feel that she was the one who would satisfy me to the zenith. I closed my eyes and shrugged away the rust of time from my senses. Lost in ecstasy, after a long trance of pleasure, I opened my eyes.

Standing in front of me, it was my ex-gf Eva staring at me with no emotions at all on her face. Angry, I got up with Henna still on my bed, and with coercion I locked Eva in my cupboard. She didn't even resist.

After my night stand with Henna, I took out Eva. I did not talk with her, I just let her stand in front of me. Right from the morning, Eva has been standing in front of me, withered and broken with rusted strings while my Henna, being more precious, is inside the cupboard now!

Looking at Eva, I can still feel the moments of our intimacy we had together. Amidst all these emotional turmoil, I have learnt that like grief, love also fades away with time. No-one is indispensable, new people come and make our life beautiful again. I am gonna sell Eva to someone, I just hope that she finds herself a passionate lover!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
P.S. This is the sequel to my most popular post so far "One Night Stand". Click here if you haven't read it.
P.S. Henna is something with which I can make the whole Institute jealous. It's a twelve string - double the assets, remember?
P.S. Henna is worth 8k bucks! She is broader, fairer and sexier. An electric guitar can never compete with the harmony of acoustic one.
P.S. Click here for having a glimpse of Henna.

10 things to do before you climb your death-bed

These are some of the moments which defined my life. These moments were the best moments in my life, and I want to recommend some of these to you all. Hope you also share your best moments with me.

1. Watching the sunrise from Kanyakumari, the tip of India: It was 4:30 in the morning, I got up and ran to the beach. There were people of all the ages, with a single burning desire to see the most beautiful dawn of their lifetime. The small sun appeared in the horizon out of nowhere, colourful clouds danced in welcoming it thus embarking the beginning of yet another wonderful day.
2. The Shawshank Redemption : If there is one movie which you can't miss in your entire lifetime, it's this. The Shawshank Redemption - A Story of Hope. There is no better source of inspiration available on the entire earth.
3. A tour on Shikara : Kashmir, considered as a paradise on earth, remains incomplete if we don't mention shikara. Its basically a small boat. Cruising through the ice-cold Dal lake in the Shikara with hands and feet being frozen and eyes being mesmerized to see the beauty of the lake surrounded by mountains, I felt at bliss.
4. IIT Insti Top : The city of history and majesty, Delhi, and a 10 floor high vantage point to give a panorama to this city - Incomparable. The breeze that flows at midnight at this place together with the soothing moonlit darkness multiplies the effect thousand times.
5. Guitar(My Eva!) : If in your lifetime, you don't happen to exhaust your fingers trying to make a song out of this, then certainly you missed something big. Fingers ready to bleed the next moment and you still determined to reproduce the song that you just heard perfectly, leaves you no option to think of any other thing. It is a great game of passion vs comfort!
   
6. Sudarshan Kriya : I am not a Bhakta of Sri Sri Ravi Shanker, nor any active member of his foundation, but I really respect him for his ingenious invention "Sudarshan Kriya". Tiring, exhausting and straining while you do the kriya, and utmost destressing, comforting and relaxing when it's over. It was the first moment in my life when I achieved the state of blankness with awareness in my mind for 15 long minutes.
7. The Autobiography of a Yogi - This is not just a book, not just a best-seller, but it is a sheer revelation. The things which are unbelievable and still exist, the infinity of human potential, the sublimity of the soul and the siddhi's conquering even death. There is no other so radical book ever published in the history of the world.
8. Writing : Thoughts are integral component of our existence. Of all the chatter that our mind produces, there comes something which is so new, so radical, so unique, so profound, so hilarious that you get an instant urge to secure it forever in words. You just pay attention to your thoughts to know how wonderful you are. I bet once you realize your thought's beauty, you will instantly wanna store them in words.
   
9. Listening to Indian Classical music and maestros : If you want to feel elation, relaxation as well as divinity at the same time, lock yourself in a room, and play any Classical music at a serene volume. It will take away all the stress and bring you closer with divine. In India, in guru-shishya parampara, music is treated as Goddess Saraswati, and every maestro - be it Zakir Hussain, Amjad Ali Khan, L.Subramaniam or Hari Prasad Chaurasia - strive for the union with the divine through their music everytime. See the documentary "The Speaking Hand" on tabla virtuoso Ustad Zakir Hussain to inspire yourself.
10. Share your feelings : The last point is very close to my heart, as it is totally my own thinking - no inspiration for this. Before you climb your death-bed, at least write a testimonial to all your friends on orkut and even in life. Make them know how much you like them, how special they are, what were the moments when you learned from them, and what are the things that makes them special in your life. You can make yourself happiest only by making others happy.
    

Taste of Triumph - 2

I had no expectations, it was totally out of sudden, amidst mixed emotions - a call made me dumbstruck. I was strolling along the Wind-tunnel of the institute when my phone rung up, I was jumping in heaven after that call. Man, I got to know that I had got the third position in the Rendezvous Abstract Photography Competition(which consists of Rs.200 cheque and a certificate to cherish). I screamed the loudest "YES!" I could on the road, almost the whole of the crowd near me was a kinda' dumbstruck. I called my Mom and she jumped on her toes, talked to my Dad and my Dad became emotional, my life could not have been better. It brings great pleasure to have a sudden surprise, without even having any expectations.

P.S. Acknowledgements : Vidhu for taking great pains for inquiring exquisite details for the event, Akshay and Aman for their words of appreciation(which really mean a lot to me even though I don't tell) and my parents for being twice more happy than I am and for believing in me twice more than I believe in myself.

P.S. I saw Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy performing at a 10 metres distance, they are so versatile man...hats off to them!!!
P.S. Don't judge my photography by seeing the photograph of my certificate, as the poor photography owes itself to my sleepy head.
P.S. I want to sleep, though it's a morning now...good night!!!

The Photographer is Back

It had been a while since I touched my camera. Yesterday, I came to know about an event of Abstract Photography to be taking place in our fest Rendezvous, so I took out my digicam from my cupboard(after 3 long months) and experimented with light and darkness. Some shades appealed to me and I thought of finding something resembling the texture of the wall. Luckily, I had drumsticks in my room, so I got an interesting outcome. It is titled "Rhythm of Light". Do comment on it - concept and innovation :

Awed to envy...

For the past 15 minutes, I was on the rickshaw, having no faint idea of the way ahead. I told the rickshaw wala, "I need to get to Daryaganj - near the mosque." The rickshaw was trotting ahead and I enjoyed the view sideways. No, there weren't any girls there, but there was a majestic monument - The Jama Masjid, with elegant red textured walls. The other side of the road had a chain of slaughterers, butchers and spice-dwellers, the smell along the road was not at all pleasing my nasal cavity. A sudden advent of some dark clouds pleased my sun-warmed body. I was quite relishing the other side of Delhi - which contained an air of Mughal era in itself. Old architecture, sufi houses and small dhabas provided a periphery to my curious vision. Small roads, too many rickshaws and 'thelas', and ultra small shops retailing paper, clothes and glasswares brought back the memories of the Arabian Nights back into my mind.

A sudden voice brought back my mind to the present moment, I had reached the mosque and rickshaw-wala was demanding his reward for dropping me to the place. I gave him his share of my wallet, and went on to inquire about the shop that made me visit such a remote area of my city. The guy told me, "Just follow these stairs, the shop is at the third floor." About a half-century of helical steps gave me a sight - An ultra-modern heaven in between these small shops. Awed, definitely, I opened my sandals and entered the place. My eyes grew bigger and bigger to its maximum radius as what I observed was a childhood dream come true. It had every thing, every possible brand right from Fender to Givson, starting from a mere 3000 bucks to as high as 94,000 bucks. I was wondering that someday I win a lottery and purchase the whole shop. Clarinet, piccolo, ukulele, cello, pedals, double bases, tenor sax to the twelve-strings., you think of any of them - it was there. You might be wondering what I am talking about? If you haven't got it till now then let me elaborate. The shop had every kind of synthesizer, even the Yamaha electronic drum-set worth Rs 1.5 lacs and ranges of violin from a simple one to the elite. (You got that, I know!) Amidst this rural outset, this monolithic shop had it all, all the musical instruments, all the brands and everything one can think of. It was a kind of musical instruments library - just no lending was possible. I tried my hands upon a V-shaped electronic guitar worth 23,000 bucks and it was a fabulous experience. After spending 2 hours in the shop, analyzing every small detail of the instruments, I finally made up my mind(and my wallet too!) to purchase something. I finally gave upon a German chromatic harmonica(popularly known as mouthorgan) worth 550 rupees and was overjoyed at its mellifluous voice.

The return journey to my hostel was a very thoughtful one, my mind still being intrigued and awed by the wonderful sight I just saw, and a part of me pushing me to acquire the whole shop someday. In the midst of happiness and temptations, the auto moved along the road transmitting me from the remote area to the ultra-modern capital of the nation. Back home, there was nothing but a smile on my face showing my happiness on a nano-scale. I placed the harmonica in my drawer and had an ecstatic siesta!

P.S. Clarinet, piccolo, ukulele, cello, pedals, double bases, tenor sax are musical instruments.
P.S. The shop's name is Bhargava's Music. It is in Daryaganj. Do pay visit to it once in your lifetime. I bet you can't resist being awed!
P.S. Yes, I know how to play harmonica, I am not prevaricating!
P.S. Did you know that harmonica is the largest selling musical instrument in the world.
P.S. An advice - consulting a dictionary-cum-thesaurus while seeing a word is much more conducive for developing a good word power than consulting only a dictionary.
P.S. Today's movie : What women want.