7 September 2016

Challenge Rejected!

Okay, that was the fourth challenge in as many days days from my FB friends. If I get the general drift, I am being challenged to put up a happy picture of Sharmila and myself  (good luck finding it) for ten successive days (haha! lots more good luck finding them) and then everyday I am to challenge another friend to do the same.

I have certainly no issue on what you want to do with your FB timeline – entirely your choice to post and my choice to ignore them. That being said, my first thought was – What??? What  kind of a challenge is this? Mind you – this is not a request. This is not a suggestion. This is a CHALLENGE to prove my love and happy marriage!!! How many wives do I have these days?

To what end? How are ten pictures of Sharmila and I – and remember – we have to look happy in all of them which dramatically reduces the sample set in our case – going to make one iota of a difference to anybody? Other than of course, setting the wrong expectations to the poor souls that are contemplating on getting married 🙂

By the way, you are not fooling me one bit about your marriage with those pictures. Put some candid pictures – one where you were fighting, one where you completely embarrassed yourself, one where she sent you to sit in the corner, one where you unexpectedly got a surprise…. you know all those small real life things that actually make a happy marriage. All those seemingly happy moments you self-choose does not define your marriage. Those are meant for a Facebook pyramid scheme. If your marriage is anything like mine, its happiness is not derived from a continuous stream of smiling face photo-ups but unrelenting ups and downs with an underlying trust and belief that the other person will always be there for you. You can’t take a picture of that. You have to feel it.

I have to say, I do enjoy sometimes when you occasionally put those happy pictures of you and your spouse. I feel special that you desired to share a happy moment with me. And certainly feel happy for you. Those are special moments. Let’s keep them special. That specialty goes away in my mind when I realize that you are doing this for a “challenge” and worse, you are trying to make a daily habit of it for some time. And that you intend to encourage such behavior from ten other people!

And maybe you still feel you need to do that. Ok. Your call. But why me?? I and the king of TMI in FB. I am the exemplar of hedonism in FB with every bit of my life posted on Facebook. Have you not been warned at all not to encourage me to post more? Even the carriers are going – dude – throttle back – your data use is overloading those snooping NSA servers 🙂

Ok. Now allow me to finish this post, quit searching our photo databases for ten pictures and instead utilize that time to think of one more reason to pick up a fight with Sharmila 🙂

Category: Musings | 13 Comments on Challenge Rejected!
3 September 2016

Friday decompression

The couplet was written by Agha Bismil but was used by Nusrat in his qawwali “Ankh Uthi Mohabbat Ne Angrai Lee” written by Purnam Allahabadi

“Mehfil mein baar baar unhi par nazar gayee
Humne bachayee lakh magar phir udhar gayee
Unki nigahon mein koi jadoo zaroor tha
Jis par pari usi ke jigar tak utar gayee”

In the gathering, my eyes kept drifting towards her
I controlled myself a thousand times; still they went back to her
There was some eternal magic in her gaze
Whoever it fell upon, he lost his heart and everything else

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Category: Music/Poetry | 5 Comments on Friday decompression
21 August 2016

Classic photography… not!

At first, I had thought that this is a photograph. In reality this is drawn using charcoal as the media on paper by my friend from middle school – Niladri Datta. (You may remember him from my visit to him a few months back to check on him, his family and his parents in Kolkata). None of us were aware of his artistic skills while in school. I think he picked it up as a hobby only a few years back. (That and taking videos while being driven at high speed on roads and also getting drenched in the rain 🙂 ). He takes to his hobby after everybody has gone to sleep at night (once his office and son’s studies and all that has been taken care of) and then posts them on his timeline. It is always a treat for me to wake up in the morning and see a wonderful painting from him.

I am simply amazed by his skills. This particular piece of art is absolutely mind blowing. Just conceiving this mentally and then making such a wonderful figure stand out – not by giving definition with colors – but actually taking definition away from the rest of the picture by putting in the darkness… this is truly awe-inspiring.

Unfortunately he still has not set up a website to share his pictures (he is happy just painting for himself) but I do hope he will set it up so many others can see his creations too.

Oh! another point – any one of you who think that you are too old to start something new, I throw my friend from fifth grade at you!!

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Category: Images, Our Friends | LEAVE A COMMENT
24 July 2016

Ah! those pesky little things called “children”

First day of vacation to celebrate the impending passage of Natasha’s next step in life – leaving us to join college. While many parents have gone thru this phase in their lives, for Sharmila and myself, this will be our first. It will be interesting to see how each one of us internalize this passage of our own lives – the balancing of the joy of seeing her grow to be her own woman on one hand and then breaking out in sweat at night realizing that if we walked over to the other room, she is not going to be there, on the other…

Today, she is going to see some of our very old friends who often helped us manage her when she was a mere baby. Many of them have not seen her since those days (and have never seen Nikita!). It probably will not make a big mark in her mind, but for me, it will be momentous watching those “intersection points”.

There is a fascinating poem by the great Lebanese-born American-settled poet Kahlil Gibran called “On Children” that does an exemplary job of setting the parent – children perspective in the larger context of Life.

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“Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
Which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
But seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
As living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
And He bends you with His might
That His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
So He loves also the bow that is stable.”

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Category: Musings, My Family, Vacations | 7 Comments on Ah! those pesky little things called “children”