i like planes.

hmm...

there was once a dog . it was a nice dog, all white with a black patch over its eye (just the way i like it)..
and since it was a nice dog, it had a nice temperament to go along with its niceness..
yais, the dog was a bit on the philosophical side and tended to reflect on its doing a bit more than other canines ...it tended to chase cars just a bit longer than the rest and even had a best-friend-cat..
but that didnt really come in the way of its values or morals coz it didnt believe in any...
not that it could process the necessity of standards or morals as long as it got to chase cars and eat scrap off the dustbin in khira nagar..
but still...
also..im not sure it would appreciate being called an "it"...im sure it was proud of its gender , whatever it was..but this is just to keep the gender bias out of this story...
this isnt a story.

well one day the dog was provoked beyond its meagre boundary of standards and morals and it nipped someone..
well...not really nipped...the dog couldnt stand bothering with other beings more than necessary so it just tore the end of that person's (yes that being was human) pants.

so...now there was this uproar and people started accusing the dog of not conforming to society's standards (not that they cared. they just liked using the word society.....they also liked using the word phlegm...but ..well..that can hardly be used in everyday conversation now can it?)

so the dog was accused of having anti-social morals...people formed anti-dog parties...huge debates took place questioning the dogs decision to nip the hem of the pant..

the dog couldnt understand all this of course..it was too busy chasing a red maruti on marine drive...also..it didnt understand any language other than dog.

so there was this huge war and people died for other beliefs and bigger and more important issues were forgotten ..
(i dont know the standard for judging those other issues as bigger...i just assumed they were ..and this is my not-story so i can do what i please.)

mean while the dog chased cars all over mumbai and over the course of its chasings wandered into the airport...
here the dog was in for a super-dooper-bombastic treat coz it saw the biggest plane that it had never seen before (you cant say ever..coz ever stretches both ways in time..and how can you say with certainity that the dog will never see a bigger plane?)

well....the dog chased the plane with its tongue all happily hanging out...and soon other airport walla dogs joined in the chase and it became those huge greyhound-type races...only the weird little stuffed bait was transmorphed into an air india flight...

and as the dog crossed the 57th slum alongside the tarmac used for take-off, the AAI official came out and shot the dog.

not one member of the pro-dog-biting-hem-of-human's-pant party came for the funeral.

Bombay blues

And today the trains stopped.

I took the 5:55 churchgate local after spending a pointless day roaming around with friends in and around juhu barista and the beach.. it was a routine 45 minutes of commuting i faced everyday to get back home to colaba. ..I didnt even have my first class pass yet so i had to squeeze in into second class..

As usual i didnt get a seat till Dadar and i was cursing my day as i had undergone rather drastic versions of the same trial in the morning.. squeezed between a lady i shall call lady A and a kid whom i shall not call anything ..i took out my half read Mumbai mirror and discovered that i hadnt gotten around to doing the crossword yet...i started penning down the first word when i reached Mumbai central..i didnt look up till i'd finished the whole thing..and when i did i saw that the train had stopped at marine lines station.I then proceeded to complete the su-doku and out of sheer boredom finished off the mensa puzzle and the weird little word finding game ..i look up...and the train's still at marine lines..

By then it was nearing 6:45 and the train hadnt shown any signs of moving. The passengers were still pretty cheerful and had proceeded to buy chips and samosas from the railway aahar shops and didnt seem concerned in the least that the train had stopped indefinitely for no apparent reason . There were trains stalled on parallel platforms and by then everyone had gathered on the platforms..

Then came the rumours... "bhayander pe taar gir gaya hai".. "borivili mein teen trian bandh padh gaye hain"... noone seemed too concerned but the people who had their homes near at hand started getting out and walking off..

I hadnt been too bothered but by 7:00 i walked onto the platform and asked around...it seemed there had been a bomb blast between Khar and Bandra..

Lady A finally took her bags and waddled out of the train cursing beautifully in marathi about how people in Khar had no business bursting bombs all over the place when she and the kid(who happened to be her grandson) had to get home..


I was a little panicky as all the phone lines were jammed and my mom was on her weekely visit to the Siddhi Vinayak temple and was a few trains behind me..
i tried calling but i finally walked out and went out of the station..and what a sight i saw..
the road was flooded with people flagging cabs and any vehicle that would hold them..people on trains stranded between stations were walking on tracks or alongside them..and since the exodus was mainly on the opposite side on the road..i tried flagging a few cabs...but they wouldnt stop...i even saw several abandoned cabes alongside the road

i had to walk it down to the nearest bus stop.Luckily i got a bus pretty quick and except for a minor stall in the middle where the bus was checked for bombs i reached home without incident..
then followed the rounds asking if everyone was alright..
distant relatives whom i didnt know called up..friends messaged and called to check..and everything reached a semblance of normality .. before long we got around to wondering if we could get a holiday the next day..

News reports showed that there had been around five or seven blasts on fast trains bound from churchgate at various locations..there had also been blasts in Srinagar the same morning and casualities anf fatalities in Mumbai alone had reached to around 135..

Mumbaikars have always been praised for their cool and their ability to handle any calamity thrown at them ..this has been put to proof plenty often right from 26 july 2005...

but the past two weeks have still been a hard blow ..first the incessant rains and floods and then the riots by the shiv sena.. and now the bomb blasts...
mumbai's lifeline has just about come to a standstill..
amazingly enough noone seems too flustered or panicked.. i bet plenty of people will still turn up for work and college tomorrow if there is no holiday declared...but i wonder how much more one city can take....

monday post

why does everything has to be definite?
or defined for that matter?
sometimes youre forced to draw up definitions and limits when there are none necessary really..
why should i claim im a certain type of person when i can feel like something else?

im pretty random and arbit at times...almost all times actually..but that doesnt mean i dont make sense...or supreme sense even...once in a while..
infact, im about the most sensible person i know.
im pretty aloof and removed from other people at times..and i'm not always very considerate..but that doesnt mean that i dont care or that i cannot socialize or just be plain friendly.

i like science . i louve science . but i like arts and music.. infact i louve art and music.
i like animals . but i dont necessarily hate people who dont like animals or people who are cruel to animals. yes, i dont like what they do..i dont even like people who litter or hypocrites. but not liking them doesnt mean ill never talk to them or have fun with them.

im not an average . im not a total.

i might not like certain TV shows and i might watch the just to make fun of them. at other times i dont feel like watching anything.

people donot have a right to demand a definition from me. nor do i have a right to expect one from them. but at times i still do anyway.

i like the rain i like the sun. but i dont like the sun when i dont want to.

i can make a point with just one sentence i can go on rambling about it for hours and hours.
i can get pissed about the fact that i manage to feel guilty when i cross my own pseudo-definition of what im like or what im not like.

i need limits . but i dont need to draw them for nothing. i dont need to fit in or rebel.

i dont need to think in terms of fitting in or rebelling infact because even the rebels fit in. or maybe thats my definition . which makes me guilty again that im trying to explain something that really doesnt matter.
i can do what i want when i want without answering to people as long as its my beliefs that are in question. half of the world ive created is a perceptive one in my head anyway so this fine net of beliefs and limits and definitions doesnt show through half the time.

and honestly, im relieved. i dont even know if this is a form of justification anyway.

i am what i am

or perhaps i am what i want.

ta-dahh!

eenie-meenie-mynie-moh

she skipped over the squares light and easy..

bent over to pick up the rounded shiny-smooth 'tipper'..

made her way hop-skip and jump..

jumped-soared over the last or first line..you couldnt say..its confusing in such games...

ta-dahhh!!
let there be light ..as it were..