there's this video of the beatles track 'while my guitar gently weeps' featuring clapton on the leads.. somewhere in between when clapton goes hallelujah with a solo, this happens.. george harrison watches clapton doing wicked chords and gives him a combo of 'bastard, why did ya steal my girlfriend?' and 'jesus.. how do you do those cords, wanker' looks..
clapton with that usual swagger of his gives back a 'tsk tsk tsk' look... the look in the eye of G Har is awefuggingsome...








a moment quite priceless..

To ya,
Pattie..
with love

my dad took me to his room and switched on the light.. twas' my convo photograph framed.. he had done it without telling me.. he hugged me and said.. "I'm proud of u, I wouldn't mind another one".. i beamed.. i owe the entire exercise of the degree earning to him.. and more.. he felt a proud man.. made me realize that i owed him another degree.. that's the least that i can do for him.. in all these years, this is one of the few times that i remember when he has asked me something..

tears..

Update: The above episode sparked off a catastrophic outburst later that night.. Embarrassing to say the least.. :(

Conned 'vocation'

glued to the seat, at the junkie workplace..
the day had arrived, to turn the page..
A new destination beckoned, the boredom had overgrown..
the journey was much needed, was tired of being alone..

stepped out of the bus, a touch expectant..
old memories flashed by, with nostalgic intent..
i was where i wanted to be, welcomed by the zone..
with all the things around me, hell I'd never be alone..

the crowd around me, stretched miles far..
the noise in the air, sounded like cries from a war..
the road looked full, the atmosphere full blown..
stifled amidst all this, i suddenly wanted to be alone..

the sea looked gorgeous, the sand never ended..
the waves lashed furious, the rocks defended..
the beach looked empty, the atmosphere unknown...
in the midst of nowhere, i realized i loved to be alone..

Well once upon a time in 1776 Thomas Jefferson signed his name on a piece of marijuana, and this document was a symbol of freedom and of liberty, at least for the rich, white, gentry. And time marched along, this plant that I referred to has been used for everything from medicine to the American flag. And now it seems to me that somewhere along the way things got messed up, yeah, messed up, for marijuana.

A gift of God to my brothers and me. Oh marijuana the government wants to test me when I pee.

Well some say a conspiracy, ? chemical and ? paper industries combined to kill the competition, government hysteria, monopoly, and conflict of interest, with total impunity. Yeah, so, if you don't buy the conspiracy, just look at the reality that your tax dollars go to spray poison on the fields of a farmer in South America. And as an added bonus, your neighbor might be the proud recipient of that poison weed.

Oh marijuana the government wants to test me when I pee. Oh marijuana gift of God to my brothers and me. Oh marijuana you cant legislate your own morality. Oh marijuana the government wants to test me when I pee.

Free from madness, chronic sadness, what is the half-life of bad propaganda? The policies fail, denied bail, you made him a demon now pay for his trip to prison. Hard to promote the status quote, but what is the shelf life of bad legislation? The hypocrite smirks, its a moral disgrace as he reads from the law that was written about the same time that he had his last original thoughts. Men said he was dying and the nausea and the pain left him wasting away and unable to keep a meal down. So he tried everything prescription could obtain but to no avail. The side effects were worse than the pain. So now he breaks the law to use the one thing that seems to help him out. But the people say, Oh hes just getting high. Not to change the subject but, didn't you ever wonder why getting highs a crime. Yeah a crime.

Oh marijuana gift of God to my brothers and me. Oh marijuana now the government wants to test me when I pee. Oh marijuana the government wants to test me when I pee. Oh marijuana the government wants to test me when I pee. Oh marijuana the government wants to test me when I pee. Oh marijuana(this is the part where everybody would sing along) when I pee.

-Terry Anastasio (Phish)

..he had always settled for mediocrity.. life seemed to have given him all that he wished for.. laying down low expectations meant that he was satisfied more often than not.. and whenever things exceeded expectations, it was a pleasant surprise.. that had been his mantra.. the downside was, he wasn't trained to take failures.. life had not taught him to handle defeats.. every little thing that happened to him was treated as victory.. call it innocence or naivety, he was confined to his own sweet cage of happiness... circumstances however played with him and lured him to the road of expectations.. the road which needed a hard heart and courage... ignorant of this, the man took a detour and the path seemed smooth.. every step took him to uncharted territory, showering loads of happiness and trouncing the mediocrity in him.. after this long.. the joyride seemed to be lasting forever and the bar of expectations was continuously being raised... he regretted at not having chosen this path earlier.. days later, the joyride had reached a point where it needed that little bit more 'extra' in order to keep it going.. a wee bit of courage would've done the trick... quite sad, it was never there... he realized he had been gliding with the wind all this while and when the situation demanded a bit of fuel with the destination within touching distance, he felt like an impotent twat.. the fall to the ground from dizzy heights was battering.. the crash landing wrecked him.. he could not call the wind, 'wicked' for letting him down.. he had not earned the rights to do so cos he had not even given it a shot... all he could do is get up, fake a pain-concealing smile to his mom, lie on the lap of his granny craving for some temporary solace... the once humble he had been cruelly humbled... all lost, he just headed into the shower.. to shed those tears which would be no different from the water inside ... he had been stoned.. stoned and washed...the wind ironically seemed to be blowing harder... the tears though, never seemed to dry..

Rwandans.. humans too..

CTR's benne masala dose
Janatha's baadam halwa
Asha sweets' rasmalai
Gullu's chaat
The Fast food's parotha
Veena stores' idly vada
Amruth's ice creams
Bhagyalaxmi stores' gulkand

..Malleshwaram and suttha muttha... el dorado.. peace...

the whole concept of money making is really weird.. the more u get into making money, the lesser is the probability that u are gonna spend it.. i'm sure that if any millionaire is posed with this age old question of 'what are u gonna do with all this money??', he is bound to present to you a totally unconvincing answer.. something like 'it is all for me, my family' or something equally inane..what bewilders me is not the fact that there are hajaar ppl who wanna make money, but the fact that all those who have enough money dont seem to stop the process... most of the blokes in this world seem to be complaining about a lack of money but dont seem to spend the money that they have already currently got.. i dont have a problem with people who complain because they genuinely do not have any bucks to spend.. but then, the remaining ppl complaining in spite of having prosperous coffers doesn seem right to me.. 'greed' seems to be the most appropriate word that i can attribute to such a situation.. something like stocking up all the curd in the world by working hard in the peak summers but not using it to quench your thirst and then realizing in winter that the curd has gone sour and even if it had not, it wouldnt have mattered.. why dont we just live for today as we dream of and stop bothering too much about tomorrow.. large amounts of idle money according to me is no different from a deadly virus which ruins your current happiness.. the bottom line in life is of course peace of mind..or wait.. why cant making money be that 'peace of mind' for a few???

I dont mind stealing bread
From the mouths of decadence
But I cant feed on the powerless
When my cups already overfilled
But its on the table
The fire is cooking
And theyre farming babies
While the slaves are working
The blood is on the table
And their mouths are choking
But Im growing hungry

When people win the Tour-de France, they don't celebrate..
They ask themselves, Why did they have to do it?
-Lance Armstrong

All I did when I read this quote in 'It is not all about the bike' (Armstrong's autobiography) was comprehend it to be an arbit, just another glam quote.. the kind of quotes which ppl write in their book to make it sell.. the 'sensation' creating kind...

Destination: Mullainagiri.. (Chikmagalur district, around 251 kms from Bangalore).
Date: 9th Feb
A sudden rush of blood to get out of bangalore for the weekend.. No plans made.. Quick decisions taken and there we were amidst the beautiful hills at seethalangiri.. The starting point of the trek... The trek to mullainagiri was awesome.. 3-4 kms of moderately challenging terrain although the enthusiasts could carve out their own route instead of the one already existing.. That said, we were there on the top of the best that karnataka could offer and it was an amazing feeling.. Little did we know wat we had in store for us a bit later.. next stop we thought should be another moderate trek to tower that we could see from mullainagiri.. It looked pretty close from where we were standing.. but so did the sun..we had estimated it to be around 3-4 kms away.. 5 kms max.. the journey began post lunch...lots of energy during the initial part of the trek.. we decided to do it in record time and set ourselves a deadline of 2 hours to do so..plus we had this idea of not touching the road at all cos we felt that the 'real' men wouldn't care to walk on the road.. 'Only Mountains it shall be!!!' was what was decided...the terrain was slightly harder but on the whole was manageable..a pal was repeatedly telling us as we crossed one hill at a time that the tower was not getting any closer.. in fact he had a feeling that it was being pushed farther and farther.. seemed like god was playing a game with three loners just like how he derived sadistic pleasure in teasing weary travelers in the sahara with the bait of a beautiful mirage.. nevertheless, we continued on our journey knowing that we were almost there and it is quite natural to crib about the target in the course of approaching it.. that was the motivation for us.. we went on and on.. and suddenly over we were there down a cliff when we noticed that the tower had gone missing.. the mirage had gone... :) or was it there in the first place? or had we come on a wrong path..there was no path quite frankly and all we did was use our common sense and some basic skills of directions ..but then the tower had gone.. we then decided to move on and not fret cos the tower was just behind the cliff that we were about to climb now..that gave us new hope.. we were almost there.. which made us climb the cliff all the more quicker.. but then once we had scaled the peak.. we were both happy and sad.. happy because the tower had reappeared.. sad because it seemed to be the same distance from us as it was when we started the trek.. though we were all mentally strong, our legs were giving up and we had to summon our last ounces of energy..the irony was.. the road that we had disrespected till now was now way behind us and was mocking at us, calling us losers.. no way of turning behind, even if we wanted to.. Ha ha.. we felt like conned maggots.. no other way other than move forward.. suddenly the pain started showing.. the heads began to drop.. the happy trip was suddenly turning sour... it seemed like an ordeal, an endurance test now.. we trudged on only to be bothered by countless cramps, tiredness, torturous uphills and all the possible things which could pull us down.. After numerous breaks, we did manage it to the tower and yeah.... that quote above did seem true.. very true...