f.r.i.e.n.d.s

The title is the only place which refers to the tv show. This is about my friends, I hope this one is fun.
(For me, thinking of something to write about is quite a task. I try to be spontaneous, but since most of my waking time is spent in office, I can not do much about it there. The other problem with personal bursts of spontaneity is that many of these thoughts, are exactly that. Just one interesting thought. Blogging has generated quite a bit of respect in me for writers....)
I could describe my friends, but that will be a long winded post and I am feeling super lazy, today being a Friday.
For me, friends are a storehouse of memories as well as a preview of the future. Each one of them has a box full of common times from the past - the fun and the games, but also the heartbreak and the agony; long hours of debating right and wrong and black and white but also innumerable moments of unquestioned support and understanding. There are times when we ruled the world together in our own little corner, but also times when we felt that everyone was against us... the times we learnt the good and the bad and also the times when we discovered the madness in each other and in our own selves. Some of the oldest memories I have are of time spent by my oldest friend in my house in Jamshedpur - breaking toys, running after one another and just being happy. Playing football and Khokho (yes!) in front of Carmel School, hours spent talking on the terrace on top of second wing at DPS, discussing the country and everything that is happening every day after playing football in front of the main road in Sarita Vihar, playing "बीस साल बाद" on the final block terrace, sitting in side the fountain in front of the main block at Suratkal, long walks in the staff area at Ahmedabad, listening to music and watching movies just talking and not moving while everyone else was running "very hard to stay at the same place" at Ahmedabad, staying awake the whole night to try and attend the first lecture and falling asleep just after breakfast, chasing waterfalls and scaring in Scotland, partying hard all over London, shivering on the top of the Eiffel Tower, driving a car through the mustard fields near Neemrana, playing cards in Florence or getting drunk on Californian wine on the terrace at Dock street on my birthday, questioning life and laughing at nothing at Maresfield Gardens - so many millions of things and if I did not have friends, I would have missed out on each of them.

Unconditional happiness and an unhurried sense of time - that is what I am trying to put across here.

The future... well I see how each one of them is and I can also steal glimpses of their future, and in some way, of my future. I see hardwork and success, and I also see wasted opportunity. I see mindblowing brilliance and I see mediocrity.
What I like to see is contentment and resilience. I like to see strength of purpose and character.
These are the things that I need for the future. I know where to find them.

Soppy eh?
Sorry. Blame it on the song in the post below?

Singing in Hindi

इन दिनों, दिल मेरा, मुझ से है कह रहा ,
तू ख़्वाब सजा, तू जीले ज़रा...

है तुझे भी इजाज़त
करले तू भी मोहब्बत
है तुझे भी इजाज़त
करले तू भी मोहब्बत

बेरंग सी है बड़ी ज़िंदगी , कुछ रंग तो भरो
मै अपनी तन्हाई के वास्ते, अब कुछ तो करो ..... (२)

जब मिलें थोड़ी फुरसत (2)
खुद से कर ले मोहब्बत
है तुझे भी इजाज़त,
करले तू भी मोहब्बत

The hindi keyboard is painful for some words, but overall an 8 on 10*.

These days, my heart keeps telling me
to Dream a little,
to Live a little...

That I too am allowed,
To fall in Love...
That I too am allowed,
To fall in Love...

The Namesake

I had read the book about two years ago. Even then, the part of the story which had hit home was not the bit about the young Phd student and his wife in a strange land, but the bit about the son and what he feels about the father.

About the movie - I think it was very well made. Though I am not Bengali, the characters seemed very real to me. I also do not remember the book very well, but I think that the movie did an ok job in giving it life. The story reminded me of a simpler time, back in India and also here. It reminded of me as a person who had just come here - quite a fool I was then (No claims to the contrary for now!).

I wish I could write a better review which would do justice to how good I think the movie is, but some of the things I felt are intensely personal and I would rather let you find your own joys and sorrows while watching this one.

On an unrelated issue, the rank is #8 now, on google.com. I think that regular posts should help take this up a bit more. I would like to make a point about quality of rankings there as well - rank#1 is a dead link and has been a dead link for the past 6 months. WTF is going on!?!?!

Oneironaut-ing

The first time I could manipulate my dream, when I realised I was dreaming and that this realisation had not woken me up, I was quite happy the next morning. I was unsure that it had actually happened. For all such lucid dreams before that day, I had assumed somewhere in the back of my head that I had been dreaming about controlling my dreams and was not actually doing so.
There was no such thing as Google* then, so such information was not easy to find. In fact, I did not know what to look for to search for such information. Imagine my surprise when I found out that it was quite a common thing (I used to think I was like the superman of dreams), that there is aterm for it - Lucid Dreaming, and sure enough, there is a lot of research and investigation done in this field.
Interestingly enough, there were common themes to such research (the wiki page linked above has a good summary of some of that research) and my investigations. I was broadly concerned about three things - How to have only such dreams, how to restart a dream in case you got too involved and it was no longer a dream and more of a day dream and if such dreams could be used to look into the future (yes, I am like this only!).
My way of trying to have only such dreams was to try not to dream dreams in which I was not aware. However, therein lies a contradiction - if you are not aware that you are dreaming, how do you control/reduce such dreams? The other way of approximating this was to ensure that any lucid dreams, once identified, were strongly encouraged. And that is whatpoint two was about. My way of lengthening such dreams was to go back to sleep to try and continue the dream. However, I read very recently about how rubbing hands in a dream would help lengthen such dreams. The side effect of rubbing hands together is that particular areas of the brain which helps such dreams.
A lucid dream is a cool place to be. But it is a delicate balance - one has to be cautious enough not to stop dreaming and aware enough not to forget that one is dreaming. If ever you also are a fellowlucid dreamer, try looking in a mirror or a watch and funny things happen. Another fun thing to do is to try and read a newspaper. This is something I have been doing and have not yet been able to make sense of what I read... I blame it on the intense media messaging which hits us in this day and age.


And by the way, the title of this post, literally means Dream Sailor-ing.

* There I go about Google again. By the way, this blog got a page rank update and am now on the first page for the search phrase Saurabh Kumar. Yay!